“No feelings, however profound, ever bring us nearer to God or God to us. In the same way, no lack of feelings can take us away from God. When all impressions fail, leaving us in “dryness, darkness, and desolation,” we should not even for a moment think that God is far from us. Nothing can separate us from the love that holds us in being, least of all our feelings. This is why St John of the Cross says that God is nearest to us when we are least aware of it.”
The last few months have been very hard for me. I last wrote a reflection about my experiences through my senior year of college. I left optimistic. I left hopeful. I still am, but life is not easy. It never promised to be either. I have had way too much time to myself this summer, much of this is due to my own disposition and my struggle to adjust. However, even when I have felt lonely, anxious, or depressed something seems to click. And as small as these moments may be, they bring hope.
The unknown is both scary and enticing. It has stifled me as of late. I honestly have no idea what I am doing in many areas of life. The unknown took away my ability to write for a while. There were a couple of months where I did not write a single thing. I was scared. I did not know what would come out. So this is progress. This is hope. I have put off a lot of things in hopes of writing something elegant. I have suffocated many ideas in hopes of finding the perfect one, but that is not what I had set out to do when I developed this site. I do not think I have written anything like this before, kind of a stream of consciousness approach I guess.
I have been running. I have run from myself, from my friends, from God. In my running, I still see God pursuing me. I still see that, even in the moments where my emotions lead me astray, He is there. I notice that when I am in my head, relying on my own thoughts and logic as I tend to do, He shows me how wrong I can be and how He just wants me to rest. For it is in rest that we find what we are looking for in this world. So much of life is spent reasoning through situations or imagining a world that is better than what we have. We let our emotions get the best of us or we stop them from ever coming to the surface. I know I do this. It shows a lack of self-control, an over-reliance on self.
We learn self-control in the quiet, by not leaning one way or another, by waiting to see what God can and will do in our lives. I hope to learn. Our culture does not teach us to wait for much anymore. It is counterintuitive. This is what I know that I need to work on. In self-control, we learn how to be thankful for what we have and to be patient with where we want to be in the future. Growth takes time. It is hard. It is painful, but it is always worth it.
Much of the unknowns in my life are forcing me to be patient whether I would like to be or not. I know that there are many steps that I have to take, some that I am ready for and others where the path seems less steady. It may be one step forward and two steps back, but I know that I have to move. I am learning to trust again. My feelings and my mind may play tricks on me, but He is there. I believe that for you and I believe that for me. Rest in that. Rest knowing that He is moving.