Back on speaking terms with God

My parents forced me to go to a regional Catholic high school. By “forced” I mean they dragged me kicking and screaming, dealing with full fury of a teenage girl raining down upon them. I was nervous, sad to leave my friends in the town school system, and enraged at being told what to do.

Going to a new, Catholic school was one of the best things that ever happened to me, and I knew that pretty early into the experience. Still, it took me months to admit to my parents that I wasn’t miserable, because I didn’t want them to feel let off the hook for doing something I didn’t like, no matter how right they were.

That’s sort of where I am with God right now. Life is more difficult that I want it to be, and I have blinded myself to the goodness around me because I am So. Darn. Mad. I am angry that I have not gotten what I want, and I have clung to my misery because I’m scared that God won’t hear my petitions if they don’t have the force of my frustration behind them.

Yesterday we celebrated the Solemnity of Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. One of the homilies I heard mentioned that acknowledging Christ as our King means making ourselves subject to him, handing over the parts of our lives that we have been holding back and letting God into them.

I have not let God into my unhappiness lately, and it is because I don’t want it to be healed. Rather than letting my heart be changed I demand my circumstances be changed, and it has been destroying me. When it was suggested last night that I make myself subject to God, that I hand over what I’ve been refusing to share, I realized that of course that is the answer. Of course that is the only way.

The silent treatment isn’t working for me anymore. I haven’t stopped having faith, and I haven’t stopped believing, I just stopped talking. Because what would I say? My prayer was a litany of anger and sadness and frustration and dissatisfaction, and I was tired of hearing myself whine.

So I’m going to stop whining, and I’m going to stop being sad. I don’t expect it to work magic, or change everything overnight. But it’s time to try. I believe I can let the grain of my wants fall to the ground and die as it may. I have enough faith in God and in myself to be confident that something can grow where it lands.