A Boy, a Girl, and a Rendezvous...

God's love and goodness never ceases to amaze me, and this morning He once again showed me what a kind and loving God he is (and what a brat I am). Seriously. How do I just keep getting brattier??
Anyway. This morning I had a 7:30am flight to catch. Being an avid -no, neurotic- runner, I needed to be up to get in a good run before a day of travel. I guess my guardian angel preferred that I sleep in a bit, because I did not wake until about 30 minutes before I needed to leave for the airport.
I am stubborn, so I fit in a 20 minute run and super quick shower before I left. I ended up leaving like 10 minutes late and there was a bit of traffic, but I made it to the airport in plenty of time! At least, I thought I did.
When I went to check my bag, the informed me that I had missed the bag check time by five minutes. Apparently, in order to check a bag one must arrive at the airport with 45 minutes to spare. I guess it's been a really long time since I've checked a bag...
I already have high anxiety, but this news took me by surprise and totally broke my spirit. I am meeting people in Virginia at 6:30! We have a rental car! I have a connection to make! How on earth could this be happening!?
So this man (rather rudely, if I may add) directed me to the line to change my flight. There I encountered other less than friendly individuals. At this point, I couldn't hold back the tears. This has never happened before (the whole missed flight thing), and I just felt so sad and confused. I know they recommend being at the airport 90 mins early. I know I cut it close. Really close. But 5 minutes late?
So I waited for 50 minutes in a line to get on stand by. By now I was all puffy eyed and gross, and trying my hardest to hold in my tears. In the words of Judy Funnie, "Oh, brave new world that has such people in it!" Things seemed so unjust. I was so alone.
Embarrassingly enough, I had hardly prayed until I got past security. I asked God to "come on!!!" and "please get me to VA today, please please?!" but I hadn't really submitted to his will. I called my mom, trying to compose myself and let her know about the change in plans.
And so... my mother is my super hero. She prayed with me. "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?" Matthew 6:26-30 That's what she prayed. And it was exactly what God wanted me to hear.
I hung up the phone and truly felt the holy spirit moving. I felt calm. And then they called my name, and asked me if I wanted a window or an aisle seat. I literally praised the Lord out loud, and walking to my seat and realized that yes -the man sitting across from me was indeed CHRIS HARRISON from the bachelor/ette. I thought, "why not!?" and took a picture with him. This was, of course, after he caught me trying to sneak a covert picture of him without him knowing. Soooo Chris Harrison thinks I'm a creeper and I'll probably never be on the bachelor/ette.
God wanted me on that flight, maybe because he wanted me to meet Chris Harrison.
So now I sit listening to Belle and Sebastian, and feeling so loved. I feel God's grace truly working. And I do not know if I will make my next flight. If I don't, maybe it's because Ron Paul is hiding somewhere in the DFW airport and God wants me to take a picture with him too :)
UPDATE
I made it to DFW with ten minutes to make my original connecting flight. I ran and prayed. Prayed and Ran. Made it to the gate with 2 minutes to spare...and the attendants were nowhere to be found. I am glad my prayer was, "Your will be done, God!!" because obviously Jesus wanted me to chill in the airport for a while, with some bud light and internet access. His will is better than mine....
.

Are you there God? It's me...

God speaks.

A lot of us, myself included, wish God would just come down on a big white cloud and say the things we want Him to say. To give us a yes or a no, to enlighten us on His plan for us, to explain what's going on in our lives and why the stuff is hitting the fan, or whether or not we're on the right path.

We all have those moments, right? The times when we look up to the heavens and yell, "Hellooooo? Is anybody up there? Is anybody listening?"

And usually no one responds. There's no booming voice from the sky like the prophets received. God doesn't always "give us a sign." There ARE times when He does, but sometimes you just have to wonder. How is God speaking to me? Or...is He?

As a youth minister I often feel like I am supposed to have the answers. There are times that I feel like out of all the people in this world, all us really "devout" or spiritual Catholics are supposed to recognize the most how God speaks and what he wants for us. We are supposed to "discern" His will. We're supposed to get it right, and somehow just know. But too often, I fail. I have no idea what God wants. I have a sort of spiritual verdigo -like I'm drowning and can't figure out the way up. All too often I just want clarity.

This weekend I had an amazing opportunity to really "discern" God's will for me. I was on retreat down in Orange county, and hoping that God would give me a big "yes!" or a booming "no, no, no, get the heck outta here!" to some of the directions I am trying to take my life in.

I wasn't doubting, I wasn't worried that I was making the wrong decision. But I did want a little assurance. A sign, if you will, that this was the right thing. And in His quite whisper, in the subtle move of His spirit, in His gentle presence residing in my own heart, I received my resounding ...ask again later...from Him. It takes more than a weekend away to get there.

Listening to God and discerning His will is about more than retreats. It's an ongoing process -something that requires patience and openness. God works on His own time. And He never forces Himself on us.

If our hearts are open to what God has in store for us, we will know how to follow Him. God's grace will never lead us astray, and even when we fail to follow the path as closely as God would like, He continually opens new paths for us to continue moving closer to Him.

The key to hearing God is prayer. Prayer is talking to God, and it isn't a one way street. I was once told that we as His people talk to God, and if He talks back that makes us crazy. But we are told to pray without ceasing, and it can be exhausting and frustrating to feel like our prayers aren't going anywhere. Being open to God's will means opening that line of communication -that prayer street- and letting the road blocks that stop God's response fall away.

God doesn't always speak the way we want Him to, but as Christians we have faith that God never abandons Us. He speaks -just not always in the most traditional of ways. Sometimes we do get HUGE signs from above, but that isn't what we can count on. Our faith allows us to rest in God's presence, and trust that He will reveal His will to us in the way that we are mean to know it.

Why does God answer some prayers and not others?

I copied this post from my facebook. I had an exciting post for tonight but after 3 hours of driving was too tired to think.


I googled it. "Why does God answer some prayers and not Others?

Yahoo's top answer said that we can't understand the reasons because our perspective is too limited. I could see that. Another answer was that He does answer our prayers, but just not always in the ways we would expect. And I definitely see that too.

In the beginning of December my mom asked me to pray for someone I don't know. Never met this person, and I never will. She asked me to pray for a situation that seemed really bleak, and terribly sad. My mom always comes to me with prayer requests. She asks me to send them to people, because she believes in the power of prayer. It's like that line from Saved, when they get the Christian band to play, and Mandy Moore is like, "Prayer works!"

So anyway, I log onto facebook at work and see another person has posted a blog -a blog about this couple, the woman I was praying for, and all the progress that has taken place in the past month. It wasn't just my mom calling to say that prayers were answered. I think it was one of those little ways God reassures us, by showing me pictures of a person I had prayed for but never met and showing me how God has miraculously turned things around.

I pray for a lot of things. A whole long laundry list of things. Stupid things, silly things, seemingly impossible things. But God gives me something. Always some answer, some sign. Good or bad, what I want or not, there's always something. Maybe it's his way of reassuring me. Then my mom joked about how funny it is that God always answered my prayers.

But ya know, it's not like every prayer I've ever uttered was 'answered' -wrapped up and served on a silver platter. A LOT of my prayers in that past 9 years that I can recalled have seemed to go completely unanswered, or fallen on deaf ears, or so it would appear.

Yet when I think about it, the things that seem to have not been answered really have in one way or another. Because in then end, I think we all end up where we need to be when we are open to what's in store.

Maybe it all depends on what we are asking for. I bet it would sound like a cop out answer to people who don't believe in anything. If I said that every prayer that I ever prefaced with "Lord, let your will be done" was answered. But think that's really the truth.

We have free will, freedom to believe what we want and free to ask for what we want. But I think inevitably, God's will is GOING to be done. And prayer is an instrument through which God communicates with us. It's a two way street. So maybe when we pray for something, we just have to be open to HOW it is answered instead of looking for whether or not we get our way.

That sounds really callused, because I know there are times when we pray for something really important. It would seem absurd that God answered my prayer about having a little extra room on my flight from LAX to PIT or getting a good parking spot and not someone's prayer about a loved one not dying, or a family of 4 kids not losing their mother in childbirth. But then it goes back to what our intentions behind the prayer are.

If we pray for God's will, and the ability to recognize it, it's easier to make sense of some of the things that don't go our way in life. I think what is especially hard to cope with is when prayer doesn't go our way, and leads to REALLY intense suffering or grief.

If God hadn't "shown" me that this was the right pair of shoes or jeans while visiting the mall (and believe me, I would say he did), or any other material and unemotional thing that I'd selfishly prayed for, it wouldn't have shaken my faith to the core. It wouldn't have been the last straw, the final thread to break in the fraying rope of my faith. It's a trivial thing. But when the big prayers seem to go wrong, when we watch people we love pass away despite our prayers that they stay with us, that's when we start to wonder -is He even there? Is anyone listening? Have I been duped?

Even in things like break ups. I can recall running down the streets of a small New  York town trying to hide the fact that I was weeping inconsolably, and fervently asking God to save a broken relationship and please let it be right. But it wasn't His will that it be so. In fact, it was His will that I wait for the right person. And in the time I've had to think about it, I'm SO GLAD to be out of that relationship (Hindsight's a biznatch, right?)

That was a hard time, but not nearly as tragic as what some people go through in their lifetimes. Heart break is hard, but I think a lot of people look for His answer in the most life changing and gut wrenching times of turmoil. Those moments of greatest lost can lead us to say, "That's it. If You loved me, You wouldn't have done this. You're not there, or You just don't give a damn."

I think that's when it really comes down to the intention behind a prayer. What are we REALLY praying for? You can't tell someone who is great mourning that they prayed incorrectly or for the wrong things, but the truth is that as Christians we know that suffering is an inevitable part of life. It's something our own LORD had to endure for our sake. We have these crosses to bear, and we must seek to understand that they UNITE us to Christ.

Maybe it's the revelation of a recent miracle that started this train of thought. Or the fact I've been watching Dead Like Me on Hulu that's brought me to thinking about it. But death is really only sad for the living. At least if we have a Christian understanding of death. If we have faith we know that what waits for us beyond this life is so much better. Just like a friend of mine posted recently on her facebook, "The very worst the world can do is kill us, and all that does is send us Home."

As living breathing people we have relationships and experiences, and we feel incredible indescribable pain and joy. We go through all kinds of things and witness both unbelievable miracles and see unspeakable horrors. And when we lose someone we love, it's the worst pain anyone can ever feel. And it is the saddest thing in the world for us. But just for us that go on living, because we are the ones still stuck here with the emptiness. Those who pass on, they go on to something more joyful and glorious than we can currently comprehend. Still somehow that doesn't always make us feel better. The idea of heaven really doesn't always seem to console those in grief, especially those without faith, or with weak or fragile faith.

Without that faith that God can work in the most painful situation, the suffering we endure seems meaningless and cruel. If we don't open ourselves the the desire to understand God's will, or to the possibility that there is a reason behind our sufferings, then it all seems pointless and without purpose.

It's not that I am some model of prayer and piety, but that's why whenever my mom asks me to pray for something, I don't just ask God for it. I ask Him that His will be done in a particular situation. Whoever I intercede for, I don't just ask God for favors. I don't just pray that God does what I want. In my experience, the most effective way to pray is just to ask God that He conform my will to His.

That way, when the people I want to live don't, and when anything important doesn't go my way, I can accept the pain and ask Christ to use it to bring me closer to Him. I think it's a pathway that He has made for us to be able to know Him better and to build that relationship. It makes it easier to accept the hardships that come with the painful things in life. And asking for understanding, or the grace to want what God wants, can help us to move on and rejoice in His love despite the tragic circumstances. It is what enables us to cope with death and loss, heartbreak and painful mistakes we make. All the problems of humanity become a method of growing closer to God when properly understood.

God answers all prayers in some way or another. I guess we either get a yes, a no, a "yes but not the way you think of it," or a 'yes but not in a way you can understand just yet'. Somehow, even when we hurt, God take's care of all our needs. Matthew 6:26 says, "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?" God takes care of the needs of the smallest of animals, so how much more will He take care of us?

And those prayers we don't see answered, the things we don't get, maybe they are the smalls things. The "wow" moments we experience when a superficial or small prayer is answered. Or maybe they are the huge life changing things, the moments when our worlds seem to fall apart and everything we thought we know -we don't.

But those moments, the most painful, are the times when we especially need to have faith and learn to pray. And to pray that God's will be done. And that He show us His love.


Hmm. I don't know. Just food for thought I guess.