A walk in the gardens....

Summer has come. I am feeling the thaw.

Every time I have prayed for a man in my life, for someone to love and share my burdens, I received back the answer that "he will choose me." Meaning, he will pick me and pursue me, and I have little control of when or who that will be.

And so, after months and months of desperate longing, I have reached a place of solace, a cottage of sorts, muffled from the world. I am not whole. God knows I will never be... but that is what God wants, and in the sightless way of my own small heart, I have finally stopped looking. I have made peace with loneliness. I have stopped looking for a savior in anyone other than Christ.

I am far from accepting all of the imperfections of the world, but God is showing me how to continue to love the world despite them. Faith is a long journey -- as my 90-year-old grandfather often says, we never stop growing in faith. I am very new to the road.

Did I mention that my Uncle died? My father's only brother, the last of our bloodline. This is God's impeccable timing. We went to Washington to visit my grandparents and I was worried that it would be our last time seeing them, since they are in their 90s, but instead it was my uncle who passed away. We spent the night at his house -- the next day he was gone. His heart stopped with no warning. Despite the shock of the death, I am somehow unsurprised... when I lost my mother at 12, I prayed for God to always give me the chance to say goodbye to those I love. So far that prayer has been answered.

God knows what death is and what it does to us... yet all things that God makes are good, so death must not be such a horrible thing, and the misery it raises in us must be for a higher purpose, something far greater than we can understand. I am as sure of this as I am of my own name. In all the strange contradictions of my person, I, too, am death, and death is alive in me, and we are siblings, he and I.

And finally, finally, I have reached that place of calm summer nights and long sunsets, where I am happy to be alone. Perhaps not always or in every second... God knows we waver as an ocean... but this is a peace I have found deep within myself, and I can return to it as often as I need. God's gardens are a deep walk through the heart. God's happiness is in valuing all things, and most importantly, in seeing what we have... and accepting that it will be taken away....

But what always, always remains is God's magnanimous love, His awe-inspiring presence, His endless grace and the foundations He has laid in my heart. Even in misery, I am in bliss, for I walk with my true Father and the One who will always love me.

Thoughts on Patience

Patience is, of course, a virtue.

I have been dwelling upon it lately. What is patience, and how can patience show us God?

To know God, we give ourselves over to something greater. We ask to be saved, we take a "leap of faith," we plunge ourselves with total trust into the unknown. We trust something infinitely huge and powerful to catch us... and yet something that we cannot always see.

To have patience, we must give ourselves over to something greater. When we are tutoring a slow learner, or standing in line at the post office, or stuck in traffic... patience is a form of surrender. It is a sacrifice made to those hours when we are unable to be where we want to be, or do what we want to do. When we do not have control. Patience is, in this sense, generosity. Patience is momentary selflessness. Giving your time to something greater. Waiting is a spiritual art.

Patience is also peace. It is the ability to be in the moment we are in, to accept where we are and lay to rest our desires, our worries, etc. Peace, also, is surrender. Peace is sacrifice.

And for those who serve God, we are asked for endless patience... patience with a world that perhaps does not understand our vocation at all. Patience with a world that demands when, and what do you want, and how are you going to get there? The world does not always understand a person who wants nothing for himself. The world does not always understand why we wait, why we are content to act beyond ourselves, to give five minutes more of our time, to wait in line with just enough grace to smile. God asks us to be patient. God tells us that perhaps, when we are patient, we stand that much closer to Him.