Abandonment to Divine Providence

Or: what if I just gave *everything* to God?

Author's note: I apologize for sending this out on Friday rather than the usual Thursday. I had a piece ready to send out yesterday morning; but on re-reading it, I realized that it wasn't up to snuff. I always figure I owe you all my best work, so I trashed the old piece and took some time to write something new instead.

When one of my friends was 7 years old, her parents went through a messy divorce. As my friend's life was collapsing around her, as chaos replaced order and the whirlwind of uncertainty swirled around her, she realized that she had a choice. She could trust God with nothing; after all, God had put her in this situation, had allowed this collapse of the firm pillars of her little life, and she was understandably upset. Or, in the midst of the upheaval, she could decide to trust God with everything.

She chose to trust God with everything…and she never looked back.

It's taken me 27 years longer than it took my friend, but I'm starting to make the same choice.

I've dealt with a lot of fear in my life. Partly that's residual. I was abused as a child. I was suicidal on and off for much of my teens and 20s; which is to say, something lives in my brain that has frequently tried its best to kill me. I'm a recovering addict. Even this past season, as readers know, has been rough.

That is: a lot of my formative experiences were of the world as a terrifying place; and even though my world now is a whole lot safer than it was when I was younger, the tendrils of fear can still wrap themselves around me as tightly as a straightjacket.

Part of my fear might also be situational. I'm a freelance author; which is amazing and the career of my dreams, but also very dicey. My income can fluctuate by about $1,500 per month. Some months I can make $4,000 (not bad for one half of a married couple living in an apartment and trying to save for kids) and some months I can make $2,500 (which is substantially scarier). When one of my biggest publishers went MIA for 3 months last year, I just didn't get paid by them no matter how much I wrote.

A few weeks ago, my fear about money and the world in general hit a peak; and in the midst of this fear, I tried an unwitting experiment.

First, I decided that I could no longer trust God to provide. Yes, God had gotten me here, I let my fear tell me; to an amazing apartment in the mountains and a wonderful wife and a life of paddle boarding and martial arts and good food. But all of that wasn't going to be enough this year. If we were serious about saving money to have kids, then I needed to take matters into my own hands.

So for a week I tried to do just that.

And it was awful. I cut everything out of my life that didn't make money, no matter how strongly I felt God calling me to it. I focused on banging out as many article as I possibly could. And it was miserable. I worked until 11pm every night, but somehow I didn't get very much done. Over the course of that whole week, I wrote maybe 2-3 half-decent pieces. I was scared and pissed off and I could barely focus. Writing, for the first time ever, didn't feel joyful and life-inducing; instead it felt draining, like just one more grind.

My marriage suffered too—obviously, since I was working so late every night. My body ached from all the pent-up fear and frustration that came with trying to carry the weight of the world on my own shoulders.

I felt like I was living the judgment that God pronounced on Adam when He cast Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden.

"Because of what you have done, the ground will be under a curse. You will have to work hard all your life to make it produce enough food for you. It will produce weeds and thorns, and you will have to eat wild plants. You will have to work hard and sweat to make the soil produce anything, until you go back to the soil from which you were formed" (Genesis 3:17-19, Good News Translation).

It was a lot of toil for very little fruit.

After about a week, I came to my senses. And a question occurred to me. If trusting God with nothing hadn't worked, what would happen if I trusted God with everything?

So I did.

I took as my new North Star two points, borrowed from Father Jean-Pierre de Caussade's wonderful book Abandonment to Divine Providence:

1) Nothing can happen that God does not will; or, at the least, allow.

2) God loves me and the ones I care about more than I can possibly know.

If I took the above as axiomatic, then it seemed like the only right conclusion was to turn my entire life over to God. After all, I worship a being who is infinitely intelligent, who knows and can forsee all things, and who loves deeply and wants nothing that isn't good for me. Faced with that awareness, what in God's name was I doing trying to run my life myself?

(To be clear, this wasn't me going from 0 to 60. Over the course of the past couple of years I've learned to trust God with more and more; to ask Him to guide me as I write articles or fiction, or to tell me what I should say in conversations. But this total abandonment to divine providence nonetheless took me to a level deeper in my trust).

Hearing Father Cassaude's description of God struck me as very similar to how Tim Gallaway (author of The Inner Game of Tennis) talks about Self 1 and Self 2. His Self 1 is what Christians might call the flesh or the false self, or what spiritual teachers like Eckhart Tolle might call the ego. Self 2 is the infinite intelligence that exists outside of us. As Gallaway writes in The Inner Game of Stress, "The problem in tennis—and, I came to see, in life—was that Self 1 was like a dime-store calculator trying to run the show, and in the process getting in the way of the performance of a billion-dollar super computer, Self 2."

I resolved, in every area of my life, to stop using the dime-store calculator and instead turn to the billion-dollar super computer for help.

Each morning when I wake up now, I pray to God something like the following: "Lord, I give you my entire life for the course of this day. Do with me as you will, because I know that your plans for me are infinitely better than my plans for me." I no longer keep a to-do list for the day. Instead, whenever I finish as task, I simply ask God, "What do You want me to do now?"

The experience has been absolutely transformative.

For one thing, I seem to get a lot more done. I've been experimenting with this approach for the past two weeks; and even though I spend a lot of the day resting or meditating or letting myself relax as I transition slowly between tasks, everything seems to get done. I'm writing a lot more articles. I'm writing a LOT more fiction. I'm getting through a lot of reading (which is important because that reading is a lot of what fuels my articles).

I'm in a state of rest, and at peace, and unhurried. And yet, everything gets accomplished.

Sometimes, time itself seems to expand—to dilate to become whatever God needs it to become for the day. Last Monday, for instance, I had the experience of just finding chunks of time throughout the day that I didn't know existed. I was able to go to three martial arts classes, write fiction, write an article, and answer emails—plus get a solid two hours of reading done. Looking back, I have no idea how it happened. The math doesn't seem to quite add up to a regular 24-your day.

Lots of times, when I turn my day over to God, I find that everything gets done just in the nick of time. I have to leave for martial arts at 6pm; and I can feel God inviting me to outline an article before I go. Somehow the outline gets done at exactly 5:57pm. Or I have a meeting to attend at 7:30pm, and I want to write fiction and knock out a quick work task before I do. Time will seem to arrange itself such that both tasks get done by 7:28pm.

It feels, of late, like I'm living the reality of what the famed philosopher Lao Tzu wrote over 2,000 years ago: "Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished."

But beyond just the productivity benefits, I feel a profound sense of peace throughout my day. Even as my body moves, my soul is at rest. I feel much less fear and anxiety, much less worry and doubt, than I used to.

I've even started giving those fear-based emotions to God, along with everything else. "God, I give you my worry over XYZ part of my life. Do with my worry as you will, knowing that your plans for my life are infinitely better than my plans." Generally, what God seems to do with my worries is to take them and replace them with peace.

In Life Without Lack, theologian Dallas Willard recommends that we spend a day with God.

"What is our part in dwelling with the Lord and living our days in such a way that goodness and mercy follow us in our wake? We move now from knowing to doing, from the idea of a life without lack into its reality. It is time to apply what we’ve been studying, and make plans to spend a day with Jesus. This will not be a day where you go away alone with him on a retreat; this will be a day when you invite him to stay with you throughout a normal 'day in the life of [insert your name here].'"

Pick an ordinary day this week; and when you wake up, take a few minutes to consciously turn your attention to God and turn your day over to Him. You can borrow my wording if you like, or use something a little more tried-and-true. I like the prayer of Thomas à Kempis, "As thou wilt; what thou wilt; when thou wilt." Turn your day over to God using whatever words most resonate with your soul.

It's not just words. As you feel the spirit of God filling you, commit in your own heart to commune with God and to act on His urgings as best you hear them throughout the course of the day.

And watch what happens.

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