As often, I did the intro to our morning meditation. In my prayer, I asked God to come and meet me in the garden where no right and wrong exists. I sound such a committed devotee, at the same time I feel such a fake. I struggle immensely to stay with ‘it’.
My life is so not what it is supposed to be like. Every bit of it seems so extremely challenging to me. I experience my life so out of order, so out of balance … I am angry, resistant and upset most of the time.
I am nothing like a ‘pastor’ is supposed to be like. Pastors are faithful creatures kneeling at the feet of the Lord, saying Grace for their very life. No, not me. Mostly, I find it impossible to see God’s grace in my life, the beauty of my existence behind the giant clouds of my expectations.
I so wish I could stop looking at my life and only seeing what’s not there, what is not the way I wish it was. I wish I could find it acceptable that I cannot make a difference in my life by changing those ‘disliked’ bits.
I so wish I could quit, I could just say, that’s it, thanks! I wish I could just break up with God and tell Him, how disappointed I am in Him, how disappointed I am in the way we do our ‘dance’. I am dancing alone in one corner of the universe waiting for my ‘partner’ to show up and step with me. But my partner has very different ideas on the choreography of our dance. I detest this one. It is not my kind of dance and so I am not willing to step along. I have a different dance in mind. A dance in which I am happy and I am the star.
I feel ashamed. I should be someone different. I should be the way, I know I am, but I cannot change my ways. I cannot be the wise sage I am at heart. I cannot see things differently. No matter how hard I try.
I believe that God is good. Only not for me. God is not good for me. Not because God is not good with me but because I expect a different kind of God. The same way, I expect a different kind of life, a different kind of body, a different kind of … all the things that are not the way I would expect.
Yesterday, I read that yet a(nother) famous actor who had been convicted to spend years in jail, hung himself. It made me wonder who experiences God’s Grace more profoundly, the one who lives but fights the life that is given or the one who checks out at a curved ball.
I can only hope that one day God will graciously bestow his Favour on me and erase my ideas of right and wrong so we can finally meet in the Garden.
“Somewhere beyond right and wrong, there is a garden. I will meet you there.”
― Jalaluddin Mevlana Rumi – مولوی
