I’ve found it a bit difficult to write this first blog post. Not because I have nothing to share, but because among all the things on my heart, I’m not quite sure what to share. My first month and a half in Ireland have been a whirlwind of busyness and rest as we dove right into ministry and community life, beginning with a pilgrimage to Knock two days after arriving. It has been incredibly joyful to get to know the parishioners and begin working in the schools, but it’s also been somewhat confusing to find my place in a foreign country that oddly doesn’t feel that foreign. Instead of experiencing culture shock, I’ve been more struck by how similar things are here compared to the US, and it still hasn’t fully sunk in that I’m thousands of miles and several time-zones away from home. That’s not to say I haven’t had my moments of homesickness, but overall, Ireland strangely doesn’t seem too different.
Contributing to this general sense of puzzlement is the fact that my faith has been difficult to navigate lately. This past year was a period of immense spiritual growth, during which I felt incredibly close to the Lord and had great consolation in spite of personal hardships. But now, those feelings of closeness have dissipated, leaving me in a spiritual drought where God seems abstract and distant. My soul still yearns for the Lord, but when I come to prayer, it’s almost as if I can’t find Him. The longing remains, rather unsatisfied, and I find myself stuck and unsure how to move forward. In the midst of the silence, it’s also hard to know where I stand with God. I begin to wonder, is He well-pleased with me? Or am I doing something wrong, causing this dryness myself? As a natural self-doubter, I often believe the latter, and these doubts make it difficult to believe in my heart that God is hearing me and working in my life. Yet even though I can’t feel it, and it sometimes feels as though I don’t believe it, I know that God is with me. And thankfully, in times of dryness and doubt, when my faith begins to waver, God graciously sends me small indications of His love and presence.
One of these indications came the other day, when I lost my flower ring. I have four rings I often wear together, and I typically put them in my coat pocket while in my room in the morning so I can put them on later once downstairs. On that particular day, all four rings were on my dresser, so I put them in my pocket as usual before heading down to the living room. When I pulled them out of my pocket, though, my flower ring was missing. I searched the house, but it hadn’t fallen on the floor, it wasn’t anywhere in my room, and it wasn’t tangled up anywhere in the crevices of my coat pocket; it had simply vanished. Emily had recently told me about some small, seemingly unimportant prayers she made that the Lord had answered, so in my search, I decided to say a small prayer that I would find the ring: “Lord, I know this isn’t a big deal, but that ring was rather special to me, and I would really like to find it.” Over the following days I continued to search for the ring to no avail. Then at the end of the week, while at Father Denis’ house for lunch, I was putting on my coat to leave and straightening out the belt when suddenly, I saw a ring on the floor. I figured one of my other rings that I had again put in my coat pocket (maybe I should stop doing that) had fallen out in all the jumbling, but the ring on the floor was my flower ring! I can’t explain how, after losing it in my own house several days prior, searching my whole coat over and shaking it out multiple times, and wearing the coat to and from work and town every day, that ring could’ve been stuck in it somewhere, gone unnoticed for days, and fallen out at the perfect moment for me to see it at Fr. Denis’ house, except that the Lord must’ve had a hand in it.
And the more I reflect on it, the more it makes perfect sense that it was the Lord answering my prayers, rather than some coincidence (which I also tend to wonder in moments of doubt). I had been praying throughout my time here that He teach me to trust Him, and that’s what He did. He reminded me of a few things about prayer that, though obvious, I seemed to be forgetting. The first: that the Lord does hear our prayers and does answer them. I think that lately, the prayers I’ve made have been more out of desperation, hoping that the Lord might hear and answer them, rather than out of faith, trusting that He will. Second: the Lord answers prayers in ways we don’t expect. Though perplexed by where the ring could possibly be, I was convinced that it had to be somewhere in our house, since that’s where I had lost it. I wouldn’t have even thought it possible for it to show up at Fr. Denis’ house, but that’s where I found it. And third: God answers prayers in His timing. When I pray, I tend to want immediate answers or results, but God has His own plans and timeline. Just because He doesn’t answer a prayer when I want Him to or think He should, doesn’t mean He won’t. I wasn’t looking for my ring while at Fr. Denis’ house and certainly wasn’t expecting or even hoping to find it at that moment, but that was when the Lord decided to answer my prayer. It surprised me, but pleasantly so, and though I had to wait, it was more providential than if I had immediately found it at home.
Moments like these have brought me slivers of consolation in the midst of my spiritual drought. They remind me that the Lord hears me, sees me longing for Him, and is working to bring me closer to Himself. More than that, God is reminding me to trust Him and remember the foundations of faith I’ve stood so firm in before. If He is even so attentive to our small, rather unimportant prayers, how much more attentive is He to the deeper prayers and longings in our hearts? This is something I’ll try to remember as I continue to say, and pray I may truly and fully mean: Jesus, I trust in You!
