Sleepy prayers, God's good-enough vs. ours, and should-ing on ourselves

Extraordinary lessons on ordinary days

It was a red-hot Louisiana August afternoon. I was sitting in the carpool line in my big black van, literally steaming inside of my clothes. The AC was on full blast, to little effect.

I had forty minutes alone ahead of me, my daily prayer time of late.

I had already been awake for nine hours. I’d been moving since the early morning rush of getting the kids ready for school. Then our 30-minute commute, driving to my job, work, and—somehow, again—I was abruptly stopped for the first time all day, sitting in that sweltering carpool line.

I was so tired that day. I fell asleep at one point during the Rosary I usually try to pray, my head jerking awake. Guilty thoughts began to stab at me as I moved on from the Rosary to pray with the day’s Scripture—which was all about loving God. My thoughts wandered. I should be getting up earlier to pray instead of waiting until now. I shouldn’t be falling asleep on God if I loved Him enough.

I continued to should on myself for a few minutes, but eventually followed a nudge to turn my mind back to prayer. Jesus is so good, and I was so tired. In my weariness, I started to tear up with relief as I imagined myself—like so many times before—gratefully curling up in Jesus’ heart to rest for a moment. I told Jesus how much I loved and needed Him.

But then—but instead of resting—I just started to apologize that I wasn’t more advanced at prayer by now. Discouragement, frustration with myself, all pent up, revealed itself.

And then, the still small voice. A neat, piercing arrow of a response.

“You are not upset that you’re not good enough for Me. You are upset that you are not good enough for YOU.”

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In In Sinu Jesu, a book written by a Benedictine monk who wrote down his conversations with Jesus in adoration in 2007, Jesus says:

“Do not give in to the feelings of guilt that assail you because you are not living up to the ideal you have set for yourself. I do not ask you to be faithful to an ideal. I ask you only to be My friend and to live at every moment in the grace of My divine friendship. All the rest follows. Perfection is the fruit of friendship with Me, not a precondition for it. You, and many souls like you, are confused about this. My friendship is not earned, it is not something acquired by measuring up to the standards of perfection that you have set for yourself. My friendship is pure gift. It is the gift of My Sacred Heart and I offer it freely” (In Sinu Jesu, 29).

“A prayer made with sleepiness and distraction is no less pleasing to Me than one made in consolations and alertness.” -In Sinu Jesus, 126)

A favorite quote of mine from In the School of the Holy Spirit, by Fr. Jacques Philippe, is this one:

“For God, each person is absolutely unique. Holiness is not the realization of a given model of perfection that is identical for everyone. It is the emergence of an absolutely unique reality that God alone knows, and that he alone brings to fruition. No individual knows what his own holiness consists of. Holiness is only revealed to us by degrees, as we journey on, and it is often something very different from what we imagine, so much so that the greatest obstacle on the path to holiness may be to cling too closely to the image we have of our own perfection.” (p. 18)

I forget that God is in charge of this faith journey of mine. I’m called to cooperate with grace and ask God what He is asking of me, rather than make a plan that makes me feel better about myself.

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Recently, I came home from an event and just felt irritable. The event hadn’t felt like a success, for some reason. I was grumpy with my family and felt generally down for no particular reason all that evening. I finally sat down on the couch to fold laundry that night after the kids were in bed. I turned on a movie, but barely paid attention. Instead, for towel after onesie after marker-stained uniform polo, I kept going over in my head all the awkward moments and conversations I’d had at that event earlier. I definitely did not explain that faith-related topic well to So-and-So #1 (and even made an off-humor joke, ugh!). I did not reach out as much as I could have to spend time with So-and-So #2, but I just never know what to say to him. And I'm pretty sure So-and-So #3 doesn’t like me and I can’t seem to get past the surface with her no matter how nice I am…

Finally, I stopped the spiral, and forced myself to turn my thoughts to the Lord. Why am I so upset?!”

He was so kind as to tell me right off the bat.

“You always want to know the right thing to say, and never want to make a social mistake, because you want to be perfectly understood, approved, and well-thought-of by everyone who knows you.”

Ouch. In a hurts-so-good kind of way.

Turns out that I was dealing with a pride issue that was masquerading as a wanting-the-good-of-others issue. I had spent the evening living out of thoughts that led me to vice (grumpiness with others) instead of virtue. A sure-tell sign that the problem was in me and my thoughts, not in the event itself.

It’s funny how somehow I’d forgotten all about this lesson (even though I wrote a blog post about it years ago!). I have always appreciated how St. Josemaria was such a straight-talk kind of guy.

"It is inevitable that you should feel the rub of other people's characters against your own. After all, you are not a gold coin that everyone likes. Besides, without that friction produced by contact with others, how would you ever lose those corners, those edges and projections — the imperfections and defects — of your character, and acquire the smooth and regular finish, the firm flexibility of charity, of perfection? If your character and the characters of those who live with you were soft and sweet like sponge-cake, you would never become a saint. ( St. Josemaria Escriva, The Way, #20 )

God often asks less of us than we ask of ourselves and others.

God is often more patient than we are with ourselves and others.

But He’s going to be real with us. He’s going to challenge us to walk in Truth. Because everything else is darkness and confusion, and we need to learn to spot what’s of Heaven and what’s not when we see it, hear it, read it, or think it.

“Never go into your head alone. Always take Jesus with you.” - Fr. Josh Johnson

God spoke to me that day in the carpool line.

And He spoke to me that day during my frustrated impromptu prayer.

Extraordinary little moments of grace.

I’ve experienced miracles in my life, but God reaches me most often in everyday life. Fifteen years of blogging testifies to that. :)

“Either we learn to find our Lord in ordinary, everyday life, or else we shall never find Him.” -St. Josemaria Escriva