Dear Ann:

God is with you and with your friend and with your niece. He never leaves our side. He answers all prayers, but he answers them according to His good will and according to what is best for our soul. That may not always be the answer we want or the answer we understand.

However, God's answers will not be forced upon us. God does not force us, He respects our free will. He will NEVER violate our free will. That is the reason why it seems like our prayers are not answered especially when we pray for things that require something of other people.

For example, if we pray for the fighting to end between our parents, the fighting may continue not because God said "no" or because God is not there, but because the parents decide they are going to continue to fight. God will not force them. He will try to persuade them, but he will not force them. You said, "I thought there was something I could do to change the circumstances, something God could do too." Well, you can't change the circumstances and neither can God if your parents are not willing to do what is necessary to change. THEY must make the decision.

Contrary to popular opinion, God does not get His way most of the time. Each time we sin God does not get his way (He does not want us to sin). God wants us to love Him and to follow His teachings, yet most people in the world do not do that. Thus, oftentimes our prayers seem unanswered because the people involved in our prayers, or ourselves, do not make the decisions necessary for the prayer to come true. God will not force anyone.

God loves us so much that He has given us a part of Himself -- the ability to freely choose. Animals do not have this ability. Our Free Will is what make us "in the image of God". Free will is what allows us to love. Love cannot be forced and is not instinctual. Love must be chosen. Thus, God will not ever intrude upon our Free Will. It is His gift to us and He will not take it back and He will respect it.

Now, with that said, God comes to the aid of people like your friend, your niece, and yourself in thousands of ways but we just don't see it. As you put it about your friend, she "could not sense God in her life at all." Our "senses" do not always tell us the truth. Regardless of whether or not she "sensed" God's presence, God was there. But, God is not going to force her to "come to her senses."

With your friend God was there in the friend who found her before it was too late and saved her life. God was there.

God was with you too. Apparently you got through it, you did bear the pain, and grew up and now understand, at least intellectually, that God was there. That is a start.

This is where faith comes in -- to believe in something we cannot see. God is with us, even when we cannot see any evidence of that. As the poem Footprints in the Sand tells us, the times when we think God has left us because we see only one set of footprints in the sand, those are the times when Jesus is carrying us and the one set of footprints are his.

God makes us promises and since God does not lie, we can trust Him to keep His promises. One of those promises is found in Roman 8:28:

This does not say that everything will be good, but that all things "work together" for good. God can bring goodness even out of evil IF we let Him. To put it another way: Life may give us lemons, but if we allow God, He will make from it sweet lemonade.

This is true even is the greatest tragedies. Lemonade can even be made from the tragic death of a loved one if we allow God to do so.

One kind of lemonade that can come from a tragic event is that it can prepare a person for later years to be compassionate toward other people who may be going through a similar trial. There are many trials and tribulations that I have had, including wanting to kill myself, including feeling hopeless, that at the time seemed unbearable, but I now can draw upon to help others. Those past experiences of mine help me to answer questions on these Q&As.

God can bring goodness out of anything.

There is another major promise God makes:

NOTHING can separate us from God, except ourselves. We can separate ourselves from God by the decisions we make, by thumbing our nose at God, by rejecting His grace, but even then God is still by our side as any good parent would be.

Whenever we think these things are not true, whenever we think that God has abandoned us, then we are calling God a liar. God is not a liar.

In your own case God was not silent, He just did not speak in the way you wanted Him to. He spoke to you through His Holy Spirit and gave you the strength to persevere through it (even though at the time you thought you couldn't take it any more -- you did get through it).

He may have also spoke to you through many ways, like through a friend at school who comforted you, through a movie you saw at the time that gave you comfort and strength, through a song on the radio, and in a thousand other ways.

God is with us ALWAYS.

There is a story told about Elijah looking to see God (1 Kings 19-11-13):

God appears to us and speaks to us in ways we do not expect and often do not recognize at first, and sometimes not at all.

God was with your friend, she just didn't recognize it, but He came to her rescue in the form of the friend who saved her life. God was with you when you were in despair over your home situation. I am sure there was a thousand ways that God spoke to you and comforted you that you do not realize or remember. He got you through it, because you did survive it. How do I know? Because you are here now and asking these questions. God is also with your niece. She may not see it, but He is there. Pray for her that she will come to see her Heavenly Father's love for her.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary