Give God a Chance

I could not share immediately after the conclusion of my second Week of RDL. I needed to let the conversation sink in for a few days before writing about it.

For the second Week of my retreat, I begged for the grace of "awe, wonder, and gratitude at the experience of God's love, goodness, care and faithfulness to me".

After sharing with my SD my reflections on this and the Gospel passages for the Week, I must have looked so forlorn that she, joyful and blessed being, encouraged me by saying that the desolation was part of it, and that nothing was lost in my prayer.

She said something that struck me. "Give God a chance," she said. For holding on to the issues and to the past blocked the grace of God that needed to work in my life. I have focused too much on the injustices I thought I had suffered that I have forgotten who God is and what He can do.

I have found some light in one of the handouts given last Sunday to all the retreatants, "Contemplating Scripture" taken from "God and You: Prayer as a Personal Relationship" by William A. Barry, S.J. I read that if I feel nothing while reading a psalm that would normally evoke gratitude (the example used was Psalm 103), "perhaps it is not the day for that psalm, or perhaps my reaction will alert me to a need for some healing from God. I can tell God how I feel and ask him for some balm and some perspective for the fight. The point is that reading the psalm has opened a door to a conversation with the Lord."

I am there now. In that fight, needing that balm, and restarting my conversation with the Lord.

This is a week of events at work and at home yet part of me wants to go to a place where I could bask in the beauty of creation and talk to my God.

Oh, I beg for the grace of gratitude for all of my blessings, since Sr. Reylie reminded me that I am richly blessed. It does not feel like it due to a very stupid and stubborn heart.

It has been a slow week but I keep trudging on. I hope to fix my eyes on God more and entertain the distractions less and less.