Abandonment Issues: Overcoming Feelings of Abandonment by God

Abandonment is a feeling that every one of us has had to face at one time or another in our lives. When going through it, it seems there is nothing remotely positive that can be derived out of feeling abandoned. Only in the aftermath of the event can we somewhat see the benefit of what we perceived to be abandonment at the time.

Feelings of Abandonment at an Early Age

I can remember the event which led to my introduction to feelings of abandonment like it happened just yesterday. I remember my mom taking me to what she told me was a routine doctor visit. I remember being examined by a doctor. I can remember him paying particular attention to my throat. My mom told me that she had to go to the bathroom. She left the room, assuring me that she would only be gone for a moment. During the time she was gone, a nurse came and ushered me into a hospital room. My mom never came back. As I write this, it’s embarrassing to admit that after 55 years I can still feel the anxiety now that I felt then. Some might say, “Get over it” but the scars of abandonment can run just as deep as the remnants of physical wounds that are carried for a lifetime.

[pullquote]Our natural parents make mistakes. But how do we reconcile our feelings of abandonment when tragedy occurs at the hands of a God who does not make mistakes?[/pullquote]

The next morning, the doctor performed a tonsillectomy and all I can remember from then on was lots of Jell-O and Ice Cream. My mom came back the next day, which only frustrated me more because my throat was too sort for me to verbalize the hurt I felt from her leaving me in the company of strangers overnight. This one incident caused me to wonder if she really loved me. And if she did love me, why did she lie to me? Who could possibly do something so horrendous to their child, I wondered at the time.

All of these thoughts and more loomed in my mind for years after my tonsillectomy. When I was old enough to understand, my mother and I talked about how and why she chose to leave me in the way that she did. She told me that she knew I wouldn’t understand what was going on. She told me that it would break her heart to see me crying. She told me that she did what she thought was best for me.

Reconciling Our Feelings of Abandonment

Our natural parents make mistakes. But how do we reconcile our feelings of abandonment when tragedy occurs at the hands of a God who does not make mistakes? How can we accept situations when we are doing everything we know how to do to worship an almighty God and our loved one dies anyway? How do we cope and rationalize that our God loves us and yet we are bombarded with lack, sickness, disease, and sadness within our own household? How can we go on loving a God who has the power to eradicate a problem that is causing His child so much pain, but doesn’t? I won’t begin to pretend that I have the answers to these questions. Like I said at the beginning of this article, sometimes we can’t appreciate the how’s or why’s until we are mature enough to understand the reasons for our feelings of abandonment.

Concerning God, there are things that we will never understand about the how’s and why’s. All that’s necessary to understand is that through all the pain, through all the misery, through all the sorrow, God still loves us.

He loves us when we don’t understand. He loves us when we don’t agree with Him. He loves us through our anger with Him. He loves us when we curse His name because of what we’re going through. And He loves us when we accept the fact that we will never understand all the how’s and why’s of a hodgepodge of events that will somehow, someway culminate in a life that can be used to His glory.

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