Grace and Goodness

These past few weeks have been really rough on me -like deep, biting, envious depression. Just seeing a pregnant woman in the grocery store would set me off. I've wanted a normal pregnancy so bad that it hurts. I saw on this one forum where a woman had heard her baby's heartbeat for the first time, and I just cried. It didn't seem fair that I had to walk this road. The worst part was when I'd walk around going "You can't be pregnant. This is crazy. Just give it up already." But I couldn't. I can't. Just when things get their blackest I'll get this thump in my tummy saying "Yoohoo?! Don't you know I'm in here, Mom?" And then I'll start thinking that maybe I'm imagining things and start railing to my husband about how God is screwing me over and how I can't be good enough to please God and all sorts of crazy things. But the hardest part of all is that a. God is gracious, and b. God is good. The really burdensome part is that it seems that a large part of what has been going on is tied to my spiritual and emotional habits and beliefs. That's what's hardest for me -the feeling that if only I did things right that all of a sudden things would pop into place and be normal. But apparently it doesn't work like that, and the pressure and guilt I had put on myself was rapidly driving me into some pretty thick depression. Part of the grace is that even though there's plenty of stuff for me to work on here it's still all by God's grace. The burden really isn't on my shoulders however much I feel or act like it. Also, God is by definition good. All things work together for good etc. So no matter how mad I get at God for putting me in this situation those are two things that I cannot deny. And really, as much as I hate looking at some of my circumstances and calling them good, my only hope is in the goodness of God. If He's not good and good to me, then what you come out with is a mean, vengeful, capricious God who's only concerned about Himself. Of course being God He gets to make the rules, but praise God that He does care about us. Of course sometimes that just makes it harder. It's easier to look at a hard situation and rant against God than to accept it as something that is ultimately good. It's easier to believe God is smiting us for some malicious reasons of His own than to accept difficulty as coming from the hand of our loving Father. I've been there and done that, and it's a dark place. I'll probably go there again even though I know otherwise. But yes, God is gracious, and God is good. Let that be true and everything else I know a lie.