Fear, ego, and self-will keep a pretty strong hold on our lives. Wouldn’t you say?
For the past two years, I have made a point to explore faith in a new way, giving it a new lens. After the accident, when I was pleading with God to let me live, to not be paralyzed, to have this great chance at life again, I made promises I had in the past but hadn’t kept.
Most people call this my second chance at life. They say that because they don’t know everything that happened before. Which is fine. But for me, this was more likely my third or fourth. For years, that weight was hard to carry. We all make deals with God, especially in times of pain and trauma, and most of us walk away and forget.
This time I told myself: make sure it’s real. Don’t be disingenuous. As my priest mentor said…don’t screw this up. So I did the work, therapy, rediscovering faith, reading the Bible, reading books and most important, listening.
Of everything I have done and everything I have learned, listening has been the single greatest gift of my life. Not talking or planning. Not arguing. Listening. Let the ego go. Release the self-will. Cut through the noise and just listen. What I kept hearing, not in explicit terms, but clearly was: not my will, but thy will be done.
Listening for that actively, daily, in the quiet, has changed everything. That phrase has become my anchor. I repeat it when stressful moments hit, when things don’t go my way, when life feels like it’s pushing back. And life has truly gotten a little better every day because of it — even on the hard days that feel like a backslide, even when I still feel like a burden to others, even when I still feel like I shouldn’t have survived.
I know it’s a shock for people who know me personally to hear me talk this way. It’s not who I was. But in the hardest times and the best of times, leading with thy will be done has made things easier. It has reminded me that this life is not really mine. It is God’s. And when you start living that way, things tend to get lighter, though it’s also challenging, because you begin to see clearly the red flags you ignored, the patterns you lived in, the things you should have done differently.
So check your fear. Check your ego. Release your self-will. And listen. Really listen. Because when you do, you’ll hear it too.
Thy will be done.