Finding the Spiritual Calm Amidst the Religious Storm

My own spiritual crisis came during college. After a long drunken night in which I allowed myself to become the subject of much gossip and much humiliation, I found myself crawling into a shell where I believed no one could touch me and where I believed that every feeling I'd ever have would go completely numb. I spent days cursing the God I'd been raised to believe in, wondering how a being that was supposedly so good and powerful could allow something like this to happen. 

Three years later, I found myself once again wondering of the actions of God, though this time in a whole different light. A close friend of mine was evicted from the home she and her husband shared. For them, it seemed like their darkest hour, and in sympathy, I listened to their grief with smiles and nods and tried to tell them everything would be okay with as much encouragement as I could muster. Two months later, my friend was diagnosed with breast cancer. The tumor was found in time to treat it and she's now in remission. Had she stayed, it would not have been found in time since the doctors she'd been seeing in our small northern town had all passed it to the wayside as nothing more than a normal breast lump.