ouch...wrestling hurts

My daily devotional today is the scripture from Genesis where Jacob wrestles with God. All night he wrestles with a man, and does not give in. Simply re-reading this passage a few times I think of this in terms of my own struggle. I've stayed up countless nights wrestling with my emotions. I've cried until it hurt to produce tears. I've cried until I stopped breathing for a few seconds. However hard I've struggled with my emotions at night, I survived until the morning. I've either stayed up or woken up to the light of the dawn. 

Jacob survives the night, is blessed and renamed by God and ultimately reconciles with his brother Esau after all the wrong. The idea of wrestling with God is something that goes beyond simply crying for me. I am still angry with God. There are moments when I feel the anger more, when I feel the distance. I cannot see a time when I will be okay with the death of my brother in relation to how I see God. There will always be tension. I am willing to live in that tension. I trust God that he will not fail me. I trust in God that even during this period of me wrestling that he still loves me unconditionally. Maybe it's not this simple.

Yesterday's devotion, the first in my book of 365 devotions, was about reconciliation. It is a fitting topic and something I've been thinking about recently. I feel the separation between myself and God. I feel it sometimes very deeply in my core. I yearn for the closeness I once felt. I want to be held in his hands again, or feel like I'm being held in his hands again. Yet the anger I still feel about my brother's death inhibits my relationship with God. It inhibits my full attention to the workings of God in my life. I am blessed. I am a child of God. I am loved. But in the midst of all that, in the midst of loving God, my brother died.