Fr. J's homily today was an 'A-ha! God is precise!' moment. (Today's reading: Matthew 8:23-27) What was today's reading about?

The calming of the storm at sea.

[23] He got into a boat and his disciples followed him. [24] Suddenly, a violent storm came up on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by waves; but he was asleep. [25] They came and woke him, saying, "Lord, save us! We are perishing!" [26] He said to them, "Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?" Then he got up, rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was great calm. [27] The men were amazed and said, "What sort of man is this, whom even the winds and the sea obey?"

As you can see, my two lovely fellow rocks have so succinctly and precisely blogged about weathering the storms in our lives this past week. And when I heard Fr. J's homily today about God being there with us in the storms of our lives - only we don't have enough faith to realise and trust in His ability to calm the monster-sized waves and solve insurmountable problems we think we have - my ears nearly popped out.

And there and then, I said, Yes God, I hear you loud and clear now. I believe that you will and can solve my problems for me - I just have to surrender everything up to you.

I had problems understanding what fully surrendering truly meant. In my head, I knew what that meant. But I realise now that while I thought I understood, I couldn't actually do it, couldn't actually fully leave everything up to God and quit trying to do it my way.

I learnt this through a very painful sharing I had with a friend sometime last week. I was trying to accomplish something by trying to forget - which entailed ignoring the problem at hand and pretending everything away. While talking, I realised that what I was trying to do was so obviously not working. And it hit me when the friend pointed that out to me, even though it was so painfully obvious previously already. I was like a hamster running on its wheel; running furiously as the wheel spins, trying to get out of its cage, but not actually going anywhere.




I think I always knew at the back of my mind that my attempts at forgetting were actually sadly futile, it was just that I wanted to be in control of the situation and if I wanted to maintain the illusion that I was in control, I'd have to be actively doing something. It only became so starkly obvious that I was being silly and rather pathetic that night; and it was such a painful realisation.

Human beings are really quite obstinate. And a little silly sometimes. (Or maybe it's just me! Ha.) Because even after the wonderful realisation that I'd been wasting my time the last 2 years or so dawned on me (or more like fell on me like a ton of bricks - the impact.. I tell you.. terrible.), I didn't want to let go of what I'd been doing! I felt so lost at the prospect of not doing anything and instead, leaving it all for God to sort out for me that, foolish as this may sound, I didn't want God to heal me. Cos that's what my action of not letting go essentially was.

And once again, my all-time favourite Bible verse comes to mind. 1 Corinthians 10:13:
God is faithful and will not let you be tried beyond your strength; but with the trial he will also provide a way out, so that you may be able to bear it.

I always found this promise extremely comforting, but I think I never really believed in it even though I could have professed to do so. But now, I am utterly convinced in the truth that this promise holds. We humans have a tendency to mess things up and complicate matters unnecessarily. The trial, the storm in my life right now isn't as tangled up as I'd imagined. It's not as messy as I always thought. Why? Because the answer is so heartbreakingly simple that I'm surprised I didn't see it before. It took that same someone to tell me twice and another friend to tell me that what I need to do now is just to focus on running to Jesus. When Jesus is placed in the centre of all things, all the little troubles or 'complications' as we like to see them just fades into the background.

I went for Mass at IHM today, that's what some people know. But what people are not likely to know is that I had a lot of trouble deciding whether or not to go for Mass. Then when I asked myself why I so badly didn't want to go, I realised that I was just trying - futilely, I might add - to do the whole forgetting by staying far away thing. And when I'd realised that, my feet took me to the platform in the direction of Marina Bay and that was that. While on the train, it came upon me that I was being so so so silly about this whole thing. If I really want to spend 45 minutes with my Lord, I shouldn't let little things like that side-track me from that. Of course, I was toying with the idea of going to Novena or SVDP for evening Mass because that would allow me to spend that time with God as well as allow me to stay in my relative illusion of safety away from all that.

But that's all that would be - an illusion! Because that's basically running away from the problem at hand! I know, some would say I think too much. I agree. The danger isn't really in overthinking. It only becomes dangerous when you think too much and never get to a resolution.

Oh my, how I've digressed. There's still so much that I wanna say but I think I should stop for now so I can organise my thoughts for another post. If not everything's gonna come out jumbled up and quite senseless. I know I'm perfectly capable of rambling far off the path, only to find myself lost in the woods somewhere.

I found this on my best friend's blog while reading blogs earlier in the evening - and it was another 'A-ha! God is precise!' moment. Cos I've been thinking of this prayer the last few days or so. Trying to recall it because I remember seeing it somewhere before and I really wanted to cling on to the words because of the turmoil lately.

Serenity Prayer
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
Courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference.

I also pray that God grants me the patience and humility to understand that we will never know what will happen in the future - and that's the truth and not just a cliche.



*kelly.