My Meanderings I Share with Him and with You

January 19, 2025 7:58 pm

Again, just my meanderings that you have likely also had, and so I share them. They are prayers meant to show you how all things are important to Him. Deeply, wonderfully important to God.

I think to myself, what must He endure? What must He feel?  I am worrying about my little puppy tonight. She is not herself. She was sick earlier but acted as if everything was okay. Now, as we are on the bed getting ready to sleep, she seems less cheerful, less playful than usual. Even her older sister is more tolerant. When the little one steals the bone, I feel so much better. She is back to normal and okay.

I can’t imagine how much God worries over us. My stomach drops at the thought of one of my silly dogs being sick. My heart howled when my first dog died in my arms. And these are animals, not made in the image of God, but for us. For our simple joy.

Is God trying to teach us something through animals? That there is instinct to motherhood? That we are wired to love? That death wounds us. I once read about a test on mother rabbits. They expressed distress when one of their children died…even from a distance. I am not sure of its validity, but I do believe that parents know when their children are in distress. When their children are happy or sad or sick or angry or afraid.

And because we are created, by God’s design, with absolute love, and inexplicable blessings, in His Image, does He not feel all of these things that parents feel, and then, to what extent?

Billions upon billions of children that He oversees…caring and loving over and worrying and hoping and longing for…to feel such love and then such fear for His Beloved Creations.

How much worry and grief do we give to our Lord God and Father? Perhaps that is why all paintings of God show Him as an image with very grey hair. The worry and the love….

Once, as I thought about all the sin and horror and insults we hurl to the Heavens at our Lord God, I hoped that I might protect Him. That I might serve as a shield against the angst and pain we cause Him. I wanted so badly to protect Him from us. He Loved that I wanted that but told me ever so gently that I was too small.

Too small…I did not accept this at the time, perhaps from pride but more likely from Love, because I thought my Love would be enough. And He Loved this. That I, in all my smallness, believed that my love could protect my beautiful Creator.

I wish I could. I wish I could protect Him from my lukewarm faith. I wish, more so, that I understood what He meant by lukewarm faith. How far might I drift before I made Him too forlorn...but I hope my smallness is enough.

He is ever on my mind.  When I wake up, He is on my mind. I say hello or thank You for waking me up in time to make it to work. I wake up grouchy but see my silly dogs’ faces and thank Him. I wake up and feel my husband kissing my cheek as he goes to work. I wake up and know that He blesses me.

During the day, when I am frustrated or angry or even laughing with others, I think of Him and feel awe at the people, the many different lovely people He has put into my life. My colleagues are all different from me but still kindred. I see the beauty in one’s laughter. I hear the rapid-fire words of another, a jokester who is facing difficulties in his life but still smiles, and I pray for him. I see Him in the twinkle of my boss’s eyes and in the heart of my sidekick manager and friend.

I am blessed.

When I am on my long commute home in the evening when the traffic is thick and my eyes are weak, I thank Him for that traffic. If I had to drive faster at night, there might be problems. He looks after me.

I thank Him for all the minute silliness and frustrations and roadblocks and sweet foods and interesting people I speak to. I thank Him.

In the evenings before I fall asleep, I pray. I talk to Him. I try to do my “formal” prayers first – the Our Father, a Hail Mary, my Angel’s prayer, an Act of Contrition, and a special Spanish prayer I learned when I was three. It starts with, “Sweet Mother, watch over me and never leave me….”

After I have said these formal prayers, and I have always done this since I was a very small child, I feel free to talk to Him about anything and everything.

I ask God first to bless everyone. I ask Him to look after this person or that person. I ask Him to bless the team I love who plays the next day. I ask Him to look after my sick dog or for forgiveness because I fought with my sister. I ask Him for patience, because I don’t understand why someone is frustrated with me. Then, I tell Him what made me laugh that day. It may have been seeing a bird argue with its mate. It may be the silly thought I had. It may be someone I heard say something absolutely fantastic. It may be a joke I played with my nephew who has my corny, literal sense of humor. It may be because I got words messed up as I spoke or a cartoon that tickled me. He listens and laughs with me and gets as much of a kick out of these things as I do. What’s more is He Loves that I share these things. He loves that He has created these encounters for me that make me so happy and ridiculous.

God…what a parent.

What a tremendous, loving, amazing parent. I used to want to die, not for any good reason but because of terrible sadness and hopelessness and a terrible lack of self-worth. I did not know, nor did I understand to the very core of my being that I am a child of God – someone absolutely special, precious, unique, irreplaceable, important – absolutely VASTLY important – and beautiful to Him. Him. He that is everything and needs nothing in His totality.

God needs no worship from us. He is so big as to be untouched by our worship. God needs none of us, but He created us, as He has said so many times, from Love and with Love and for Love. His very Will for us is Love. His yoke is so very light.

Why is it that we fight so hard against instant, constant, perfect, unconditional love? Are we crazy? Are we warped or so lost in the values of this world that we could possibly lose sight of Love or disdain it so readily? What can we possibly be thinking?

Is it that atheists worship themselves? Is it that they fear the unknown? Are they so pessimistic as to believe that there is nothing greater than this world? That they see no wonder or miracle in the world around them – within the symmetry of the planets or in the petals of flowers, the manes of animals or in the workings of our inner bodies where cells and mitochondria and organelles exist to maintain our lives? Are those intricacies an accident? Are the similarities within symmetry so common that the very perfection we see impossible but for some higher entity blessing us with these perfectly made things?

Atheists, I say to you, are you so pessimistic and unaffected by beauty? Do not fabulous sunsets or thunderous storms not make you wonder why? Why? Why are we here? Why do we see? Why can we hear? What three bones were created in our ears that allow us to hear? Why are they related to our balance? Why are our toes perfect for walking? Why do the pupils in our eyes act like cameras but more precise in seeing beauty, light, action, movement, life?!

We are so small. Even as a child I recognized this, but I gloried in it. I gloried in my smallness because it meant that life would be filled with wonder and curiosities and beauty…and God.

Our conversations are easy…well, usually. Sometimes I share my fears…failing a test, getting in trouble with my father for doing something wrong. Because I’ve crossed a line that may make forgiveness of a friend or loved one near impossible. Most of us have worried about all of these things, especially, I think, the latter. Loving others, other people, makes us so vulnerable to hurt and pain. Losing a child, losing a spouse, losing a parent or friend…these things are sometimes so unbearable.

To endure these heartaches…it is so hard to depend on the care and comfort and wisdom of this world to help us survive devastations. But our Creator can. That is why we turn to Him. That is why atheists suffer so much longer. Philosophy can provide platitudes and understanding of sorts, but it cannot give us comfort, because it does not give us a parent to run to.

So, my prayers start with the ones that are formal, and then I lapse into the human prayers. Thank you. I love you. Please help so and so. Please bless my this, that, or other. Please keep us together. Please help them get well. Please let them win. Please don’t let him or her die. Please help me pass this test. Please let her say yes. Please keep them safe. Please, please, please.

Then, there are the prayers that ask for nothing, because I am so happy and content and filled with Love because I know Him. Because He has given me a gift far bigger, far more exquisite and extravagant and rich and amazing…knowledge of Him.

He has given me the true understanding of His Presence and blessings. He has given me full understanding of the BIGNESS and AMAZING HUGE BLESSINGS of the EUCHARIST! And my heart can do nothing but swell. My cup runneth over.

And I pity those who do not know Him. With all of my heart, because they do not (yet) know that His yoke is more than light. It is absolute JOY. It is absolute relief. It is an exemption from the heaviness of sorrow and pain and wanting. We are not immune to these things, to tragedies, but God lightens our burden. He gives us strength and comfort and ultimately peace.

I think often that when we are in pain, when we desperately hurt, we are in good company, because how much suffering did our Father and His Beloved Son endure when God became Man. He brought Himself down, very, very far down from His Godliness and became Man. Not so that He could experience what it is to be man but to show us what it is to be godly in God’s eyes. God, Jesus, forgave. He was loving and forgiving and filled with laughter and giving. He was also just and could be indignant. He discerned and helped men to understand right from wrong, mercy from judgement, love rather than hatred, beauty, brotherhood, wonder, understanding of what our Father put on this small earth that is our world for us to use for medicine, nutrition, sweets, salts, sustenance, manna.

He has shown His power in calming storms or raising them; in shooting stars and the amazing rings of Saturn. He has demonstrated His power in the warmth of the sun and the earth’s proximity to it – all perfection for life and His creatures.

Every thing God has created has perfect symmetry with life. Indeed, every thing He has created has been in perfect symmetry with every other thing. The rings of trees, the armadillo’s rings, the stripes of raccoons, the details of a flower, the work of honeybees, the splitting of cells, the synapses of our minds, the taste and feel of water, the curiosity of children, the ability of the deaf and blind to compensate for their senses, for the revolution of the planets and moons, for the minds of scientists, for the genius of musicians, for the beatific, solemn, and simple of heart, for those who cook daily meals or teach or fix. Aren’t we all wondrous creatures of a great and glorious and Loving Lord?

And so, these are things I discuss with Him and say to Him and wonder with Him. I have asked Him why He created jellyfish and mosquitos. I have asked Him what made Him paint skunks and zebras and orcas and Dalmatians black and white and why pumas are simply black and why polar bears are white. I have asked Him why kangaroos have pouches and why dolphins smile.

I have asked Him how someone made a Stratovarius violin so amazing and why He chooses certain people to be prodigies. I have thanked Him for autistic children and silly children and stoic children and smart children and for every child in this world. I have thanked Him for loving such wondrous variety in every person and animal and plant and thing that He has created, and all for us.

I have thanked Him and asked Him about the three bones of our ears. I have thanked Him often for those bones. They seem so curious and unlikely to me.

I thank Him for my insightful and loving friends who have taught me to Love Him even more. I have thanked Him for His Words and teachings and guidance and absolutely for His Love and Forgiveness. I have thanked Him for showing me what hell can be and why we should absolutely want not to go there. I have thanked Him for blessing me so deeply and have asked for His forgiveness for worrying that He might take all these blessings away because I can't possibly deserve them. I ask Him to keep me from falling into the ways of this world that take me off His Righteous path or that lead me to forget that Heaven is the goal, and His Love is the key.

Oh Jesus. I say your name, and my heart says thank you, forgive me and I love you. I am a small person…a little person, and yet you have noticed me. Thank you, and I love you.
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9:09 pm