Dating, Breakups, and Why?

I've felt a little at odds with God lately.  I liked a girl for a year.  I waited for the right time.  Finally the time came and she said yes.  We dated for two months and then it ended abruptly.  And now, many weeks later, I'm sitting in a lonely chair processing the breakup and I have found myself asking a couple of questions over and over.  "Why did this happen?"  And "what did I do wrong?"  Throughout the relationship, I always reminded myself that if I just followed Jesus everything would be ok; if I just loved like Jesus the details would work out.  I genuinely believed that.  Well everything did not work out.  I felt like God abandoned me, or maybe He never listened in the first place.  "I followed you God, I loved like you, I pursued you and everything went to hell."  It seemed like God lured me into a trap.  Either that or life has no meaning and I am just a delusional trying to convince myself that God knows who I am. 

I was forgetting that God never made that promise.  He never said if I followed him everything would be ok.  He never said that relationships would all make sense and work out if I just loved as well as He did.  God commanded us to do those things despite the results, and have faith in Him that it is for the best even when it doesn't work out.  The beginning of the book of James comes to mind, "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing."  James doesn't say "if you follow Jesus then you won't have to go through hard stuff" or "Make sure you figure out what you did wrong when everything seems to be falling apart."  He says when you meet various trials just know that it's a good thing in the end.  It's actually surprisingly encouraging to me right now to know that hardships and suffering are just as much a part of the life of a Christian as of anyone else.  Hard times in life come and go and just because you are going through something difficult doesn't mean God has abandoned you or you were acting outside his will. 

The book of Job has been my greatest source of comfort the last month.  Job was a great guy who loved God and was blessed tremendously with family, friends, and good business; then one day for no apparent reason everything was taken from him.  Job went from praising God for all the ways He had blessed him, to cursing the day he was born.  As he struggles to find meaning in all of it and wrestles through serious doubts about God and the purpose of following Him, I feel better about my own situation and circumstances.  God didn't provide a magical fix to all life's pain, but he gave us people to relate to when we are going through it and He tells us that even when it becomes literally impossible to find the meaning in the suffering that there is indeed meaning; but His plans are bigger than our vision and comprehension.   The tests of life aren't symptoms of something going wrong, they are bringing perfection and completion.

So I guess in the end I am finding meaning and encouragement after all.  Even sitting in an armchair in my bare-walled bachelor pad, processing a breakup in dramatic self-absorption, I find that God's words bring healing and inspiration and even now in my blinded condition I am a little better able to understand God and life.  So don't be like me and get mad at God if you don't understand the why and don't conclude that you are outside his will if things aren't working; but be encouraged, God doesn’t cause all things to happen but He does cause what does happen to work together for good for those who love God because neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor breakups, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.