Looking for the tow truck driver

A recent comment I left over at one of my regular reads, A Former Leader's Journey, got me thinking about some of the best advice I've ever received in terms of understanding God's will:


Coming from atheism, the whole concept of there being a personal God who is somehow involved in all that we do was amazing...and intimidating...and confusing. As anyone who has read my 2007 archives knows, for many months I was fascinated with the concept of knowing exactly what God's plans were for all the little details of my life. I looked everywhere for signs: did my invitation to a friend's wedding get lost in the mail because I wasn't supposed to go? Did my computer crash while writing for my blog because God didn't want me to publish that post? Did all the difficulty we had getting to church mean that we should switch parishes? I wanted all the answers NOW, and wanted the world around me to act as a sort of spiritual Ouija board in which God gave me clear Yes's and No's when I asked him questions (that way there'd be no uncertainty and I wouldn't have to mess around with that sticky "childlike trust" thing).

At some point I realized that, unless being a Christian was supposed to make you neurotic, I was probably doing it wrong. So I emailed regular commenter Steve G. and asked him for advice. The details of my question and his answer are here (I highly recommend that you read the whole thing), but the summary is this: I offered him a hypothetical situation in which my car breaks down on the way to an important meeting, and asked how to know the mind of God based on that situation. How do I know if God means the car breaking down to be a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down about the subject matter of my meeting? Or could it be that God is trying to tell me something about my relationship with the person I was planning to meet? Steve G.'s response was not what I expected, not what I was looking for, and not what I wanted. But it was a profound insight, and it changed the way I saw the world. In summary, his answer was:

Maybe it's not about you at all. Maybe it's about the tow truck driver.

He countered with a hypothetical situation in which there is a tow truck driver who is in a bad place in his life and is having a crisis of faith. He takes a call about a woman whose car is broken down on the side of the road. When he gets there he sees a Bible or something on her seat that indicates she's a Christian, strikes up a conversation about faith, and ends up being led back to God through the discussion they have. In other words: I am not the protagonist in that story. I'm just "the Christian woman whose car broke down," a bit player with a small speaking role.

It was this advice that led me to one of the biggest paradigm shifts in my entire conversion: the realization that to be a Christian is not to make God part of your story, but to realize you are part of God's story (that phrasing borrowed from this fascinating post at Purify Your Bride). Up until this point, I would have described my goal as a Christian as "to make God a big part of my story!" To understand that it's not about me, that the story was never mine to being with, was so humbling, so intimidating. What would this mean? How was I supposed to control everything if I didn't even know where God was going with all of this?!

Though Steve G. actually offered the ultimate answer in his response, it took months for it to sink in. I had to learn it on my own, the hard way (as usual), after banging my head against the wall by trying to do it my way a few more times. Eventually I realized that what it means to accept I am part of God's story is to ask in every moment not "What is God trying to tell me with this situation?" but rather, "How can I better know, love and serve God through this situation?" It is to stop reading tea leaves to see what God thinks of all my great, important plans and to realize that my plans are neither great nor important in the grand scheme of things.

Whenever I am tempted to forget this lesson (which is often), whenever I get so mired down in the frustration or difficulty of a situation that I can't imagine how this could possibly be part of God's plan, whenever I get so fixated on my own desires that I fall into thinking of all events in my life as related to them, I remind myself to "look for the tow truck driver." The tow truck driver has become a symbolic reminder for me, a call to put it all in perspective and remember that I have the great honor of being but a small player in the story that God writes. And, sure enough, nine times out of ten when I set my gaze higher and look outside of my own little bubble to see what's going on with the other players on the stage, I find that it is surprisingly obvious that the drama that I find myself in the midst of is actually not about me at all. Indeed, it's usually about the tow truck driver.

Daily bread, for the next 20 years

The the March Write-Away Contest over at Scribbit really got me thinking. The topic is simply: The next 20 years.

My senior year in college a professor actually asked us to write an essay about that very thing: where are you going to accomplish in the next 20 years? Boy, was I all over that one! I opened up my "Goals" Excel spreadsheet, categorized by short-term, medium-term and long-term goals, and started writing. I started with where I wanted to be in 20 years -- the founder and CEO of a thriving web development company with at least 30 employees -- and worked backwards from there. I also threw in the various hobbies that I was going to pursue, such as becoming a published author by the time I was 30 and learning to program in Java by the time I was 28. It felt great to know exactly where I was headed!

The problem was, my life veered off the Excel spreadsheet. At the end of each year I'd review all the great plans I'd laid, only to find that I'd accomplished barely half of them. "Goals for this Year - 2001," "Goals for this Year - 2002," "Goals for this Year - 2003," all had distressingly few items crossed off the list. I started to wonder if I needed to find better ways to motivate myself, if perhaps my tendency to procrastinate was to blame, if I was destined for failure.

And then, somewhere along the way, I started to believe in God.

After a life of atheism, I came to believe that there really is a Creator, that we can know him, and that he has a plan for our lives -- a plan better than anything we could come up with on our own. When I looked back on my discarded Excel spreadsheets with this newfound knowledge, I started to see something: in each of those years there were certain things I'd accomplished that were not on the spreadsheet, yet that brought greater peace and joy to my life than anything I'd planned to do. Most of these things didn't come with much acclaim and didn't have the worldly glamor that my goals had had, yet I could see now that they were far better. I started to wonder just how much more I could have done, how much more my life could have been enriched, if I'd stopped banging my head against doors that were closed, and started peeking into the doors that were open. I started to wonder if maybe Someone else had a better plan for my life than I did.

So, a couple years ago, I decided to set aside the spreadsheets and the goals lists. I decided to stop praying this:

Give us this day a detailed plan of how You're going to provide bread for us every day for the next 20 years with specifics as to what quantities You will provide and at what intervals we can expect to receive them so that I might work that into my goals milestones.

And to start praying this:

Give us this day our daily bread.

I would plan my life around much shorter intervals, discerning what I should do today or this week or maybe this month, and not try to speculate where God would lead me after that. I would seek not to follow my desire for worldly status or other people's approval, but to let go and let the finger of God be my guide. And as I reflect on this seemingly reckless abandonment of my life to an unseen God whom I had barely gotten to know, I keep coming back to the same thought:

This shouldn't work...but it does.

Perhaps it's my nonreligious background, but I continue to be amazed that my life has not fallen into scattered chaos without my planning it out to the last detail. What I secretly worried would happen is that this whole "following God's will" thing would lead to me jumping from one idea to the next, leaving a bunch of unfinished projects in my wake after I drifted off to do the next thing that I decided was "God's will." But that hasn't happened. Looking back at the past couple of years, there's more clarity in my life than ever before. It's like watching a play unfold: I see storylines cropping up, I'm starting to see a clear direction and purpose in where I have been led so far...I just don't know where it's going from here, or how it's going to end. As I've said before, it's more exciting than anything I could have ever planned.

So, what will happen in the next 20 years? It gives me a little thrill to say: I have no idea! There are a couple things I feel pretty sure about: e.g. that we're meant to stay in the city we're in for the rest of our lives, that I'll always do something involving writing, however informally; and we have taken basic measures for planning for the future such as retirement and college savings accounts. But other than that, I have no idea. I don't know where my husband's career will be. I don't know if I'll ever get any writing published. I don't know if I'll ever go back to work. I don't know whether we'll be rich or poor. I don't even know how many children we'll have.

When I think of the rest of my life here in earth, however long that may be, I don't expect that it will always be comfortable or easy. But, if the past couple of years are any indicator, I expect to find that God will indeed give me my daily bread, every day, and that with it will come a freedom and a deep sense of peace that I could have never found on my own.

Comments closed for Lent

Getting out of the boat

Recently I was all excited about doing a little project that I felt pretty certain that God was calling me to do -- the details of what it was don't matter, suffice it to say that it was a small but enjoyable task that I thought would be a wonderful way to show Christ to others. About half way into the undertaking, it became more challenging than I'd anticipated. Then yesterday morning I heard through the grapevine that someone had made a belittling comment about it, expressing some criticism of it in a condescending way that really got under my skin. That was the last straw in making it officially "not fun anymore."

I was exhausted from a busy weekend anyway, and this little comment threw me into a bit of a funk. I was so disappointed that the wind had been taken out of my sails about this endeavor, and thinking about that snowballed into a general malaise. To make myself feel better, during the kids' naptime I drifted off to do what I usually do to mentally run away when the going gets rough: I escaped into a book, surfed the web a little bit and then watched some television. At the time, I didn't feel like that was the right thing to do. These activities were not making me feel more peaceful, and in fact seemed only to serve to make me more unsettled. I felt like what I needed to do was to stop trying to distract myself and step away from the book and the computer and the television and just pray. But I didn't want to. Praying sounded uncomfortable, it sounded like it would take too long, and I wanted to feel good now. So I continued to bury my head in the sand of shallow distractions.

Though I felt somewhat better later, I never did completely pull out of the bad mood yesterday. For the entire day I felt bummed out about that condescending comment, uninspired about the project, and disappointed that God felt distant. I contemplated abandoning my project altogether.

And then, this morning, I saw something that gave me insight into what was going on. I watched a sermon by T.D. Jakes called The Last Night on the Boat, and as soon as I turned it on I knew it was what I needed to hear -- not what I wanted to hear -- but what I needed to hear.

"Where do you go when you're traumatized? Where do you go when things are too much for you?" he asked the audience. "That's your boat."

His sermon was about the symbolism of the boat, how the boat was where Peter and the other disciples felt comfortable and safe, how they wanted to cling to it in times of trouble, how they had to get out of it and leave their lives as fishermen in order to become fishers of men. When the going gets tough, Jakes pointed out, when things start to get painful or uncomfortable in our spiritual journey, we say to ourselves, "I'm going back to what I can control. I'm going back to what I can handle. I'm going back to what I'm good at. I'm going back to what's safe for me."

And in an oratory technique a bit more startling than what I'm used to from my soft-spoken priest, he implored the congregation to "slap somebody and say 'GET OUT OF THAT BOAT'!"

After taking a moment to imagine just how awkwardly I would have carried out that order had I been there in person, I realized that that was exactly what I needed to hear: GET OUT OF THAT BOAT!

What happened with that little project is what's happened over and over again as I've worked to grow closer to God: I know what I'm supposed to do, but when the going gets rough, I run back to the boat. In my case "the boat" is things like seeking other people's approval, trying to get a big thumbs-up from the world in all that I do, wasting time reading uninspiring content on the internet, watching vapid television or finding comfort in certain foods. Those activities are comfortable and provide immediate gratification with little required on my part.

It was interesting to reread the passage that Jakes alluded to in his sermon, Matthew 14:22-33, where Peter sees Jesus walking on the water. Peter says "Lord, if it is you, tell me to come to you on the water." Jesus tells him to come, and he gets out of the boat. He's scared, but he does it anyway. I imagined myself in Peter's shoes, and thought of how differently it would play out given my current attitude: after I came to believe in God I prayed for him to ask me to come to him, i.e. to give me some direction so that I might know he exists, and know what he wants from my life. "Lord, if it is you, tell me to come to you on the water," I basically said. And here's how it played out from there:

JESUS: Come.

ME: Who, me? Are you serious, Lord? To be honest I didn't really expect an answer.

JESUS: Come.

ME: How am I going to be able to walk on water? That's impossible! I can tell you right now that I am going to drown if I set foot outside this boat. It's night time, the water is deep, this is too scary! You cannot possibly be asking me to do this!

JESUS: Come.

ME: Ya know, I'd love to, but now that I'm actually looking at the black abyss of water that stands between you and I, I think I'll just go ahead and stay here in the boat.

As I've said before, my problem is not usually knowing what God wants me to do, but actually doing it. In matters large and small, over and over again I've found that doing the right thing sounds a whole lot more exciting when the idea is first proposed; but when I actually take a look at just what I'm being asked to do, when I look down at the inky water that I'm asked to step out into, I want to run back to what's safe. Sometimes I feel like it's too inconvenient, other times I feel like it's too painful or too scary or just too different than anything I've ever done. Sometimes I think it's impossible. But I'll never get close to God if don't step out of the boat.

Comments closed for Lent

Knock, knock. Who's there? A clue.

My post from Friday about St. Frances of Rome was supposed to be up on Thursday.

After a fun but completely mentally and physically exhausting day, Thursday afternoon I put the kids down for their naps and flopped into my desk chair for my daily quiet time. It was like a taste of heaven itself to sink into the comfy chair and experience the placid silence of the house. All the cares of the day melted away as I opened up a new document to share yet another way in which God has worked in my life. As usual, the practice of putting the words together, meditating on truth and beauty, almost instantly made me feel prayerful and relaxed. And then --

KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK! DING-DING-DING-DING-DING!

I had not even finished the first sentence when the silence was shattered by loud banging at the door and then repeated ringing of the doorbell. I jumped to my feet and ran to open the door, only to see an empty porch. I heard giggling somewhere off to my right. Furious, I shut the door and went back to my desk. I couldn't believe they were doing it again: the kids next door had been ringing the doorbell and running for the past couple of days. The day before I had gone to their house and kindly asked them not to do it anymore, and they assured me they wouldn't. And here they were, doing it again. I muttered something to myself about it being a good thing they didn't wake up the children, and went back to typing (although a whole lot less prayerfully than before). I still had a good hour of naptime left, I thought, so it should be fine. And then --

KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK! DING-DING-DING-DING-DING!

From upstairs I heard a quiet whining. They'd woken up all three children. As I heard the symphony of moaning work up to full-fledged crying, I realized that my coveted quiet time was now gone. Instead of enjoying a peaceful oasis of prayerful reflection, I now had three overtired, crying babies to tend to. The mental downward spiral began. Rather than see it as an ordinary childhood prank, I got myself all worked up about the idea that this was a personal attack, that they had done it solely to ridicule me and make my day a little bit harder.

I eventually caught the neighbor kids outside and went to talk to them. I was mostly civil, but that has a lot more to do with my non-confrontational nature than any sort of cooperation with the Holy Spirit. Once I was back inside, when I would catch glances of them through the window I would look upon them with scorn. I sent my husband an email that described them uncharitably. I couldn't wait until their parents got home so that I could see to it that these kids got in lots of trouble. I indulged in vengeful thoughts, thinking of how satisfying it would be to hear that their parents got really mad at them.

At some point God gave me the grace to take a step back and look at myself, and what I saw wasn't pretty. I realized that if I were to put into words the feelings that went through my mind every time I saw the kids whisk by my window on their scooters, it would be something like, "You little jerks! I was trying to have some quiet time for prayerful reflection to write about how we can show Christ's infinite love to others even in non-ideal circumstances, and you punk kids ruined it!"

Ah, spiritual maturity.

So often I hear about inspiring spiritual concepts, and when I ponder them from the safe confines of the pages of a book I am on fire to make them a part of my life. I thought of St. Frances of Rome as I started writing that last post and thought, "Yes! I too want to show Christ to the world! I want to let God work through me to show love and beauty to others through my actions!"...and then, when the books were put away and I was back in real life, as soon as it got a little bit painful for me, I was out. I wanted to show Christ's love to the world on my terms, when I could see the situations coming and prepare for them -- perhaps by volunteering at a soup kitchen or giving more money to the poor or making my husband's favorite meal for dinner. But I wanted nothing to do with that whole showing Christ to others thing when I had been the victim of a prank that pushed me to my mental and physical limits by making me deal with a situation that I was not prepared to deal with.

It would have been painful -- really, really painful -- to truly die to myself in that situation and look at my little neighbors through the eyes of Christ, to ask Mary to lend me her heart and look upon them as if they were my own beloved children. But how might the situation have been different if I had? What kind of big impression might it have made on those kids if I had thrown some cookies in the oven and invited them over so that we could get to know one another better (perhaps even sharing stories from some of my own childhood pranks), instead of just glaring at them through my window? Since I opted for the less painful option (again), we'll never know.


When I went back to my desk the next day to finish the post, I shook my head and smiled when I read St. Frances' biography. Talking about St. Frances of Rome had been something of an afterthought, a seemingly random topic that just popped into mind because I wanted to update my blog but couldn't think of anything else to write about. I'd seen her story before, but the only thing I remembered was that she was an example of someone who truly brought God into her marriage and selflessly loved others. That was the only point I was trying to make in the post.

But given the way that day had played out, it was like God hitting me over the head with a 2x4 when I re-read her story and saw that probably the most salient aspect of her life was that she selflessly followed God' will even when it was very painful, even when it was not her will. When I saw the question her confessor once asked her that marked a turning point in her life, it just about jumped off the screen at me:

Are you crying because you want to do God's will or because you want God to do your will?

I thought of myself the day before, just about crying over being derailed from supposedly doing "God's will" through quiet reflection and writing, and felt like maybe I needed to look over my shoulder in case Jesus was standing right there. God could not have made himself any more clear to me had he been there in person to tap me on the shoulder. Point taken.

It was stunning to see why St. Frances of Rome had come to mind seemingly out of the blue the day before. God had a message for me, delivered through her. I smiled when I got to the end of her biography and saw the recommended prayer for her intercession. As I said the prayer aloud, I felt the warmth of knowing that she was looking out for me that day, praying for me and for anyone else who's ever lost sight of what it really means to do God's will:

Saint Frances of Rome, help us to see the difference between what we want to do and what God wants us to do. Help us to discern what comes from our will and what comes from God's desire.

Amen.

Comments closed for Lent

A reckless experiment with prayer

[This is part of an ongoing series about bringing peace to my daily life. You can read the other posts on this subject here (scroll down).]


I've mentioned before that at some point during our conversion process a family member alerted me to the fact that I am actually related to a Benedictine monk. This long-lost cousin and I have corresponded occasionally ever since, and at one point I asked him if he had any recommendations for how I could better incorporate prayer into my daily life. He told me about something called the Liturgy of the Hours (also called the Divine Office), an ancient liturgical form whose origins stretch back to Jewish worship before the time of Jesus.

He wrote of how the earliest Christians' days revolved around prayer, how they would consecrate each part of the day to God by pausing to say certain prayers (usually psalms) at certain times, setting aside their work to turn their hearts and minds to God. The practice is thousands of years old, and still today every priest, monk and nun from the Pope on down are vowed to pray these prayers each day. He encouraged me to consider this, to join him and all the other religious and lay people across the world who join their voices together in prayer throughout the day to consecrate their hours to God.

"Sounds great!" I thought. "Too bad I don't have time for that."

A few Google searches led me to see that each of the three"major hours" would involve stuff like praying psalms, reading Scripture passages, reading the works of great Christian thinkers...in other words, things that I don't have time for. I decided to just come up with some ways on my own to add some less time-consuming prayer to my days.

None of these ideas for praying more actually happened and, meanwhile, the Liturgy of the Hours wouldn't go away. I started to think that maybe God was trying to tell me something, since I couldn't seem to escape blog posts and discussions and articles about the Liturgy of the Hours. I kept trying forget about it, to push it off to the "fantasy list of all the things I'm going to do when I have tons of free time," but I couldn't get it out of my mind. In the little bit of praying I actually did (like 30 seconds at night) I began to ask God to make it more clear what he wanted me to do here. Obviously I wasn't supposed to actually pray the Liturgy of the Hours since I had too many important responsibilities that left no room for extensive prayer, but what was it? Maybe just pray one of the prayers each day? Maybe learn about it to share with others? I then promptly tried to forget about it again.

Shortly after this prayer I was reading Pope Benedict's Jesus of Nazareth, and came across a fascinating section about Jesus' temptation in the desert to turn the rock into bread. Pope Benedict talks about how this is the temptation that Christians face still today, the temptation to focus on important practical matters like making sure everyone has bread, and worry about all the God stuff later. What struck me was when he talked about what Jesus means when he responds to the temptation by citing the Old Testament verse: "Man does not live by bread alone, but...by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord." Pope Benedict writes:

[Jesus] himself has become bread for us, and this multiplication of the loaves endures to the end of time, without ever being depleted...The German Jesuit Alfred Delp, who was executed by the Nazis, once wrote: "Bread is important, freedom is more important, but most important of all is unbroken fidelity and faithful adoration."

When this ordering of goods is no longer respected, but turned on its head, the result is...ruin and destruction even of material goods themselves. When God is regarded as a secondary matter that can be set aside temporarily or permanently on account of more important things, it is precisely these supposedly more important things that come to nothing. [emphasis mine]

Point taken. I began to really think about all my "important" tasks, and ask myself if they truly allowed so little room for prayer -- after all, Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity have helped the world tremendously on a practical level, yet they spend lots of time in prayer. I began to seriously look into the Liturgy of the Hours, researching what it would involve. It seemed counterintuitive that someone in my state of life with three small children would be led to this, but I felt pretty strongly that for some crazy reason I was being called to it.

Meanwhile, I'd been thinking a lot about how to bring some desperately needed structure to my days. It would bring so much peace to my life to have a clear rhythm, a stable routine, but how do I (to borrow Hallie's term) anchor my routines when I have a long history of ignoring self-made schedules? How do I find a natural rhythm to my days, to (as a commenter recently put it) live on God's time when modern technology makes to soooo easy to live on the world's time? How do I create hard stops?

When these two lines of thought finally collided in my mental meandering, "Why should I pray the Liturgy of the Hours?" and "How can I bring structure to my day with hard stops?"...a lightbulb finally went off in my head.

Could this be it?

Could making my daily tasks revolve around these prayers -- instead of vice versa -- as Christians and Jews have done for thousands of years, could this be the key to bringing peace to my daily life? Could putting regular prayer before everything short of emergencies provide the structure I've always yearned for? Could the pre-set times and prayers of the Liturgy of the Hours be the guide I need to not blow it all off and just tell myself I'll do it "later" (as I did with countless other plans for prayer)? Could Lauds and Matins and Vespers provide strong anchors for my days?

I really don't know. But I'm going to try it.


I've said so many times that I "don't have time" for any kind of serious prayer...yet I have never actually tried it. I based my assessment on looking at my schedule in Excel and seeing how full it was, not on actually having tried prayer and found that it didn't work.

So next week, I'm going to knock all my "important" tasks down a notch on the priority ladder, and I'm going to do something I really, really don't have time for: I'm going to pray all three major hours of the Liturgy of the Hours, roughly at the correct time that they're meant to be said, every day from Monday until Friday (RNW has a great sample of what that involves here).

I make no promises of whether or not I'll keep it up after next week, but I feel like this is something I at least need to try. Every day next week will have three hard stops, one for each major hour. Every aspect of the day will revolve around prayer, not vice versa. Other than serious emergency, nothing will prevent me from saying these prayers. I won't be a perfectionist about it -- I'm not yet ready to chant them all, I may need to pause now and then to tend to the kids, and I might mess up parts of it -- but they will get said. And at the end of the week, I will have a realistic estimate of just how much (or little) prayer I have time for, based on having actually done it rather than speculation.

Honestly, I'm interested to see just how rough it will be: will there simply be a few dirty dishes sitting around on Friday afternoon, or will the Health Department be knocking at my door? If at the end of the week I feel frazzled and stressed about all the things that didn't get done, if it does not bring peace to the household, then I can safely put the whole idea to rest and know that I at least tried to do what I felt God was calling me to do. It will be interesting to see what happens when I use prayer to structure my days, putting all other matters second.

Truly, I do not have time for this. I have a three-year-old, an eighteen-month-old, and a four-month-old. I have too much to do. So I guess I'm giving God my time, lots of it, and asking him to work a miracle: if I'm going to get through next week without my to-do list getting out of control and my house degenerating into chaos, I'll need him to do some serious multiplying of loaves here. I'll need help. I'll need grace. Lots of it.

I'll be updating throughout the week next week so you can all get a glimpse into this reckless experiment with prayer. Whether this brings peace and order to my life because I interpreted God's will for me correctly or it's a flaming train wreck because it was just a bad idea that was all in my head, it should be interesting reading either way. :)

Anxiety is easier

Last week St. Francis de Sales and some bad programming at Google Maps led me to one of the biggest realizations I've had this year: that anxiety = not trusting God. For a long time I knew that stress about certain individual matters was due to a prideful insistence that I had the best plan for how this or that situation needed to turn out. But it has been quite stunning to realize that every single time I am anxious, it is due to a lack of trust in God.

So, as I've mentioned, I've been trying to work on this by making a conscious decision to put all my trust in God every time I feel anxious. Every time I feel those all-too-familiar sensations of anger or anxiety (or both) start to bubble up, it's a reminder to turn immediately to God and figure out what he would have me do at that moment. Of course, I thought, most of the time that will be impossible to know. Especially in instances where I don't have long periods of time to reflect and pray, where I have to react to a situation quickly, I assumed that I would only rarely be able have a clear sense of what I should do to be in line with God's will, that the majority of the time nothing would really come of such an exercise.

I was wrong.

To my surprise, many times when I do this, when I turn to God in a state of anxiety to seek his will for me in this situation, I know exactly what his will is. I just don't want to follow it.

For example, last week my mother and I were preparing to co-host a Christmas party on the weekend. In the week leading up to it, I sensed a lot of tension. I felt like she wanted me to help a lot more than I was able to, and each night that went by without me going over to her house to help decorate and cook, it seemed to get worse. And when I realized that I was going to have to use part of Saturday morning, the day of the party, to go to Mass for a holy day of obligation, my stress level reached a boiling point. I felt like my mom was just going to blow a gasket if I told her that I couldn't even help with last-minute preparation because I had to do church stuff.

I was feeling extremely anxious when I decided to turn to God and trust him with this situation. And as soon as I got in a trusting, prayerful mindset, I knew exactly what he would have me do: act in great humility and love. God's will was that I humble myself to tell my mom how very much I appreciated all the hard work she'd put into this party; that I offer a sincere, loving apology and admit that I'd left her with all the work, that I had not followed through on my promise to help; to use the opportunity of telling her that I had to go to Mass for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception as an opportunity to be a little bit vulnerable and share my faith (something I almost never do with my family) and explain why it was important to me to go; and to get up extra early on Saturday to go to the first morning Mass I could find so that I'd have as much time as possible to help my mom.

My prayer to know God's will was so quickly answered, the path forward so clear...And I thought: "That sucks!" I guess I was hoping that God's will would always involve stuff like amazing coincidences and unexpected journeys and beautiful realizations (as happened the Friday before), not actual hard work on my part.

This situation is just one example. Over and over again this past week, I've found that the challenge is not usually knowing what God's will is...it's following it. There have been some occasions where I really don't know what I am supposed to do and can only go forward in meekness and blind trust. But, more often, when I pray about my anxiety, God's path for the resolution of the situation is actually pretty clear: it involves stuff like smoothing over tense interpersonal situations with great humility and love; resolving financial stress by admitting things I don't want to admit and committing to sacrifices I don't want to make; making overwhelming situations manageable by taking a hard look at my priorities (like, say, stopping half way though a blog post I really wanted to finish to open mail instead) and asking for help when I need it. And so on and so on. Not surprisingly, it keeps coming down to stuff like sacrifice, humility, loving openly and selflessly, patience, being willing to be vulnerable, etc. In other words: really hard stuff that I don't want to do.

This has been a surprising development. I guess I always thought of knowing God's will as something reserved for the most saintly saints, something that takes long stretches of deep prayer and meditation to even begin to discern. I'd never really considered the situation where I know exactly what God's will is but just don't care to follow it. Looking back, I think that for a while now I've used anxiety as a crutch: sometimes it's easier to just sit around and stress out, to indulge in feelings of being helpless and overwhelmed, than to do what I know God wants me to do.

Part II: What happened when I decided to trust God

OK, since a couple people asked, I'll share the rest of the story that I alluded to in my previous post: what happened when I decided to let go of my anxiety and just trust God. (I hope my atheist readers are taking a break from blog reading today. They'll think I've lost my mind once and for all!) :)


So there I was, driving around a dark neighborhood, a zillion anxious thoughts running through my head: "I cannot believe I'm running late AGAIN! Am I ever going to be on time for anything again now that I have kids?! And isn't it JUST MY LUCK that Google Maps took me to the wrong place when I was running late to begin with! Is my friend going to be offended that I didn't show up?! Should I call my husband and see if he can navigate me to the right place, even though he's trying to deal with all three kids?! I wonder if he's getting really stressed out watching them after his twelve-hour day at work!..." You get the idea.

I was stuck in this mentality that since I'd screwed everything up by being late and getting a bad map and getting lost, I was on my own; God's will would have been for me to not screw up in the first place, and now it was up to me to figure it out. Luckily, I was able to pull out of my anxious rut long enough to remember that that was not the case. God has a will for us at every moment, even when we get ourselves in bad situations. I realized that it wasn't too late -- it's never too late -- to turn to him and humbly seek his will. So that's what I did. I made the choice to let go of my anxiety, to trust that God guide me down the right path. I decided to pull over to pray and think, so I turned down a dark side street.

As I was slowing down to park, a bright object caught my eye: a shining statue of Our Lady.

Some small church had a little outdoor chapel with a white statue of Mary, which glowed in the light of a big floodlight. In the darkness of that unlit neighborhood on a winter night, it stood out like lighthouse on a dark sea. It was so beautiful, and so uncanny that I'd seen it as soon as I'd decided to seek God. The only prayer I could say was just, "Thank you."

I was so drawn to the statue, so eager to express my thanks to God and his Mother for giving me this little sign. I wanted to get out of my car to go pray in the chapel, but that seemed dangerous in this dark, unfamiliar neighborhood. A thought popped into my mind, and I knew with certainty that it's what I was supposed to do: I'd go to my church.

A sense of peace washed over me. All of my anxiety was completely gone. I wasn't supposed to go home, I wasn't supposed to try to make it to my friend's event, I wasn't supposed to squeeze in some errands. I was to go to church. On my way over I turned on Relevant Radio and one of the first things I heard was a guy talking about how his life changed after Our Lady guided him to go to church one night. (I'm not making this up, I promise!)

When I got there I was surprised to see a lot of cars in the parking lot. I walked up to see some note about the Feast of the Something Something on the door and could hear that a Mass was going on. I didn't think we usually had Mass at 7:30 on Fridays, so I planned to just peek my head in the door and then head out, maybe going to find the nearest Adoration chapel to pray for a while. But when I looked in I was surprised to see a good friend standing in the entry hall with her baby, so I walked in to say hello. While we waited for her to go in and receive Communion I asked her why she was there at such an unusual time.

She responded by telling me that it was a Vigil Mass for a holy day of obligation: the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Mary's feast day. I'd had no idea.

Chills ran down my spine. God seemed so close that I was almost tempted to look over my shoulder in case he and Mary were standing there. I looked in at the glow of the sanctuary, the angelic music wafting all through the building, and felt I was in a warm oasis of life and beauty. I also realized that it was almost two years to the day since I first began going to this church (which, of course, I blogged about at the time). It was a wonderful moment of feeling safe and at home, realizing how very far I'd come since the first time I stumbled into this strange place.

I left the church after the Mass ended, knowing that I had done what I was meant to do that night. Earlier this week in prayer I had asked Mary to pray for me, and to bring me closer to her. I'd also asked for God to show me how I can make it to daily Mass more often -- and in figuring out how to squeeze in going to church for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception I discovered some local Mass times that I hadn't known about before that will allow me to make it happen.

I think the events of Friday night were answered prayers. It was one of those times when everything seemed to come together, when God seemed so close that I could practically touch him. And I could have so easily missed it all if I'd continued to be anxious, if I hadn't stopped and made a conscious decision to put all my trust in God.

Keeping the big picture in mind

I was looking through the stack of books on my desk for something to post about today, and I came across a passage in one of my favorite books that I thought was perfect in light of my last post (and others like it).

I recently read Finding God's Will For You by St. Francis de Sales. The wisdom that St. Francis offers in this classic text is so straightforward and yet so profound, so simple yet so life-changing. His calm, reasonable tone is exactly what a scattered, overly analytical person like myself needs for spiritual growth.

When I picked up the book this afternoon I immediately came across a section I'd starred that was a great reminder that fixating on details and minor points can not only be unproductive, but can be a big hindrance to spiritual growth. St. Francis writes:

[There is] a troublesome temptation that sometimes come to souls who have a great desire to follow in all things what best accords with God's will. On every occasion the enemy puts them in doubt as to whether it is God's will for them to do one thing rather than another. For example, they ask whether it is God's will for them to dine with a certain friend or not to dine with him; whether they should wear gray clothes or black; whether they should fast on Friday or Saturday...In this way they waste a great deal of time.

Does he know me?! Oh, wait, this was written like 400 years ago. It sure does sound familiar though! He goes on to say:

While busying and perplexing themselves to discover what is better, they needlessly lose opportunities to do many good deeds. The accomplishment of such deeds would be more to God's glory than the distinction between the good and the better -- with which they amuse themselves -- could ever be. [...]

[W]e do not have to weigh all kinds of little actions to learn if some have greater value than others. Frequently there is even a certain superstition in wanting to make such an examination. [...]

It is not giving good service to a master to spend as much time thinking about what is to be done as in doing what is required. We should measure out our attention according to the importance of what we undertake. [...]

Choice of vocation, plans for some affair of great importance, a work requiring a long time or some very great expenditure of money, change of residence, choice of associates, and such similar things require that we think seriously as to what best accords with God's will. But in little daily actions, in which even a mistake is neither of consequence, nor beyond repair, what need is there for us to...give them much attention?

That second to last paragraph is sort of a summary of my life: spending as much time thinking about doing stuff as actually doing stuff. Wait...that's not right. It's more like a quarter of my time thinking about it, a quarter of my time talking about it, (maybe another quarter used to blog about it) then a quarter of my time actually doing it.

Anyway, St. Francis de Sales ends by reminding us that, not surprisingly, it's ultimately about quietly, humbly, prayerfully going about our lives and keeping the big picture in mind:

Even in important matters, we must be very humble and not think of finding God's will by force of scrutiny and subtle discussion. After we have implored the light of the Holy Spirit, applied our thought to search for His good pleasure, taken counsel with our [spiritual] director and perhaps with two or three other spiritual persons, we must come to a resolution and decision in the name of God. After that we must not call our choice in doubt, but devoutly, peacefully, and firmly keep and sustain it.

This is exactly the kind of advice people like me need to hear. I think that because of my tendency to be more of a numbers person, the kind of person who prefers an Excel spreadsheet to reality, the whole "seeking God's will" thing is really nerve-racking. Where is my checklist? Where is the Gantt chart with my deadlines and task breakdowns? How am I supposed to know if I'm on target without some quantitative measure of my accomplishments towards the goal?

The answer is, of course, that it's not for me to know. And why should I? There would be no point in God revealing his plan for my life since I wouldn't even be able to begin to comprehend how it fits into his overall plan for creation. I think it comes down to the same thing I touched on in this post, that I know so well intellectually but have a hard time putting into practice: God's will is this moment, right now. There's not much of point in wasting energy over-analyzing whether you got here through good choices or bad choices or worrying about what God has in store for you for next week or next year. Just pray, seek humility, and stay close to God. If you do that, he'll push you back on course if you get off track. He'll lead you where he wants you to go.

Covering my head at church

When I first believed that God might exist and Christianity might be true and started visiting churches in seriousness, one odd little thing was my reaction to the appearance of the congregations. I'm not sure what I expected, but I was always surprised at how casually people dressed to go to church. In particular, something about the women's appearance seemed amiss, though I couldn't put my finger on it. It was when I noticed an elderly lady at the back of a church one day who had her hair pulled back and her head covered with a black lace scarf that I realized what it was: it seemed to me that women should cover their heads in church. I didn't really care or think it was wrong that most didn't. But it just seemed, well, strange.

As an agnostic with no background in religion, I didn't have any kind of theological defense for my feelings. I didn't know what the Bible said about it, I didn't know what the Magisterium of the Catholic Church said about it. It just felt like a good thing to do. I had only recently come to seriously consider the daunting prospect that the Creator of the known universe might actually exist and that we might be able to have some kind of contact with him by going to Sunday services, so going to church struck me as this amazing, kind of intimidating event. The idea of covering my head appealed to me as a symbol of humility, modesty, and as a way to embrace traditional femininity. It seemed like a little sacrifice I could make to show this God that I was really making an effort to respect him after my many years of disrespect; it also seemed like it would serve as a much-needed reminder to myself to approach the house of God with my pride in check.

As I got more used to going to church and slowly became a Christian, I decided to forget about the whole covering my head thing. No other women did it, and countless people whose opinions I greatly respected assured me that this is not something that's required of women, and that God surely doesn't care. This sounded right (and still does).


The problem is, I haven't been able to get the issue out of my mind. I think about it a lot. In almost two years now of regularly going to church, I have never become completely comfortable with having my head uncovered. I don't exactly "want" to cover my head...but not doing so just doesn't feel right.

I'd been "prayerfully thinking" about this for months, trying to figure out whether the issue was nagging at me because God was trying to tell me something or whether it was just some personality quirk on my part. I made it known that I was more than willing to do this, but that I'd need a little nudging from God.

And then, a few months later, my mom came over one day and handed me a plastic ziplock bag and said, "Here are a couple of my old chapel veils, if you have any use for them." They were her chapel veils from back when she went to Catholic school. Not being the clue-getting type, I promptly put them on a shelf in my closet and forgot about them.

Then, last week at the Red Mass, my husband chose a seat that had us sitting right behind a young lady wearing a chapel veil. After the Mass I struck up a conversation with her and she really encouraged me to consider wearing one. At the end of the evening as we were exchanging contact info, she reached into her purse and gave me a chapel veil as a gift.

So...the notion that I should cover my head at church has been nagging at me so much that I started praying about it, asking God what he wants me to do, and then two separate people give me head coverings -- completely unprompted -- within a few weeks of each other. Hmm.

I'm not sure what to make of it. I'm not trying to say here that I think that all women should do this -- Christianity seems to be doing just fine with 99.9% of women going to church with their heads uncovered. But for whatever reason I feel prodded that it's something I should be doing.

Maybe this is part of God's plan to show the world his robust sense of humor. Because the notion of me wearing something that is often associated with extreme piety is hilarious. I can just picture some of my lovely fellow parishioners having a conversation like this as we're all getting settled into the pews before Mass:

"Did I just hear someone say a really inappropriate word?"

"Yes, I believe it was the lady over there."

"Which one?"

"The tall redhead in the chapel veil who didn't genuflect before dragging her screaming toddler out of the pews. I believe she's the one who I saw just moving her lips last Sunday when she forgot the words to the Nicene Creed."

It was in thinking about this that I realized that the main reason I don't just go ahead and wear a scarf or a veil is (as usual): pride. I am so obviously not a holy person that I feel like it would look completely ridiculous for me to be the only woman in the congregation with her head covered; that people would think that I was some self-righteous snob; and that my actions at Mass might be watched a little more closely since I'd appear to be holding myself out as some kind of devout church-lady.

Who knows, maybe that's the whole point of this situation. Maybe it's not so much that God cares about me covering me head per se as it is that he's testing me to see if I'm really willing to humble myself to obey what I believe is his will. Or maybe this is just all in my head and I have some weird hangup about having my head uncovered in church.

Anyway, I just wanted to share my little dilemma in case others find it interesting (or, more likely, amusing). I haven't decided what I'm going to do yet but I will keep you posted. :)

What advice changed your life?

As I enter into what I think of as my own personal Mommy Boot Camp, the adventure that is having three kids under three when you know nothing about kids to begin with, I think of two bits of wisdom I learned over this past year that have been a tremendous help to me and have brought a lot of peace to my life. I thought I'd share in case anyone is interested:

1. Don't worry about the future
The first piece of advice that really changed my life was the idea of carefully discerning what is really worth worrying about. I originally wrote about this here. Thanks to a brilliant homily by my priest, I realized that I often spend more time worrying about how bad something is going to be than I do actually being in the bad situation -- if it even comes to pass at all.

With practice, I've been able to catch myself when I start stressing out about future events. I resolve to do whatever I can do to improve the situation, and then I let it go. I take it to prayer, put my trust in God that it will play out according to his will, and pray that I'll have the grace to handle whatever happens in the most Christ-like way possible. (I should note that I do not do this perfectly every time, and I do still worry unnecessarily, but I'm much better than I used to be!)

2. God's will is this moment, right now
In order to be able to let go of worry, I first had to learn to trust in God, to truly be able to say "thy will be done". To do that, I had to learn a thing or two about God's will. I got so much wonderful advice in this department from the book He Leadeth Me, which I wrote about here. I believe that it was no accident that I came across that book earlier this year, since the insights I gained from it were much-needed preparation for the road to come.

Before reading that book, when I sought to discern God's will for my life my thought process was something like, "Is it God's will that I write a bestselling book or that I receive status and acclaim through my field of work?" My pridefulness led me to overlook that fact that maybe God's will for me is something much more humble: to simply, lovingly accomplish the tasks and challenges that are set in front of me each day; to not fixate on whether the future holds grandeur and glory for me; to not burn mental energy on how tough this or that situation is going to be; but to wipe the runny noses and load the dishwasher and clean up the spilled milk -- with love. If God wants me to do more, he'll lead me to it.


Thinking about this has made me wonder what advice other people have found to be life-changing. So I ask you guys: what is some of the best advice you've ever heard? It could be anything from housekeeping tips to discipline tricks to spiritual guidance -- just some bit of wisdom, about matters big or small, that you were actually able to put into practice in your life. I'd love to hear what others have to say.

A prayer for patience

I just loved Karen Edmisten's recent post where she talks about mothers and prayer time, and shares a story of a prayer for patience that was swiftly answered:

One recent morning, I was awake long before my daughters. It was 6:15 a.m., and I settled onto the couch with my prayer book, relishing the thought of uninterrupted, fruitful conversation with the Lord....I began by asking the Lord to grace me, above all else, with patience on this day. "Give me the patience," I implored, "to be the mother You want me to be." The next sound I heard was the unmistakable creak of someone coming down the stairs. My fruitful conversation was ending already! My four-year-old peeked around the corner and asked, "Mommy, can I have some pancakes?"

I laughed out loud when I read that because I had just had a very similar experience:

Last Monday, the day before I was to go to the hospital to have labor induced, I decided to take the time out of my incredibly busy schedule to go to confession. My nesting instinct had not been strong enough to overcome my laziness and procrastination instincts, so I had about a million things to do on Monday to get the house ready for the new baby. I hesitated to take the time to go to confession, but felt like it was a good thing to do just in case anything went wrong with the delivery the next day.

I arrived at the church ten minutes early, and there were already about 12 people in front of me in line. It was going to be a long wait. At that moment I realized with extreme frustration that I'd forgotten to bring a book or a rosary or anything to help me pass the time while I waited. Trying to make the best of it, I decided to see if I could remain in a state of prayer the entire time.

As I gazed at the crucifix and the tabernacle, I tried to simply open my mind and see where God might lead me in prayer. I was drawn to pray for patience, and for the ability to not let the little ups and down of daily life bother me. I pictured the analogy of sitting on a boat in rough water, being tossed around by the waves and getting sea sick; whereas if I could go under the water, I'd only barely feel the motion of waves as they rolled by. I used this odd little analogy as my prayer, asking God to grant me the grace to get out of the boat and go under the water where it's peaceful and still; to not let the waves of everyday life make me sea sick. I resolved to remember that God has a will for us at each moment (I originally posted about that here), and when faced with frustration to turn to God and see how I might carry out his will in this sitation, rather than banging my head against a wall trying to get things to go the way I wanted them to go.

I had a full hour to meditate on this prayer since the line moved slowly. Finally, there was just one more person in front of me, and I was about to make my confession. It had taken forever but it was worth it. I flipped through my "How to Make a Good Confession" booklet and eagerly anticipated hearing those wonderful words that my sins had been forgiven.

And then the priest walked out of the confessional. He came over to those of us who were still waiting and said apologetically that he didn't have time to hear any more confessions because Mass was about to start. I smiled and said, "Of course, Father. I understand." And in my head I thought, "ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?! I arranged child care and took an HOUR out of my last day before the baby arrives -- an hour and forty minutes if you count drive time -- for NOTHING?!"

As I walked to the parking lot I felt extremely stressed and muttered to myself about how I need to go to confession and what was I going to do now and how could I make up for all this lost time, etc. etc. And then I realized that perhaps this was an answer to my prayer. By insisting that I MUST go to confession TODAY and railing against the lost time on such an important day I was not trusting God. I was seeking to fulfill my will, not God's. "OK, God," I said as I drove home, "I trust you. I'm not going to worry about the lost time, about not making it to confession. Just give me your grace to help me dive under these little waves, to stop letting frustrations like this distract me from being the person you want me to be."

God gave me more opportunities to work on this later that day. But he also gave me the grace to handle it. When I got home I saw the TV blaring some graphic story on a cable news channel, and heard shouting and commotion coming from the kitchen. I walked in the kitchen to see my mother-in-law, who wasn't supposed to arrive until the next day, scooping ice cream into bowls for the kids. I was starving so I went to have some donut holes I'd bought myself as a pregnancy treat, but she and the kids and eaten the entire box. As I got some pots and pans out to get dinner started she told me not to bother, that the kids wouldn't be hungry after all the donut holes and ice cream.

I turned to God and prayed something like, "GRACE! NOW!" And, to my surprise and delight, I was actually able to respond by giving her a hug and telling her it was great to see her. I decided to go up to my room lest I have any more opportunities to practice patience, turning off the TV on my way upstairs, and as I lay on my bed I was able to cut through the frustration of the moment and see what a wonderful, loving person my mother-in-law is. I was able to appreciate the fact that she loves her grandchildren so much that she couldn't wait to see them. I could accept that fact that she enjoys having the television on at high volume all the time as a little personality quirk that pales in comparison to all the great things she has to offer. I was able to dive under the waves, to not get bounced around by things that don't really matter in the long run like the kids eating donut holes and ice cream for dinner.

Karen shares this lesson from her story of her interrupted prayer time:

The Lord, in His infinite kindness, quickly reminded me that our lives are not on our terms, but on His...He always knows best how to help me grow, even when I don't care for His methods. What I wanted most that quiet morning was "my prayer time." What I needed most was to make pancakes, and to do it with love and surrender. What did I need the next day? To get up again at 6:00, give it another try, and see what He had in store for me.

Little did I know, the lesson I learned that Monday was exactly what I needed. As I will detail in my next post, after the baby was born pretty much nothing went my way. The last week has been one frustrating, unexpected thing after another. I realize now that the best gift God could have given me last Monday, the day before the baby arrived, was a hard lesson in patience and trust. Unbeknownst to me, I needed that even more than I needed to go to confession. As Karen points out, God doesn't always give us what we want; but he always gives us what we need.

An exciting life

One thing I've always wanted is an interesting, exciting life. By "exciting" I don't mean that I need all my days to be packed with BASE jumping while handling rattlesnakes, but just that I've always craved a life where I'd be challenged and stimulated, where there'd frequently be something new and different going on, where I'd not spend much time stuck in a rut or bored.

And back in my pre-conversion life, I was pretty sure I'd hooked that up. When my husband and I were first together we traveled extensively, lived in the downtown entertainment district, went from zip-lining in the jungles of Costa Rica to underground raves in San Francisco, took big risks with our careers, involved ourselves in interesting side businesses and organizations, etc. etc. I felt like I had done what I wanted to do: I felt like I lived an exciting life.


This has come to mind lately as friends who've known me for a long time have called to ask how I feel about tomorrow, when I'll have my third baby in three years. A couple of girlfriends who have known me the longest have expressed a particularly pointed curiosity about what I think of all this. "Your life now is so, umm," one friend said as she struggled for a way to phrase it, "so different now than it used to be. Do you miss it?"

When she asked that question, if I missed my old life, I realized that I really don't at all. The biggest reason is, of course, that back then I didn't know that God existed. As I've said before, the worst day with God is far better than the best day without God. But there's another reason I don't miss it, one that may surprise some people: it wasn't that exciting. Not compared to my life now, anyway.

While I probably experienced more surface-level thrills back then such as stepping off of a plane in a new country, or shaking hands with some political bigwig whose fundraising party we had managed to sneak into, it was all basically predictable. Scheduled. I was firmly under the illusion that my life was mine to control, so all excitement had its proper place on the calendar. And when events played out that I had not anticipated, that did not fit with my plans for my life, I'd go into a mode of trying to get everything back in line with an iron fist, wallowing in frustration and angst until I forced things back on track.

It was like riding a roller coaster at an amusement park: exciting, yes. But nice and safe and orderly. Plenty of surface-level thrills without much unpredictability. The car stays safely on the tracks and your route is carefully controlled.

Discovering God and deciding to trust him with my future and to live my life according to his rules has been like getting off the roller coaster and leaving the amusement park -- not for a life of boredom, as I might have imagined it to be when I was younger, but for a life of true excitement. If all the carefully planned activities of my early 20's were like riding a roller coaster, turning my life and my future over to God is like whitewater rafting on an uncharted river. It's a life filled with plenty of slow, steady parts where I'm just floating along and taking in the scenery; and sometimes there's rough water; other times there are huge rapids and real danger; but I never really know what's around the next corner.

When I was younger I would have been shocked and a bit incredulous at hearing that living with a strict faith like orthodox Catholicism would lead to a more rich, more exciting life than anything I'd ever experienced. But, really, it makes sense. What is more intriguing than the fact that the Creator of the universe has a will for each one of us at every moment of every day, and that we are able to tap into that knowledge? What is more exciting than knowing that all we need to do is take life day by day, discern where God seems to be leading us this morning or this afternoon, and then just sit back and hold on for the ride, which may very well take us into uncharted territory that we would have never discovered by ourselves?

I've thought about this many times over the past few weeks as I've worked to get the house ready for the baby. As I was assembling the new crib yesterday I thought with a smirk, "Boy, I would have never guessed that this is what I would be doing this weekend." A year ago I would not have imagined that I'd have another baby in August 2007. That certainly wasn't my plan. But these past nine months have been a wild ride, and something tells me that after tomorrow I'll have eight squirmy pounds of living proof that God's plans are always more exciting than our own.

God's will and little decisions

As regular readers know, a big topic of interest for me is how to do God's will at every moment, every day. I spent a long time just trying to figure out how to discern what is and is not God's will (some posts on that here, here and here), and I think I finally have some clarity on that.

But a related issue -- and one that really demonstrates how overly literal and hard-headed I am -- is the question of doing God's will on a minute-by-minute basis. I mean, at what level of granularity am I supposed to seek God's will? Of course I seek his will for big decisions like adding a child to the family, what route my husband should go with his career, or how to educate my children. And I can even see prayerfully seeking God's will in terms of how to handle smaller daily matters like toddler temper tantrums, what music I choose to play this afternoon, or how to handle the Jehovah's Witnesses who show up when I'm in the middle of getting lunch ready.

But what about the really small stuff? Most of the decisions people make in a given day are minuscule things like whether to change lanes in traffic, which dish to put into the dishwasher first, or which foot to put in front of the other when you walk. In order to simply function there's no way I could pause to pray and turn to God before doing any of those types of tasks...so does that mean that I'm just on my own, that very small decisions are entirely up to me, outside the realm of things about which you can seek God's will? If so, where do you draw the line? (And...can you believe how neurotic and overly-analytical I am? Yes, I seriously get hung up on stuff like God's will for how to move my feet when I walk. Welcome to my world.)

I had all these questions rolling around in my head when I saw Aimee Milburn's wonderful, must-read post on the topic, and it was like an answered prayer. She addressed this very issue and, as usual, had some excellent insights on the subject. She writes:

We tend to think of God's will as always being specific actions, things He wants us to do, and so we need to discern them, what He would have us do. And there is truth to that. But we also have a lot of freedoms. God does not dictate every moment.

Exactly. So what are we neurotics supposed to do when we're stuck on whether or not God has a will for which fork we grab from the silverware drawer?

God is love. Therefore His will is love. So maybe "doing God's will" means in the first place not doing, but being: being like God, loving how God loves, and the things God loves. [...]

The key to Christian life is not so much doing a bunch of things...but being transformed into the likeness of God – which in turn informs what we do, and how we do it.

This makes so much sense. The more you purify yourself and become like God, the more all of your actions -- the big ones as well as the little ones -- will naturally fall in line with his will. As Aimee notes:

To be like God, and to love as God loves, requires great purification of our wills, because we love the wrong things. Sin itself is a type of love, an attachment to things other than God or the ways of God which we must be purified of. It takes effort -- but in time our effort is taken over by God, and our purification accomplished by God, as He draws us into closer union with