On the bus ride back up from SEEK 2013, there was an “open mic” where were invited to share a testimony of our experience. I didn’t go up because I hadn’t known what to say, or rather, how to put it into words, but this is what I think would have spilled out if I had gone up.
It started I think with what I learned from the “Greatest Adventure: The Disciples on the Road to Emmaus as a School of Prayer” talk, from Father Scott Traynor. He mentioned something I’d never heard before—telling God about your dreams, talking with him about what’s going on and your desires. The past twenty years I’ve been alive, I had always figured, everything I have to tell Him about, He already knows… so why waste His time? It never even occurred to me that He would care to hear it from me directly. And not only does He care—but He WANTS to hear it from me. Because Love is endlessly fascinated with every detail of the beloved.
I took this to heart when I entered Eucharistic Adoration. For the first time, I started telling God everything, writing out in my journal anything that I was moved to spill out. It was probably the most honest and intimate prayer I’d ever experienced. And by opening my heart just a crack, God was able to push the rest of it open for me and fill me up.
And let me tell you. I don’t know if I was experiencing His love at its fullest, but in that moment, His love definitely hit me at the most ferocity it ever has in my entire life. Everything I had, every blessing in the form of another person or experience, everything was a gift from Him. And all of that was even AFTER He had already come to earth and died for me, died just because He couldn’t bear to spend an eternity without me. Pondering those, along with the words “endlessly fascinated” repeating over and over in my mind…
It’s often hard for me to understand all that love, but in that moment, I did, and it brought me to the floor in tears, knowing that I was so unworthy of it all, and that I had nothing to give that would ever amount to a “fair trade”. I had an overwhelming desire to give myself over completely. I felt myself saying and meaning it from everything in me: I know it’s not enough, but take my entire life—I surrender it to You.
Even as I prayed it then, I knew I might lose sight of His love again, and might feel like retracting that surrender—so I also added that, even if I forgot the reason, I prayed that I would never forget the decision I made, and the conviction I made it with. That I would live for my God, who loves me. That I would recognize that everything I have is a gift from Him, and use it to glorify Him. And also that I keep the Lord present in everything I do. AND be joyful about it!
I'll be what God made me to be, which is the best version of myself. And I will set the world on fire!
