In high school, I thought there was never enough. I always wanted more: more success, more money, more popularity, more faith. To high school me, God was pretty much nonexistent. Mass and thoughts about faith were limited to Christmas and Easter. I only prayed when things were bad, so my prayer mostly sounded like, “God, please help me.” This form of prayer led me to associate God with the lows in my life. The God I had learned about in school and at church did not seem to exist—I was experiencing a God who was never enough.
Unsurprisingly, faith did not play a significant role in my first year at Boston College. But I liked the idea of having faith and started to dip my toes into a couple faith communities. By the spring of my sophomore year, it seemed I had slipped and sunk a little too deep. By a weird, unexpected turn of events, I was preparing to lead Ignite, a faith-based retreat.
To put it frankly, I was not excited. I hoped to make it through the retreat having put in as little work as possible. But when another leader fell ill the day before, I found myself scrambling. I offered to write a substitute witness talk, and of course, I got stuck writing one on prayer. How was I, someone who never prayed, supposed to write a talk on this subject? With the help of other leaders and directors who taught me their favorite prayers and made me more aware of ways I prayed regularly without even realizing it, I somehow found things to talk about.
At Mass after the retreat, I decided to pray with one of the new ways to pray that I had learned that weekend––I started by thanking God for something that happened that week. Next, I asked for help with something I was worried about. Finally, I tried to remember a moment where I was in awe of God’s creation or especially aware of God’s presence in my life.
This last one really stumped me; I could not seem to think of anywhere I had seen God— ever. So I remembered something else a friend said to me that weekend, “There’s no such thing as coincidences. Coincidences are just the Holy Spirit at work in our lives.” As I reflected on a recent coincidence and tried to analyze how I could attribute that coincidence to God, something clicked. I was overcome by a powerful rush of peace and joy! Suddenly, I had this strange, new feeling that God was there.
That week, I started to attend Candlelight Mass to continue getting to know kids I had led on Ignite. Since I was at Mass daily, I started praying daily. Each night, I was able to recognize something that had brought me a fraction of the peace or joy I felt at Mass a couple days before, and I recognized these moments as God’s presence. It did not take long for me to see God in almost everything; I recognized God’s presence all around me, not just at Mass. God tore through my barriers, overflowed from the box I thought He belonged in, and spilled into the world around me!
It is fascinating to compare my understanding of God from the beginning of my college years to now. I switched from seeing a God of scarcity to a God of abundance. In fact, my view of a world that never had enough was transformed to a world that is overflowing with grace, love, tenderness, and goodness. Sometimes, it is easy to slip into those old habits and be trapped by anxiety about what’s to come. Especially as a senior with limited days left on the Heights, it seems that time is passing too quickly, that there is not enough. Yet I am also reminded that we are operating on God’s time, and with God, there is abundance. There is always enough.
- A God Who Is Enough - October 29, 2020