Un-limiting God

Does anyone else find themselves limiting God as much as I do? I got an email from a friend yesterday asking me what I hope to find or experience at a conference I’m going to the first week of January. As I was considering my answer, I thought “well, I don’t want to go into it with any expectations because I don’t want to be let down.” It’s a trap I fall into quite frequently. Instead of thinking about things before they happen, I go into them blindly, with no idea what to expect. In some cases that’s good. I mean, it doesn’t do any good to overanalyze a situation or worry unnecessarily about it. But it doesn’t hurt to do a little thinking beforehand either, especially if the thinking involves praying ;)

Now that I’ve lost you with all that rambling, I’ll explain how this has anything to do with limiting God. In my efforts to keep myself from being disappointed, I’ve taken God out of the equation. I’ve assumed that He doesn’t want to or worse, can’t, grant my desire. I’ve prematurely assumed He’s going to answer my prayer with a no, without even giving Him the chance to say yes. But the last time I checked, we have an all-powerful God who is able to take the idea he has of himself in his mind AND MAKE IT INTO A FLESH VERSION! Soooo I’m pretty sure He can help me have an incredible experience at this conference.

Now, let me give you a little context—this is how the website describes the conference:

“SEEK is a gathering of college students on a journey.  It’s a place where we can come together to take on some of life’s BIGGER questions and, like guides along the way, learn from one another where wisdom and experience lead.  Life is meant to be lived and in order to live it to the fullest, we need to heed the wisdom that calls us to ‘ask, seek and knock’ to discover who we are, where we’re going and what motivates us.
Presented by FOCUS, the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, SEEK 2013 is an adventurous five-day event in Orlando from January 2^nd – 6^th.  With unexpected twists and turns, you will be challenged, inspired and left wanting more.”

How in the world could I be let down by that?? (Ignoring the fact that I’m not actually a college student anymore. Haha not important). But really. God is going to be doing some amazing things there. And as long as I have an open mind and participate in the activities and give everything up to Him, I’m going to leave a changed woman, or at least a more enlightened one! Especially if I pray about it before I hop on that 20+ hour bus ride and really think about what I want to take away from the experience.

And that’s my rambling for the night. Basically I’ve noticed that I tend to forget that God can do anything. But He wants me at this event for a reason, and I’m ready to figure out why! (and maybe ask for a thing or two along the way ;) )

God is So Good.

Like I said yesterday, I've been busy discovering things about myself lately. It all started this weekend. But I guess I should back up and explain some things first. Now the question is just how far back to go...Well, I guess if I'm going to get personal, I may as well start in the beginning of it all. I hope you're in the mood for a story.

About a year and a half ago, I started my journey of becoming (fully) Catholic. I had been baptized as a baby, but my mom didn't practice so the only experiences I had with anything concerning the faith were a few masses that I went to with my grandparents. Basically, I didn't know anything about anything. That all changed during the middle of my senior year. I was becoming closer friends with a girl who was really starting to look into her faith. She had grown up Catholic but wanted to start understanding it more. Her mom sent her a giant stack of books that she began making her way through at a rapid speed. Every time we hung out (which was almost every day), she'd tell me about whatever it was she was reading at the time. Something about it was really intriguing to me. Then she gave me one of the books to read--Surprised by Truth. Maybe you've heard of it. If not, it's about 11 different people who converted from various other Christian faiths to Catholicism for one reason or another. After reading that, I became hungry for more information. My friend invited me to go to mass with her, so I began attending each week. Boy was it hard at first! I never knew when to stand or when to kneel (or what the significance was to the posture changes) or what the mass responses were (though a few months later, everyone else was in the same boat as me!). Anyway, after a few months of going to mass and continuing to talk about things with my friend, she told me I should look into RCIA classes if I was truly serious about learning more. I made the call the next day and was told that St. John's offered the classes but they wouldn't start until the following school year. So I put my name on the email reminder list and kept doing what I was doing for the next 4 months. Then August finally came and my life was basically turned completely upside down. I started meeting so many amazing friends who I immediately clicked with. I finally felt like I was involved in things, and the joy I was experiencing is hard to describe. I think I met all my best friends last year and I can't believe I've only known them a year or less. I could go on and on about the blessings the Lord poured down on me that year but it would take forever so let's just say it was a very formative year for me, and when I received my first communion and was confirmed at the Easter vigil, I couldn't stop smiling for days.

Now fast forward 6 months, a graduation, a mission trip, and a whole roller coaster of emotions later and we're back in the present time. Here things don't always seem as warm and fuzzy. I'm missing my friends and the support I had last year. I miss running into people everyday who really knew me and, even more than that, wanted to know me. I miss the peace. I miss the reverence at mass. And for the past three months, I've just been lonely and mopey and kind of lost. I've struggled to find a community at home, both for friends and faith. This longing and sadness has been exacerbated by my less than stellar prayer life. It's been pretty dry and nonexistent at home. But I couldn't seem to find the motivation to do something about it. Or I would sit down on my bed and pray for a few days but then I would make excuses for not doing it the next week. Basically, I was spending more time feeling all woe-is-me than I was looking for a solution to the problem.

Then this weekend happened. I went down to champaign in the hopes that I'd be able to distract my friend from her heartache. Turns out I shouldn't add that skill to my resume just yet as I'm not sure I accomplished anything other than saying all the wrong things at all the wrong times, though I'm sure she'd never admit that. I'm just glad she wasn't alone all weekend. At least I fulfilled my role as friend in that respect! Anyway, the weekend proved to be a pivotal time for me, or at least the beginning of a pivotal time. After listening to the talk I mentioned last time and spending some time with Jesus, I ended up having a not-so-mini breakdown in front of my friend Sunday night. All of the frustration and loneliness I had been feeling just sort of poured out, despite my insistence that we didn't need to talk about it. I knew what I needed to do (spend more time in prayer, make God the highest priority in my life, become more intentional about getting to know people, get out of my house, exercise, etc.) but I just couldn't seem to do it. Luckily for me, telling someone about my plans (even if they aren't fully formed yet) makes me more accountable. Mostly because I don't want to have to tell them the next time they ask that I'm still having the same problems because I haven't tried any of the suggestions they gave me last time.

So, I left Champaign late Monday morning with all kinds of hope that this would be the time when I'd actually follow through with my plans of changing my situation at home. I got home and spent some time meditating on scripture. Then I went to Bible study that night prepared to ask the girls for their help in keeping me accountable, too. I shared a little about my situation, and it turns out one of the other girls is going through similar problems, especially in the loneliness department. We wound up being paired up for prayer partners by the end of the night, which gave me the chance to get to know her a little better. After the study was over, I talked to another one of the women, who I'm a little closer to, and got to exchange struggles and prayer requests with her on the way to our cars. It was just so apparent that God was at work that night, telling me to spend more time getting to know these young women so that our friendship can grow. I definitely left feeling better than I arrived.

Then this morning happened. It couldn't have been any clearer that God was answering my prayers. I snoozed my alarm twice, leaving just enough time to throw some clothes on and brush my teeth before rushing out the door for mass. I still ended up being one of the first ones there, though it's not surprising since only 9 other people were there. But back to the point. After mass, one of the women approached me. I would try to guess her age but I'm even worse at that than I am at consoling friends. Let's go with somewhere between 25 and 35, but I can't pinpoint it any more than that. Well, we've seen each other before but neither of us could remember the other one's name so we re-introduced ourselves and ended up talking for 30ish minutes. It was so beautiful. I told her about my problem finding a place to pray and she told me about a chapel that has perpetual adoration! We made plans to go together on Thursday.

This post is getting really long and it's probably sounding more and more like rambling, but I'm just so blown away by how quickly God responded to my prayer requests after just a little bit of faithfulness from me. He's obviously been trying to get my attention for awhile, but I just wouldn't listen to Him. It's sad that it took me this long to respond to His longing for my heart, but I'm glad He made me go through it. I doubt I would have said that or understood the significance of suffering before my conversion (reversion? fulfillment of the sacraments?). And I'm not saying I enjoyed the suffering while it was going on. I don't like feeling alone, but I don't think I would have had my faith renewed had it not happened. I would have continued thinking that I only needed to work on my relationship with God on my own terms, when I felt like it or when my friends brought it up, instead of understanding how important it is to put God first.

I still haven't thought through everything that's happened so I'm probably missing some of the ways the Lord has been working in me the past couple days. But I wanted to get some of my thoughts down, and I thought this was a good way to do it. Hopefully it's easy enough to follow. I'm sure my very faithful readers will let me know ;)