On the banana peel / How God is like the Trump Administration

My dad is 78 years old, and my mom is 82. The average life expectancy in the US is 78.87 years (2019).

As my mom said the other day, she's got "one foot on the banana peel."

At this point, with dad having cancer surgery, chemo/radiation, and as of yesterday, emergency surgery for a twisted bowel obstruction, he's got one foot on the peel and is doing a little jig. 

It has made me aware of how I hear of other people going through "hard stuff" and think to myself, "How do they manage that?"

The answer is complex:

1. You go through what you have to because what choice do you have?

2. I think a lot of the time you aren't aware you're going through it until it is done. (Except me, who recognizes we're going through a hot mess at the moment.)

The other night, when mom and dad were in the ER, and we didn't yet know what the diagnosis was, I laid in bed and had angry conversations with God.

Well, not really with God.

God is not my sugar daddy. I don't plead for stuff. I don't wish for things. For my own sanity, I cannot have an anthropomorphized God in my life because he/she/it makes me furious. 

My anger at that instant was directed at people who do the whole "God is good" song and dance when they get the answer they want (no cancer or whatever). But they don't do the "God is an asshole" thing when the answer is not what they want. Then they do the "God's got this" thing.

I'm not poking fun of them because if this gets them through the muck, then have at it. 

But it doesn't get ME through the muck. It just makes me think that God is like the Trump Administration--taking ALL the credit for the good stuff and none of the blame for the bad stuff. 

After lying in bed for several hours, I finally decided that for my own mental health I had to look at Dad's situation as just nature happening. His aging body doing what aging bodies do. Nature is not good nor bad; it simply is, and it does what it does. It is much more calming for me to think this way about my family's shared existence at this time. 

Of course, while all this is going on, I've been interviewing people who have been throwing around preachy moralizing at me, and it is aggravating as hell. 

I'm the doubting Thomas who never gets to put his hand in Jesus' side. I'm the Paul who doesn't have the conversion. And I'm the Carrie who resents other people throwing their "God is good" and "God's got this" into my face even though I know they have good intentions. 

The road to hell is paved with those.