Miracles or Fairytales?

A while ago, I wrote my favourite blog post. It has since become the most popular post on this page (please note: by this I mean more than 3 people have actually read it, and as far as I’m aware I haven’t been excommunicated as a result…).

I finished the post with these words:

“Tell Jesus about your lack of wine, your blindness, your lamentations, your sufferings and your burdens. Offer up to Him what cripples you and know He will fix it… be audacious, expect miracles.It will change your life.”

Allow me to take it a little further (or backwards… or something… hear me out).

I know God has wonderful plans for me – ‘plans to prosper me and not to harm me, to give me hope and a future’ (Jeremiah 29:11). I know that Jesus has my back. I know that He wants more wonderful things for me than I could ever dare dream of. All of this I know, so if you’re still reading and expecting me to say that all of my past words were simply naïveté, I’m sorry to disappoint you – I still vehemently hold that hope is a virtue.

I will say this though: for the last little while, I’ve been wondering – are we expecting miracles or fairytales? Are they two different things?

My main gal St. Therese of Lisieux tells us with her wonderful, enviable simplicity that “our desires are not fancies.” Looking back on my own life, I remember one occasion where I truly felt that the King had truly satisfied even the least desire of my heart. I was in Sorrento, Italy, and having been away for almost 7 weeks, was feeling very homesick. That Sunday morning, I left my travel buddy asleep and walked to the closest Catholic Church for mass, fighting tears. I walked into the Church of Santa Maria Della Grazie ("Holy Mary of Grace"), where, during communion, 7 elderly Dominican nuns (some too frail to even walk), started singing one of my favourite hymns. Suddenly, as I sang along in my own language, I felt like I was home. Jesus, my Lord, my God, my all.

However, as much as that experience and many others have given me the audacity to ask great things of The Lord, where is the fine line between ‘the king satisfies even the least desires of our hearts’ and ‘life is not a fairytale?’

Reflecting on this as of late, all that came to mind was the man, who upon falling into a well, had faith that God would get him out. Several people came, offering him a way out – all of their attempts to help denied when the man said that he was relying on God to get him out. He drowned, and when facing judgement, asked God why He didn’t pull him out of the well. God’s reply, of course, was that He had sent several people to get him out, but they had been rejected because the man had been too stuck on how HE wanted God to save him and could not see past his own idea of what being saved was.

Sometimes we are just like that man. Sometimes, we ask Jesus for something, expecting a miracle, then are perhaps too blind to recognise when He grants it. Sometimes we don’t know if it’s really what we need because we are too stuck in our own world and too fixated on our own (perhaps shallow) desires to see that God isn’t necessarily satisfying our most immediate desires (to immediately teleport us out of the well), but, like the loving Father that He is, is instead fulfilling the deepest desires of our hearts (freedom), even if we don’t know it yet.

Let’s make this as simple as possible. Luke 11:10-11 tells us:

“… everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead?”

Imagine me asking God for a pizza. Out of nowhere comes a pizza – well, sort of. The pizza is cheeseless. Now, if my short time in France taught me anything, it’s that life is happier with cheese in it, so, for the time being, let’s call this half a miracle. I may give the pizza back and say ‘I know you can do better. I expected a miracle. This is OK I guess, but could you send me one with cheese next?’ What I seem to have forgotten, however, is that God is, first and foremost, my Father. He knows that as a woman of Middle Eastern descent, lactose and I don’t get along all that well. God is the cheeseless pizza chef – the chef who gives me what I need and not necessarily what I immediately want, ensuring both effective digestion and my lasting happiness.

Excuse the psychobabble. My point is this: real faith isn’t just expecting miracles, it’s expecting, trusting in and relying on God’s miracles and not our own. It’s trusting that dreaded answer given to you by Jesus: that voice crying out to you despite your best efforts to silence it.

This is where I'm thankful for my friends. They know me, and they encourage me to ask the Lord what He wants of me and trust that He will make His answer clear. I am thankful for their advice, their meanness, their softness, their clarity. I would not deserve them if I lived 300 years. They taught me to pray until God can no longer hold back His peace from me – to storm Heaven until Heaven comes to my help. Then, when things get EXTRA crappy, they climb into the well with me, pull me up onto their shoulders and remind me that things really aren't that bad as long as I have people I love beside me.

As difficult as some situations are, I pray that I never accept something I shouldn't because I'm afraid that’s all God has in store for me, and I also pray that I accept, with gratitude and a heart full of joy, the gifts God has given me.

Lord, do not allow my pride and shallow desires stop me from recognising the miracles all around me. For this, I pray.

Santa Maria Della Grazie, Sorrento Italy.