Our Whiny, Wearying Blindness

Third Sunday of Advent - Year A

Readings on the USCCB Website

It can take a long time to hear God.

Mostly because I can be so incredibly deaf.

I cried out in my prayer for years for female friendship in the Church.

First, God sent a very good friend (Hi, Hannah!), a friend who has a gift for building communities of women in the Church. And I saw community blossom around me. (Hi, young women’s group!)

But I whined at God that I still needed female friends. I guess I’m at least partially blind, because this community of women filled my home almost to bursting every week, but I didn’t really see them.

So, God used my very good friend to bring me into another community of women who loved me and led me into retreats and spiritual practices where I have experienced miraculous healing. (Hi, All Things Women!)

But I am, I guess, related to the princess from the fairy tale, “The Princess and the Pea,” because I told God almost continuously how it didn’t feel quite right.

God shrugged His shoulders. If those weren’t the right communities, He would bring me to another. Our family moved across the country.

He brought me into another community of women who were just like me in so many ways. (Hi, co-op friends!) But I continued to groan at God about my great need.

And so, He gave me another community. (Hi, pilgrim friends!) And still I whined – they were so far away.

And so, another. (Hi, book club friends!)

And another. (Duh, I have the most incredible gift of daughters babbling away in my home every single day.)

Suddenly, I realized recently that I am surrounded by female, Catholic friendship almost everywhere I turn. I may be the most ungrateful daughter of God ever or at least the dumbest.

God has continued to answer my prayer until I couldn’t ignore the answer even if I tried (and we’ve all seen here that I tried for a good, long, stubborn time). Oh, how sometimes I am an ornery child in my relationship with God.

I am absolutely, 100%, without a shadow of doubt, sure that I weary God. Sometimes, it takes a neon sign of happiness before I notice all the ways God supplied my needs while I whined about my neediness.

Fortunately, whininess doesn’t void God’s love for us. God doesn’t roll his eyes at our ridiculous requests like I do my own children’s (oh, yes, you for sure are so deprived my dearest tween who isn’t allowed that cool thing). God hears us and delights in us. Even a whiney prayer is still a prayer.

How quickly I forget that God is reliable and keeps His promises forever. That’s what all the complaining comes down to – I have forgotten the goodness of God and His promises. I get so rusty with ingratitude until all I can see is what I lack.

How thankful I am for the Advent season where God reminds me, year after year, that He always keeps His promises to his whole tribe of whiny complainers. Every single last Ahaz-like one of us.

Ahaz is king while Israel is falling. (He’s the king in the first reading who refuses to ask God for a sign.) Two great enemies are sweeping away His power. He’s making earthly allegiances in order to try to save himself and his people. He’s strategizing and using all his military power to try to protect his kingdom. He recognizes and uses everything he can to his advantage, but he worries and worries. Nothing he does is enough.

Ahaz has no peace. He prays and when God responds, he refuses to do what God asks him to do, like every whiny two-year-old who refuses the treat they’ve just cried about for an hour. “I don’t want a sign,” he says, “I want my kingdom, and I’ll find my own way to get it.”

The prophet Isaiah’s response makes no sense on a human level. God will solve the problem of protecting the Kingdom of Israel with a miraculous baby? What? But it turns out, the only way out of every whiny, peace-lacking, worried-induced problem we have is this one baby. It’s Jesus.

Ahaz’s solution is already speaking to him but he refuses to surrender control to God. The solution to my problem, my desire for more female Catholic friends, was with me the whole time. It’s like when we need a pair of glasses and we’re running around everywhere looking for them and they’re already on our heads. God is always the answer. Our present life is always the place we’ll find Him. But we overanalyze the past and micromanage the future rather than sit with Him and His Son in the present.

In this final week leading up to Christmas, I hope those glasses you’re searching for slip off your forehead and onto your nose. Even if just for a second, may you see the world as God sees it. With delight and beauty, with unshakeable peace because the victory over every bad and terrible pain has already been won, with His never-ending love. I hope you hear God ask you to choose His Son over your answers, and I hope you surrender even for just a moment. Every hope for salvation is built on little surrenders.