No Foolin' (Part III)
(Part III) "Fool me once..." Where was God in all this chicanery?
After the humiliation, one question burns the brain: Where the hell was God when you were going through all that? Here are my takeaways.
Where Was God in All This? My Takeaways
Wisdom and spiritual formation (and a few years of trying to forget it ever happened. Ahem, that is to say, “time”) have spoken to me as I debated and mused over this largely mortifying experience and if I would, should or could ever make it known. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far. Here’s what I’d say if it happened to you.
God, who is a loving God of mercy, wastes nothing. I got up at 4:00am every morning and fasted for two weeks. I said those ancient Catholic prayers and a few of my own – tears and all. Just because some jackass false prophet online told me to do it so I could have a baby and improve my marriage and business doesn’t mean that God didn’t hear those prayers, see my tired eyes, and know of my sacrifices.
God knows your heart. And I mean all of it. He knows the part of my prayers that were empty and transactional, and He knows when I departed all legalistic mentality and shared with him my deepest desires. Who cares how I got to prayer. I got there in faith and hope.
Vengeance is mine saith the Lord. The Lord saw everything that happened. He knows and He’ll deal with it. I did what I could do. The Lord will handle this wolf. I may not see it but I did no one harm with my actions. Justice is on my side here. My conscience is clean.
God does not cause bad things to happen, but He will allow it for your ultimate good. Thing is, and here’s the hard truth. I prayed. And when it came to the primary desire, God said no. He simply said no. And, friends, that hard. That’s really really hard to swallow sometimes. Again, re-read number 1 and 2. Those prayers were real. They were heard. God said no to a child. One day on the other side of heaven, He'll talk to me about it.
St. Paul talks about being a fool for the sake of Christ. Well, then I am reigning queen. Get me that Crown of Life! I can say hands down that if being a fool on earth is as the wise in heaven, I’ve won the battle. Just call me Sensei.
Trust in God, not in man. It is true that God works through man. But God’s love, favor and grace isn’t transactional. There’s no holy tit-for-tat. His character is merciful and just. It’s righteous. Beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Obedience is never in vain, even if you get it wrong. Even if I had prayed first and thought I’d been given that interior feeling of an open door, even an order, but ultimately got that message wrong, I would have been rewarded for my willingness and desire to obey. Read number one again. (God wastes nothing). That said, I don’t recall praying and asking first if I should have proceeded. Lesson learned. Also never in my desire to be obedient was I ever in danger of hurting another individual.
Fellowship and the Body of Christ. If you can’t tell anyone the thing you do in the “dark” because of fear, worry, anxiety, fear of foolishness, or any other word that’s not on the list of good fruit, this is a pretty blaring sign that something is amiss. Something’s not right. The “check” in your spirit is already been, well, checked. Go to God. Pray in the presence of one who can bring some objective wisdom into the space. Then at the very least you’ll be saved from the humility of which you could have been spared. Good friends laugh with you and say “phew that was close!” Really good friends might even figuratively slap you upside the head for falling for such a prank. But the ones who get you, love you, and are there to light the way will never mock you. Maybe what I’m saying is that if you’re going to make even a potentially stupid choice, check with someone smarter than you are first.
A New Relationship With Social Media
It bears noting that I gave up all social media for a full year soon after this mini odyssey. I honestly didn’t connect the cause/effect until now. I was just tired of social media. Very tired. And I didn’t just “deactivate” in case I wanted to come back two weeks later. I deleted. I let it all go. (I came back a year later, with a much less committed, sober-minded, relationship.)
A Question to Ask in Hindsight
God knew this would happen… that I would step back from social media. Could that have been a fruitful reason for allowing it to happen?
Closer in Christ
The neon green 80’s blinking sign for me is that I didn’t share this with my husband. Can you imagine if I had? This story would have been relegated to a tweet. At any point I could have opened the door and invited him in. Perhaps my pride didn’t allow it because inwardly I knew my husband would be on this wolf like white on rice. I didn’t want to believe the worst. I wanted to believe I had one more chance. Because after all, it is true that nothing will be impossible with God. As long as he says yes.
A Question to Ask in Hindsight
Did God answer the prayer of fruitful marriage bringing us closer in Christ? Would I have found myself asking and musing about inviting my husband in to a deeper pain thereby warding off the wolf had all this not happened?
God’s Mercy. We All Have Sorrowful Mysteries
I mentioned in Part I of my innate desire for “Liberte!” Freedom. Counterintuitively, one of the most freeing phrases I have heard was spoken by a wonderful religious sister named Sr Miriam James Heidland who says that we all have our own sorrowful mysteries.
We all have sorrowful mysteries.
Sr. Miriam James Heidland
We all suffer. And in our personal stories of suffering there will be one or some or many that will ever have that quark, that mystifying inexplicable and unfathomable component of unsolved mystery. That thing, that “why” that no matter how much healing work, grief work, understanding or knowledge we obtain, that one deep and sharp sorrow simply remains, veiled deep within our heart; a cloistered chamber where few may enter because it is not for outsiders to dwell. But if there with God we dwell, we can receive His comfort, His presence, His mercy, though the answers remain absent.
We ask God, “Why don’t you change this? Why me?” But we see as through a mirror – and very dimly. Darkly. Always seeing our own reflection while He asks us to look through to Him.
So until we get to the place where all things will be revealed and the suffering… oh the suffering! The suffering of death, loss, what never happened, what dreams weren’t realized, the absences, the betrayals, the persecutions, the victimizations and the incessant tomfoolery… we must resolve with quiet knowing that we are in partnership with Sacred Mystery.
Our sorrowful mysteries are our own. Some we may share with our neighbor. Some we only share only with God. But somehow just knowing that in this life we were not meant to have it all figured out, (as my friend says, “ ‘figure it out’ is not in the bible”), makes the sorrow a bit more bearable.
And paradoxically - beautiful.
I have a similar story that a different circumstance. I’ll have to share it with you sometime. This is a great post and there’s so much wisdom here.