cc not showing up in game

None of the CC will work on your Desktop. It must be in the Mods folder the game created. The resource.cfg file must be there and you should not edit it. If you have, delete it and start the game. A new one will be created.

the only way the game would open was if the folder was on my desktop. i tried deleting everything and it created an all new folder but the resource file is still there and it never was before. 

the cc in the mods folder in the sims 4 folder

You can have a shortcut to the folder on your desktop although the mod folder still needs to be inside your Sims 4 files. Usually if mods or CC won't show up in a game is because it needs to be extracted. If you have either package files or rar files, right-click on the file, extract, then run your game. It should show up.

The resource.cfg file has always been there you probably just never noticed. The reason the game is not working when your CC and Mods are placed correctly is that one or more of them do not work with the current patch level of the game. Every time there is a new patch (on average once a month) you must look for updates to your Mods and CC and remove any that no longer work. http://modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Finding_Problem_Custom_Content