Blessings & Success

When you move to a new city there's no one, even after two years, who really knows who you are. Our lives are a crazy quilt of experiences that have shaped us and if we're lucky there are a few people who've been around long enough, and understand us well enough, that they know the story for every patch. My best friend is one of those persons. Without these people to vouch for our stories and explain our quilts, the rest of the world will just come to its own conclusions and will quite often get it wrong. That is frustrating. That is what I'm feeling right now.

My move to Omaha was the final step in reaching my life's goals. Not because I wanted to live in Omaha, but because moving here allowed me to take the last step in my career; the final step I had dreamt would define my career success. I know that sounds odd, but my dreams never included a specific place, just a description of my job and my lifestyle. And now I'm living it.

You would think that people would be happy for me, especially other Christians. You would think that when I say "look, look what the Lord has done" they would see me and say "Amen. Praise God". But they do not. They say "what makes you think you're so special that God would answer your prayers when he doesn't answer anyone elses?"

It's true, ladies and gentlemen. I don't know if the majority of Christians are this way, but the ones I keep encountering do not believe that God actually answers prayers. And so when I tried to have this conversaton at lunch last Sunday, I think I offended someone at the table. Yesterday the sermon was about, you guessed it, success, and how we don't know how to measure it, and the ways in which we measure it are not God's ways. And the minister, as he spoke, looked pointedly at me, or so it seemed.

I was shocked...disappointed...disillusioned believing (incorrectly) that that he was preaching a sermon about something I had said without ever hearing my side of the story first. A sermon based on heresay. This happened to my best friend years ago when we were in college. I no longer remember what the sermon was about, I only know that my friend was mentioned in a sermon or speech of some kind and she was highly offended, so much so that she stopped going to church there and eventually changed schools. She was only 18 or 19 years old and she handled it remarkably well for a young girl her age.

If this man knew me or anything about me he would be circulating petitions to make me the poster child for success. I was so shocked that I could imagine having a crisis of faith if I had been younger. I could imagine doubting the existence of God. But thankfully I am 38, not 18, and I felt, not a crisis of faith, but shaken in my belief in worship assemblies and ministers who think they know it all; men who forget to follow the caution they preach cause a world of trouble. Just look at Jeremiah Wright.

I prayed about this as I drove to work today, my best time for prayer. If I had been saying what he thought I was saying, then yes, that would be cause for alarm. People should not think they are better than other people, or that they are blessed because of their actions or because "God loves them more".

"We don't know", said the minister, "if something is a blessing or if we are a success until we look back."

I agree, and I do look back. I keep journals and I can go back almost 15 years and read my own words of prayer. I can (literally) look at my life and all around me and I can see the answers. I am sorry if everyone hasn't done this. But my telling of it and my rejoicing in it does not make me prideful. Has every prayer been answered? Of course not. But every answer is a blessing.

New note: Added June 4, 2008:
Of course I couldn't let things hang like that and let this fester, so I called my minister and told him how disturbed I was about his sermon, and asked him if there had been any discussion about the lunch conversation. I was relieved when he said no. I told him about my 15 years of journalling and he was really affirming. He said "Good for You" and told me that is exactly what he was trying to get people to do with his sermon. (He really IS a good minister & I felt guilty, but relieved and forgiven...whew)

Told ya the universe does that. Of course it could have been just that once the topic came up, people continued to talk about it all week until it finally worked it's way to the minister and he thought "ah hah, that would be a good topic for a sermon!" But I think if that had happened he would have told me.

Nahh....

New note added:
Looking back I think the reason I experienced this is so I could understand and relate to the traumatic experience of my friend. Thanks Universe.