Five years ago I had never once believed in God, not even as a child. All my life I was a content atheist; it was simply obvious to me that God did not exist. I thought that religion and reason were incompatible, and eventually became vocally anti-Christian. In 2005 I began to have doubts about atheism and started this blog to ask questions of believers. Long story short, I blogged my way from lifelong atheism to Catholicism (my husband and I both entered the Catholic Church in 2007). I now write about faith after atheism. Welcome to my blog, I'm glad you're here!
God and computer problems, Part II
Back in this post I talked about how some technical issues were about to drive me insane. To summarize, I thought I would make a simple change to my blog (getting a custom domain name), and it ended up causing all sorts of errors because of a technical glitch on Blogger's end. After researching the issue and talking to other people in the Blogger help forums, I came to the realization that there was not a single thing I could do about it -- nothing -- and I didn't even have a way to directly contact Blogger technical support to let them know the problem was happening. Most people were getting an error page when trying to access my site, and I didn't know what the problem was or whether it would be fixed in an hour or a day or a year (or never).
After informing my husband of my plan to resolve the situation by throwing my laptop through the window and stomping on it for a while, he asked an interesting question: "Why are you so mad about this?" When the only answer I could give was something along the lines of, "Because...just BECAUSE!" it occurred to me that perhaps I should think a bit more about what had me so bothered by this situation.
As I alluded to in my last post on the subject, it came down to trusting God. As my husband pointed out, I should trust God with the technical problems on the blog where I write about trusting God. And that should be easy, right? After all, I've made a lot of progress in terms of letting go of my white-knuckle grip on the major areas of my life, so it should be no big thing to let go of my anxiety about this. Yet when I tried to do just that, when I tried to cultivate a peaceful state of mind in which I rested in the knowledge that the only thing I needed to do was listen for God's will and it would all work out according to his plan...I couldn't.
But why?
It's not that I thought that the fabric of the universe was going to fall apart if people couldn't read my little blog. It's not that I felt that the errors were inexcusable -- my background is in the tech industry so I'm sympathetic to the fact that those things happen sometimes. It's not even that I thought it would have any noticeable impact on my or anyone else's life. So what was the problem?
Lack of control: I was completely, totally powerless.
As a modern American, I realized, there are very few things in my life over which I have no control. I've never experienced food shortage or crop failure; I've never had a well dry up; none of my children have ever had illnesses that couldn't be at least partially treated with medicine; when I'm in pain there are drugs to make it go away; and thanks to air conditioning and central heating, I can even have a sense of controlling the weather by keeping my house and car at temperatures that are comfortable to me. I. Am. In. Control. All. The. Time.
I decided to brainstorm to come up with a list of situations I might experience over which I have zero control, where there is not one thing I can do to change the outcomes. Some of the few things I could come up with are:
When I looked at the list, I was amazed: sure enough, these are the times when I am most anxious and/or angry. I am more discontent in those types of situations than I have been when I've faced life-altering events like, say, when I got a life-threatening blood clot during pregnancy and found out I had a serious clotting disorder. Even though the latter situation was far more important, I had more control: I could research the best medicines to take for the blood clot, switch doctors to get better treatment, modify my activity to lower the risk of a pulmonary embolism, read up on the best diet for people with my disorder, make sure to stay at a healthy weight, etc. I could say that I trusted God with the outcome, and I really did...yet I still had some amount of control.
As I mentioned in one of my last posts, I've made a lot of progress in terms of trusting God with the long-term plan for my life. Interestingly, it all started last year during Lent. The day I wrote this post was a turning point in my life. It was the moment that the concept of "trusting God" finally clicked for me, that I finally understood what it was all about.
I can't help but wonder about the timing, then, that another piece of the puzzle fell into place for me during Lent this year, almost a year to the day after my first lesson on the subject. Last year I began to understand that I needed to work on trusting God with the big picture. This year I am beginning to understand that there's a lot more to it than that; that to really put my life in God's hands means to trust him with everything -- everything. I'm realizing that even if I can prayerfully turn to that famous line from Matthew 26:39 when facing major crossroads, I will only have truly abandoned my life to God when I can find myself stuck in traffic or staring at an error message on my computer and calmly say, "Not my will, but Yours."
After informing my husband of my plan to resolve the situation by throwing my laptop through the window and stomping on it for a while, he asked an interesting question: "Why are you so mad about this?" When the only answer I could give was something along the lines of, "Because...just BECAUSE!" it occurred to me that perhaps I should think a bit more about what had me so bothered by this situation.
As I alluded to in my last post on the subject, it came down to trusting God. As my husband pointed out, I should trust God with the technical problems on the blog where I write about trusting God. And that should be easy, right? After all, I've made a lot of progress in terms of letting go of my white-knuckle grip on the major areas of my life, so it should be no big thing to let go of my anxiety about this. Yet when I tried to do just that, when I tried to cultivate a peaceful state of mind in which I rested in the knowledge that the only thing I needed to do was listen for God's will and it would all work out according to his plan...I couldn't.
But why?
It's not that I thought that the fabric of the universe was going to fall apart if people couldn't read my little blog. It's not that I felt that the errors were inexcusable -- my background is in the tech industry so I'm sympathetic to the fact that those things happen sometimes. It's not even that I thought it would have any noticeable impact on my or anyone else's life. So what was the problem?
Lack of control: I was completely, totally powerless.
As a modern American, I realized, there are very few things in my life over which I have no control. I've never experienced food shortage or crop failure; I've never had a well dry up; none of my children have ever had illnesses that couldn't be at least partially treated with medicine; when I'm in pain there are drugs to make it go away; and thanks to air conditioning and central heating, I can even have a sense of controlling the weather by keeping my house and car at temperatures that are comfortable to me. I. Am. In. Control. All. The. Time.
I decided to brainstorm to come up with a list of situations I might experience over which I have zero control, where there is not one thing I can do to change the outcomes. Some of the few things I could come up with are:
- Computer problems where technical support is not available
- Getting stuck in traffic
- Turbulence on airplanes
- When I need to get in touch with my husband while he's out and he forgot his cell phone at home
- When I've lost something irreplaceable and can't find it anywhere
When I looked at the list, I was amazed: sure enough, these are the times when I am most anxious and/or angry. I am more discontent in those types of situations than I have been when I've faced life-altering events like, say, when I got a life-threatening blood clot during pregnancy and found out I had a serious clotting disorder. Even though the latter situation was far more important, I had more control: I could research the best medicines to take for the blood clot, switch doctors to get better treatment, modify my activity to lower the risk of a pulmonary embolism, read up on the best diet for people with my disorder, make sure to stay at a healthy weight, etc. I could say that I trusted God with the outcome, and I really did...yet I still had some amount of control.
As I mentioned in one of my last posts, I've made a lot of progress in terms of trusting God with the long-term plan for my life. Interestingly, it all started last year during Lent. The day I wrote this post was a turning point in my life. It was the moment that the concept of "trusting God" finally clicked for me, that I finally understood what it was all about.
I can't help but wonder about the timing, then, that another piece of the puzzle fell into place for me during Lent this year, almost a year to the day after my first lesson on the subject. Last year I began to understand that I needed to work on trusting God with the big picture. This year I am beginning to understand that there's a lot more to it than that; that to really put my life in God's hands means to trust him with everything -- everything. I'm realizing that even if I can prayerfully turn to that famous line from Matthew 26:39 when facing major crossroads, I will only have truly abandoned my life to God when I can find myself stuck in traffic or staring at an error message on my computer and calmly say, "Not my will, but Yours."
Labels: Lent, Trusting God, Turning Points
Posted on
Thursday, March 20, 2008
at 3:46 PM | Permalink
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