Trust in You

For this past month or so I have for spiritual reading been pouring through the pages of "Come Be My Light", the private writings of the "Saint of Calcutta" (Mother Teresa). It is a tremendous read and I highly recommend it no matter how far you are in your walk of faith. As I have read and reflected upon the thoughts and life expressed in these pages, one thing continues to pour forth from the pages and greatly humble me: Mother Teresa's never wavering trust in God's plan for her life.

For example the book goes into "the call" Mother Teresa receives to start the Missionaries of Charity. She originally receives this call in September 1946. However, it is not until August 8, 1948 that Mother is granted permission to begin this endeavor after having to convince her spiritual director, archbishop, Mother Superior, and Rome of the divine nature of the call. Yet, as in each setup she encounters in life, she does not doubt the plan God has for her. Rather than viewing those people as "setbacks" to the plan, she sees that God's will is being made known through them. They are not disabling her from carrying out God's plan, but serving as tools of God to enable her to see the plan. She accepts all these things, regardless of how different it might be from the way she expected things to work.

I am greatly humbled by this ability to trust because it is a virtue that I am lacking. In fact, I still remember the first time I began to question God's plan in my life (you all should get a kick out of this and how shallow I use to be). It was the summer after my 8th grade year at St. Mary's School. It had been a fun year, but challenging as well. I had lost my grandmother to cancer, and it was the first big loss I had experienced in life. After having made the decision to attend high school at Mulvane High School over Kapaun Mount Caramel, I began making big plans for high school. I was going to get really good grades and be involved in a lot of clubs so I could get scholarships for college. I was going to come in and be a force on the soccer team and lead the team in assists (I played midfield at that time) and go on and play in college. You see, my dad had played basketball in college so I wanted to play a sport in college too as I knew that would make him proud and that is how I planned to pay for college. Plus soccer wasn't as popular in Kansas, so it wouldn't be too hard to land a scholarship. Well, then "it" happened. The first or second day of soccer camp I broke my foot, stress fracture to my 5th metatarsal. Without putting a screw in, it was going to be 9 months to rehab (3 months on crutches, 3 additional months of no running, and then 3 months to rebuild my leg muscles and get back to where I was at). So on top of missing soccer my freshmen year I had to miss basketball as well, and I was going to have to work really hard to be ready in time for spring soccer with my club team. How could this happen. I mean, didn't God know this was going to really set me back and hurt my chances for playing in college? Haha, why yes I think he did, and I think that was the plan. Because I suddenly had some spare time on my hands, I changed around some of my classes for the second semester and got into "Automotive for Everyone" my first class in the shop part of the school. I got along with the teacher really well and he talked me into signing up for some more shop classes and really got me interested in engineering as a possible career choice and perhaps giving up my dreams of playing soccer in college to pursue engineering. In the words of Eric Church, "I thank God I ain't what I almost was."

Yet, trust is still something I struggle with. To borrow a term from Andy Grigg's song "She's More", I think I along with most people fall into the trap of creating our own "paint by number fantasies."

You know what I'm talking about. We come up with these "conditions" that if met we think will make us "happy." For example, for myself I would like for nothing more than to end up back around Wichita with a good engineering job with a company like Spirit or Cessna or Koch; get married start a family, pass on all the family traditions, pass on the family name. But I can't let my plans get in the way of me following the path God has laid before me. Mother Teresa once again holds the key here: devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. Mother was adament that the Blessed Sacrament was held in the chapel of the newly formed Missionaries of Charity so that the sisters could visit Christ every day. She knew that if Christ was there, they could fact any difficulties, any "setbacks" that might come their way. We would be wise if we realized just how true this is.

To end with I'd just like to leave you with the following quote I found.

"When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don't throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer."