Longing (Chapter 1)

Chapter 1
“LORD, my God, I call out by day; at night I cry aloud in your presence. Let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry.” –Psalm 88:2-3

One warm August evening in my home town of Mesa, Arizona I sat in the small rose garden dedicated to our Lady a stone’s throw away from my parish doors. The roses were in full bloom, the grass was the bright green that only a long warm summer could bring about and the leaves of the trees swayed placidly to the gentle gusts parading across the garden. I sat there, in tears, looking up to the skies and asking God to stop what I knew was coming. My girlfriend at the time had called me the night before and asked if we could meet at the church saying, “we need to talk.” That most terrible utterance to ever escape the human mouth, that phrase that carries with it a sense of fear, anxiety, despair and even heartache. I cried aloud to God, feeling in the very depths of my bones that this was going to be one of the most painful experiences of my young life. I asked God aloud, “Why? Why is this happening? Why do I need to suffer like this?” and heard nothing but the gentle whisper of the wind through the trees. My heart sunk in my chest as I glanced at my phone and saw the time had come when we had scheduled to meet.

I walked apathetically towards the church where I knew she would be waiting. I saw her, my heart began to melt inside me and we began to walk the campus and talk. She tried to keep things as upbeat as possible, “This is really hard for me, and I know it has to be hard for you too” she said to me as we sat down next to each other. I began to brace myself for the bomb that I knew was coming my way. She glanced at me, and then she looked down at her feet and said, “We can’t be together any longer, I am just not attracted to you like that any more.” My heart dropped to the soles of my shoes, the entire world seemed to have just stopped. She proceeded to enumerate all of the different reasons why we could no longer be. Consciousness was no longer with me, as my mind began to float to other thoughts, to other places, anywhere but right there where I was. We walked away from that break-up talk with tears rolling down our faces. I got into my car and I began to scream, “What is the matter with me?!?” This longing that had been placated and appeased through our relationship suddenly returned. My first girlfriend was the person who I felt closest to because I gave her a big portion of my heart, and she had reciprocated with me. We were connected, we were close, we were utterly convinced that we “loved” each other and most importantly there was a connection on a deep, intimate level, not sexually, but our souls had come to know each other and became connected. Then, as suddenly as it began it ended and we were left with broken hearts and shattered dreams because that relationship that had brought about so much intimacy was suddenly gone. I had no idea what to do with myself, with my heart and most importantly with my prayer life.

There’s this part of being human that is eternally searching for something to quench our thirst for greater something above and beyond what we see and participate in every day. We seek it in the most obscure and empty things; we look for it in food, in alcohol, in abusive relationships, in pornography, in gossip, even sometimes we hope to find it within ourselves. There’s a general longing amongst us that simply wants satisfaction, wants to feel complete. Do you ever have that feeling where you just can’t help but say to yourself, “I just want something more?” It’s part of who we are, it’s core to our human condition, we are the only creatures in all of creation that need something outside of ourselves to complete ourselves, and that “something” that we seek is none other than God Himself.

Growing up Catholic, I always felt like I had a “good handle” on the whole God thing. Even though I went to mass every week without fail, I was actively involved with ministries in my parish and I went to a small Catholic school in the middle of nowhere so I could study theology there was still something that plagued me, this nagging feeling of just not being satisfied. Always floating through the back of my mind was attraction to members of the opposite sex. Girls would walk in and out of my mangled “love life” and every time it was good, things with my faith journey seemed fantastic. Everything took on a new shimmer, I was satisfied with my state of life no matter what it may have been because, “God blessed me with this person who I can love.” Then, when things would go awry and my heart would be shattered, my faith, my prayer, my peace and my trust in God’s plan shattered as well. God and His plan became the villain, trying to steal my satisfaction, trying to hijack my happiness. I remember venting to a friend once after an especially painful experience of having my heart broken using a quote from Bruce Almighty, “God is just a mean kid with a magnifying glass, and we are the ants.”

There’s this deep longing to love someone unconditionally and be loved the same way in return. It’s natural, it’s how we’re designed and it’s a beautiful part of our humanity. I know far too many young single Catholics that continue to lament over not being with that “one person” or not having found their future spouses yet. I recognize them because I was one of them, ever constantly searching, keeping my ear to the ground to see if the next woman to walk into my life could be the one I’m meant to be with. All of this though was a simple smoke screen, a cover-up for a much deeper more profound problem that many of us struggle with. Our lives today are robbed of intimacy. We yearn for it, we expect it, it’s the thing that keeps us moving ahead day in and day out.

Maybe if you think about it in these terms: when was the last time that you sat down with a friend or family member to chat instead of shooting them a quick text message? What do you do more often: a phone call or a social networking post? Do you usually shoot off an e-mail or do you focus on writing a letter? That’s just in terms of our relationships here. How does that translate into our relationship with God? In this world filled with the “quick fix” and the “easy communication,” we’ve lost this skill to truly be intimate and connect on a deep level with those around us. If we can’t even do that with the people that surround us, how can we possibly hope to do that with a God Who speaks not in the fire, the earthquake or the thunder but in the gentle whisper? Things get so garbled in our noisy world we’ve resigned ourselves further and further into alienation from those around us, from our true selves and ultimately from our God.

The desire for intimacy is so deeply ingrained into all of who we are in the innermost depths of our humanity. St. Augustine began his confessions with one of the most widely recognized quotes of all time, “Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in you.” People have been searching for all of human history for the answer to the deep hunger within ourselves. We turn to possessions, to power, to lust, to gluttony and all manner of other little gods that we continue to carry around with us, unknowingly sometimes, instead of turning and truly delving into the life-changing relationship with the Lord or life Himself. We want to be intimate. There’s an intrinsic need to be intimate with someone and have that intimacy returned. Words cannot express how gratifying or uplifting it is to have at least one other person to be able to love totally and unconditionally and know without a doubt that you will be loved in the same way.

So there is this problem, this yearning, this deep-seeded desire for intimacy. It’s there, and some people choose to deny it and look to passing things to satisfy. The true question you have to answer for yourself is this: what or who am I deeply intimate with? Some people have love affairs with their addictions, others jump from relationship to relationship “knowing” that will satisfy and still others completely deny it and lock their hearts away until they become cold, bitter and hardened. Is this the life that we’re meant to live? Are we supposed to pour ourselves into these things repeatedly always feeling empty yet compulsively coming back for more? Does living like that really count as life or is it mere existence?

Within ourselves there is a longing that cannot be satisfied by any means we have. We are made in the image and likeness of God, which means that there is this part of us that is ongoing and eternal. As such, there’s part of us that simply cannot be satisfied in mere earthly things. St. Iraneus of Lyons said once, “The glory of God is man fully alive.” Without this intimacy, without this deep love being given and reciprocated we cannot be fully alive. God brings about all things for His glory, the question becomes whether or not we will participate with it. God wants you to be fully alive to bring about glory and honor to His name. Do you want to be fully alive?