Saturday, April 2, 2011

Trust the Big Mystery

Today is the first day that I actually slept in and felt great about sleeping in my bed that I often take for granted!!!  As much as I appreciate the things that God has blessed me with -  I believe that everything is planned for  me to realize this that God is my comfort zone - not my bed!!   It's hard to put it in words. But something just didn't feel right. Then I went to RIT for a recruiting trip with my co-worker but she is also my friend. 

(She's a wonderful friend and I feel blessed to have met her. We both have graduated from the same college but different times. I feel that I was meant to meet her at one point if it wasn't at RIT then it's at work. )

At RIT, we both were nervous about the information session and the Career Fair. For some reason we didn't have faith in ourselves and we were scared that we were going to forget everything we wanted to say and not do a good job. Once we entered the room and set everything up,  then we were ready for it and I knew that everything was going to be just fine. And it was. After that, I think I was somehow "punished" lol I don't think it's the right term for it but as a result of worrying so much , my stomach was completely sore from being so tensed and being in knots!!! I literally made myself sick! In my mom's family, we have a history of having sensitive stomachs. I guess its from all the unnecessary worrying that we always do! It actually caught up to me and I want to get rid of it. I should have trusted God that everything was going to be just fine!

That night, I slept terrible and even was seeing things in the middle of the night. I still don't know what to make of it. I told everyone about it hoping to find answers, one person thinks I had a fever and became delirious and the other thinks I was seeing ghosts. Whatever it was, I was beside myself seeing the green darting light on the top of my bed sheet covers. I was nervous and then I turned on all of the lights. Then I went to bed thinking about it, I knew God was with me but was wondering what was going on!? I felt God calming me down and went back to sleep. All day I was worried I was going to be tired and irritable but I wasn't. God was on my side and the day went well. I'm blessed that God shakes me out of my comfort zone to say hello to me. I love Him for that :)

At the Career Fair, a very good friend of mine that I have became close with when I worked with her on my audio training for my cochlear implant. I think it's amazing how we connected so fast after we met each other. I felt that it was meant to be for me to work with her. She's one of the most thoughtful, considerate and caring person I've ever met too. She loves her family and she always wants to know how's everything going with our family too. She stopped by at the career fair and gave me a birthday present which was unexpected and sweet of her. She gave me a book "Everything Belongs" by Richard Rohr.  The writing style is amazing, it is not simple or easy to read, it is definitely challenging but the descriptions and analogies he uses are awesome. I just finished the second chapter and still have a lot more to go!

Basically this book is about letting go of your comfort zone and challenge yourself in the way of LIVING -- not thinking! And not looking for answers and just simply accept the Mystery of God and live in Him. 

This is for people with "teachable spirit" - its a term that I learned at my stepmother/father in law's Church in Mobile. People with teachable spirit is open to new ways of thinking and living while the unteachable spirit is narrow-minded and think that they have all the answers so that they don't need to learn or grow anymore. No matter what, we are always and still need to grow in God's presence. It doesn't end in baptism. That's only the beginning.   

 I learned so much from this book it is going to be hard for be to summarize it!!!



"The only true perfection available to us is the honest acceptance of our imperfection"

"It takes uncommon humility to carry the dark side of things. It takes a kind of courage to carry the good side too"

 "To resist the instant fix and acknowledge oneself as a beginner is to be open to transformation."


"This generation is an evil generation. "It seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah'" (Luke 11:29"

What's wrong with wanting hard evidence? (Quest Bible)
 
Nothing, but we must be willing to accept the evidence once it is presented. Jesus repeatedly offered miraculous evidence to substantiate his claims but refused to perform miracles just for the show. 

According to the book, many believe that once they have their "born again" experience, their baptism in the spirit or their first religious retreat, at least for a few days they become "obnoxious" which you can't blame them since they are so excited about seeing the truth      but    it's dangerous if they don't have the honesty and humility.  That's why Jesus repeats the admonition to conversion. We need to be converted again and again and....again!! It takes a lot of letting go. If we aren't willing to move out of our comfort zone, it won't happen. 

I know that Gil and I have experienced a lot of that when we got married. Gil moved to a place where he has never visited before!! He had no idea what to expect and was already preparing to hate it anyway. Which he did. We moved out to another place to help us adapt better. So we have been doing both - doing stuff that definitely didnt make us comfortable and we have been trying to find materialistic stuff to make us feel like we "belong" but in the end we both knew it was God who has to make us comfortable. 

Like I said before, there's so much form this book that is hard to summarize.  What I love about this book is that it talks about what I have been dealing with every day. I know that there is more to life than what I'm doing on daily basis. It is so easy to be blinded by our "social order" in our society and world that we don't fall in love with the Big Mystery that God has for us.  I'm just as guilty as other people, always looking for answers for everything that happened to me in my life and sometimes for other people in their lives !! I have the need to explain everything which is what I'm doing right now!! So then what am i doing here on this blog? I don't want to keep all this amazing discoveries to myself, I want others to know about this and experience it as well. It would be selfish of me to think that I should only enjoy God's grace but I know that God loves not only me- He loves you and everybody in this world - even our enemies. He wants us to love them too.


PS Thank you LG for this book!!! I will write more about it later but please feel free to share your comments like you did in your e-mail if you wish :) 

2 comments:

  1. Hey, Amanda, I love your writing. It is so beautiful!!!!

    I am reading the book again too. Rohr writes "...Jesus repeats the admonition to conversion. We need to be converted again and again. We aren't born again. We born again and again and again and again. Accepting and acting on the principle takes a lot of letting go. If we aren't willing to move out of our comfort zone, it won't happen. All great spirituality is about letting go" (p. 53).

    For me, the letting go is challenging. However, I am ever inspired by kind, thoughtful, and ever growing students like you and Gil.

    I am going to invite Don to join your discussion. I have worked with him 34 years and we have ongoing religion/philosophy discussions. He has been an awesome teacher for me like my students.

    Hope you are feeling at peace at home with Gil. Enjoy your birthday week.

    LG

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  2. Amanda, its nice knowing you have a friend that cared about you and gave you a book. Its so weird that I hate reading when I was a kid, and now I'm starting to like books haha. I'll become a book worm.

    I seem to noticed that a lot of books are telling us to appreciate what is in front of us because a lot of people don't. They may think they do but they don't. We all need to be reminded to appreciate things.

    We need to have a coffee date soon :)

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