This is not compulsive blogging, I promise...I had actually been considering the idea of keeping my blog going even though I'm not an "official" missionary at the moment. Why, you ask? Well, it's not like God doesn't stop moving in my life just because my job description is "unemployed" rather than "full-time missionary" (haha. oh Mom, I'm so sorry!)
Anyway, a conversation I had with a friend yesterday convinced me that I should just go ahead and keep it up--hey, if nothing else, it will help me process, right?
And let me tell you, I have a LOT of processing to do!
I feel like I say something along these lines quite often: "That was the hardest thing I've ever done!" I think I'm just going to stop saying it, because inevitably something comes up that's harder than what I've just managed to work through. You know that saying, "God only gives you what you can handle"? Well, what they don't tell you is the part that comes next: "After you've handled that, God gives you more!" (Which makes Mother Teresa's sassy response make more sense: "I wish He wouldn't trust me so much!")
I’ve found that these last two months have been some of the most challenging I have experienced; God has “put me through the wringer,” so to speak—stretching me to grow in ways I honestly didn’t know I could live through (even now, I’m left with a sort of incredulous feeling: “How did I make it?” Guess I’m more resilient than I thought).
Without getting into too many details, I quite suddenly found myself in a place where everything in my world seemed to have been tipped upside down and backwards. I felt...well, disoriented is probably the best word to describe it. You know that feeling when you can’t tell which way is up, or you can’t quite remember what day it is? That’s sort of what I’m talking about...something akin to spiritual amnesia, if you will. I had literally watched all my plans crumble right before my eyes; which left me feeling rather dumbfounded.
What’s a girl to do?
First step: call mom and cry.
Second step: find refuge and seek good counsel.
Third step: PRAY. A lot.
This last week or so, I’ve had to fight the almost overwhelming desire to try and “figure it out”—by which I mean taking it upon myself to search for something that will fulfill me; or, at the very least, something I could suffer through until everything got “better.” I’ve learned enough over the past two years to know that going it on my own is not successful—-so I thought I’d take care of that by praying that God would reveal to me what it is He wanted me to do—-please, quickly!-—while still doing research and sending out resumes and trying to figure it out. Hey, it’s the best of both worlds, right? I’m allowing God to direct my life, while still actively living it. God’s gotta love that.
Maybe you can predict where this is going?
In His characteristic fashion, God very quickly set about letting me know that He wants more—-as a matter of fact, He wants all of me. Inviting God to be navigator just isn’t enough. God is asking me to see this seemingly crazy, senseless time of my life as an invitation—-to know more about myself, to re-evaluate, but most importantly, to know God in a deeper, more intimate way.
Before I can do anything, before I can ask God to lead me down any sort of path, God desires that I come to know him in a more profound way, that I trust him more, that our relationship grows and deepens as only a life-long relationship of love can. In one of his homilies, Father Jose used the phrase, “tuning our ear to be able to hear the heartbeat of the Father." And that is exactly the image that describes the kind of relationship I’m talking about. God is inviting me to lean closer, to rest on him, to attune my ear to hear the sounds of His heartbeat—-a very quiet, very subtle sound. Only when I am at that degree of closeness can he move me; and then it’s the movement of a dance, the natural movement of Him leading and guiding someone who is so close to him that I can do nothing but follow where he’s going. And that’s how I will get to where I’m going next.
I have been given an incredible gift: the time and the place and the means to stop and listen. The invitation to know God. The call to more. And far be it from me to waste this gift by running around and trying to do things myself. God wants more from me than that—-God wants more for me than that. I believe now more than ever that he has his hand on me, that he has set me apart for something that is unusual and wonderful and bigger than I as of yet can imagine.
And for now, I’m just resting in the Father’s embrace and trying to sync my heartbeat with his.
