WHEN GOD SAYS 'YES'
The manner God has answered the deeper longings of my spirit over the years can only be summed up as cataclysmic. He doesn’t wave a magic sky wand that instantaneously remedies everything; neither does he sew patches on frayed fabric, nor pour new wine into old skins. No, when it comes to the deeper, foundational things he's leveled the structure. I assume this is because my stubbornness and flawed approach to life make it necessary. If he can work with me, he can work with anyone.
As an example, I was raised in a conservative faith tradition, reared on a juridical God that most folks, including myself, feared despite the occasional mention of grace that might escape our lips every now and again. We officially recognized Christ's atonement, but the practical reality is our religious lives were defined by whether we were doing "enough." By the time I graduated from college, I had rejected this way of relating to God on a theological level, but the lingering effects of such a view of God continued to contaminate my relationship with him. So I prayed fervently every day that he might teach me to love him without fear. I prayed, and prayed, and prayed.
Even today, fifteen years after the fact, I can remember the exact moment he began answering me. He planted a seed of thought that grew and grew and could not stop growing. It germinated into the realization I couldn't reconcile Hell with eternal, unconditional love. The confusion that followed left me feeling abandoned and, ultimately, betrayed, and I eventually slipped into Atheism and walked that path for several years. It was a seemingly tragic answer to my prayer, but somewhere along my journey as an Atheist I received what I'd asked for. I wasn't aware of it at the time, but I wasn't afraid of him anymore. And then one day he returned. He granted me a powerful unitive experience out of the blue one day on a walk, and just like that he came back into my life. Only it was different now. I wasn't afraid, and I didn't receive him back on account of fear. He found a home in my heart because he loved me, I knew it, and I loved him back.
Now I face a similar challenge. A few years ago, I began praying yet again for a foundational reordering of my life in God. I longed to place my life, my very self, completely in his control, to go and say and do solely as he wills, and embrace the utter dependence of such total surrender. I prayed and prayed and prayed. It was at that time the walls around my well-ordered life began to collapse. Before it was all over, I'd lost everything. I was hospitalized, medicated, jailed, unemployed, divorced, and hopeless. Not only had I lost everything, but the way in which the ship went down left nothing to salvage, nor any hope of rebuilding what I'd lost. There would be no going back. Fast forward two years, and I still walk in a wilderness of uncertainty. I fight him constantly, grumbling like the consummate Hebrew, harboring this dark suspicion that he's led me into this desert to die.
Yet quietly and concurrently, I'm slowly accepting, like Jeremiah, that he's all I have left. Perhaps, despite myself, I'm slowly learning the true meaning of dependence. I'm stiff-necked, so he's dragging me through the sand. Through this struggle, he's answering my prayer just like before, with honest and relentless grace.