No Geneva

It has been a full week, and I am finally getting around to writing about it.

Last Monday, the Forum finally sent a form email lauding my qualifications and saying they had decided not to retain my application. After being kept waiting for weeks on end and not responding to an inquiry I sent a week before that, it was somewhat anticlimactic.

The effect was that of a slow-moving whiplash after practically being told to pack my bags, with the repeated question, "How soon can you move here?"

Numb, then stifled tears (with an overwhelming sense at first that to cry was to cop out, something I have never felt before), then frustration, then honest grief.

I won't bore myself or you with the details. It was a rough week and I'm glad it's over.

But one of the crazy things - for five days straight before the crushing news came, I saw non-stop Maseratis. They were completely kosher sightings - unanticipated, not looking. The most striking was the day before - I was driving to church a bit late, and planned in my head exactly where I wanted to park. When I drove up, there was a Maserati, with a parking space on either side of it. I'd never seen one at church before.

The last one came as I was sitting in my car in front of church on Monday, finally in tears about all this while on the phone with a friend. A Maserati circled in the street right behind me. I haven't seen one since.

As in March, the Old Testament reading in Mass was that of Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac. The Lord seemed to be saying, "This is your Isaac - will you trust Me, and then let Me give you back your dreams some other way?"

This past Sunday the New Testament reading was that of Paul's thorn, and the other readings were about prophets not being listened to or welcomed by their own. I'm not sure what my thorn is, but I'm afraid to guess at it, for fear I'll be stuck with it forever.

Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD!
O Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleas for mercy!
Psalm 130:1

The Scripture reading on the day before I got this mother-of-all-bummers news was about Jesus raising Jairus' daughter from the dead. On His way there, news came that the sick little girl had already died, "so don't trouble the Teacher (Jesus) any more." Yet Jesus responds that she is only asleep, and not to be afraid, only believe. God warned me, as I sat there and listened, that my dreams would look dead in the water, but not to be afraid, just believe in a very good eventual outcome.

I meditated on that quite a bit over the last week - the raising of this little one with the words, "Talitha, koum!" (Little girl, I command you, arise!), alongside the restoration of Abraham's son Isaac, and then the other obvious raising-from-the-dead story, of Lazarus. What a gift to be taught not to give up "bothering" Jesus for what is most on our hearts, even if it looks entirely improbable, and like Abraham and God's promises, even if it takes a very, very long time to see the fruition. Don't be afraid, just believe. One day the Lord will call me to arise too.

And as I pondered Jesus' weeping at the death of Lazarus, I thought of Isaiah's precious words:

"He was despised and forsaken of men,
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
And like one from whom men hide their face
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
Surely our griefs He Himself bore,
And our sorrows He carried;
Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted."
(Isaiah 53:3,4 emphasis mine)

Incredible poetry of pain with all those word pairs... and I conclude that those two words, "Jesus wept" prove that Jesus really did carry our sorrows and bear our griefs for us, not just on the cross, but in His everyday life. He knew He would raise up Lazarus from the dead, but He chose to experience our human affliction first. The most wonderful reversal of loss was about to happen, the best gift - but He wept with the mourners first.

And though I feel very much smitten of God and man, afflicted and despised in this whole Geneva thing, my Lord has been there first and carried the shame and frustration and loss and pain. He has been to all the depths that He asks me to descend to and experience.

Like Abraham I am being tested, and the Lord is allowing a repeated experience of huge disappointment and career stalling in order to weed something out of me. I am not sure what that something is, but I hope that I can come to terms with it this time so that this gutting experience no longer bears repeating.

I don't know what I want anymore - I don't know what I should want, and I don't know how to pray. Thank goodness that "the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans too deep for words." (Romans 8:26). I went to see my deacon at my church, and bless his heart, he smiled with true empathy and told me that God probably had indeed told me to do that application - and then He had led me straight to the cross. Suffering and humiliation were borne at pinnacle by Christ on that cross, and I am being blessed by carrying the same, he said.

That helped somewhat - though how to pick up and move forward right now is beyond me. I am at a loss and all I can do is cope in the here and now and wait on the Lord, and choose to believe in His triumph for me, not a finishing off of everything I hope for in this life.

"Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:12-14)

I went to pray the Rosary at church the other night for the first time in quite a long while. In the introduction to the Rosary one prays first the Lord's Prayer, then three Hail Marys for faith, hope and love. Normally it feels perfunctory and obvious to pray for those three cardinal virtues, but this time it hit me like a ton of bricks that in the past weeks I had completely lost them. I felt no faith, no specific hope for my life, and no love for anyone. I have even been more critical and mean in my thoughts toward random wierd strangers and lousy drivers on the road who cause me impatience. Whatever happened to that St. Therese-esque gift of being able to channel love to a stranger on the street and see the joyful effect on them?

I resolved to get back into a routine of a few things - Mass no matter what, running in the mornings to get my head clear, more quiet time at night in the church, Rosary at least once a week and choosing to mentally say to every stranger I pass, "Jesus loves you!" I am all out of whack and no wonder the Lord did not give me what I asked for - I am in desperate need of a big tune-up.

I am profoundly disappointed and stymied about what to hope and pray for, and how to hear God...and what it is He wants me to relinquish and what He wants me to reach for in its place. It would be so much easier to give up on everything and settle... but I've tried that over and over, and it never, ever works. I was made for something big and challenging and for a cause. For those of you who know the story... God didn't build this Maserati just to park it in the garage.

The other hard thing is both needing the input and interpretation of a few wise others... and yet needing to sift through what they say and not take their every word as gospel truth...to refuse the temptation to please people instead of focusing on God and asking Him for His interpretation...and allowing enough time in uninterrupted silence to hear His answer. I've hardly started with that yet.

Rwanda, hopefully, will help....July 25-August 8. Pinch me - I'm going to Africa? Hard to believe. I need to get busy and raise a little support for it.

Thanks for your prayers and support as I wade through this difficult time. I have never had so much widespread support and prayer for something in my life as I did this effort. I am deeply touched and grateful.

"Lord, to whom else shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."
(John 6:68)

In Christ, our Life,

~ Christine

"If you are what you should be, you will set the whole world ablaze."
~ Catherine of Siena