Day 11. January 12, 2012. Loneliness and God's hand

Let me start off by saying, "thank you God for even your subtlest of gifts.  Perhaps, they are the most profound."

First, I read this:  "So, be lonely, Liz.  Learn your way through loneliness.  Make a map of it.  Sit with it for once in your life.  Welcome the human experience.  But, never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings." p. 65

That spoke to me, not on the level of loneliness, but on the level of pain.  We all want to escape pain.  I want to get out of problems, run away from them, instead of experiencing them for what they really are:  part of life!  Pain, anger, sadness, disappointment, FEAR, and failure, for example, are all part of life.  So, be afraid an do the right thing anyway.

THEN, I (seemingly randomly) opened my prayer book which was translated from Rabindranath Togore.  I say seemingly randomly because I randomly picked a page.  However, I'm learning that nothing happens by mistake in this world.  There are no accidents.  When it comes to the gifts, the signs, the omens which are revealed by so called random acts, it turns out that randomness is merely an illusion.

Case in point.  The prayer I opened to was this:

"Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them.
Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it.
Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved, but hope for the patience to win my freedom.
Grant me that I may not be a coward, feeling Your mercy in my success alone;
But let me feel the grasp of Your hand in my failure."

Too coincidental to be coincidental.  So, I need to not only thank God for the gifts in my life, but also for the challenges, the failures, the troubles and the trials.  I can also be thankful for the difficult people in my life for somehow, they make me better and stronger, so long as I feel God's hand in mine at the moment.

If I go this alone, or feel like I am alone in this moment, of course I'd feel angry and hurt.  Of course I'll take it personally.  The conflict with my fiancee was a learning opportunity.  I ought to be grateful for that.  She taught me something about myself.  My over-dependance or over-reliance on some one causes strife.  I made her do all the work (the planning for the trip, renting the car, getting the map) which made her cranky.  I couldn't see it in the moment.  I can see it now.  I didn't see at the time how I could have been more helpful and that I played a part in the squabble.  Thank you for the clarity, God.  Hopefully, in the future, I can change.  I'll have some for-thought.  I'll not be so consumed with resentment about having had to work six days in a row and with worry about how cranky she's going to be that I'll miss an opportunity to be helpful, which might lead to the easing of said crankiness. 

I may screw it up again.  But hopefully, I'll feel God's hand in mine as I screw it up.  And, I'll go through it.  God will lead me where he chooses.  I just have to follow his lead.