Monthly Archives: November 2014

God’s Will

I wish God worked at the post office. Then He would have a rotating two-tier wheel of clamps by His side. It would hold red ink rubber stamps. And if God worked at the post office, one of those stamps would most certainly say, God’s Will. We could just drop our letters at the post office and ask, “God, is this Your Will?”

Everybody talks about seeking God’s Will. I look for God’s Will just about as hard as anyone I know. In the first seconds of wakefulness each morning, my face smothered in the pillow, I say good morning to God. “Please, God, let me do something for You today. Let me know what You want. Give me the courage to do what You ask.”

In the morning darkness, on the couch under a quiet brass lamp, I open His Word and read for daily guidance and comfort. During the day in the car, I turn to AM radio, listening to others who seek His Word. They speak with such confidence. They’ve found it, His Will.

“Look,” they say, “ask yourself what your mission is. What do you hunger to do? What are your talents? God wouldn’t give you a mission and talents if they weren’t part of His Will.”

It’s so tempting to latch onto their advice without challenge. I love to write. If I could sit at the typewriter skipping breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I would scarcely feel hunger. Wouldn’t it be great if God loved what I love! But I know better…I think. My thoughts call up my personal divining rod: Hitler. He loved cruelty, killing, and war. Does our own passion and commitment to a cause prove God’s Will? Hitler might have thought so.

A Christian writer’s conference is a wonderful place to seek security in the love of writing. At my first writers conference ever, I carried one book and two articles in my bag hoping to find God’s Will in some editor’s approval. Encouragement was there. “Keep at it,” a few told me. So I listened eagerly for advice from the experts: buy tapes, buy books, write proposals and query letters, write more, join editing groups, expect rejection, keep at it, hundreds of rejections mean nothing, organize, keep going, keep records, keep writing. But above all, they intone, seek God’s Will. Remember, God doesn’t create talent for nothing. You can do it, get published, be a star, be a writer. If you love it, God will, too.

I crave their reassurance, but when does my will get relabeled God’s Will as justification for what I want? If it’s God’s Will, why does he make me spend weeks writing and rewriting book proposals? Couldn’t writers just send out a book proposal to God at the post office and have Him stamp it with red ink: God’s Will or…

Forget It!

I must be God’s most rebellious servant. God, if it’s your will, make it happen. You’ve left too many hurting people on earth for me to dilly dally around writing query letters and book proposals. One mile down the street, Pat lies alone in her nursing home bed, her bones poking through tightly stretched skin all covered over with painful lesions. She is waiting for me to return this week, waiting for any bits of conversation with me as interludes in her long day, in a long week, filled with bed pans, IV’s, pain pills, and cold food. I don’t need publishing. I don’t need fame or money. At least send me a sign. Something big that I won’t miss.

Lucy Swindoll understands. She told God she wanted to do something significant with her life. But she also begged, “God, let me know when that moment of significance happens. I know you, God, you value small things. I might miss it. Don’t let me miss it. I might do something so small I will never realize it was significant.”

Maybe Lucy Swindoll’s radio program was my sign. She caught me in the car on my way home from Officemax yesterday with her story of a birthday party in a hearse. Immediately my mind turned to the unbelievable antics of her “gang of grownups” who managed to lose a long black car in the middle of the night. My giggles and laughs followed her details from one escapade to the next, until finally, she and her four friends sat, riding in the front seat of a police car to pick up the “lost” hearse from the police impound. I approached the turnoff to home and tapped my foot on the accelerator, “Speed up Lucy! I need to know how the story ends.” But they arrived at the police station at the very same moment I had to turn the car over to my daughter for her work transportation. Cut short, I turned off the radio, not to know whether Lucy was arrested or not. Ah, well. “God’s got more important things on the schedule for me,” I consoled myself.

Later that night, as I relaxed on the patio, my son Justin called for a ride home. I pulled my feet off the coffee table and tried to gather energy to meet my motherly obligation without grumbling. Driving to meet him, I had a moment’s inspiration. On the way back, we could buy ice cream for root beer floats. We had never done this. It was just the excitement we both needed!

Maybe God wanted ice cream. Maybe it was He who pointed at Smitty’s grocery store, a place I never shop. Did He nudge me, while Justin was in the store, “Turn on the radio.” I did. I turned to my normal Christian station 960 AM, and as usual in the evening, it was lost in static. I thought of picking my regular country western alternative. “No,” God nudged again. “I’m here. Keep looking.”

Inexplicably, for the first time in my life, I turned to the FM dial. On the first push of the “seek” button, there was Lucy again, arriving at the police station, ready to pay $43 to pick up her hearse. Wow! Thanks, God.

I followed her story to the end, laughing all the way. Her point? She wanted God to use her and she wanted a sign. For Lucy, it came one night at a dinner party when an American Christian Writer editor walked up to her and asked her to write. Incredulously, she pointed out to him that she wasn’t a writer. What would he suggest, she queried. He asked, “What do you think you could write?”

“Well, I won’t use scripture,” she declared.

“Fine,” he agreed.

“Perfect,” she deadpanned, “a Christian writer who doesn’t use scripture.” Now, that’s my kind of writer, I thought. I quit listening to the radio and turned my thoughts to my own doubts.

“Is that you God?” I asked.

God is one persistent person. Elie Weisel is a writer rejected over 20 times because the world doesn’t want to get depressed about his life. Poor world. But finally, one person hears God’s call and publishes Elie’s words. His words and books based on his survival of Hitler’s concentration camps have pulled me out of my deepest depressions. I have survived my own life because Elie wrote his story and persisted to find a publisher.

A new writer friend Marsha tells me, “Maybe somebody else will know what you mean when you write. Maybe your words will help someone, someday.” I think of my father-in-law, the eternal atheist. Unexpectedly, he reads the book I wrote for my children, and he is converted for a week. It’s the longest week of his life. Is this a sign?

Tonight at 2:30 a.m., I wake, unable to sleep, restless, but settled. I need to hear God. I wander to the office and turn on the computer. God, is that you? I want to lie down, but I’m not tired. The strain of listening for God shatters my peace of mind. I seek the determination to walk away from writing, to let it go, but a pecking insistence remains. In the darkness, I must sit and type for one more chapter. “God is that you?”

“Please, God, I need a sign. There is simply too much of me in my writing for good judgment’s sake. I have promised a year. I’ll give writing a chance, just in case that’s what you want. A year. I know it’s not my place to tell you what to do. But I need a sign. I can’t bear to leave Pat alone in bed during the day at the rest home unless I know there’s a better reason to write than keeping my own sanity.

“Please, God, if it is really You, use your red ink stamp. Better yet, hit me with a brick. I’m not a very good Christian. I need a big sign. I don’t think I will be able to detect Your whisper.”

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Return to: CONVERSION – Looking for Signs of Land
CONTENTS

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Posted also on www.JaneJimenez.com
JANE JIMENEZ – ALL THINGS WRITTEN

GodTalk

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I write. I want to make GodTalk.

As a relatively new believer of only six years, I often feel stuck in the middle of two opposing worlds. The world I left behind, my past life before Jesus, has my history, my dearest friends, and my family. But it has almost no GodTalk.

Yes, I still get together with old friends. And yes, they talk about ‘god.’ But he is only a speculation, a question mark, a little ‘g.’ He is the god of spirits and ghosts and angels that are fun to watch on make-believe television. And when a click of the remote passes by the waving, prancing preachers who ‘do’ religion on television, my friends smile. They even tell me God might really be out there, somewhere. But that’s not GodTalk.

In my new life born of Jesus, when I visit with my new friends, there’s plenty of GodTalk. It’s all about finding God’s will, submitting it to the Lord, and praising the day my Savior redeemed me. But that’s not GodTalk, either. This is privileged communication between believers, privileged because we’ve taken the time to learn some special words, short-cut words to explain how we feel. But the only people who can possibly understand us are other believers.

GodTalk is special. It’s the bridge between these two worlds of my life. It’s more than words. It is attitude, an openness to hearing God. It is watchfulness, the desire to see God in the simple things of the world. It is the willingness of a heart to meet God, to really have a desire to answer him with our life when we ask Him if He’s there.

For me as a writer, most often GodTalk is the personal, lonely mental conversations I have, trying to bridge across the world of my past into the world of my future. It’s the struggle to translate what my Christian friend is saying into non-Christian words my secular friends will accept. Or it’s the silent mental apologies I make for my secular friends when they fail to communicate their deep spiritual longings to Christians.

When I write, I am writing my GodTalk. Essays, editorials, books – words placed one after the other on the page – how can they move my old world closer to my new world? How often this writer’s desire feels like a slow train to China. I dream for the words that can build a rocket. Where’s the blast that lifts the words off a page and makes them live in people’s lives?

I want to write. But Lord, give me your heart for stories that teach people to GodTalk.

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Return to: CONVERSION – Looking for Signs of Land
CONTENTS

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Posted also on www.JaneJimenez.com
JANE JIMENEZ – ALL THINGS WRITTEN

AT THE FOOT OF YOUR CROSS

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AT THE FOOT OF YOUR CROSS

My Lord Jesus Christ,

I fall at the foot of your cross

And raise my eyes to fix upon yours,

Begging to draw down the power of your love and forgiveness

Offered to me without deserving.

Please, Lord Jesus, carry my longing

With you to the throne of Almighty God,

Holding my heart in trust

Until the day I find myself with you at last.

May I, Lord Jesus, with your love at the cross

As my witness to the power and mercy of God,

Accept the gift of this one day,

Glorifying you and the Almighty

With each thought and deed.

I beg you, Lord Jesus, to stand between me and

Every evil temptation casting a shadow on my path.

Let your brilliance light my way

So that when evening falls,

I might lay my head upon my pillow

And lay my day at your feet as my best,

In love,

My offering of thanksgiving I give, that you loved me enough

To go to the cross as My Light

And My Salvation.

Amen.

Jane Jimenez, 1998

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Whiplash

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Whiplash is a non-medical term describing a range of injuries to the neck caused by or related to a sudden distortion of the neck commonly associated with motor vehicle accidents, usually when the vehicle has been hit in the rear. The injury can be sustained in many other ways, including headbanging, bungee jumping and falls. It is one of the main injuries covered by insurance.

It hurts…
…what just happened?

I never intended to become Catholic. But…then…I never intended to believe…in God…or in anything or anyone other than myself.

Having lived for a considerable time on each side of the faith fence, one thing I can testify to for all the agnostics and atheists out there is that they have an easier ride than people of deep faith. This is not what non-believers propose.

In the typical characterization put forward by agnostics about believers, Christians are grasping onto God like Linus holding onto his blanket. “No matter what happens in the world, if you Christians have your little God blanket, it will all turn out OK.”

It is easy for agnostics to hold onto this misconception, because they are generally not willing to engage in serious, meaningful dialogue with Christians.

From this side of the fence, I understand the hesitation of agnostics to welcome “GodTalk.” I get it. The talk between believers and non-believers quickly turns passionate, and if someone doesn’t get tarred and feathered, they are sure to get thumped by a Bible before things are over.

This is where the concept of sin becomes useful, even to agnostics. We are all subject to the failings of human nature. Call it what you will…sin…or bad judgment…we all have it. Christians are not hypocrites. They are, quite simply put, fallen human beings. Paul, chief among sinners, bemoaned his condition:

¹⁸For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. ¹⁹For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. ²⁰Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. [Rom 7:18-20]

In these twenty chapters of Coming Home, I have struggled to tell the story of my personal car crash. A little VW Christian on a journey into the Catholic Church, after detours and traffic jams and speeding tickets, finally crashed full speed into a brick wall. The road turned, and the little VW never saw it coming.

This project is not about getting even. And it has not been for the purpose of making me gloat in retribution.

I began the trip early in 2013, hoping to prepare myself to become Catholic. I was ahead of schedule at that point. In 2012, honoring my marital vows and love for my husband, I had “put Catholic on hold” for a future date…many years hence…when my husband could fully trust that I treasured his faith in Christ no less than mine. Just when I had settled on waiting, he flashed the green light. “Yes,” he told me. “It’s time for you to begin your journey into the Catholic Church.”

But faith is not a straight road dictated by Christ, charted by maps and marked at night with bright landing lights. It is an adventure where our faith is tested…tempted…challenged…thwarted…and redirected.

I hurt. Today, I am far afield from the map I had charted. I am not where I expected to be when I first opened the door and walked into RCIA v.1.

I could have used less law and more love in RCIA v.3.

It would have been nice to have heard the truth more promptly and more succinctly in RCIA v.2 and RCIA v.4.

Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one. [Mat 5:37]

But even after all that…after RCIA 1 and 2 and 3 and 4…I could have handled all of that…until finally running into the brick wall in RCIA v.5.

What comes next? I don’t know. I am waiting to heal.

Yes, healing takes time. And healing involves more than broken bones. In October, I could have knocked on more doors and tried to beg my way into an RCIA program that had empty chairs. Even now in November, I figure that is still a possibility.

But I am tired of banging on the door of Christ’s church begging for entry. My body is aching. My heart is in traction. My soul is wounded. And Christ…I try to fit my experiences of the past year into his parable of the wedding feast.

Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: ²“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. ³He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. ⁴Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’ ⁵But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, ⁶while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. ⁷The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. ⁸Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. ⁹Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’ ¹⁰Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests. [Mat 22:1-10]

I stand on the street, waiting for an invitation to the wedding. If they are inviting both the good and the bad, that should include me. If they can’t find me, if they don’t see me in the throngs of those wanting to enter, I will jump in the air and wave my hands…even with all the aches, pains and bruises.

Still…I wait…outside a closed door.

I ache. I am bruised. My neck hurts so badly that it can’t turn right or left. Is there a speeding train headed toward me on the road ahead where it crosses the tracks? I pray it isn’t so. In this condition, I will not be able to turn and see it before it runs me down.

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NEXT: more to come…

RETURN to COMING HOME Contents.

Father Walter, RCIA v.5

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Looking forward to RCIA, I used the website for the parish to send an e-mail to Tim, the Director of their program. For once, since my inquiry over a year ago into becoming Catholic, I was excited.

——–E-MAIL ORIGINAL MESSAGE ——–
Subject: RCIA
From: JANE JIMENEZ
Date: September 3, 2014

Tim,
I would like to join the RCIA classes. When do they begin/take place? How do I participate?
~~Thank you, Jane Jimenez

It was wonderful to see Tim’s prompt response come back to me on the same day in my Inbox! No more long delays and echo chambers. Finally, things were coming together…at long last! I opened his message with great anticipation.

——– Message ——–

From: TIM
Date: September 3, 2014

Hi Jane, We have been meeting for over a month now, and unfortunately, the sessions for this year are now closed. If you have any other questions, please let me know.
~~In Christ, Tim

I took a deep breath. Closed? How could you close RCIA? My brain was frozen. I used my fingers for counting to make certain I kept my focus. Six months…Easter, 2015…then twelve months…Easter, 2016. In the parish of my choice, I could enter the church in 2016, eighteen months from today. In total, from RCIA v.1 through RCIA v.5…altogether it would take 31 months from my first inquiry… more than two years …for me to become Catholic.

Loosing all sight of charity, in my usual “loose cannon” fashion, I fired off an immediate e-mail response.

——– Message ——–

From: JANE JIMENEZ
Date: September 3, 2014

Tim, forgive me an unholy moment of impertinence…How does God, how does Jesus, how does Mary…how does St. Maximilian, my saint…close the registration list on entering the Church of Christ?

You invited “other questions.” This is the only one that comes to mind at this moment. It is more rhetorical than real, so don’t feel compelled to answer. Don’t worry about juggling your plans. I don’t know what God has in store for me. I await His lead.

Thanks for your prompt and frank response, Jane

I still couldn’t breath. Too many converts?! All this…while I had been worried about baptism, marriage, and sex with my husband? Forget all of those minor issues! The parish I had chosen because of its reverence in mass was just too busy to handle one more convert. If I had had comments two months ago for the Pope about the new evangelization, my list of comments was now unreadable.

——– Message ——–

From: TIM
Date: September 3, 2014

Hi Jane, We advertised for RCIA for 4 months in the bulletin, on the website, and from the pulpit announcements. To answer your question, the sessions are closed for this year, not forever. If you desire to enter the Catholic Church next year, sessions will be available. How long have you been coming to the parish?
~~In Him, Tim

I wanted to reach through the computer, grab Tim by the collar and yell, “In Him???? Who the heck is Him???? It sure as heck can’t be Jesus! I don’t remember one place in the New Testament where Jesus said He had no more room for sinners!”

This was definitely not the best frame of mind from which to compose an e-mail to Tim and every blasted priest of the parish. Never one to hold back, though, I pounded the keys. If I offended anyone, I would have eighteen months to beg forgiveness.

——– Message ——–

From: JANE JIMENEZ
Date: September 3, 2014

Tim…Father Walter…all the priests…and God…Jesus…Pope Francis…and everyone…

I write only with the greatest respect for your love of Christ and his Church. When I attended last Sunday’s mass, I was so moved by the reverence and tenderness given to worship.

How long have I been coming to the parish? How long had Peter’s converts been following Christ – But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say…

At the end of Peter’s exhortation…to the First Converts…

³⁷Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” ³⁸Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. ³⁹For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” [Acts of the Apostles]

I know, with all of your years of seminary and ABCD’s, you will have an answer for this and every other question I might pose. My simple guess is that Peter received those who received Christ.

I send this with much pain attached. Yes, I confess I am not in a gentle state of Christian humility at this moment either.

I do not know where Christ is leading me at this time. I am the sole Christian in my present world seeking entry into the Catholic Church. Most of my immediate world is agnostic. Those who are Christian are either ex-Catholic or hostile/resistant to Catholicism.

You, meanwhile, are in good company with other Catholic Fathers and leaders who insist that I was amiss in my desire to be baptized and in my desire to enter the church sooner rather than later. You are, however, the first to suggest that 2015 is “closed” and that I should set my sights on 2016.

I am 63 – 43 years of ambivalence and agnosticism followed by 20 years of Christian faith leading me to Rome. Yet…here I sit, writing you this note. I am supposed to “prove myself” – the state of my faith and the fullness of my understanding of faith in Christ. I am supposed to prove this to you, as if offering a pedigree to deem me worthy to “be considered for” entry into the true Church of Christ.

As a writer…I am venting general frustrations from the past year that have come together in this most recent communication re RCIA.

I trust that you love Christ. You certainly love his Church. But do you love the sinners who share the neighborhood with your parish? I am one of them.

Catholics fed by your reverence for Christ in the Mass are truly blessed. Those who meet your time schedule in RCIA will, no doubt, flourish in your parish. I still seek a parish on the banks of the Jordan, one simple soul in a crowd longing to be baptized and taught by a “John the Baptist” who calls us to repentance and welcomes us without delay.

May the Father, Son and Holy Spirit richly bless your ministry!

In Christ, Jane Jimenez

²¹When my soul was embittered,
    when I was pricked in heart,
²²I was stupid and ignorant;
    I was like a brute beast toward you.
²³Nevertheless I am continually with you;
    you hold my right hand.
²⁴You guide me with your counsel,
    and afterward you will receive me with honor.
²⁵Whom have I in heaven but you?
    And there is nothing on earth that I desire other than you.
²⁶My flesh and my heart may fail,
    but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. [Psalm 73:21-26]

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NEXT: Whiplash

RETURN to the COMING HOME Contents.