A New Experience of God, Finally

“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the life that is waiting for us.”

Wise words from Joseph Campbell.

Today, my Advent reflection is all about journeys.

 Life is full of comings and goings and every journey we take requires us to leave something behind in order to move towards something new.

We can handle this leaving behind with peace and acceptance or we can go kicking and screaming.

Maria tends to go kicking and screaming. My sister hates change and every year for a long time she would cry on or around her birthday because she never wanted to grow up. Growing up means things have to change in life and change is a very scary thing for her. However I, for one, am so happy for these changes in her life maybe because, since I am older, I know how much she has to look forward to. Yes, she did have to let go of many things as she grew up but the experience of my 20-year-old sister is, honestly, much better than my 16-year-old sister (no offense to 16-year-old Maria).

It is much easier for me to encourage others such as Maria to let go than it is for me to do so in my own life. Most of you know that in August I ended a 3 year relationship. This was by far the biggest thing I have had to let go of so far. Yes, I let go of an individual and all of the things that come along with a relationship but the most challenging piece was letting go of the life I had planned for myself.

 I like plans.

 I like having things mapped out.

I had a plan for my life and it did not involve saying goodbye to the person who really had become my best friend. Yes, it was for the best and yes, it needed to happen but, despite the fact that the end was necessary and mutual, I was still clinging to the illusion of what my life was supposed to be.

After we ended things, I spent a long time fighting, with every bone in my body, the reality of my actual life. I still had MY plan and I was NOT going to let that plan go no matter what. Letting it go meant letting go of the security blanket my world with Mark had become and venturing out on my own. My expectations for what my life should be were making my miserable because the reality of the situation was things were not the same anymore.

I needed to let go of the way I wanted my life to be or I would never be able to life the life that was waiting for me.

Advent calls me to bring this same understanding to my relationship with God. I thought God and I have a fairly good relationship most of the time but when I said goodbye to my relationship with Mark I was making a lot of demands of God and myself and, as a result, was overlooking the way He was ACTUALLY working in my life.

It took me a long time to even begin to understand that all of these requests and expectations were clogging my system ad weighing me down. I was like the person who refuses to say they are sorry even when they know for certain that they were wrong and then develops an ulcer from all of the negativity they are holding on to. I decided I would just wait miserably for God to hand me the life I wanted because, clearly, He got it wrong and I would just sulk until He and I were on the same page and that page was in MY book.

Clinging to these desires was keeping me from seeing the blessings in my life which, really, are abounding. In reality, even though I like to think I have a good relationship with God, my faith was very limited during this time. Once I began to widen my view I was almost embarrassed by how tunneled my vision had become.

“My black-and-white, right-and-wrong version of faith shattered into a million pieces. It was a narrow faith that wasn’t leading me to fullness or joy. Once I gave up my old ways of looking at things, something began to shift. Being willing to experience God in a new way created an opening” (Daybreaks).

I want to be willing to experience God in a new way. I am still a long way off from really “letting go and letting God” but I think I am beginning to get back on the right path. True, I have had to leave a number of things behind but, like Maria and saying goodbye to childhood, who I am becoming and what I have waiting for me is going to be much, much better.  

New Year's Resolution

Let me just start by saying this:

I love Advent.

Something about the imagery of staying awake and moving towards Bethlehem is so beautiful to me. Plus, as a child, my parents made a big deal out of the Advent season. Every evening, sometimes willingly often reluctantly, we would gather at out "Advent corner" and pray together. We had some really wonderful moments together around that "Jesse tree". As we got older, it got more and more difficult to keep this tradition going. I remember one comical night when I brought a guy over for dinner and afterwards my parents invited him to join us for our Advent prayer. I will let you guess what his decision was. Needless to say, things didn't workout with this boy and I. Someday, I will find someone who values this Advent commitment as much as I do and marry him on the spot.

 Since this is my "New Year" I am going to make a resolution:

This Advent, I resolve to learn how to wait which, for anyone who knows me, is an extremely difficult thing for me to do.

I hate to wait.

I want everything now.

I have always been this way; constantly thinking ahead and moving forward. To my families annoyence, I spent most of my teenage years complaining about how everyone in my life is constantly late. Though this is an annoying trait to have, I think my frustration with their late tendencies had less to do with wanting to be socially polite and more to do with my intense discomfort with waiting for anything or anyone.

I don't do waiting well and, ironically, God is in the waiting.

It looks like I need to get used to it.

This blog is a way to practice the discipline of waiting for me. I am always in such a rush that I don't even like to sit down and think let alone write down my thoughts. I like to confine my "thinking time" to when I am in the car driving from one thing to another and then, quite comically actually, I am frustrated that it is taking so long for me to hear the answers I seek. Here's the thing about answers, they hardly ever operate on the same clock as I would like them to. In order to really "think" I need to allow myself to stop moving in every aspect and that includes driving.

So here I am, forcing myself to stop moving and start listening.

I received an Advent reflection book recently called "Daybreaks" by Paula D'arcy. When I got it in the mail I almost threw it away.thinking to myself "these things are all the same and they never work. I don't need someone elses thoughts to make my Advent better. I have got this under control."

Of course, I was wrong. I most definitely do NOT have it "under control"

This is, by far, the best compilations of reflections I have ever read. I sat down this morning just intending to glace at the text and was overwhelmed by how much it spoke to me. This is perfect for me at this exact moment.

Currently, I am not in the best place mentally, spiritually or physically. This is ironic because I am in love with SO many aspects of my life at the moment but I am followed by this annoying cloud that likes to form when I am alone. This cloud and I are old friends. It's the same cloud that I am usually avoiding when I am keeping myself busy refusing to wait and yelling at my family to be on time. When I stop and wait for anything that cloud looms larger and larger so what do I do? I just keep moving.

But it's Advent,  and Advent is the season dedicated to waiting.

It's funny that a chronic busy-body such as myself loves this time so much. It's almost like every fiber in my being is trying to tell me I need to learn how to wait and seek God even though I have no patience at all for the tedious process. In the book"Eat, Pray, Love" there is a wonderful quote about how to look for God that I often think of:

"Look for God. Look for God like a man with his head on fire looks for water."

This Advent, that is exactly what I plan on doing because the reality is my head is on fire a little bit and my soul is very, very restless.

In "Daybreaks" the author reflects on learning how to wait while she watches a cluster of deer and thinking of how long it has taken them to be comfortable enough to simply exist around her:

"We're learning to be together. They're teaching me how to wait. How to let things be. I wonder if it is this way, or could be this way, when God and an individual soul approach one another, each of them moving just as tentatively, yet respectfully. Maybe they circle one another with no intention on the part of God to alter anything, only a will to bring something into being-to awaken the hidden core of life. And what might it be for the soul f she took the time to approach slowly, aware that this solitary approach was the very thing she came to do? What i the soul approached with no demands? No fists raised against unanswered prayer. No expectations. Just walking toward something with the intention of knowing it, abandoning herself to it, as well as she could. I think it makes a difference. I think how you walk toward something determines what you're able to see. I consider these days of Advent to be days of impending birth. What if I made a resolve to approach them as I approach the deer, alert to their power to direct me?"

Bam. There it is. My New Year's Resolution.

I will come to God, in intentional stillness, and simply wait. No demands, just awareness that it is in these challenging moments of my waiting that God is bringing to life a new creation in me. 

God is in the waiting.