The Many Voices of Advent
I had a really awful week last week. My soul felt so many disturbances and great turmoil, and I felt like I couldn't regain peace. I had too many questions and not enough answers. I felt like giving up.
What is Your will for me? Why am I here? Why is the spiritual life so difficult and a crazy maze of emotions? Why do I have moments of great joy and ecstasy and moments of intense pain and disturbance as I seek to love You, Lord, and do what You ask of me?
Am I on the wrong path? Am I on the right path? Is it going to be like this for the rest of my life? Why won't You give me clarity? Why must I suffer so much? How long, Lord? How long must I go on like this?
On Friday evening as I was driving to pray in my favorite Franciscan chapel with the exposed Blessed Sacrament, four songs came on in a row with references to God holding you and not giving up.
Well clearly, there was a message to be heard.
I remember a Catholic religious sister telling me one time when I was trying to figure out all of the answers to my life, "I think God just wants to hold you." And then I remembered in my last confession another reference to God holding and embracing us.
And I realized, the Lord just wants to hold us.
I find that the more questions I ask and the more I try to figure things out, the more I am left with just this simple truth: God just wants to hold me. He just wants to shower me with His love. He just wants to comfort me. He just wants to tell me that it will all be OK in the end.
And in my human-ness, I fight it. I resist it. I walk away from it. I don't always embrace it. Because I prefer to run after an earthly love that's more tangible, physical, and easier to understand and feel.
But His arms are there. Always open to hold you and I as we suffer, as we struggle through this life, as we battle the demons in our midst, and as we fight through the trials that try to pull us away from Him.
Go run to His arms. He's waiting to just hold you.