In life we have groups that we choose, and those that are chosen for us. As children, we choose our playmates based on those we are in class with or what activities we join, or from our neighborhood.
It is the same for adults, but we have an added category of the social groups our children join as we shepherd them to and from these events. We are asked to get involved and help them prosper.
As a homeschool mom, for many years, I have shied from many of these groups, preferring my quiet, carefully cultivated circle of comfortable friends. But God blew that away with one whisper of a breath.
It is comforting to choose our friends, whom we will walk with and who will help us grow into who we were made to be. I have been blessed over the years to walk with many faithful friends who have lifted us in prayer, laughed and cried with us and through whom we have been made better people. It is a beautiful life, and one for which I am very grateful.
However, during the past year, I have been wrestling with a growing discontent in my heart. I searched long and hard, wondering what could be causing it, and I found the answer in the prophet Jonah.
Jonah was called by God to go to Nineveh but didn’t go, at least not when first asked. He had his own judgments against the Ninevites, who were part of the Assyrian empire. Perhaps he was afraid and was also quite comfortable being the known prophet in the northern kingdom of Israel.
So, he chooses to go the other way and heads the opposite direction of where God is calling him. The ship he is on finds such stormy seas that the sailors throw Jonah overboard as he states he is the cause. God sends a whale, and Jonah sits in the belly of the whale for three days and three nights.
As Christians, we see the prefiguration of the resurrection written into the story. However, I found myself compelled during the past year to examine the call of Jonah.
God called Jonah to go somewhere uncomfortable, to be with people who were perhaps rough around the edges, people who were different than him. He knew the Ninevites’ brokenness, and He also knew Jonah’s. Here’s where I have rested. God knew the Ninevites needed saving, and He also knew Jonah did, too.
Perhaps like me, Jonah was growing too comfortable in his carefully cultivated bubble, and God called him out. Perhaps like Jonah, my time in the belly of the whale where I have wrestled, cried tears of pain, anger, abandonment and loneliness was meant to open my heart to God’s new call.
My children are getting older now and are involved in sports, acting, jobs and many other activities that have asked for a commitment from me. My immediate “yes” came out of a desire to love and serve my children, but God knew how to get me.
It is through my mother’s heart that he caught me. It is in my desire to model love to my children that He found me, and it is in the recognition of my own judgment and brokenness that He is healing me.
This year, I find myself attending Mass in different places and forming new relationships. I am sharing much time outside my bubble with people who do not know the Lord and many who do, but differently than I am used to.
There are times I am uncomfortable to add the word “Christian” as I tell my story, and yet every time I do, God boldly reveals a conversion of heart toward Him, a window into someone’s soul that has allowed His grace to flow and heal.
Who am I to stand in the way of that gift? Who am I to even be the conduit of that grace, but God does not choose the equipped. He whispers, guides, prods and pushes us into sharing His love, and here’s the kicker. We are transformed in doing so; not just changed but transformed.
We stand tall in the identity of prophet that each one of us receives at our baptism. Have you had a moment in your life where you feel fully alive, living wholly in who you were created to be? For me, it has been in the desire for something more, the recognition that something was off, the wrestling with what I saw happening and who I was called to be, and God is speaking life into that.
Fortunately, right now, I am not being asked to move my family across the world to go preach the Gospel. Instead, I am being asked to join the PTO, work at a concession stand, sell tickets, plan fundraisers and help with costumes. It is here that I encounter people who are changing me for the good and who, through God’s grace, are encountering His love through that “yes.”
