Meditation

This post is primarily a reflection, not an argument.  It is more of the secret-public-journal type of post.  Just a heads-up. :)

If you have been keeping up with my posts, or know how the past year has gone for me, this won't be news, but for those who don't, it goes something like this.  In May 2013, we moved from Atwater to Fresno (about 1 hour south) to be closer to family.  We were about to have our 4th child and we wanted a better sense of community than we had in the Merced area.  However, I did not get a job closer to our new home.  Instead, I gained a 1 hour and 7 minute commute from our new house to my job.  This left me with about 2 and a half hours of "car time" each and every day.  In the beginning I listened to audiobooks, but I soon discovered Catholic radio and a show called Catholic Answers.  It is a call-in show centered on Catholic Apologetics.  Couple that with an encounter I had with a friend in which I was unable  to articulate exactly why I believed what I did, I was hooked.  I was an avid listener and I processed as much as I could over the course of a year.  Another friend of mine gave me a bunch of fantastic audio talks on various Church topics.  In the span of 1 year, I absorbed a LOT.

It was spiritually enlightening to me.  It had been a few years since I had been in school, and I really did miss the learning and thinking and processing that I had only ever gotten from college classes.  Two of my audio talks were over 20 cds long and were actual college classes where the professor (Dr. Brant Pitre) simply put a recorder on the podium.  I loved it, and I ate it up.  CD after CD.  I remembered more than seemed humanly possible.  It was exactly what I needed and wanted.

Throughout my life I have always struggled with prayer.  Not only the question of "why would we?" (which is another post) but even going through the motions.  My wife and mother-in-law seem to have almost this iMessage-like conversation with Jesus.  They send the text, he replies.  My conversation was, at best, clumsy, and at worst, non-existant.  God knew what I wanted, he knew what I needed, why on earth does he want me to tell him?  It had been a frequent topic in the confessional too boot.  One that I never seemed to get past.

At the end of this past school year (after 12 months of commuting) I finally had a break from my commute.  I was teaching summer school closer to home and I only had a 7 minute drive instead of the usual hour plus.  I was also exhausted.  In terms of units, I had taken roughly 26 units worth of classes in my commute (in terms of the carnegie hours), and I had been doing homework as well.  I decided to take the summer off.  I though it would be good for me.  I though it would be a well-deserved break.  A welcome relaxing time away from study.  I was wrong, but I didn't know it until it was over...

Let's put this all together.  As it were, I can always tell when my wife has neglected her prayers life.  She becomes more irascible, and, well, I'll leave other descriptors for the sake of my marriage (it's ok, she knows that it is true).  When I started school two weeks ago, I was fairly depressed.  I thought it was due to other factors like the end of the summer and other reasons that are part of a different post. But, when I started listening to Catholic content again, my depression lifted.  It was like a fog had cleared.  All of a sudden, I was perfectly fine.  What was that all about?!?!  Now I know...

All that time, I thought my prayer life had been bunk.  All that time, I struggled to pray the way I saw others do it.  But, that wasn't the way God connects with me.  It is through my greatest passion, learning, that God speaks to me.  My prayer type is not that of vocal prayer, but that of meditation and contemplation.  All that time last year when I was on fire for God, it wasn't just because I was learning, but that my learning was prayer.  It was the prayer that connected me to God.  And, it wasn't until I stopped doing it for 3 months, and picked it up again, that I realized it.  I am not saying that each person necessarily has a "type" and that is all they should do, but what I am saying is that my spiritual dryness that I though was a lack of conversational prayer, was really a lack of meditation.  God found a way to break through to my hardened heart; it is the reason I have a commute.  How else could a husband and a father of 4 get over 2 hours per day of study?  They can't.  This is the only way.  It is the reason He brought my family back to the "promised land" and why all of my attempts to get a job closer to home have failed.  It isn't his plan for me.  I probably could find a way to spend that much time in study, but until I do, my commute will not get shorter.  And I will thank God for not putting me to the test until I am ready.

And so, one more year, 400 more hours in the car, 400 more hours of apologetics, 400 more hours of class, 400 more hours of prayer.  Thank God for knowing me better than I do...