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.

What does it mean to "turn it over to God"?

When I first started looking into Christianity, one of the things that most perplexed me was the concept of turning a situation over to God.

When I would receive advice like, "Jen, you need to just turn it all over to God," it kind of sounded like a bad idea. Being the dense person that I am, I took the statement a bit too literally. I thought that that would mean setting all reason aside and taking no further actions of my own free will. Basically, I pictured myself lying in bed in my pajamas, waiting to do anything at all until I heard the booming voice of God give me detailed instructions.

I think that this concept might be at least somewhat confusing to others as well. I frequently get emails from people who are looking into religion for the first time, and one of the things I often hear is confusion about abstract concepts like this one. (As one reader put it, "So often in this journey I'm completely lost in abstractions, like there is some decoder ring needed to discern what real things I can do to learn and grow.")

In case it's helpful to anyone else, I thought I'd elaborate on what I've learned. Here is an example of one of the first situations that I attempted to put in God's hands, including specific examples of the actions I took:


Background: Early last year, my husband and I desperately needed a house. We'd been living with my mother for two years while we got our business off the ground, and while it was a wonderful experience, we both felt that it was time for us to move on. We both felt strongly that we wanted to buy a house near my mother's so that we could still see her frequently. Our budget was very limited, however, and it was going to be hard to find a house in our price range in the specific area we wanted.

We had been leaning this direction for a while, but when we discovered that we were expecting our third child (when our second was only five months old), I started to feel panicked. Not only were we cramped already, but I was growing weary of being a housewife living in someone else's house. Yet there were so many options swirling around in my head: "What if we can't find a house that meets our needs? Should we rent an apartment? Should we stay here?" I didn't know whether I should be looking at local apartment complexes, looking at houses for sale, trying to find ways to make it work to continue living with my mom -- I was so overwhelmed and confused.

After spending a couple months agonizing over the situation, I decided that I wanted to let go and turn it over to God. But what would that mean? Should I stop looking at houses? Should I try not to think about the situation at all? After getting some great advice from wise friends I finally felt like I had an idea of what it would mean to turn this situation over to God. Here's what I did:

1. Followed the path of peace: First, I began to pray regularly for direction on this matter. When I contemplated the logical arguments for and against each of our choices, I found that only the option of buying a house gave me a sense of peace. Even when I approached the other options in a positive, "can-do" way, they left me feeling uneasy. I was cautious not to assume that that therefore was a sign that we were meant to get a house, but just took it to mean that this was the path we should pursue at that moment.

2. Stopped pursuing paths that unnecessarily distracted from living my vocation to the best of my ability: Another way to phrase this one is that I "stopped banging my head against walls." My old way of searching for a house would have been to stay up until the middle of the night surfing real estate websites, let thoughts of mortgages and closings consume my mind, walk around grouchy and irritated because I felt like the weight of the world was on my shoulders, etc. A big change in my behavior after turning it over to God was that I only worked on house research as time allowed. I trusted that if we were meant to get a house, I would find time to do the necessary legwork without having to set aside the foundational work of my vocation like taking care of the children, keeping some semblance of order in the house, going to church, etc.

3. Kept the ultimate goal in mind: What I found was that to turn the housing dilemma over to God was, ultimately, to set my goals higher -- much higher -- than the details of the situation at hand. Early on in the process I thought of my goal as, "TO GET A NEW PLACE TO LIVE! NOW!" To turn it over to God was to focus on the fact that my ultimate goal in this or any other situation is simply to know, love, serve, and grow closer to God.

We ended up finding a perfect little house at a great price. We found it by driving through our desired neighborhood on the way home from running some errands one weekend -- the owner had put the For Sale by Owner sign up less than 24 hours before. When we told him we wanted to make an offer, he said a bit hesitantly, "I hope you guys don't think it's weird if I tell you this, but I really feel like this is an answered prayer." So did we.


So, if that's helpful to anyone, those are some specific details of what I did when I turned a dilemma over to God. I should note that my actions weren't really as perfect as I described there -- I glossed over a lot of ups and downs for the sake of brevity. Also, just because that's what I did doesn't mean that that's the perfect way to do it.

I would love to hear from readers as well: What is an example of a situation in which you made the choice to "turn it over to God"? What are some specific actions you took (if any) after making that decision? How did it turn out? Long comments welcome. :)

The Adoration List update

On Friday I told you about the idea of keeping an "Adoration List." The idea first came to me in the beginning of March, so though it was frustrating to have to wait almost 30 days to see the fruits of the habit, it was a great relief to have a way to let go of the little daily worries that linger in the back of my mind. At least once a day I thought of how eager I was for the first Friday to roll around!

When Friday finally arrived, I was so eager to get down to the nearest Adoration chapel and go over this list. It had grown rather long, and I couldn't wait to see what I'd find through prayer: what would I find to be the big issues worth addressing? What would turn out to be things that seemed like a big deal at the time but are really not worth worrying about at all? There were so many scattered thoughts scribbled down on that paper, I was glad I wrote everything down since it would be impossible to remember it all.

As I prepared to get out of the house, things were already Not Going How I Wanted Them to Go™. I had let time slip by and it was getting late. I didn't finish some things I wanted to get done before I left. My mother had made a wonderful last-minute offer to babysit so that my husband could go with me, but the kids were uncharacteristically fussy about us leaving, and it required the skill of a snake charmer to extricate ourselves from the chaos without all three of them having simultaneous meltdowns. When we were finally in the car and on the road, I still felt tense and stressed, but took great comfort in knowing that I would finally be able to bring my long list of worries before the Lord. I will leave it up to your imagination as to how I reacted when I realized:

I forgot the list.

I. Forgot. The. *%@!&#. List. And there was no turning back -- it was already late, we were more than half way to the church, going back in the house would get the kids all wound up again, and I had no idea where I'd left it anyway. I was beside myself. I had been looking forward to this every single day for weeks, I really felt like it was an idea I'd been led to through prayer, and now it was all for naught because of an absent-minded mistake (it was with bitter irony that I recalled that one of the items on the list was "Am I too forgetful?").

To be honest, I'm not sure if I would have even gone to Adoration if my husband hadn't been with me. The self-pitying, control-freak, not-trusting-in-God side of my personality had been kicked into overdrive by this situation, and I was so frustrated about it all that I wanted to just forget the whole thing and go pout somewhere. At some point it did briefly occur to me that perhaps I should turn to God in calm trust that this was part of his plan and he'd lead me where I needed to go, but that thought was quickly drown out with more important concerns like, "HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO HAVE A PRODUCTIVE ADORATION WITHOUT MY LIST?!" (That is what John Paul II emphasized in Ecclesia de Eucharistia, right? That Adoration of the Eucharist is supposed to be productive?)

Anyway, when we arrived at the church my heart softened a bit. Outside the chapel was a write-on/wipe-off board where people could list their prayer intentions, and just reading through all the things that other people were praying for helped put it all in perspective. I added my own note to the board and was about to head into the little chapel when something else caught my eye: the schedule of people who had signed up to sit with the Blessed Sacrament while it was exposed for Adoration.

I'd known about this, but until I saw that schedule I'd forgotten that the consecrated Host is never left alone; so in order to offer Adoration a church has to make sure that at least one person will be there at all times. I was amazed as I looked at the schedule for the 24 hours of Adoration: there were names next to the slots for the 1:00am - 2:00am hour, the 2:00am - 3:00am hour, the 3:00am - 4:00am hour, and so on. It was so touching to see all these people who were willing to get out of their beds in the middle of the night and go sit with the Lord. It reminded me of why I think of churches as places of hope.

When I walked into the silent chapel, I saw the man who was scheduled to sit with the Blessed Sacrament that hour sitting in the back row. I noticed that he wasn't reading or doing anything. He was just sitting quietly. I took a seat and immediately set about the task of trying to mentally review my forgotten list. But it wouldn't work. I just couldn't. It was like my mind was being blocked from doing any efficient, analytical thinking. I am the type of person who always has about a million different trains of thought running through my head, and for the first time in a long while, all my scattered thoughts were silenced. My mind was quiet. The only thing I felt like doing -- really, the only thing I could do -- was bask in feelings of overwhelming appreciation of God's presence.

I knew, with absolute certainty, that I was not meant to bring a list. I wouldn't have looked at it even if I'd had it.

For the longest time all I could do was offer prayers of thanksgiving and adoration. I didn't feel like I needed anything anymore. The only thing I needed at that moment was to give God as much love and gratitude as possible. (I've gone back and forth a few times about whether or not to mention this next part because it sounds kind of odd, but here it is anyway...) After a while I felt strongly drawn to pray for a specific person. Here's the crazy part: it's someone whom I never knew, who was not a believer, and who died in 2005. The only connection I had to her was that I read her blog a few times. But I spent the rest of my time at Adoration praying for her soul.

When I left the Adoration chapel, I felt lighter. It was like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. My only concern was how I was going to do this more often. Later in the evening I was still marveling at how powerful the draw had been to spend most of my time in silent appreciation, to just be, and then I checked comments to my post about taking a list to Adoration. I was amazed as I read through others' experiences with this devotion.

Patty wrote:

It seems that whenever I go to adoration with something in mind to do (reading, journaling, decision-making, etc.) I end up just being quiet with Jesus, because that's what I really needed--some quiet and just to BE and not DO, because that's all Jesus wants is just plain old ME, and turns out what I needed most was Him.

I always leave peaceful. You're going to love Adoration, I'm sure of it.

Anne Marie wrote:

Adoration: My favorite devotion. Period. Like spending time with, well, GOD. I've been known to bail out of a particularly difficult day for a few hours to run up to the perpetual Adoration chapel an hour away from us just to get some perspective before returning to the fray...Perspective, yes, that's what's needed, perspective. Adoration is just the ticket.

Laura wrote:

Adoration is like a drug. Once you get a taste of it, you need to keep going back for more....I cannot even begin to expound on the graces that have come to our family because of our commitment to adoration. Give it a try and you will find yourself desiring it more and more!

Elizabeth wrote:

You might only have the opportunity to go monthly, but it will quickly become a much-anticipated ritual for you...I'm still not entirely sure what I should be doing in that first 40 minutes....but there is something undeniably moving about being in a still church with others in the presence of God...The best way I can describe it is that, short of attending daily Mass...it's the next best thing to keeping that Sunday feeling all week long. You are in the presence of a miracle.

Tausign wrote:

If you find yourself oozing out 'Praise and Adoration' do NOT stop, keep it up as that is the highest form [of prayer]...I'm sure you had a blessed time this evening. The Lord falls over those who spend time with Him.

Carol wrote:

I've only been to Adoration twice, but that was more than enough for me to get "hooked" on it!...I've noticed that while I take things along with me to do, in the end I tend to just fall silent and "be" there.

I can't remember where I read this recently but there was a little, old man who would spend hours and hours on end in Adoration. He was asked once what on earth he was doing in there for all that time and he replied to the effect of - "I look at Jesus and He looks at me and we are happy together."

Ashleyrae wrote:

Adoration will bring a certain kind of peace to you life...What I found out the first few times I went was that it's ok to just not do anything, to just be still. I think the Lord will guide you in your Adoration prayers. You may find yourself coming with a certain prayer in mind or with a book or journal and then God says, "I'd rather you do it my way." Funny how His way always gives you exactly what you need.

Those are just some of the comments where others shared their experiences with Adoration. What struck me all weekend as I watched these comments roll in is how precisely they pinpointed what had happened. It was uncanny to see how closely my experience of Adoration matched that of others. "Do these people have crystal balls or something?" I joked to my husband at one point.

So, back to the original subject, I don't really know what to make of the Adoration List. I still think it's a good idea and plan to keep that sheet of paper out in my kitchen. Maybe I'll try to take it with me again next month. All I know is that going to Adoration was like a spiritual cleansing, that even though I forgot my list and didn't think about solutions for any of my worries and the only active praying I did was for a deceased person whom I never met...I walked out of the chapel knowing that God had given me what I needed. I didn't (and still don't) know what the exact solutions are to any of my little problems...but I don't feel as much like I need to know. I'm starting to think that maybe all I need is more quiet time in front of the Lord.

AREWP Week 12: Refocusing

[AREWP stands for "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'll just come out and say it: last week was a disaster.

Between a teething seven-month-old, a teething 20-month-old, and disastrous setbacks with potty trainwreck training my three-year-old, it was a really rough week. I had not only fallen behind on laundry and other housework, but the stack of unopened mail on my desk seemed to be somehow breeding and growing larger by the hour, and every time I tried to catch up on email I just felt like crying and legally changing my name to Sisyphus. My husband was helping as much as he could, but it didn't seem to even make a dent in all that had to be done. I was so overwhelmed that I kept forgetting to observe my prayer times. I felt like I was drowning.

One of the emotions I felt most strongly throughout the flameout of last week was simply surprise. "How has this happened?" I kept wondering. Things had been going to amazingly well ever since I started praying the Liturgy of the Hours. I'd had other tough weeks since then where I didn't fall off track with prayer and maintained a sense of peace even throughout tough days. I kept wondering what had changed, what it was that derailed not only my prayer life but the wonderful sense of peace I'd found in daily life. After about the third or fourth time I forgot to pray one of the major hours because I was distracted by something else, I finally realized:

My mentality had totally, fundamentally changed.

For the first couple of months that I structured my days around the Liturgy of the Hours I never forgot to pray, because that was the purpose, the very center of my days. To give you some specific examples, here is a glimpse into my mentality throughout the past few months when thinking about what I needed to do the next day. Let's use examples from Thursday evenings, when, say, vacuuming the living room and mopping the kitchen floor were on my to-do list for the next day:

WEEK 1: "Tomorrow my goal is to serve God first and foremost. I will observe the universal prayer times of the Liturgy of the Hours -- even when it's not convenient for me or what I want to do -- and thus anchor my days with prayer. No matter what else happens, these prayers will get said. Hopefully the structure of having my days guided by set times of turning to God will help me accomplish the other things I'd like to get done, like vacuuming the living room and mopping the kitchen floor."

WEEK 8: "Tomorrow my goal is to pray the Liturgy of the Hours, but I really need to make sure I vacuum the living room and mop the kitchen floor too."

WEEK 10: "Tomorrow my goal is to vacuum the living room and mop the kitchen floor. Oh, yeah, and I need to remember to pray too."

WEEK 11: "Tomorrow my goal is to vacuum the living room and mop the kitchen floor."

I was so amazed at the practical benefits of having my days revolve around prayer that I slipped into the mentality of seeing those practical things as the end I was trying to achieve -- and it all fell apart.

The reason my house was so much more clean and orderly after I started praying the Liturgy of the Hours was not because I'd found a great organizational routine. It was because the way I approached daily life had fundamentally changed. Praying Lauds, Matins and Vespers at their scheduled times was a great exercise in obedience to God: it was never convenient to stop what I was doing and get out the prayer book. It always involved setting aside something else I felt like I should be doing. But in making these little sacrifices I was reminded, three times a day, that life is not about what I feel like doing, that I need to let go of what I want to get done and foster only a calm trust in God.

The grace and peace that entered my life after I started living this way set off a domino effect where everything else fell into place. The order that these prayer times brought to my days meant that housework fell into a gentle rhythm, and it was easy to fall into a routine without even having to think much about it. As I mentioned here, since my working hours were cut down to make more time for prayer, I had more energy to pick up the pace in the times that I did work. To my great delight, the result was a cleaner, more orderly house.

But then the temptation arose to take a shortcut: I loved having my household running so smoothly, so I began to elbow God aside and focus on that alone. As I showed in the example above, the thought process of "Tomorrow I will pray; and vacuum and sweep if it's God's will" drifted into "tomorrow I will vacuum and sweep; and pray if it's Jen's will."

This weekend I was reminded of a quote from Pope Benedict that I excerpted in greater detail in my first post about scheduling my days around prayer:

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.

[Excuse me for a moment while I go tattoo that on my forehead...OK, I'm back.]

At the end of last week I felt like everything was in shambles. I felt like there was no way I could ever catch up on all that I had to do and regain a sense of peace in my daily life. With a laser-like focus on all those important practical matters I needed to take care of, I sat on the couch with my head in my hands, feeling crushed under the weight of it all. I looked at all the notes scribbled on my to-do list, on the disaster area that was my living room, and thought, "I can't do this." And in that moment I realized: it's true. I can't. I can't do it all. I need to let go.

And when I did just that, when I set aside my to-do list and stopped asking myself "How can I get X, Y and Z tasks done tomorrow?" and started asking myself only, "How can I pray tomorrow?" I felt a weight lift from my shoulders, and knew that I was back on the path to peace.

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:

• 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."

Comments closed until Easter

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.

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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.

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God and computer problems, Part I

Remember back when I said that the old domain for this blog, et-tu.blogspot.com, would always work? How I assured readers that, despite any epic sagas that might be unfolding in the custom domain registration department, one rock-solid anchor of stability was that at least there would never be any problems with the old address? In a sanity-testing turn of events, the new custom domain, ConversionDiary.com, is working fine (for now), but the old domain is not.

The reason I spontaneously decided to get a custom domain is because it sounded so easy (excuse me for a moment while I look for a pen and my "Worst Ideas Ever" list...); for some odd reason I thought my original Blogspot address would automatically forward to my new domain so that any existing links or bookmarks to my site would still work. Where on earth did I get that crazy idea? Oh, wait, I remember. Because Blogger said "your original Blogspot address will automatically forward to your new domain [so that] any existing links or bookmarks to your site will still work."

After a lot of researching, posting in the help forum and going through a few mental acceptance/denial cycles about the fact that there is really no way to directly contact Blogger technical support, I finally realized that there is nothing I can do. Nothing. When most people try to access my site through the original address (a.k.a. the only address anyone knows), instead of the promised automatic redirection they get an error page that asks if they want to go to the new address which HAS NOT BEEN CHECKED FOR VIRUSES OR MALWARE (hysteria emphasis mine). Any search engine ranking I might have had has plummeted. Though I have stats turned off for Lent, other bloggers with this problem report that they've lost more than 50% of their readers, and that in many cases their feed subscribers have stopped getting new content.

I was recounting this tale of woe to my husband, trying to fully convey the gravity of the situation with dramatic hand gestures and even a creepy, ominous tone in my voice when I said the word "MALWARE," and he started laughing. Laughing. [Warning: husbands, do not try this at home.] The following conversation ensued:

ME: I couldn't help but notice that as I was recounting my tale of blog agony, you broke out in laughter. Would you care to share what you found so funny? [Probably not exactly how I phrased it at the time.]

HIM: You're talking about the blog Et Tu, right? The one where you're always writing about trusting God?

ME: Yes. And...?

HIM: Umm, do you think that maybe you should trust God with the technical difficulties that happen on the blog where you write about trusting God?

ME: [Ran off to lock myself in a closet and scream.]

I didn't actually do that last part, but I thought about it. Instead I just mustered up that special look that I reserve for situations where I have nothing to say because I have been smacked upside the head with a cluebat, when I have been told something that is annoying but true and I can't even save face by pretending I don't think it's true because I wrote a blog post saying I thought it was true. (Sadly, I actually have had enough practice with that situation to have perfected a look in response to it.)

There have been things I struggled with in my conversion from atheism to Catholicism. The universe has a Creator? There is a loving God even with all the suffering we see in the world? God became a man? He died and was resurrected from the dead? The Bible really is the inspired word of God?

The dilemmas I faced when I pondered those questions, however, were mere pebbles in the road compared to this one, a teaching so challenging and difficult that it sends me into spiritual crisis to even ponder it: I really am supposed to strive for a calm trust in God, even with computer problems? Even if said computer problems could accurately be described as "horribly unfair" or "infuriating"? Even if it's preventing me from writing blog posts about trusting in God?!

Oddly enough, this little Blogger issue has become a sort of crucible for me this Lent. It seemed like it should have been a small matter to let go of my angst about a silly technical problem, and yet I found it harder to trust God with that than with even some of the big medical or financial issues we've faced in recent years. But why? That's what I've been pondering all week, and what I'll go into in Part II of this post.

UPDATE: Click here for Part II

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Thanks to Critical Mass for introducing me to the word "cluebat." I will get a lot of use out of it.

Cat vomit, temper tantrums, and dying to self

What does it mean to "die to self"? I used to ask that question a lot when I was first exploring Christianity. I had no idea what that odd phrase was supposed to mean. Frankly, it sounded kind of morbid and depressing. So I set aside the question and decided to revisit it once I had more pressing questions answered.

These days, as I come to feel like I finally have a grasp on the basics of Christian teaching and try to grow in my newfound faith, this whole "die to self" concept keeps coming up again. And I think I finally understand what it means.

It really, really clicked for me earlier this week. I had a "perfect storm" moment where it was as if every frustrating thing that could possibly occur in a day all happened within about a 30 second time period. I'd only had four hours of sleep the night before. I'd been working hard to accomplish just one little thing that morning -- cleaning off our bathroom counter -- and while I was doing so the 18-month old cleared off my nightstand and threw my books everywhere (losing my bookmarks in the process); the three-year-old launched into a major temper tantrum and broke something in the process; his tantrum woke up the peacefully sleeping baby and she started fussing; and when I walked over to go get the baby I saw an outdoor cat who hangs around our house (who is not supposed to be inside) sitting next to my bed. As I paused for a moment, the counter only half cleaned, trying to figure out which fire to put out first...the cat threw up on the floor in front of me. Then the phone rang. I saw on caller ID that it was my husband. He was going to ask how my day was going.

In that moment, I understood what it meant to die to self.

To "die" to myself would be to not let love be smothered by my selfish, sinful tendencies that had been stirred up by the challenge of this situation; to make the painful decision to let go of my heated feelings of frustration and anger and let God work through me in all my actions; to let go of the way I felt like handling the situation to instead act in a purposeful but calm and loving manner, never losing sight of the needs of the other people in this situation. It was clear that I had two choices:


1. What I knew to be the right thing to do:

• First of all, pray. Ask God to be with me in this moment.
• Then go get the baby, temporarily sequester the 18-month-old in the playpen so that she'd stop destroying my nightstand and wouldn't get into the cat's mess, and firmly but lovingly explain to my three-year-old what he did wrong as I put him in time-out.
• "Offer up" the yuckiness of cleaning up cat throw-up. Consciously choose not to dwell on the inconvenience of it.
• Answer the phone when my husband calls with gratitude for having the kind of loving spouse who calls regularly to see how I'm doing. Tell him what he may be able to do to help me get through this challenging day in a constructive way, without "dumping" on him.
• Most of all, just think of it as attending the "University of the Moment" and remember that all I need to do is turn to God in complete trust, and that what is meant to get done will get done -- nothing more, nothing less.
  

2. What I felt like doing:

• First of all, spend a few solid moments dwelling on how awful the situation is. Point fingers, trying to figure out who let the cat in.
• Yell in the general direction of the three-year-old and 18-month old as I grudgingly pick up the baby. Instead of loving guidance, just keep raising my voice until they stop misbehaving.
  
• Let out a bunch of loud sighs as I clean up the cat vomit. Dwell on it to the point that I start to feel sick myself, and then feel sorry for myself because I feel sick. Get exasperated when the two toddlers get too close and try to touch it, as if there's no way I could have seen that coming.
• When my husband calls, try to see just how much frustration I can pack into the one word "Hello?!" when I answer the phone, and when he asks how my day is going, respond with something utterly unhelpful but satisfyingly self-indulgent like, "My day is terrible! TERRIBLE!" Then proceed to rattle off a long list of every annoying thing that has happened in recent memory, culminating with a grand proclamation about the tragedy of my inability to complete a simple task like cleaning the bathroom counter.
• Sulk.

I went with an only slightly improved version of choice #2. But why? That's the interesting part: it wasn't because I felt like it would be mentally healthy to "let it all out" by releasing my negative emotions in other people's directions. It wasn't because I felt like choice #2 was the better option. It wasn't even that I felt like I couldn't have chosen option #1 -- even in the heat of the moment I knew that God would give me the grace to take the high road. So why go with the lesser option, then?

Because I didn't want the pain.

The option of choice #1, I realized, would have meant "dying to self" -- and I didn't want to experience pain of the mini-crucifixion that that would have involved. Like an addict craves the empty high that drugs can give, I craved the empty high that self-pity and anger can give. I knew it wasn't good for me. I knew it wasn't good for anyone in that situation. But I didn't want the pain of nailing the self-pitying and angry sides of my personality to the Cross, the pain of humbling myself to let go of my plans and trust in God's plans instead.

And the result? If you had some kind of meter that showed a real-time readout of the total amount of love in the world at any given moment, you would have seen a little dip that afternoon. In choosing to seek the path that involved the least immediate pain for me, in choosing to let sin control the situation, I slammed the door to allowing God to work through me. I took a little bit of love out of the world -- and a whole lot of love out of our household.

I don't know what I used to imagine "dying to self" would feel like, but I didn't anticipate that there would be real pain involved. (I can just picture lifelong Christians smiling knowingly at that one.) The more I live as a Christian, the more I am struck by how difficult it is. To borrow a phrase from fellow former atheist John C. Wright, I find that Christianity is a very inconvenient religion. To die to yourself as we're called to do -- to live in the moment with calm trust, to let go of your own ego and selfishness, to reject the empty high of sin -- is hard, hard work.

And yet, despite the difficulty and the pain, it's the only thing worth doing at all. Because it is only through the painful process of dying to self that we can let God -- who is Love itself -- work through us; we can have the pure, selfless, agape love of Christ will flow through our every action. Though it's much harder than I thought it would be, the payoff is much greater than I could have ever imagined. I hope that I can remember that the next time I am tempted to run away from the pain of dying to self.

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God's 12th Man

I spent my first two years of college at Texas A&M University. As an atheist I never really fit in in the heavily Christian environment, but there was an infectious enthusiasm among the student body that was hard not to admire. The school is renowned for its many traditions, and it was oddly refreshing to see the zeal with which the students upheld them. I only realized after I left to go to another school that there was a real sense of hope and self-sacrifice on that campus that is rare to find among young people these days.

One of my favorite traditions was that of the "12th Man": back in 1922 the Aggie football team was the underdog in a game against the top-ranked team in the nation. They were slowly but surely pulling ahead, but had so many players injured that it looked like they might not have enough men to finish the game. The coach had seen that E. King Gill, a reserve football player who was now on the basketball team, was in attendance, and the coach asked him if he would be willing to go in the game if needed to keep the required eleven men on the field. Gill gladly said yes, and remained standing throughout the game as a gesture to the coach of his readiness to serve. Still today, all A&M students remain standing throughout the entirety of every game as a gesture that, like Gill, each of them is ready to be a 12th man, prepared to go out onto the field and slog it out for their team at the coach's word.

I've been reminded of this tradition over and over again as I think about my newfound faith, and how I hope to incorporate it into my life.

Now that the newness of being a Christian has begun to wear off, I find that I have to try harder to center my life around God. An initial shockwave of excitement at realizing that God actually exists carried me along for a while, making any kind of spiritual growth automatically fun and exciting. Now that the "new convert" energy has lessened, I find myself walking an increasingly fine line between being comfortable with my newfound religion and taking it for granted.

One of the things I've caught myself doing lately is setting limits on how high I should set my spiritual goals. It always goes something like this: I'll hear some inspiring story about the great level of abandonment to God that a saint achieved -- e.g. that St. Therese of Lisieux was humble to the point of getting on her knees to ask for forgiveness when accused of breaking a vase she did not actually break, or that St. Juan Diego was so dedicated to the Eucharist that he would walk on bare feet for miles to get to the church multiple times per week, or how St. Francis of Assisi did not require a single material possession for his extraordinary joy -- and I'll feel great awe and admiration...and then quickly tell myself that that's not something I should attempt to achieve.

My excuse used to be that it would be prideful to even attempt it, but then I learned that trying to become a saintly person is not a matter of pride since the only way to do it is to "die" to yourself, to move your ego out of the way and let God do all the work. Yet even after that realization I still couldn't quite seem to get on fire about the idea of trying to reach the level of holiness of the great Christians, to aim to be among the men and women throughout history, known and unknown, who truly put God first in every single part of their lives. Though I didn't realize it until recently, in the back of my mind was a vague feeling that it wasn't necessary.

Though I never articulated it, the thought process went something like this: God changed the world through people like St. Therese, St. Juan Diego and St. Francis. Obviously, he's not going to change the world through me, so there's no need for me to aspire to quite that level of dedication to living the Gospel. What I'm doing right now has really improved my little corner of the world by bringing me and my family closer to God, and God knows my heart so therefore he's aware that I'm a basically good person (at least I try to be), and that's what matters. For me, I would think, there's really no need to even try to do all that radical abandonment stuff the Christians you read about in history books have done.

Lately, as soon as I start slipping into this mentality, that idea of the 12th Man comes to mind.

The Aggies ended up winning that game back in 1922, yet E. King Gill never actually played. When asked about his role in the game, he once replied, "I wish I could say that I went in and ran for the winning touchdown, but I did not. I simply stood by in case my team needed me." When it became clear that he wouldn't be called onto the field, that there would be no use for him as a big player in the game, he could have taken a seat -- as so many Aggies since then have undoubtedly been tempted to do during games in the sweltering Texas heat -- yet he didn't, and they still don't. What motivates the Aggies to remain standing through the games is not a realistic possibility of being called onto the playing field; it's not about feeling like it's necessary in order to be a good fan, since simply showing up and wearing team colors would be sufficient; and it's definitely not a certainty that they could even contribute much to the game if they were called. It is an act of love: they love their school, love their football team, and they stand because each one of them really would be willing to go out onto the field and give it their all on the off chance that the coach asked them to (anyone who knows many Aggies knows that that's not an exaggeration!)

Like all bold acts of hope and optimism and love, the enthusiasm is contagious. The standing fans impact the game, even though they're never called out onto the field. To be in the stands and see every single person around you on their feet -- even though you're in the terrible freshman seats at the top of the stadium, even though it's late in the third quarter and the temperature is dizzyingly close to 100 degrees -- will inspire even the most grouchy cynic (ahem) to rise to her feet as well.


I realize that if I were to be spiritually mature enough to grasp even a fraction of God's perfect love, I wouldn't need any kind of rationalization for wanting to reach a saint-like level of abandonment to his will. But until then, when I fall into that apathetic mindset of aiming for something less than great holiness, I like the thought of just trying to be God's "12th Man."

Even when in my short-sightedness I don't understand why I should seriously aim for the humility of St. Therese, the dedication of St. Juan Diego, or the detachment from worldly comforts of St. Francis; even when I feel like I couldn't get there anyway; even when I feel certain that God has no plans to "put me in the game," to work through me to do good on a large scale as he did with those people...what an act of love it would be to get ready anyway, to put forth the extra effort and discomfort to get to my feet and remain standing as God's 12th Man.

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Celebrating Advent

As I mentioned, at the beginning of this month I found myself scrambling to celebrate Advent...which was especially challenging since I had no idea what Advent was (luckily my kind readers helped me out). I had to turn the page over on my already huge to-do list to now add "Get Advent wreath!", then after thinking for a moment, "Figure out what Advent wreath is for" and, after more thought, "Figure out what Advent is for."

Though I sincerely wanted to know more about this season, I felt burdened by having more to do. As if the Christmas season wasn't already busy enough, if I were to observe Advent it would mean doing even more! So I prayed. I prayed a prayer of regret, expressing remorse that I knew I wasn't going to be able to properly observe this season, asking God for help, and promising to try to do better next year.

Meanwhile, I had been working on the issue of anger. The topic had seemed to have come out of nowhere -- I didn't think I had a problem with being angry and it was never in my plan to work on it. Yet it kept coming up. I couldn't set the issue aside, even though I kind of wanted to. I really felt that God was leading me to work on this right now, though I didn't know why.

As I've chronicled, I came to realize that my anger was almost always the result of being anxious, which was always the result of not trusting God. I began trying hard to never allow myself to indulge in feelings of frustration and anxiety: whether my toddler threw a bad temper tantrum or all the pots and pans came cascading loudly out of the cabinet when I opened it or my neighbor stopped me to tell me a loooong story when I was in a hurry, I would seek peace by remembering that all I had to do was trust God. I worked hard at letting go of my plans, at not fixating on how these inconvenient events were derailing what I "had to" do (according to me).

I trusted that I would get it all done...as long as I accepted "it" as what God wanted me to do instead of what I wanted to do.


Then, this morning, I thought of how two days from now is the last Sunday of Advent, how it's a shame that I let it slip by. I never did get around to making an Advent wreath with the kids, we didn't do a Jesse tree or put up a little Christmas countdown calendar. I didn't even read any of the things I'd earmarked as "good Advent reading."

But as I've gone through my day (day five of a visit from my mother-in-law), I realized that something has changed -- something big. I'm not stressed. Sure, I am occasionally tempted to be stressed when I see all the gifts I have to wrap or my mother-in-law shouts from the living room over the blaring television that my three-year-old spilled the Coke she was letting him drink. And I guess I have felt anxious here and there. But, for the most part, it has really worked to just turn to God with all anxiety, to say "I trust that you will work this out" every single time I start feeling stressed. I have made it through this Christmas season in a (mostly) peaceful state.

Last Sunday the priest at a friend's church talked about Advent as a season of waiting, and that our goal should be to wait well. And as I walked through my choatic house, looking at all the areas that could be more clean, thinking of all the things that didn't get done -- we never did get a Christmas tree up, I forgot to get gifts for a couple of loved-ones, I didn't make those Christmas cookies, I couldn't even find time to decorate the house at all -- I realized that I am actually at peace with all of this. So many things that I really wanted to do didn't happen; but the only thing that really matters did happen: I trusted God. I had sort of hoped that God's plan would involve me miraculously finding the time to make my house look like something out of Martha Stewart Magazine's Christmas issue, to come across a bunch of extra money to get all those gifts I wanted to get, to take the kids for a portrait with Santa.

But none of that happened.

And I realized that, ironically, it is in the fact that none of these "important" things got done that I observed Advent after all. I put my trust in God, even at the expense of all my big plans. I was patient as I waited for him to show me the path forward, even though it was really tempting to elbow God aside and frantically rush around to "get things done!" I set aside my plans for his, and in the process gave my family the gift of a calm, happy mommy. I waited well.

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.