This post is an intermission post (for lack of a better term).  To read the preceding posts please click on Parts One, Two, Three, and Four.

This morning when I checked my email prior to writing part five of this on-going series, I found a comment from a reader that so completely described my anguished feelings over the past few years that I asked her permission to share her note with you all.  Although, she and I have differing life circumstances, the question she presents is the same one I wrestled with over and over and over.

Here is what she wrote:

I just finished reading yesterday's post.  I wish I could believe that God only gives good gifts, but I just don't.

We weren't trying when I had the second miscarriage.  It was not quite an accident, but more of a whim.  But I was happy.  And then I was sad.  The loss devastated my relationship with my husband and our relationship with our church.  It made me discontent with my job, which I gave up, hoping that working from home would help with a future pregnancy.  That hasn't worked either.

Credit To: I don't know.  I found several of these images all over the web.  It doesn't seem to belong to anyone? See watermark in top left corner of image.

Now we have no money and no future.

Where is the good gift?

By most medical standards, I'm getting too old for this.  Maybe I should just accept that we don't need kids.  We don't need a legacy.  I'm not fit to be a mother anyway.  I can finally give up the dream and get a full-time job and enjoy life with enough money to pay the bills like we used to have.  And once I don't care about the kids in the nursery, we can join a church.

Maybe I just need to be content and learn to tell people that I really don't need kids to be happy.  It's not a gift I'm going to get.  I'm going to get years of companionship with my husband, a full night of sleep whenever I want, the ability to take long road-trips at a moment's notice.

Maybe without the pressure, I'll get my marriage back.

Her comment took me straight back to that place of disappointed hurt and puzzlement when I was trying to comprehend how a "good" God could allow so much pain to someone He supposedly loved enough to die for.  This reader and I were able to talk via Skype earlier this afternoon, and she had a lot more to say.  So much, that I wondered if she might be willing to write a guest blog post here.

She is considering it, so stay tuned...