This past week I was delighted to find out that a local Catholic church was hosting one of my new favorite recording artists, Matt Maher (http://www.mattmahermusic.com/), in concert at a venue close to my home. Even though I really wanted to go, with the looming deadline of a rather large quarterly tax payment due in just days, I couldn’t justify spending the cash. I tried to put it out of my mind and forget about it. But just hours before the concert, a nagging urge to go came to the forefront in my consciousness. I wrestled with an intense desire to be fiscally responsible, but the nagging urge became all consuming, so I went.

As I approached the box office, I slid a credit card through the entrance in the glass window and asked to purchase one ticket. The girl behind the window promptly slid my card back to me, along with a ticket and said, “A generous donor just donated a handful of tickets to give away to the next few people in line.” As I accepted the gift, I found myself both speechless and stunned. A sense of gratitude flooded my heart because somehow, it seemed clear to me that I had just been led to a divine appointment. I was convinced that I was supposed to be in this place, at this time, for this concert and that before the end of the night, I might leave with some understanding as to why. Before Matt Maher walked onto stage, a representative from the host church welcomed us and began the night with prayer. As we Catholics are typically not known for possessing stellar skills when it comes to spontaneous prayer, we were invited to join together in the “Our Father”. Excited about the concert, I rushed through the words rotely and ended the prayer with a thoughtless, but resounding, “AMEN!”

Matt did not disappoint. We listened as he introduced his songs with stories of his life and how he had found God’s presence over and over in the midst of his experiences. At times the music was loud and rocked the theatre; at other times, it was reflective and prayerful. Through it all, I found myself drawn, like a moth to light, to the text painted on the side of his piano. As an enthusiastic aficionado of all things typographic, I was drawn to its simple, rugged beauty. In an irregular, vintage letterpress-like text, it simply read AMEN. After the concert, I even made my way to the stage to snap a photo of it. While it was a very worthwhile, enjoyable evening, I arrived home without a definite understanding as to why I was meant to be there. However, as darkness consumed the day’s light, I climbed into bed and once I stilled myself, I began to see it over and over in my head; that word, AMEN. I drifted to sleep for a time, only to awaken later with visions of it playing on repeat in my mind. So be it. That is the definition I could remember of amen as I laid there in bed. My dad, a true wordsmith, always made us look up words in the dictionary when we asked him what they meant. Most of them I forgot, but not this one. Just three simple words, but with such powerful possibilities. So be it. I had spoken it earlier that night. I had thoughtlessly spoken it at the end of the “Our Father”. I had just said “so be it” without even thinking about that to which I was agreeing. I had obliviously said “so be it” after telling God straight from my lips, “Thy will be done.” Yikes, I thought to myself, what if God takes me seriously?

It could be said of me at this point on the journey that I am a sort of recovering control-freak/perfectionist (still very much a work-in-progress). However, at my core, I don’t like to say “so be it” until I’ve previewed the terms and conditions to which I am agreeing and definitely not until I’ve been told the details of Plans “B” and “C” if “A” doesn’t worked out as was explained to me. My mother’s mantra, which I recall hearing even in my earliest of days, was something to the effect of, “Sometimes plans change and you’ve got to learn how to deal with it.” This was spoken most often following a total meltdown on my part, because something out of MY control changed and I hated when that happened. I did not possess the admirable skill of “going with the flow”. Even before I met my husband, I was quite certain about how God’s future plans for my life should play out. My days at a Catholic University, sheltered in a bubble full of virtuous people striving for sainthood, only served to cement this vision of my perfect life. I was to marry a devoted, Catholic man who adored me, we were to have five to seven children and we were to reside in a gloriously beautiful, clean, sizeable home decorated straight out of the pages of the Pottery Barn catalog. My life’s work would be inside my home, homeschooling our little darlings so they would not be stained by the imperfections of the world outside our piece of heaven on earth (insert gagging noise here, right?). Well, apparently, this Plan A was gonna change and neither Plan B or Plan C was explained to me in advance, because if they were I would have NEVER agreed to them either. Guess what? No one consulted me. But then, was it possible that I had already agreed to the change because I had said the same oblivious AMEN, as I did the other night, following hundreds of “Thy Will Be Done” my whole life and God actually took me at my word?

My Plan A pretty much started to fall apart the day my devoted Catholic husband and I welcomed our first child into the world. Our daughter’s birth was the event that God used to gently pull the loose string on the tightly wound ball of my ideas for the future. On that day, mental illness struck with a mighty blow, crushing my ideals and aspirations of perfect motherhood into tiny shards, and later I would discover, this was only just the beginning. (https://eyeswideopentothesacred.wordpress.com/?s=imperfect+imperfection). Nearly five years later, my life, even on the best of days resembled nothing of my hopes and dreams. A series of events that followed her arrival had derailed us off of the fast track to perfection; the realization that our first child would most likely be our only; her diagnosis of Sensory Processing Disorder, which rendered the simplest task of getting her dressed in the morning a monumental and herculean one, the harsh reality that financially we couldn’t thrive without me working outside of the home. By the time we enrolled her in kindergarten, after I finally surrendered to the notion that I wasn’t up to the task of homeschooling this girl, I felt my life was completely falling apart. Where was God to be found in all of this mess? I believed Him to be a God of order, of perfect function and of peace. My life was disorderly, dysfunctional and stressful. Certainly this chaos couldn’t be God’s plan for my life.

Lent of 2007 was about to begin and through a series of events, a book landed in my hands which I decided to use as spiritual reading for the next 40 days. It’s title:Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life. It’s author: Rabbi Irwin Kula. (http://yearnings.irwinkula.com/thebook.htm) I distinctly remember my husband remarking how very interesting it was that a Catholic girl was reading a book written by a Rabbi for her Lenten spiritual reading. He’s right, I thought to myself, but I was captivated by two words in the title, Sacred Messiness. Could the mess that was the reality of my life actually be sacred? I devoured the book and when finished, had a second and third helping. I went back over certain phrases in an attempt to soak them into my stream of consciousness. Some of the most powerful ones for me read,

Inevitably, for everyone there comes a time (or times) when the way we divvy up our life no longer makes sense…our relationships, our work, our world back us into a corner and cause us pain. And then it’s time to dive, to widen, to make room for new truths to emerge.

The ability to live with seeming contradictions-and the ambivalence and tensions these contradictions create-is what gives rise to wisdom. The messes are the point.”

WHAT? The messes are the point?? This book turned my inner life upside down and opened my eyes to the exciting possibility that God was exactly in all of this mess and was actually leading me into it, so that I would find Him in a whole new way. This unplanned, chaotic Plan G (a.k.a. God’s plan) for my life is probably the best thing that ever happened to me. It opened me up to receive anew the gifts of mercy and non-judgment; acceptance and trust. It has made me much more yielding to things beyond my control. And without doubt, it continues to bless and surprise me with new challenges. I laugh to think what an an unlikely headline this would have made in the Plan A of my life – “God Uses Jewish Rabbi to Save Catholic Girl from Her Lame Plans.” Hee.

At age 11, our daughter was diagnosed with inattentive type ADHD. Once again I was led to dive into deep waters whose currents I am woefully unable to control. In the days since then, as I’ve been learning to navigate the turbulence, there have been times when I thought I would surely drown. But here I am, two years in, with my head still above water. I’m a stronger swimmer and am capable of doing things I didn’t know I had in me to do. It was a surprise to figure out that this major people pleaser has the ability to do that which my daughter recently described as one of my greatest talents, when she said, “Mom you are really good at writing mean letters, but making them sound really nice.” (In reference to my attempts to advocate for her when things at school aren’t going so well.)

In retrospect, I am thankful for all of the AMENs I’ve ever spoken-the deliberate, intentional ones and the oblivious, unintentional ones. Most of all, I am grateful to God for taking me at my word. Even though to this day, I still find moments when I’m still clinging with all my might to Plan A, deep within I am convinced that Plan G is ultimately a far better way. It is difficult and challenging and not very comfortable a whole lot of the time. However, if God deems it possible to be present in this mess called my life and deems it possible to somehow use it for good, I resoundingly and intentionally say, SO BE IT!