How I Know God

I knew God through the stories my mother read to me when I was a little girl: Jesus walking on water, helping the Samaritan woman, letting the children get close. I knew God when I prayed the Hail Mary before falling asleep, when I sang “Silent Night, Holy Night” while holding a sparkler in front of our Nativity Set on Christmas Eve. I knew God on Confirmation day when the dark brown cross around my neck threw a shadow on the long white robe I was wearing. The pictures that day show me serious and focused, a red rose in my hand, symbol of God’s unconditional love. I was too young to understand;
all I heard were the priest’s lectures about sin, redemption, and human unworthiness.

I avoided God through countless hours spent in cathedrals and monasteries all around France, listening to my parents’ depiction of devotion and sacrifice in the Middle Ages. I preferred the safety of the post card stand in the narthex and the timid lights of candles, 10 cents for a prayer heard and received…”Get me out of here!” I avoided God while practicing with the church choir and dreaming of mass-free Sundays and late breakfasts. The sound of the guitar in those icy walls never managed to warm my heart to His enduring presence.

I swapped God for the race to success and the whirlwind of London’s financial markets. Professional achievement filled my heart with pleasure and left my soul unsatisfied. I swapped God for the careless attentions of men who never tried to know me; for the mirage of a carefully decorated interior that never reflected the wildness of my most secret hopes: true union instead of fleeting friendships, aloneness instead of loneliness.
I spread my wings away from home and yearned for the wind that would lift them to new heights. I did not know that it had to blow from within.

I heard God whisper in the generous smile of my future husband; in the pure voice that sang the ‘Ave Maria’ after we exchanged our wedding vows; in the giggles of my beloved children as the mighty wave of love rising inside me changed me forever. I heard Him whisper as I held my father’s hand on his hospital bed. I watched in wonder as four days of closeness erased years of discipline and distance and awakened forgiveness in my heart. I said goodbye on a freezing January morning finding comfort in my conviction that he remained by my side, a proud witness of my uneven steps towards Grace.

I prayed to God as the flood of grief threatened to drown me, as I watched my mother lose herself in a somber world of despair and blame. I counted on the life line she forgot to throw. I was the child pushed into the pool of her own fears and doubts. I had to touch the bitter bottom before I finally pushed myself up for a breath of fresh air. I prayed to God that I would remember to cherish all His blessings; that I would rediscover the light that shimmered in the Christmas sparklers of my childhood. The path promised to be tortuous and filled with questions but walking it felt better than floating aimlessly in a hostile ocean.

I cried to God when the images sent by my wounded brain frightened me more than the roaring in my ears; when the endless spinning made me wonder if the world would ever be a safe place for me again. I cried to God when I woke up at night surrounded by shadows that painted my future in a pallet of anger and frustration. I could not make sense of a blow that left me utterly broken; little did I know that mending my body would leave a few holes open whereby my inner spirit would escape and start talking. The tears would not fertilize a desert. They gently moistened my soul: it burgeoned and grew, smiling and telling me not to be afraid. I cried to God as joy found a corner in which to rest, as His messengers explained to me that it was there to stay, that it had found its home.

I thanked God for the relief of walking unsupported and sleeping peacefully through the night; for the opportunity to find out who I truly was and for the loved ones allowing me to follow my heart. I thanked Him for showing me how illness and struggle could lead to creativity; he gifted me with words and the desire to write them. They are an expression of His love for me and I’m grateful for the chance to discover the person I was meant to be. I thank God every day for the miraculous world around me and the love that I receive with every breath I take. I thank Him for finding me worthy of spreading it like a cloud of endless energy reaching the ones in need of what I can give.

I know God through his words in the Bible: “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength”* I know Him when my eyes are closed and my body is filled with gold and trumpets, when the joyful song in my heart explodes in a harmony of fulfilled desires and answered prayers. He is with me when my teenage daughter’s silence shatters my heart in a million fragments, when my friend refuses to accept the absence of a well loved husband, when I meditate in church, or when I make French toasts for breakfast. I know God because He wants me to know Him. He shows His face in every word I write. I know God because I’m alive and I pay attention.
*Isaiah 30.15

This post was submitted by Maryse Godet Copans.

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