Having faith

A friend had surgery last summer and post-operative complications led to lots of pain and additional surgeries. She is frustrated, fearful and depressed.

One day she said, “I keep asking God to take the pain away, to fix this, and God does nothing. How can I have faith?”

“That is not the kind of God I have,” I said.

My God is not like a plumber, someone to whom I show a problem and say, “just fix this.”

My God, like my family and friends, is someone with whom I have a relationship. In the same way I would not expect my family or friends to fix my problems, I don’t expect God to either.

My relationships are more about listening, accepting, supporting and loving.

And just as I don’t blame my family and friends for my troubles, I don’t blame God either. My God is not a punishing God, and I don’t believe God causes pain or suffering; I believe that pain and suffering are part of life. When I am facing a challenge, I approach God with the question, “What am I to learn from this?”

Often, the answer is to let go.

Looking back, I can see that many of my struggles have been exacerbated by my pride or stubbornness or belief that I am strong enough to handle anything. I tend to hold on too tightly to my expectations and my image of myself as being in control.

Sometimes it is difficult to learn lessons when I am in the middle of a painful situation, and I have to wait until the situation has passed to gain clarity.

Other times, though, I can see that if I let go of my pride and admit my vulnerability, the pain lessens. Just by surrendering my ego, by admitting that I need help, I can ease the burden.

I have learned that it is not only ok to accept my vulnerability, but that accepting my vulnerability is the way forward. I am human; I need help.

After I left l’Arche, brokenhearted and humiliated, I had an aha moment. “God holds all the cards,” I said one day, and as soon as I said those words, I was comforted by the truth of God’s presence in my life—not to take away difficulties, but ready to catch me when I fall, to console me and help me stand again.

I have always loved the image of the potter creating and re-creating. I think of God that way, always ready to send a Spirit of hope and new life to get me back on my feet.  

Each of us faces challenges—health troubles, job losses, unmet expectations, etc. My faith tells me that God does not give me these challenges, nor can I expect God to remove them. My faith tells me that God will be with me through them, loving me, believing in me and wanting me to remember to let go of the illusion that I am in control.

Unpacking the shadow side

One of my earliest memories is from a day when I was four years old and I found a dime in my back yard. A dime in those days was a lot of money; it could buy ten pieces of candy. In my excitement, I shouted my good news, at which point my older brother claimed the dime was his.

I probably chanted, “Finders keepers; losers weepers,” which was something we said to proclaim ownership of found items.

My brother was not easily dissuaded when he wanted something, though, and he came toward me to grab the dime, claiming, “Its mine.” And so I swallowed it. Yep, I just swallowed the dime to make sure my brother could not get it and I could keep it. (Not the smartest move, perhaps, but I was four.)

Twenty-four years later, I was in therapy, and when asked for my earliest memory, I shared this story.

My therapist said, “And you have been swallowing every painful incident ever since.”

What?

His response was unexpected. I thought I had just been sharing an early memory. I had no idea of the significance of that encounter with my brother and the dime, but I could see that it was true.

Every bad thing that had happened to me had been submerged deep inside me, swallowed like the dime, to stop the pain of whatever painful thing was happening.

At twenty-eight, this was my first experience with therapy, and I had not previously examined much from my past, the relationships and events that had shaped me.

We did not go in for therapy in my family, preferring to believe that no one needed help or had any issues. Therapy was for sissies or “crazy” people, and we could be neither. We just kept moving forward, and my way of moving forward was to swallow everything bad in my life.

I suppose all this has resurfaced now because I have been thinking about resiliency and how resiliency has helped me survive the traumatic events of my life.

From therapy, I learned about what Carl Jung called our shadow side, that place inside where I had shoved every painful experience. At twenty-eight, I started to unpack that overstuffed bag, to look at what was there, and to see what I could learn from those experiences that could help me more forward with my life in a healthier way.

Even though my way of coping as a child was not particularly effective for mental health, it was effective for survival. And when I began to unpack what was stored in the darkness, I began to see myself as a survivor and to understand how all those events had shaped me into the person I had become.

Once I brought each event from my past into the light, I could see the lessons I had learned—how they taught me to be more understanding of what others had experienced and more accepting, and how they had made me more resilient.

Interwoven

Running away doesn’t really work.

I should know; I tried.

But my past came along for the ride and continually intruded on my life.

Better to turn and face it than to try to outrun it.

And then, ever so slowly, weave the past into the present.

Accept and embrace it.

The tapestry is vibrant and beautiful.

Falling apart

I think most of us have had something painful or difficult in our lives, experiences we might rather move away from (quickly) rather than examine for life lessons. My living in l’Arche was like that for me.

l’Arche is a Christian community where people with and without developmental disabilities live together and create community. Sounds idyllic, right? For some people, it is. But I was not one of those people. For me, living in l’Arche was very painful.

My plan had been to live in l’Arche for the rest of my life. I had quit my job, given away my furniture, packed the rest of my belongings into my car and headed to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. I quickly realized, though, that my plan was not going to work out, and I left the community before my first year was up.

I was devastated—and humiliated and angry. This was the most difficult and painful situation I had gone through—and I had gone through some pretty painful things.

I think what made this more difficult was that I had brought it on myself. No one had coerced me or forced me. I had decided to go to l’Arche. It was a decision I had freely made with prayer and planning—and then it did not work out.

Shortly after leaving l’Arche, I sought spiritual direction to help me process my sorrow and grief.

All of my hurt, disappointment and frustration poured out in that session. Tears of sadness mixed with tears of anger. I was confused and felt like I had just been through an extreme spiritual battle—a battle I had lost.

Did I give up too quickly? Had I not been persistent enough? Doubt wracked me.

“I think I am falling apart,” I said to the spiritual director.

“I think you are falling together,” she replied.

Her words stopped me cold.

Had I been looking at this apparent failure from the wrong angle? Was the whole point of my moving to l’Arche to break me down, to uncover what I had so carefully kept hidden? Was I meant to fall apart so that God could put me back together in a different way? Had this experience revealed deeper truths to me that I might not have learned any other way?

Laying out the pieces of my shattered dreams and allowing someone else to look at them was a turning point. Where I had been stuck trying to piece things together in one way, she was able to offer a different view. It was like a jigsaw puzzle—one where I could not see the whole picture.

Great mysteries are sometimes hidden in unexpected places.

Advent is a wonderful time to reflect on the hidden mysteries of our lives and to be open to growing in trust that God sees the whole picture of our lives.

More often that we might think, God is helping us to fall together, even when it might feel like we are falling apart.