He's Still There (Even When You Can't Feel Him)

In the homily today something was said around the idea (and I phrase it this way so quotes aren't misrepresented by me) that there is no greater hope than the hope that our sins can be forgiven. I sat with that for the rest of Mass & I think I'll carry it into this week too.

I don't say that casually. I say it as someone who lived it and still does. I felt it in the reception without judgment from our church these last years & I still feel it within our community as I grow imperfectly towards heaven. That kind of love is disarming in the best way. The kind that meets you where you are, sees every single thing you've done & every version of yourself you've tried to outrun, and still says come anyway. I don't think I'll ever stop being undone by it honestly.

I've been wanting to talk about what's been happening since Jon's baptism bc if you've been following along you may have noticed I've been a little quieter than usual. Since Easter Vigil I've felt this weird disconnection from God. Like the line just went silent. And for someone who spent the last 2 years basically drowning in His presence, I could not wrap my brain around it 😆.

So I started thinking about this. As someone in recovery I know what dopamine feels like... may have chased it for a year or a decade 😆. And the Holy Spirit was giving me those hits on repeat for 2 solid years. It started with learning how to actually meet God in personal prayer, like not just reciting things but sitting with Him, which grew from 20 minutes to close to an hour a day without me even forcing it. Then starting to go to Adoration regularly & feeling Him there in a way I genuinely did not expect. Then our run with celibacy as Jon & I weren't married yet, which was not easy & also brought up a lot of healthy tension between us that actually pushed us closer bc it had me talking to Jon about my faith in ways I never had in 10 years together. Because God is hard to explain to someone who isn't there yet & I had been protecting that part of myself without even realizing it. Then getting married. Then Jon telling me he was joining Catholic classes. Then Jon getting baptized at Easter Vigil which was the single most beautiful night of my entire life. Other things we'll one day share about when God says go, but for now are ours. And then... nothing. Just quiet 😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨.

I want to be honest that the first 2 weeks of that quiet were genuinely hard. There were Sundays I didn't want to go to Mass. There was a moment I nearly stepped out of the communion line because I felt so disconnected I wasn't sure I should even be there. That's a vulnerable thing to admit but I think it matters bc I don't want anyone reading this to think that spiritual aridity only happens to people who are far from God. Sometimes it happens right after the most beautiful moment of your life & that's its own kind of disorienting.

I've had time to sit in it though & here's what I think is happening, not because God told me directly but because I've been watching the last 10 years play out from a new vantage point. For a long time I was the one holding our family together in faith. The one carrying it, praying over it, talking about it to anyone who would listen except the person sleeping next to me, bc again, God is hard to explain to a nonbeliever & I didn't know how Jon would receive it so I just... didn't go there. For 10 years I carried it mostly alone & I think I got really used to that role. It became part of how I understood myself in our marriage & in our family.

And now Jon is stepping into who he was made to be. He is the God fearing man I prayed for & he is here & he is leading our family spiritually in a way that is so genuinely good it almost caught me off guard. And I am learning what it actually means to let him lead in that category. Not just saying the words but actually exhaling into it. Actually submitting in the most freeing, non-degrading, genuinely beautiful sense of that word. And maybe, just maybe, my whole self is exhaling in ways I don't fully have language for yet. My body is holding itself differently. There's something loosening that I didn't even know was held tight.

And I think that loosening is part of why the quiet makes sense. When you've been the one gripping something for 10 years & you finally get to set it down, there's an adjustment period. You don't just immediately know what to do with your hands.

I think the silence is an invitation. Not punishment. Not distance. An invitation to find God outside the feeling.

Because faith isn't just for the moments when you feel it (hard lesson, took me longer than I'd like to admit). He is there even when it doesn't feel like anything. Even in the dry Masses. Even when prayer feels like talking to a ceiling. Even when the dopamine stops & you're just sitting there wondering if you made the whole thing up. He's still there.

Today is Ascension Sunday & it just clicked for me (my brain takes time to get things okay 😆). Jesus left. He literally ascended & left His people standing there watching Him go. And that could have felt like abandonment. I imagine it did for a moment. But He left so the Holy Spirit could come & fill them in a way they weren't ready for before. He left so they'd be prepared for something bigger than what they could hold in that moment. He didn't leave them behind, He set them up.

And I keep sitting with that bc maybe that's what this quiet season is for me. Maybe I needed to stop getting the dopamine hits so I could learn to find Him in the stillness. So I could learn that He doesn't only show up in the mountaintop moments. So I could stop gripping the evidence & just trust.

I keep coming back to a prayer I learned from Mother Olga, "empty me, fill me, use me." Lately when I've been going to Adoration & sitting in prayer at church I've been asking Him to empty me of the greed of needing to feel Him to believe He's there. Because that's what it is honestly, greed. I got so used to the feeling that I started to confuse the feeling with Him & those aren't the same thing. So I ask Him to empty me of that. To empty me of any doubt that creeps in when things go quiet. To empty me of any disbelief that tries to convince me I imagined all of it. And then just fill me. Fill me with so much love for Him that it spills out without me even trying. That it shows up in how I speak to my kids on a hard day. In how I love Jon. In ways I don't even plan for or see coming. And then use me. In whatever way I'm supposed to be used that I don't fully know yet. Because I genuinely believe I'm still being prepared for something & I don't need to know what it is yet. I just have to stay.

So that's where I'm at... not resolved. A little bit sick this week which didn't help anything 😆😮‍💨. But real & still here & still showing up to Mass even on the Sundays where it feels like going through the motions, bc I've learned enough by now to know that showing up is sometimes the whole prayer.

If you're in a quiet season right now I just want you to know you're not off track. The silence isn't the end of the story. He's still there. It's just not a feeling.

And there is no greater hope than the hope that our sins can be forgiven. I needed that reminder today & maybe you did too.