Growing in faith, in fear and trembling

When I, for lack of a better way of saying it, came back to the Catholic faith about 6-7 years ago, it was spurred on in no small part by my atheist wife. I wanted to be in a position to be able to respond to her challenges. In doing so, I have learned a great deal about God, Mary and the One Holy and Apostolic Church. So much so that I have been blessed in assisting my local parish priest in teaching RCIA the last two (2) years.  

In this past year I have come to realize that there was something missing in all this learning, something important. That piece that was missing is a true relationship with God.  I wore this knowledge as sort of an amor. It was something I could grip tightly to protect myself from challenges I imagined would be forthcoming and as a blade to brandish to prove my faith. 

Little did I know how useless and pathetic that was.  I was missing the beauty and life in the trees because I was obsessing over the details of the forest.  It was a loving trusting relationship with God that I did not have.  

This lack of a relationship raised its ugly head in many ways in my life.  It was exhibited daily in my fear over money and worrying how I would manage everything I had on my plate.  It peaked in 2015 when I found myself in counseling and on medicine for anxiety and depression.

It was reading The Marian Option that I came to understand how much love was missing in my life. Please don’t take this to mean I didn’t have people in my life that loved me and that I love. In that area my life was overflowing. But it was the unique motherly love Dr. Gress describes that I didn’t even know I was missing. It was the fatherly Love that is found through Mary that I could have never fathomed. 

So since reading that ground shaking book I have grown in love and trust of both our Blessed Mother and our Lord and Savior. I have internalized and grown in what I already intellectually knew, that I can put my full faith and trust in God. That wherever I am and whatever I am doing is what He wants me to do. As a serious control freak, this not at all easy. 

I would say that my faith on this new level is still fragile in my fallen state. So it is not without fear and trepidation that I take this next leap. This past week Inwatched a documentary on the life of Blessed Solanus Casey (I have provided a link to his cause below). This man grabbed a hold of my imagination like nothing before. I love this man, his humility and simplicity. I saw in him how I can grow in these two sins that cause me much strife. 

It then hit me to pray for his intersession for the miraculous cure for my wife’s paralysis. Praying for this has never entered my mind. This idea gutted me in its audacity and presumption that doing this is God’s Will. It gives me much pause because I am scared to death that my faith will come out of it in shambles if her miraculous cure is not God’s Will. 

I dive headlong into this prayer with blind trust that God will have a  warm and deep body of water at the bottom of this cliff. 

http://www.solanuscasey.org/portal.php