the bearable lightness of being...

Waiter: I think God sometimes gives us opportunities rather than answers.

Joan Baxter: What do you mean? Why wouldn’t God just grant our prayers?

Waiter: When you pray for patience do you think God just gives you patience? Or does He give you the opportunity to learn patience? When you pray for your family to love one another, do you think God gives you a loving family? Or does He gives you opportunities to learn to love each other?

If you’ve ever watched the movie Evan Almighty, you’ll most likely remember this rather rich (and paraphrased) dialogue between Morgan Freeman as God pretending he’s a waiter in a local restaurant while talking with Lauren Graham’s character, Joan Baxter, as she sits in the restaurant troubled over the comical state of her husband who’s building an ark in modern-day upstate New York.

At issue was the prayer she had prayed in the beginning of the movie asking God for her family to become closer throughout the upcoming events of her husband assuming a new job. Morgan Freeman’s God character casts an interesting light on how prayers might be addressed by an active, participating and loving God.

I’ve been praying for a while to have times of quiet…rest…stillness. Anything to free me up from the daily rigors of waking early in the morning to commute off to work, leave work to commute to class and sit through class until late at night only to return home to get started on homework or focus on my church internship.
Those who’ve known me over the last year or so have seen that stillness elude me all too often as well as the effects of burnout.

What I’ve seen from the last week here in DC with Boo is how God doesn’t always give you what you’re asking for in prayer but instead God grants opportunities to experience what you’re asking for. Here at our new apartment, we’re without a TV, about a mile and a half from the nearest train station, and surrounded by luscious forests and rolling hills. It’s been a retreat of sorts for me and Booyeon. A chance for us to calm our pace, collect our breath and experience peace and stillness.

We’ve eaten lunch and dinner together in Wesley’s cafeteria each night in front of floor to ceiling windows overlooking the green campus. We’ve taken long walks to and from Tenleytown, a local town center, to enjoy great local meals. I work from our apartment and take my lunch breaks either napping with Booyeon or simply talking with her about her “vacation schedule.”

And through it all I’ve appreciated God’s gift of providential opportunity rather than providence alone. I think it makes me feel as if I’m in participation with God rather than simply a recipient of God’s. It’s as if I was a child who wanted a bicycle. And my father or mother offered to build the bike with me instead of just giving me a new bike they buy from the store. There comes with the process of building an experience of relationship—talking, sharing, laughter, struggle. Throughout the building process, I feel closer with God—able to share with God through the experience rather than simply the result.