Yes!

Yesterday was hard for me to go through the exercise, today was a soothing balm to that hurt.

I often frequent a Natural Family Planning website and forum at www.livingthesacrament.com and from the women on the forum, I have learned to take an approach to my fertility as Mary did with the Archangel Gabriel. So it came as a pleasant surprise to have Luke's account of the Annunciation. The instructions of the day from "An Ignatian Prayer Adventure" was to "marvel at Mary's freedom to say 'Yes'!"

When I read through the Annunciation today I heard two different things. First I put myself into the story and wondered what it would be like to have an angel tell me that I would be pregnant. I am not saying that I would be given the blessing to carry the Lord but my own child. Gabriel saying "Do not be afraid" I think reaches out to any first time parent's fear of having a child. At the same time I would still be like Mary as I would be concerned with the 'how' it would happen.

Despite Mary's fear she still has the boldness to say yes regardless of all the stigmas of her day. Then I saw the meme to the left and remembered a lot of cultural issues Mary would have faced. She should have been cast out of her family and stoned. From my collegiate studies, Mary was also supposed to be a consecrated virgin. She had reason to be overly scared for herself and her only worry was that she "didn't know man." (v. 34) Gabriel reminds Mary, and myself, that nothing is impossible for God, (v. 37) and that was enough of a reassurance for Mary to give her "yes".

So Jesus had been an unplanned pregnancy and currently, short of divine providence, I am not expecting to become pregnant. My second realization is how a person reacts in faith. I truly do marvel at Mary's yes. Her yes only started with the Annunciation and continued throughout her life. From trying to find the lost child Jesus, to raising Jesus as a single parent, supporting his ministry, and standing by him as he died are only a small list of the yeses Mary gave.

However, I need to be more bold as I step out in faith. I second guess myself, I occasionally doubt my decisions. I look at where God is trying to bring me and stop being a child and digging my feet into the ground trying to stop my moving forward. I need to confidently move forward and not always balance the options.

A Loving God and a Lost Child

Yesterday I had mentioned that I had began an 8 week exercise using "An Ignatian Prayer Adventure" and today I almost quit. I almost quit because it got hard and hit one of the spiritual wounds I carry and I don't like to talk about. It took me 6 months before I even considered mentioning it to my new confessor. This is a wound that I don't like mentioning but always seem to come out once I trust someone, a lot. It has also been one God and I have been working on together, slowly, like taking off a bandage with care. Well, today it got ripped off instead. But here's the deal, I wander to different places, I never quit the journey.

When I was a teen I had awful self confidence, I thought everyone hated me and I never knew who I could trust. A mentor of mine and a priest suggested that I begin praying using Psalm 139. It was my rock, it gave me hope and as a teen I had too many highlights and girly doodles around it to signify my obsession with this Psalm. As I grew more confident in myself, my need for relying on this Psalm decreased.

Fast forward to my post college years to now. I am happily married and my husband and I are trying to start our own family. The beauty of how God creates individual life is evident and apparent to families and readers of this Psalm alike. It scares me that my husband and I may never know or fully understand what it means to assist God in his creation. I am afraid that part of it is selfishness because my husband and I are happy with our lives right now, and the other fear I often hold is that I've done something in which infertility is my cross that I am being asked to carry.

This brings me to the questions that the exercise asks me, How does God gaze upon me? I feel like God looks at me with the love that is beyond compare. He looks at me with the same love as when he created me, and will continue until I leave this earthly life. Because of this I feel ashamed and guilty for feeling like I have not and am not carrying my cross with submission.

I vowed that my husband and I would accept life as a gift from God, I just haven't been treating it as a gift. I've been demanding it as a right. By my own blind desires, I am again missing the mark.

Then comes the next reflective question of the day, How open am I to receiving this intimacy? Intimacy, a word that I heard all too frequently as a teen and young adult. It was often explained to me as the act of "into-me-see". Intimacy isn't just the love that my husband and I share with each other but how I am able to see into those I love, to know fully who they are.

This intimacy with God scares me because I don't want God to see inside of me. I don't want God to see my brokenness and woundedness. I want to be better than I am and show that I've been a good steward of his love. Then I recall something I read from St. Therese of Lisieux in A Story of a Soul, "Here is one of those incomprehensible mysteries which we shall only understand in Heaven, where they will be the subject of our eternal admiration. My God, how good Thou art! How well dost Thou suit the trial to our strength!" Because I am loved, because God chooses to bring me closer to him, I am given a trial to which my strengths will assist me. Now, only if I could place what those strengths were.

Through it all, God is often referred to as the "Divine Physician"; if I don't show him what my wounds and scars are, how can I let him heal them? By doing this, I am also accepting of the intimacy that he chooses to share with me. Scary though it may be, it is also beneficial to me as his daughter.