The Hard Parts

I once saw (okay, I think I actually trice saw...but that isn't important) a Rob Bell video called "Shells." I only have vague memories of how it specifically went, but I remember the jist (okay, a friend reminded me of the jist earlier today...but that isn't important either). It went something like this...

A boy is walking along the beach collecting shells. He is happy and enjoys what he has found, but they are nothing magnificent. None of the shells are big and many are merely broken fragments. Suddenly, he sees it. A full and beautiful shell floating out in the ocean. His father encourages him to go get it. He tries to get out to it, but keeps stopping short and returning to the shore. With more encouragement, he makes it out to the shell, but he doesn't grab it. He comes back to the shore and his father who asks what happened. The boy explained that he couldn't get the full and beautiful shell. The father asked why, and the boy responded, "My hands are full of shells."

How often is this us? We cling so tightly to the things around us that we can't grasp the better things God has for us. We are unwilling to let go of the comfort of the life we've created and grown accustomed to.

I've realized in the past few days I don't really and truly surrender. When I trust and hope in a future that God has planned for me, I always focus on some possible way that it will work out. I surrender to a possibility - one that might make me slightly uncomfortable, but with which I am ultimately okay.

I don't surrender to an unknown. I don't surrender to a future full of hope and happiness that I cannot imagine for myself. I surrender only insofar as I can understand.

That isn't real surrender.

Real surrender embraces the darkness.  Real surrender trusts the God whose plans I cannot see and desires those plans in my life. No. Matter. What.

That's the hard part: joyful surrender to what appears to be a dark abyss, while trusting and hoping and delighting in God's promise.

After all, if my hands are full of my own comforting visions, how will ever grasp what is actually better?

Quietly Waiting

I'm out of touch with myself. I have a desire to express myself, but nothing identifiable to express. My heart is full and heavy, yet my head cannot ponder what it holds.

My life is changing.  It is at once a big and a small change.  I'm graduating.  I'm moving home. I won't be back here next year.

Somehow, I have nothing much to say.

I shouldn't be too surprised.  I know myself well enough to know that I process slowly, taking in and resting with before expressing and understanding.

The words will come in time I'm sure. Until then, all I have is a prayer that begs the Lord to draw me closer and pleads that the Father reveal is will.  It is a prayer that wants for so much and receives in undetectable ways. 

It is a prayer that bears much hope.

Discernment

The following is a list of the 5 steps for discernment as listed in my teacher's manual for 5th grade religion class (Faith and Life Series)

- Pray and receive the Sacraments often; have a deep relationship with God
- Know yourself and the gifts God has given to you; He will use them
- Search the desires of your heart; God will speak through them (see Ps 37:4)
- Be open and ready to follow wherever God leads
- Although it won't always be easy, you should have peace, joy, and a sense of rightness

::sigh::

As the Job Search Continues...

...these are some of the things I keep telling myself...

1.) My prayer, for a long time, was that God give me only one choice - that He not make me discern His will through more than one possibility. If God does answer that prayer, there will have to be a lot of dead ends involved.

2.) I know the lessons I am learning now in how to listen and discern better, to trust God more fully, to surrender more deeply, and to unwaveringly have hope are far better than this discernment period ending will be. I want to learn those lessons. I want to become holier.

3.) I speak with complete sincerity when I say that I want to do God's will.  I honestly want what He wants for me. Those words are not uttered merely for the sake of saying them.  I mean them, and I want to live them.  It's just hard to keep that in sight when the process is scary and the result doesn't look the way I expect. I just have to remember what I truly believe anyway - no matter how difficult and stinky the situation seems at present.