God of the impossible

That's our God - the God of the impossible situations. 

The homily today at Mass focused on Joseph and how the found himself in an impossible situation - a wife pregnant with a child that surely wasn't his, but even more impossible - a wife with a child conceived by the Holy Spirit.  Ummm....yeah...sure....tell me another one.  'But because Joseph was a man of great faith, he was also a man of great surrender'.  And because of that surrender/faith, he came to know Jesus - God -in-the-flesh in ways that we can not even imagine.  The parting food for thought from the homily - Why does God want to be present in our lives?  Because each of us engraved as a deep wound on His heart. 

Impossible situations.  Surrender.  Engraved on the Heart of God. 

I know friends with situations that seem impossible.  Cancer diagnoses. Issues with grown children. Troubled marriages.  Family issues.  Financial stuff.  Grief.

I know that I've felt like I've been in situations that were just unbearable.  Not life or death.  Just miserable with no seeming way out.  The issues I've faced in the past year at school, for one. 

Surrender is a work in progress for me.  Never my first option.  First option would be protesting about how it is not fair, and then looking for alternate routes, complete with figurative (if not actual) kicking and screaming.  And then finally, like a child that has been placed in their crib to "cry it out", I realize that the kicking and screaming doesn't help.  I know that someone is there, and I know that even if I don't understand why I'm in the spot that I'm in...there's a reason.  And eventually, I let it go...slowly.   OK, God.  I don't know why I'm here or why You think I need to go through this, but I know You have something in mind.  And I trust that in the end, it will work out.  You will bring some good from this, somehow - in only a way that you can.

At the end of last school year, I was facing a supervisor who would have driven me to drink or quit, a class of kids who would have made me lose what little sanity I cling to, and an administrator who was miserable in their job and openly hostile to me.  But God never lets us go.  In August, I found out my supervisor had resigned!!  In October, my class of insanity finally went to a better place.  That left only one major thorn in my side.  One night, earlier in the school year,  as I was replaying events from the day in my head and telling God, "You know, God, I don't really need this $%&@ in my life."  I heard a small little answer, "You know, Karen, maybe you do."  That was when I could finally say, "Alrighty, then.  I don't understand.  I don't know why.  But obviously, You do.  Go ahead.  I give up." 

Since that time, the thorn has barely spoken to me, and the silence has been good.  I almost like work again. Every once in a while ugliness raises its head, but it is a reminder to pray.  I kick and scream for a bit, because surrender is a work in progress, but in the end, it's OK.   God is there.

Engraved as a deep wound on the Heart of God.  I guess that is most of us, and a thought worthy of prayer and reflection.

Let us remember to pray for those in impossible situations.  I don't have to look far right now to see them.  May those in those situations find a deep intimacy with God through their surrender.