Rejecting God

It’s no secret to anyone who has been reading my blog these past ten months that my uncle’s death has sent me into a crisis of faith. I am not really sure if “crisis” is the right word because it isn’t like I am struggling to believe in God, His Goodness or that everything that happens in my life will help save me, even the suffering because God has to power to do that. I know all of these things. So what is my problem? I am not sure but I had a little bit of an aha moment about what my “crisis” must feel like for God today.

I sat in a coffee shop with my fifteen year old daughter. She was rude, condescending and rolled her eyes at everything I said. Every comment I made was met with a philosophical lecture with the main thesis being that she is smarter than me and I’m just stupid, out of touch and old. She never said any of those words to me, but the attitude was certainly obvious. Especially for me since she is pretty much an exact replica of me and that is how I used to treat my mother when I was fifteen, and even still do sometimes.

I looked at her over my laptop and just wondered what exactly I had done so wrong in her eyes that she thinks I am so stupid. Then I remembered, I became Catholic. She was a little girl when I converted and she was on fire for the faith at the time. She now claims that she only became Catholic because I made her but anyone who knows this child or talked to her during that point in her life knows that is not true. She loves the saints, knew Christ and was best friends with the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist. She wanted to join the order at 15. Now here we are, she is 15 and openly hostile to anything related to the Catholic faith. I have no idea how we got here except that the world has a very strong pull on people who think they know everything, and that means teenagers become quick victims to it.

I could go on and on about all my theories and opinions about why this is but the point I am trying to make is that I got a glimpse of how I treat God. I act like I know everything. I tend to roll my eyes at Him a lot, not let Him finish a sentence and over all want to assert my autonomy while rejecting anything He has to offer me. I am a teenager spiritually. I must break His heart just like my little girl breaks mine right now as she sits sullen, quiet and so sure that I do not get her or know who she is even though for nine months she grew in my womb. God must long for me to look up and see the love He has for me written all over His face. He must long for me to just listen to Him because He loves me and knows the dangers that lay in front of me in this life. He must.

So that is my crisis of faith. How do I look up? How do I hand over my will to Him? How do I let Him help me? I thought I knew, but I don’t.

Here I sit longing for my child to see me and she is longing for me to see her, neither of us knowing how to move from here.

This is what rejecting God looks like. It isn’t about not following a set of rules, but it is about thinking we know better and have no use for Him or His advice or His help. No use for Religion, the Sacraments, Adoration, His saints, His angels or His love. I guess the first step in seeing Him is what it always is: confession.