Installment 2: jesus

ways in which I feel god

The two ways I feel God the most are through signs & in/through other people.

I can write about the signs I have gotten from God over the years forever & I honestly might do an entire essay collection on different instances. I was never big on praying for signs until I went on a pilgrimage to Spain in March 2019, tried it a few times, & was overwhelmed with the results. I try not to do it often because I do not want to take advantage of ~God’s Power~ or ask for too much, but praying for signs is huge.

To me, there are two types of signs. The signs you ask for & the signs you don’t. I am here to talk about the signs you don’t, the ones we experience in passing. The ones we don’t always pay attention to.

I attribute everything in life to God. Every crack on the sidewalk, every bee that flies near me, & every lemon on the tree in my backyard. When I am driving & “The Middle” by Jimmy Eat World comes on shuffle, I know that is a sign from God. For what? I am not always sure, but it is a sign of something. It honestly usually makes me feel like I am not alone & should keep actively trying to be better. God is the yellow lights I almost made but did not (I always think of red lights as moments to slow down & take deep breaths), God is seeing a black hair tie on a seat in a plane in Paris (a good story for later), & God is finding the gluten free Joe-Joe’s in the pantry you forgot about. God is the butterfly that landed on my hand while I was journaling outside a few weeks ago & God is finding the puzzle piece you have been looking for. When I check the time at 3:16, you cannot convince me it has nothing to do with my savior.

I also actively feel God through others. People are fundamental to my life & I hope you feel the same way. Connecting others with my faith has been life-giving & world-changing.

Whenever I would get a weird feeling to walk a different way to class & ran into someone I know & love, I would feel God. Whenever I got bored during my daily routine & decided to get a muffin from the den & end up seeing someone I hadn’t caught up with in a while, I would always know it was God. A few weeks ago I was having a miserably awful day, finally worked up the willpower to FaceTime a friend, & he ended up reading me a few paragraphs from a book & the words he recited were absolutely what I needed to hear at that moment. I knew it was God working. He made me cry. When I wake up to texts from my Jesus friends about bible verses, when I am thinking about someone & they call me, or when I run into someone at a grocery store, that is God. God is the man who was running outside my house last Sunday who smiled & said hi to me. God is the friends you met at the perfect time & God is the companions you don’t talk to every day or every week, but love so dearly.

God is the sunset & the sunrise & when people remember little details about you, reminding you how cared for you are. God is timing, circumstance, & everywhere. God is every challenge, every celebration, & always an invitation. One of my favorite things about God is God is all the times I have looked back and thought “I had no idea what was going on in my life then, but I get it now”. The trials that turned into something beautiful.

This is not to say I live my life constantly being like, "thanks, God! You rock!". I still get frustrated with situations & circumstances often & actively have to remind myself to trust more. But it does bring me comfort to know God always has my back (& God has your back, too).

God is all the little things you can't explain & all the times you were not grateful for something initially, but it ended up being a beautiful blessing. God is a beautiful blessing.

MY FAITH IS NOT PERFECT

I’m Christian. I have two religious tattoos, bible verses in my Instagram bios, & never skip church (not only do I not skip church, I went to church twice on Sundays pre-COVID). My internal dialogue is a prayer & my friends have told me it’s annoying I “make everything about Jesus”. I listen to worship music, was the president of a bible study, & started converting to Catholicism when I was 20. I did two & a half Ignacio Companions trips (Guyana 2018, Cambodia 2019, & Peru 2020), went on a pilgrimage to Spain, did De Colores (a weekend service trip to Tijuana), two Jesuit silent retreats, volunteered at First Year Retreat, have participated in & lead Kairos, went to RE Congress (the biggest Catholic conference in the nation), the blessing of the holy oils in Downtown LA, I have gone to mass in a Campus Minister’s apartment, given a talk at eXaLT, volunteered at Feed the Hungry, & was a part of Christian Life Community. I went to The Well every week my senior year, volunteer at my church every chance I get, & am reading the Bible. I can recite various bible verses & love asking others about their faith (or lack thereof). People come to me often for advice about Christianity & I am often called to speak for Christians/give “the Christian perspective”. Simply put: Jesus is everything to me & people know.

But my faith is not perfect. I have days where I do not feel connected to God & I have days I question whether or not converting to Catholicism was right for me. I have days I do not want to be challenged, days reading the Bible feels like a chore, & days I get distracted & do not pay attention to my faith life at all. I have moments I wish I could participate in various twenty-something cultures & not get questioned about it (“surprised to see you here! aren’t you like super religious?”), days where waking up early for church is the last thing I want to do, & days I get annoyed when I’m asked how I view something as “a Christian woman” when I usually just feel like a person. I even have days I get annoyed by God’s workings in my life & don’t want to have anything to do with God at all.

I’m open about my relationship with Jesus for a reason, but I don’t want anyone to think my faith is perfect or that I don’t question things or sometimes stare at a church & feel nothing. I question the Catholic Church all the time & like to challenge priests & pastors by asking hard questions, but sometimes the hard questions stump me & I start to think my life would be easier, more fun, or crazier without Jesus. I don’t like being seen a some token “good girl”, being stereotyped as judgemental, or when people assume I’m something I’m not simply because of my savior. Sometimes I feel restless & want to get belligerently drunk at a party & do something crazy just to do something crazy. I don’t always enjoy being “the Jesus girl”. Sometimes I miss how I used to be before all of this.

But ultimately, at the end of the day, I know why I live the way I do & I love it. My life with Jesus is so much better than my life ever was without him & I know having faith is a gift from God. My faith isn’t perfect, but it makes everything worth it.

Something right

This past year I started asking myself questions instead of asking others questions about me & became so comfortable with “Lizzie” that I truly stopped caring about what people think about me. Yes, I want people to like me, but that’s not my motivation. I just want to glorify God in any & every way I can & goodness will hopefully stem from that. I can’t please everyone & I don’t really want to. If I’ve learned anything from my sobriety & my faith this year, it’s that if you are Christian & you’ve devoted your life to Jesus, your life isn’t going to look like everyone else’s life around you. You shouldn’t “fit into the culture” & be loved & accepted by everyone because the things that are important to you & what you believe is different. Yes, I want people to like me, but if I’m truly devoting my like to Jesus, it’s going to look different than the popular culture. I cannot be afraid to share the things I believe when it’s the whole purpose of my life. The purpose of my life is not to please everyone, it is to share my life with others & show Jesus’s love through everything I do. And, ultimately, if that makes me less popular & less accepted…I think that’s a good testament to the fact that I’m doing something right.