Repetition

God repeats Himself with infinite patience because I am like an unruly teenager, who spends my time ignoring my God.

Christ the Bridegroom (Icon)

Recently, I had some quite significant surgery.  As part of my recovery from this surgery I was required to take it easy and slow things down.  Now, it would not take much to enforce this sort of requirement after that surgery, because the pain during the recovery in and of itself made it very difficult to rush my own recovery.

Instead of m=being able to run around, I was sort of hunched over for a while and concentrating on my deep breathing and the way that I was engaging the muscles in my arms and legs to support the weaknesses in my core.

While I was recovering at home – after coming home from the hospital – I was still a mother.  That meant that I was still required to talk to my children and get them to do all the things that I needed them to do.  Like most teenage children, they can take a few tries before they finally hear what I have to say to them.  For example, if I ask them to pick up the clothes in their rooms, they will usually ignore me for a few tries and then only action my request after multiple requests over an extended period of time.  This is not because they are lazy or stupid or even hard of hearing.  This is because at this stage of life they are experimenting with boundaries and are trying to work out if it is essential for them to listen to me or if they can get away with ignoring what I have to say a fair bit…

And because I have been slower and weaker than I usually am because I am recovering from this surgery, every time I had to repeat myself, I felt my frustration growing and my pain worsening.

And I have been thinking about this today as I have been thinking about how God repeats Himself with infinite patience because I am like an unruly teenager, who spends my time ignoring my God.

Over and again God tells me what He wants from me.  He does this through scripture, and He does this through the redirections of my life – moving me from one place to another, all while I complain and grumble along the way.  And He does this through all the different things that He allows into my life the GOOD and the bad that He turns to the GOOD…

And I have been thinking about that today.  Because my Beloved suffered and died for my sake.  And He suffers and dies for my sake during every single Mass.  And even despite such suffering for my sake, I ask Him to repeat himself over and over and over again – with complete disregard to the pain that this might cause to Him…

How terribly sad for my God.  How terribly sad and cruel this is…

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.