Texting God

My First Easter: Written February 2nd, 2011
-This specific blog post was written during the time period I was converting to Catholicism

I love to drive. It a great time to think and reflect, scream and yell, sing and dance, and basically do anything else that you feel is therapeutic. This past weekend, I was traveling to Manhattan, which meant a three-hour drive with just me. Usually, this is great news, however I wasn’t really looking forward to this drive for one reason: I couldn’t get my head to shut off for the past week or so and I just wanted it all to stop. I didn’t want to have to THINK ever again. Yes, maybe I was being slightly dramatic but a three-hour drive with just my dang head and me was not looking like a fun time.

But this drive did start the beginning of quite the little weekend. I was being too much of a thinker most of the weekend, but I got to reconnect with some friends, get a therapy session from a great friend, ponder a few things with God and I got to share Him with multiple people. It was great. At least that part. haha

So anyway, back to the dreaded three-hour drive. It did kind of suck. haha But I started to think about something. Go figure. Here is a question I kept thinking:

“What if I could just text God?”

I want to text God about something ridiculously stupid and I want Him to reply back to me. I want to text God an inside joke and I want to picture Him smiling about it and then get a response back that only I would understand. Basically, I was being dumb. I wanted to talk to God and I thought he should have to talk to me back.

“Just send me a text message God.”

I know what people might be thinking….just pray already. I had. But I was getting so frustrated lately with praying. Maybe that’s why I wanted to text Him so badly. I don’t know if other people get into funks with prayer. It’s like I pray and am so distracted that it’s hard to get a prayer in or I just feel empty after and just prayed to say I prayed. I don’t know. It’s weird and I was getting fed up with it.

I guess this stems from a need for a direct and immediate response from God. Which doesn’t usually happen, at least in a way that we are able to recognize. I also know that I shouldn’t think I am worthy of a direct response from God. No one really is. Plus, when you really stop and think about this, I think a lot of people crave this. But then when they don’t get exactly what they think they should get, they turn away from God and try to get it that direct response from another source. Which is not good.

A lot of these thoughts were popping up into my head against my will because I was thinking about not texting someone that I would normally text a lot. And it was hard. And it was frustrating when something random came up that reminded me of them that I couldn’t send a stupid little text message. It is just a freaking message. Why did it matter so much? It shouldn’t be so hard but most importantly it scared me that it bothered me so much.

So then I got to thinking about what if God were a contact in my phone. Would He be on my favorite list? Would He be the one with 300 or so messages after his name? Would it bother me so much if all the sudden I couldn’t just text Him?

I wasn’t so happy with my answers. I don’t think that makes me a bad person, I think it makes me one among many that struggle to put God first. Which also doesn’t make it any better. But it is good that I can work on this more now. I shouldn’t focus all my attention to one or a few people. Most importantly, I should try to have more conversations with God. He should be a part of my daily life more than He is currently. I need to celebrate with Him when something good happens. Go to Him with my struggles when something bad happens. This sounds so simple and pretty easy to do. Most people probably think they already do this. In fact most people, would be like, “Okay I just need to pray more and that will do it”. That’s what I thought too. But no! It’s more than that. He should be the first one we want to text each day about what is going on in our lives or something that made us smile. He should be our number one contact. It should make you cry thinking about what life would be like without being able to “text” God.

So I roll into Manhattan wishing I could text God and being frustrated about praying. The conference was good. At the beginning, I felt sort of just there. It was good to see friends but my head would not shut off. I finally got to meet up with my friend Allen right before I had a meeting. Spilled my guts to her. In a span of about 15 minutes, I got everything off my chest and told her all the crazy stuff going thru my head. I told her I was becoming Catholic. I told her I was scared now that I did it for the wrong reasons. She told me I was stupid for thinking I did it for the wrong reasons…..that God brought me here. Get this……she told me sometimes we have bad things happen, just to be closer to God. I was like…..you have no freaking clue!! She was so happy that I was going to church and didn’t think it was weird I was becoming Catholic.  She told me I was being stupid….in some ways about the whole church thing. She told me she understood what I was going through and that I wasn’t crazy. She told me she loved me. She told me it wasn’t going to be easy. She told me I needed to do things for me. For the first time in a week I felt better.

I am so blessed. Not everyone can have an Amy Allen in their lives. Someone that can listen and advise without making a person feel like crap or like they failed. Someone that is there just to listen and build you up when you need it most. No matter what you have done. I felt so revived. So hopeful. I really feel if it weren’t for her, I would have exploded. : )

So anyway more randomness to come….. You know those coming-to-Jesus meetings we all have with the people in our lives at some point or another. Well, I guess when you talk about all the events of this past weekend, you could call all of them my coming-to-Jesus meetings. It pretty much happened everywhere I turned. Which is good. ☺ I had one with myself in the suburban on the way to the conference where I recognized I needed to put God as my number one. I had a pretty typical one with Allen. Now I was gonna have one with the big man upstairs.

So I went out that night with some friends. Wasn’t really feeling the cheer. Feeling way better after my chat with Allen, but I did leave early. As I was driving home, I got into the driving mode again! It was great because if there is anything better than driving, it is night driving. And if there is anything better than night driving, it is night driving in your favorite part of the world. And Manhattan happens to be pretty special to me. So I wound up on a huge hill with some beautiful sky above me. I got mad at God (wasn’t very nice of me). I cried. And then………. I prayed and finally felt like He was getting the message. Finally.

Now, the next morning, I was about to have another coming-to-Jesus meeting with my old professor from college…..

We are just sitting at the lunch table, holding typical conversation you have with a bunch of ag teachers. He is just sitting on my left, and leans over and says “So what do you do for fun?” I laughed. Mainly because two things popped through my head:  Nothing and catholic-nerd-studying. Neither one seemed liked a very suitable answer for him. We talked a little about the necessity of finding something to do. In reality, if I don’t find something to do again and just for me, I will not be teaching much longer. Yes, my job is very demanding. Yes, it is far too easy to get consumed in the job. I do know about this problem and I do already know that I have about reached my limit. I can’t continue teaching and being an FFA Advisor like I am currently doing. I will get too consumed in others and will loose sight of me. I will not be happy. It will affect my relationship with those around me and it will not be how God intended me to live. I need BALANCE. So once again I have more work to do. : )

So as the weekend progressed, I began to feel differently about my relationship with God. Leave it to me to make a weekend meant to become a better ag teacher one more about my struggles with my relationship with God. Haha. But it felt renewed. I even got to share with my friend Laura about me becoming Catholic and got to attend mass with my best friend Katie, who is not Catholic. Opening up and having these conversations with multiple people was a huge blessing. This is what God intends for us. This is also when I was most happy!

The conference was pretty much over and now I got to spend some time with Katie and Jacob and my good friend Father Keith! Haha I say good friend, but really just know him through the RCIA videos from St. Isidore’s that I watch. Which just a little nerd fact, I have now watched 12 videos at approximately 2 hours in length. Yes, that is a DAY’S worth of RCIA videos. Haha So you could imagine that I have developed a certain fondness for Fr. Keith and was super excited to get to attend a mass of his. Just Katie and I went. It was a packed house! Crazy amounts of people there and there were no missals to help me. But that was okay because they had amazing music with a real choir and violins. Which I liked very much!

Father Keith’s homily talked a lot about the Beatitudes. The things Jesus told us to do to be better Christians and to help us get to the Kingdom of Heaven. The thing he really hit on the most was doing these good things not because we are supposed to do them or because Jesus told us to do them. We do them because we truly want to. That we expect no gain for what we are doing to be returned to us. Because when we do this without want for any personal gain, we have the light of Jesus shine through us to the people in our lives. The thing that got me to thinking was, how can I be completely sure I do something out of love and for no personal gain? If I even have to ask that question am I doing things all wrong? Sometimes, I think I am good at this. But then other times I know I fall short. But then if it is still a good thing to do, should I not do it anyways? And why do I have to think so much about these things. : )

Anyway, I also could relate a lot of what Fr. Keith was saying to apply as a teacher. Which, made me feel more at ease about why I was still teaching and about why I was even sitting in that church that morning. I felt good. Then at one point during mass we offered up our prayers. Well, I guess this is happening pretty much the whole time but the time when everyone responds, “Lord, hear our prayer”. And since Father Keith is awesome, he paused a little longer than usual on the end one where we get to do a spontaneous prayer. Being raised Protestant, this is where I feel like I can get my own little thing in. So I got my little prayer in, and everyone responded “Lord hear our prayer.” And I was like “whoa” I get it. In that instance, with everyone all gathered in the church together as one, saying those four simple words, I felt like I had just received a text message from God. “Kasie, I hear you, I am working on stuff, you are where you are suppose to be (so quit being dumb and second guessing everything), be happy, I love you”. I know this happened because I was with a body of believers and that I had been having those conversations with God.

So a bunch of ramblings about a weekend I feel blessed to have had. I KNOW that everything happens for a reason.

PS- It is true. God is a contact in my phone. I am sure He receives all my text messages. He and someone else maybe??? : )