The idea of journeying with God was completely foreign to me during my youth. If I had been introduced to it earlier in my life and embraced it, I think my journey would have looked considerably different. As a youngster, I didn't connect with God at all. My family didn't attend church regularly, although we kids were dropped off at Sunday School on occasion. As an adult, I suspected that was when my parents had sex. In high school, I did attend a church youth group, but irregularly and primarily for the social advantages.
At big family gatherings, grace was skipped unless my drunken uncle managed to weasel in a long, meandering prayer. His devotion to the Bible was generally part and parcel of his drinking escapades, possibly to draw attention away from them. Unsuccessfully, I might add.
I truly never considered the absence of God in our family life as either good or bad. It was simply the way it was. No one ever stood over me reciting the Lord's Prayer when I went to bed. I think I must have learned “Now I lay me down to sleep . . .” at a friend's house while sleeping over.
My next-door neighbor was a girl my age who went to a Catholic school. I remember feeling jealous that she had a rosary to lead her in prayer. I told my mom that I wanted to be a Catholic so I could have a rosary. “Wait until you are older,” she said. In the meantime, however, my neighbor taught me how to say the rosary. I was thrilled, but still didn't ever pray for real.
I don't know if believing in a caring God would have alleviated my near-constant fears about life in general when I was a young girl, but I'm inclined to think it could have made a difference. I was anxious most of the time. I well remember Sunday afternoons when I was in the second grade. I was always sick to my stomach, often to the point of vomiting, because of my fear about school the next day and my teacher, who terrified me.
Many Sunday nights, I woke up my mom because my stomach hurt so badly that I couldn't lie still. My interruption of their sleep enraged my dad. My mom took me to see a doctor and he said she shouldn't worry. I simply had a nervous stomach.
My second-grade teacher didn't like me for some reason, and she often poked the top of my head with a pencil—which hurt. I dreaded every time she walked down the aisle in my direction. I begged my parents to take me out of her class, but both the principal and my dad thought I needed to stay put.
It was a very painful year and, midway through it, my appendix ruptured. To this day, I've wondered if I brought all that on as my way to escape that teacher's pencil point, if only for a few weeks. And possibly to make my dad feel guilty as well for not hearing my anguish over being in her classroom.
Because I had come home from school sick on so many occasions that year, I was told in no uncertain terms that I couldn't do it again. But the day I ended up in the hospital, I ran home in so much pain that I couldn't lie still on the couch. My mother called the doctor and he rushed me to the hospital in his car. I was taken into surgery immediately. My dad sat by my bed after the operation with tears in his eyes, sorry for not believing how sick I really was. I still hated my teacher, but I felt vindicated. And I was glad my dad felt badly.
Could trusting in a caring God have changed any of this? Who can say? But many of the less significant things over which I worried throughout my young life might have been alleviated. For instance, I was always in doubt about my friendships. I lived in fear that I would be left out when someone planned a big event. And I was sometimes, but probably not intentionally. At that time, I had no idea that my life had been divinely orchestrated and that God was my constant companion no matter where I went.
Revisiting my past, as I am wont to do, I can now see the perfect pattern of the events in my life—the happy times as well as the sad ones. I can also see how my first husband's infidelities and the sexual abuse I experienced as a young girl contributed to the person I was becoming. All of these memories give me reason to pause, with an understanding for which I am so grateful. Each and every experience played its necessary part in my development. To be able to celebrate this fact gives me great satisfaction.
Every situation, person, and experience you encounter contributes to where you are at this very moment, and God has been along for the entire ride. To be more correct, He's been driving the bus. And He will continue to drive the bus. And you will continue to be His passenger until your ride is over. That awareness can give you so much pleasure and bring you so much pure peace.
I don't think my parents or my eldest sister ever believed in the constant presence of a God who understood their needs and provided for them. My sister talked often about her inability to believe that there was anything after death. Fear and anxiety ruled their lives. This makes me sad for them. Still. And I hope that, by now, they can see that God actually was present in every moment of their lives. Nothing they did was ever “out of sight” of a loving God. We don't have to know that for it to be true.
I have an inkling that we take who we are at the time of death to our next experience. Only then can we see, with new eyes, what we did not realize while on our previous life's journey. Of course, I can't know if this is true, but it gives me solace, and comfort is what I long for in what remains of my life.
Even though I believe in a Presence that guides me—and I'm confident that millions of people share my belief—there are probably nearly as many who never feel the comfort of a caring guide. Some may reject the idea outright; others may simply do so because they feel no pull in that direction. I am not sure this idea would ever have captured my imagination without my journey into alcoholism and drug addiction—a journey that was scripted quite perfectly for me, and one that led me into the recovery rooms where I “met God.”
Whenever I have a moment of doubt regarding an upcoming engagement, my relief is swift and sure when I review, even cursorily, the events from my past. Whom I met, where I was led—and both in the context of what I experienced—all fits perfectly into the tapestry that has been mine to weave. Not one thread has been extraneous to the whole. This gives me assurance that nothing about the future will be extraneous either. Wherever I am called to be and whomever I meet there are on my “calendar of events” even before I open it to review the upcoming day.
The comfort of knowing that all will be well, as English theologian Julian of Norwich told us hundreds of years ago, is music to my ears and feels like a hug around my beating heart. Neither you nor I need fret about anything. That we do fret is purely the work of the ego—that incessant, very loud voice that only survives because of the attention we give it. Its very existence is directly tied to our insecurities, which it works hard to create and then keep alive. Without them, the ego's power diminishes, thus allowing us greater freedom to choose the “other” voice.
The phrase “all will be well” has a potency to it that is life-changing if we allow it to permeate our existence. It surely comforts me like a warm blanket on a very cold night. It is true simply because we are not in charge of our lives, or anyone else's either. We are traveling a specific path that is divinely directed. We will never be confronted by a circumstance “accidentally.”
Whatever situation calls to you is on the agenda that bears your name—an agenda that you share with the God of your understanding. So lay your concerns aside. Now and forevermore. What will be, will be. Amen.