GOD'S WILL BE DONE

Following the Will of God….These words flow sweetly off of my lips these days.  I have spent the last four years questioning, yearning, and following the Will of God.  I asked and He answered me.  Am I really telling you, dear reader, this?  The journey to get to this comfort level in which I can write these words to you has been a long and challenging one; one in which Satan has not wanted me to be successful at.  Years ago I would never even have considered letting my spiritual self out of the closet.  My mystical experiences, my compelling need to ask “why” to pretty much anything ,  the constant feeling that I was seeing situations from a place 30 steps away from others, and my intense love for God were gifts given to me to comfort myself with..were mine to explain my dissenting opinions with others…and were meant to inspire me to look more deeply into situations and discover the Hand of God as a personal revelation.

 Today, I find myself at another point on the journey, a journey that began with one charismatic minister asking me two questions:  1) Are you sure you are Catholic? and 2) How is God asking you to use your experiences to help others?  These questions came as part of my meeting with a “review” committee within the Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) method of learning.  It was a meeting set up by my CPE Supervisor to help me clarify my call into ministry.  I knew I was expected to respond as one is expected to respond at a dissertation, I suppose, by my immediate response was one of uncomfortable silence.  The moment was profound and I could “sense” that;  if I would just be a little more “authentically” me, the Wisdom of the moment would reveal itself.  I opened up my mouth to speak and very uncomfortably said to him that, yes, I was Catholic.  I have always “sensed” a very strong and intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit and (gulp)  I I always thought that my mystical experiences were just meant for me; that they were a gift for me to contemplate about and be comforted with in times of suffering.  I had never considered that they had been given to me to share with others. 

Opening myself up to the Will of God required that I “gird myself” and see Wisdom and Truth.  Who was I?  Why had I witnessed these “Holy” moments surrounding suffering and death?  What did God want me to do and how was I going to protect myself?  These were the questions that on occasion I would lay awake thinking about or would try and shove out of my consciousness as I was quietly fishing, waiting for the thrill of the bass strike.  God followed me everywhere.  I began to see Him in the eyes of my homeless clients.  I began to hear His words to me in the voices of my CPE brothers and sisters.  I would sing words of hymns at Mass like “Here I am Lord.  Is it I Lord?  I have heard you calling in the night.  I will go, Lord, if you lead me.  I will hold your people in my arms” and I would physically shiver.  The shiver seemed to be two-fold (remember the need to have the why always answered?).  I shivered with an anticipation of something to come and I shivered with a fear of un-totalled cost. 

At the time I was working at one of the local shelters and meeting with homeless men and women on a daily basis.  My soul, my spirit in the closet, was not comfortable with following “best practices” case management and began to knock on the door of my heart and murmur quite strongly on occasion, “Let me out”.  As time went on and clients kept coming, achieving, leaving, and returning I was caught in a dilemma…Did I still want to live a life of Truth or was I willing to knowingly say “no” to God.  It became quite a struggle between faith and fear.  I fought with the angel of God.  I knew with everything in me that the people who were sitting in front of me pouring out their life stories and timidly expressing their suffering and disappointments were sharing these things with me from a place deep within them that was yearning for human understanding; a connectedness that would give them hope and strength to live one more day in this manner.  Their stories of violence, abuse, rape, torture, lost loves, shame, addiction, as different as the color of their hair or the clothing that they wore, overwhelmed me.  There were moments of feeling successful and then they would return again to play the tape of the “story” one more time or to be turned away for lack of maintaining.  I tried to keep it somewhat superficial but God was knocking at the door.  He was calling to me to do the one thing I knew how to do…go deeper.  “Ask them about Me” He would beckon.  So I did.  Their responses were so remarkable that I was in awe.  I remember one hardened homeless gentleman perking up at the question of whether or not he considered himself to be a religious person and he said, sitting up straighter in his chair, “Oh yes. “  He then grabbed his backpack that he kept close to him and as he pulled out a picture of Jesus he said “I take Him with me wherever I go.  I even have a Bible in my tent down by the river, right by my bedroll.”  I didn’t know what to say next because the response was so unexpected.  Having learned that the breathless moments I had experienced before were called “Holy” in ministry I became aware that day that God was reaching out to me in the faith of this homeless man and I was meant to hear this.  That day I chose to open the door to the spiritual stirrings of my soul and continue to seek Truth and deal with fear.  I didn’t know what that meant but the decision was an “ahah” moment for me.  I sensed that the Will of God needed to be followed by me or my life would be less than it could be and those who I served would be denied the Presence of God moving through me to them.  I had the ability to help “heal” them by showing them love as my brothers and sisters in the midst of the messiness of their lives. 

This decision of mine led me into so many grace-filled, God moments that my cup overflows with them.  I think of sitting with this man or this woman holding each other’s hands and praying for relief of suffering, release of hatred, right ordering of shame, love of neighbor, forgiveness of naïve and limited understanding and I am filled with joy.  As much as I miss each and every one of them and I pray that God bring others into their lives who will also be intentionally following His Will I feel truly blessed and at peace with the work that I was given and that I said “yes” to.