Saying Yes to God

Too many times, I feel as if I am living a lie. When people find out that my husband and I have as many children as we do (twelve souls!), many automatically assume that we are very patient and saintly people. For me, this could not be further from the truth. (There are also those who judge us to be certifiably insane but perhaps that is for another time and another article.)

The longer I have been married – the older I get – the more I am convinced that the only reason I am even able to get a foot out of bed in the morning is because God wants me to do so. Otherwise, I feel more than slightly off-kilter, even on ordinary days, and downright broken when life gets a bit more interesting than usual. When things are going well, I am just happy to be there, a witness to the good things with which I have been blessed. When things are not hunky-dory, I am very nearly convinced that somehow, God made a mistake with me.

Thank goodness my heavenly Father has the patience of — well, God Himself when it comes to people like me. The readings for the Feast of the Annunciation gave me pause to consider my very existence in the world.

I Am Alive!

As a child, I was (and still am) a voracious reader. It was in one of the many books I read that I came to know a simple yet significant bedtime prayer, which fervently spilled out of my lips into God’s ears every single night:

Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
If I die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.

Saying that last bit always came with the echoing thought, “Please let me wake up in the morning!” My extremely active imagination did me no favours. If I did not say the prayer, I was uneasy. So, pray it every night, I did, and in the morning, I was glad for it. I was happy to still be alive!

Over forty years later, I am still grateful to be able to wake up each day – and yet, the appreciation is not always obvious or forthright. There are times now when I wake up, I hit the ground running and hit snooze on God. “Hey Lord, my life is too busy and I am even busier. I will get back to You when I catch a break. Maybe, but not right way.” I am alive, but not fully as God means for me to be. I have to be there for Him.

Here I Am, Lord

The very first thing anyone has to do is to “show up”. When the roll call for Life is happening, we have to make sure to yell out, “Present!” This is the initial daily step each one has to take – a decision we make when we are conscious and aware of our being alive simply because God loves us. Choose to stand up and be counted among the Father’s children.

One of the most effective ways I have found to do this is to pray a Morning Offering. Perhaps we are still sleepy, wanting to grab more than just a few more minutes under the bedcovers. This conscious act of offering up everything we possibly can to God and His Will is what sets us on the right path and tone for the day.

Committed to Memory, Spoken from the Heart

I must have learned this prayer when I was seven or eight years old. Over the years, it somehow never left my memory, even after years when I did not pray it. As a mother, it is the prayer I have taught my own children by dint of repetition, and have learned to love this prayer more and more each day.

This prayer is the closest reference to it I could find online:

O JESUS, through the most pure Heart of Mary, I offer You all my prayers, works, joys and suffering of this day, for all the intentions of Your Sacred Heart, in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world, in reparation for my sins, and in particular for the intentions of the Holy Father the Pope. Amen.

I Come to Do Your Will

We read in the letter to the Hebrews:

Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said,
“Sacrifices and offerings thou hast not desired,
but a body hast thou prepared for me;
in burnt offerings and sin offerings thou hast taken no pleasure.
Then I said, ‘Lo, I have come to do thy will, O God,’
as it is written of me in the roll of the book.” (Heb 10:5-7, RSVCE)

The next daily step is to make ourselves available to do our heavenly Father’s will, whatever it may be. Let me be the first to tell you that when God’s will and mine are on the same page, it is truly a beautiful thing all around. Too often, though, my will has an unfortunate and feather-brained mind of its own. In those moments, a fleeting but rebellious thought crosses my mind: “Here I am, Lord. I come to do my will.”

I love telling people that if they want to make God laugh, they should tell Him their plans. I might as well be a court jester by profession. God does not giggle when I tell Him what I want and plan to do; His is a full-on, top-notch, grade-A belly laugh. It is the kind which reverberates throughout the universe and beyond. It would be nice, of course, if I could join Him in the laugh-fest, except many times I fail to see the humour in my plans.

Still –

Father, if thou art willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done (Lk 22:42).

It is Jesus Himself Who shows us in the garden of Gethsemane what it means to commit to doing the Father’s will.

How lovingly Jesus embraces the wood which is to bring him to death!
Is it not true that as soon as you cease to be afraid of the Cross, of what people call the cross, when you set your will to accept the Will of God, then you find happiness, and all your worries, all your sufferings, physical or moral, pass away?

Truly the Cross of Jesus is gentle and lovable. There, sorrows cease to count; there is only the joy of knowing that we are co-redeemers with Him (Josemaria Escriva, The Way of the Cross, Number 2).

Let It Be

Here I am complaining about what I can or cannot do in life, while the Gospel for the feast of the Annunciation reminds us of what God our Father asks of us when He makes His will known:

And Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her (Lk 1:38).

And so it was, according to God’s Word:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God  (Jn 1:1).

Mary’s fiat was necessary. She embraced God’s Will and the world was never the same again:

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father (Jn 1:14).

We – you and I – may be lacking and flawed, imperfect and broken, but our acquiescence is necessary for the fulfillment of God’s Will:

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church (Col 1:24).

Our Father God does not tell us to go it alone. We are not loved for what we can give or have, but simply because we are. It is God Himself Who gives us the faith, courage, and strength to say yes to His most loveable Will, for with Him, nothing is impossible.

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it (1Cor 10:13).