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The greater the surrender to him the greater has been my joy.
*Mahatma Gandhi
Let nothing disturb you
Let nothing dismay you
All things pass
God never changes.
Patience attains
All that it strives for.
He who has God
Finds he lacks nothing:
God alone suffices.
*St. Teresa of Avila
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Have you ever entered one of those times of questioning your life? Asking what it all means? Grieving what is? Mourning what could have been? Seeking to begin anew? Collapsing into a sweet surrender into God's arms? Saying, "God, I pray for a new beginning"?
This writing is somewhat a guised musing, one couched in prose and devotional, a window I am letting you look into, within the form of guiding and encouraging you. A guise - lurking behind are my questions and seeking.
This journey has entailed critical moments in the last months. A marital separation - being left alone wondering what persons wonder when feeling unjustly betrayed and abandoned by someone dearly loved - feeling a gale of contrary, conflicting internal feelings. A hospital stay. An awakening anew and kneeling in deeply-felt re-consecration of life to God. A try again at the marriage - during which time my church went part-time and my income cut drastically, and loss of health benefits -, with months of frustration, until exhaustion - with the confession that I had forsaken God's Will in misguided efforts to please others. Living alone once more - returning to peace that I had not known for many months, with an ardent spiritual seeking for a new beginning, accompanied by one of the most telling shifts inwardly - in surrender to the Divine at a depth I had not known before, or, at least, in years. And, now, waiting patiently and prayerfully as to where God leads - sometimes contented fully, at other times haunted by a profound inner frustration at the uncertainty of it all.
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Would one feel sorry for such a one. Rather, feel sad for the person whom Love does not have enough of to throw him or her into such a meaningful maelstrom - and, then, for the person to devote it all to God in Love and come out a better person.
St. John of the Cross, when a Maria de la Encarnacion was saddened at St. John's sufferings, near the end of his life, encouraged Maria, saying:
Think nothing else but that God ordains all, and where there is no love, put love, and you will draw out love...."
While we may be uncomfortable with St. John's belief that God ordains all, his advice regarding Love strikes us as true. We know, at some level, that we are created by Love, created to Love, and created to receive Love.
Indeed, there is much about our lives that possibly God did not will. To assign evil done to us as part of God's will for us, would mean to assign God willing someone to do that evil. That is not right. But we know God is Love.
I look at my life, now, and there is much there that God did not will. At times, I am saddened by what could have been, what is, or what apparently shall be. There are happenings inside and outside me that I would not have chosen. Some of them are certainly not in the Divine will for me - except as there is a permissive Divine will, one that allows and uses such for good.
But what I, now, do with my life is in God's will for me. Maybe, I should say "... I ... allow God to do." And I find of paramount importance that I accept all in my life with the Love that I am called to Love with, is ordained of God.
What do we do with these our lives, when we seek newness - new beginnings? Well, we begin with our lives and a radical acceptance of it - all of it. This, your life, is all you are given at any one moment. What shall you do? And, recall, sometimes the doing is a time of prayerfully seeking God before acting. Some of our life-elements that was not meant to be is for we were too hasty to act, and not prayerful enough prior to acting.
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