Growing up, I was from a divorced family. My father and mother divorced when I was five and I lived with my mother and her parents from that point forward on ten acres in Oklahoma. By the time I was old enough to see over the kitchen counter I had specific chores that I was responsible for. My grandparents would watch me at night while my mom worked at the local Air Force base on the night shift. This is where I eventually met and married my husband who was in the Air Force stationed at the same base. I grew up learning how to garden, raise animals, and play outside until it was dark, unlike the kids of today.

Being from a small town in the bible belt of the country, it was just a given that on Sunday mornings you would be in church. If you went out the night before, didn’t matter, you were in church on Sunday. Our faith was based on the Methodist Church in our small town in Oklahoma where my mother and I both graduated from the same school. I grew up going to church on Sundays both in the mornings for service and for church youth group (which my mom was a leader of with a couple of other parents) in the evenings. Since it was a small town the kids my age grew up together through the years in the church. We all went through confirmation together and we all graduated together. I always knew that I had to know Jesus to be able to go to heaven, it was just known that is how it was. You have to ask Jesus into your heart and ask for forgiveness of your sins to be saved. As we went through confirmation classes this was all gone over again.

As I grew up through my young adult years, and even to some point now, I know this is how I get to heaven. I know that Big Bubby is sitting in heaven now talking with Papa about fishing, football, basketball, and arguing over who’s the better team Oklahoma or anyone else.

At some point, maybe when we moved to the Dallas area, my husband and I moved to going to a Baptist Church, his family was always Baptists, close to our house. Methodist and Baptist belief’s are not that far apart and we fit in quite well with the other parents of kids our age. So the transition was an easy one. Our kids all grew up in the Baptist church and were baptized at different points in their spiritual journey. I can say that I am thankful that all three of my children do know Christ and accepted him long ago as their savior.

With three kids, growing up you start having your calendar fill up pretty quickly with activities the kids want to participate in. All three played soccer although the two boys stopped at a younger age, our daughter played up until high school. So our weekends were filled with trying to make all the games and week nights all the practices. Big Bubby also started playing baseball after soccer. He was a pretty good player and ended up playing on traveling select teams. So our going to church fell to the back of the line. I also began to feel that the church we were attending was more of a social hang out for most and that didn’t sit well with me. So God to a backseat to life so to speak.

Before 11/10/15, I would have said my faith was strong that I believed God had a plan for me, now, that strong faith has been shattered and I am trying to rebuild something I thought was strong enough to withstand the strongest adversity. I have always felt I had a strong faith in God and that he would always be there for me in my most desperate of times and my most joyful of times. Right now, I don’t feel God is with me at all. I am in a very dark place in my journey back to faith and feel that I may never regain the trust that I had a savior who would protect me from all adversity or shield me better than I was when this tragic event happened.

Now in a dark time of my belief that God isn’t there and wasn’t there to protect my son that day, I am mad at God for taking my beautiful baby from me so early in life. I am mad that he didn’t take me instead. I have lived a full life. Now, as  I write this blog post, I am still struggling with my faith in a God that is supposed to be a God of love and a God of Grace. Where was He on November 10th when my son needed Him the most? Why wasn’t He there to move the bus away from my son? Is it something I have done? Am I being punished for not being a “good enough” christian? These are all questions I have right now and I am trying desperately to find answers that I may never find.

I have never been a very good person regarding studying the bible so now I am reading everything that I can find on grief related to religion or references to the bible verses that I could read that would help me become deeper in my faith with God. I hear that people get signs from their loved ones who have passed. Does that only happen if God allows them to give us a sign? Or do you have to be the “perfect” christian to get a sign from your loved one? I just need to know Big Bubby is OK. Not that it will help me come to terms with the loss that I have and the death that I feel inside since I lost him but it would be something I could hold on to.

I have talked with the pastor of the church my husband and I are attending and they have given me some references to look at. I will be using those in future blogs after I have studied it.

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