God Winks and Takesy-Backsies

I have always said that by the time I finally give something to God, it usually has claw marks in it.

I would love to tell you I am one of those people who prays about something, peacefully releases it into God’s hands and skips off into the sunset filled with faith and serenity. That has NOT historically been my process. Mine is more along the lines of praying about it, giving it to God, taking it back because I thought of one more thing, worrying about it for a while, giving it back, dissecting the situation from seventeen different angles, possibly writing several thousand words about it, and checking in one more time just to make sure God fully understands what I think should happen.

Surrender is a work in progress. So is change. We talk about healing and growth as though they move in some nice orderly direction, when my experience has been much messier. Two steps forward, one backward, three forward, four backward, sideways for a minute, followed by one really fantastic day where you think, Oh my God, I think I’m finally getting this, and another that makes you wonder why you even got out of bed that morning.

The strange thing is, once you start changing, doing things differently doesn’t necessarily feel better right away. Old patterns may not be healthy, but they’re familiar. We know what we normally do when somebody hurts us, scares us, disappoints us or pisses us off. There is a well-worn path between the feeling and the reaction.

Then you decide you don’t want to keep living that way anymore, and now what? You’re standing in the same kind of situation, trying not to reach for the old response. That can be incredibly uncomfortable, especially when you’re trying to figure out whether you’re setting a boundary or protecting your ego, listening to intuition or fear, letting something go or just avoiding it.

Nobody tells you enough about THAT part of healing.

When Faith Is Complicated…

Recovery has also taught me something about faith.

After life has rolled you around in the mud a few times, faith isn’t necessarily the easiest thing to reach for. Let’s face it, when enough shitty shit has happened to you, being told there is a peaceful, loving God watching over everything can be hard to reconcile with what you’ve actually lived through. Then someone tells you, Trust God.

But what if that is the very thing you’re struggling to do?

People arrive at faith from a million different places. Some don’t believe in God. Some aren’t sure. Some believe in something bigger than themselves but don’t know what to call it. Others have been wounded by religion itself. I’m not interested in judging any of that or telling somebody else what their spiritual journey is supposed to look like. I can only tell you about mine.

I’ve always believed in God. My problem wasn’t usually believing He existed. There were times when I had a much harder time believing I was worthy of Him. Shame can do that. I could believe in grace for everybody else while quietly imagining there was an asterisk next to my name, like other people were automatically eligible and I needed to submit additional documentation.

One thing I heard in recovery that has stuck with me is a very simple way of looking at G.O.D.:

Good Orderly Direction.

I love that because even when everything else feels complicated, I can understand good orderly direction. What’s the next right thing? Can I stay the course? Can I take direction from somebody who might know something I don’t? Can I screw up without turning the screwup into proof that I’ve failed? And, probably most importantly for me, can I remain teachable?

Because I can be a know-it-all. There, I said it. It is not my prettiest trait, and certainly not my favorite thing about myself.

There is a demolishment of pride that comes with genuinely trying to change your life. Being smart, capable, experienced and right about plenty of things does not mean you know everything. Sometimes what stands between you and growth is your absolute certainty that you’ve already figured it all out. I’m trying to get better at that—to listen, to be teachable, to start over where I need to start over and become a better version of myself than the one I’ve been living as.

It takes practice. A lot of it.

When the Old Stuff Starts Feeling Different

A while back I was with a group of friends when some familiar behavior started creeping into the conversation. Somebody wasn’t there, we had opinions about something they’d done, and before long the conversation was becoming less about the behavior and more about the person.

Taking somebody else’s inventory. 

We’ve probably all done it. Somebody hurts or angers us, and we want an audience. There is absolutely nothing wrong with talking to someone you trust and trying to work through what happened. But there is a point where processing can become prosecution, and suddenly we’re no longer saying, This hurt me. We’re building a case for why the other person is awful.

I know how to do that. When I’m angry, I can make one hell of a closing argument. Give me a grievance, supporting documentation and twenty minutes and apparently I’m ready for court.

But sitting there that day, I had a very clear thought: I don’t like how this feels.

And I was proud of that. Not because I’ve become too spiritually evolved to gossip and I’m now accepting applications for sainthood. What mattered was that I noticed it while it was happening. The behavior that once would have felt completely normal suddenly didn’t fit the same way.

To me, that’s healing too—not perfection, but awareness. That’s the shift.

And Then Came the Wink

All of this had already been working on me when Sunday came around.

I had been working on another piece about the difference between what we say we believe and what eventually shows up in how we live—how easy it is to talk about kindness, grace, faith, forgiveness, compassion and integrity when nobody is testing any of them.

The subject was hypocrisy, but I didn’t want it to become one more piece where I stood on a hill pointing down at everybody else behaving badly. Eventually the flashlight has to turn around.

What do you believe with your whole heart…and then occasionally suck at actually living out? 😆

That was very much on my mind when Billy and I went to church Sunday, and they started a series on the book of Jude.

Now, if you’re unfamiliar with Jude, it’s tucked near the end of the New Testament and it’s only one chapter long, but the little guy comes in hot. One of its central warnings is that not everybody who looks faithful, sounds faithful or claims spiritual authority is necessarily leading people somewhere healthy. Faith eventually has to mean something in the way we live and treat people.

And I’m sitting there thinking, Are you kidding me? I had literally been writing about this.

I looked over at Billy, who knew exactly what I’d been working on, and gave him one of those married-people looks where you can communicate an entire paragraph without saying a word.

Are you hearing this?

I hadn’t been studying Jude. I hadn’t known what they were going to talk about that morning. I had simply been wrestling with this idea on my own and, more importantly, trying to make sure I wasn’t using it as another sophisticated way of pointing a finger at somebody else.

Then there it was.

God wink.

And I want to clarify what I mean by that, because I don’t believe the message was:

Congratulations, Jessica. God has reviewed the evidence and would like you to know that you are correct and everybody else is an asshole.

Although written confirmation from the Almighty would have been extremely convenient in several situations throughout my life.

This didn’t feel like vindication. It felt like encouragement. More like, Keep looking at this. You’re paying attention to something that matters.

That’s what a God wink feels like to me.

Not necessarily a miracle. Not God spelling instructions across the sky. It’s something quieter: a sentence, a song, a conversation, a phone call, a piece of timing that connects so precisely with whatever has been stirring inside you that you stop for a second and think,

Okay, God. I hear You.

Call it coincidence if you want. I’m perfectly comfortable with that. I’m not here to argue anybody into my faith. I just wonder how many of these moments I’ve missed because I was waiting for something louder. I’ve spent plenty of time asking God for giant signs, clarity, answers and preferably detailed instructions. Apparently I would like faith to include tracking information and a delivery date.

Maybe it doesn’t work that way. Sometimes all I get is enough encouragement to take the next step, and lately, I think that’s enough.

Good Orderly Direction doesn’t mean perfect orderly execution. I can stumble, catch myself, learn something, get back up and keep moving. There will probably still be some claw marks along the way.

The God wink doesn’t have to mean God is changing everything around me. Sometimes it’s enough to notice how much He’s been changing me.