Social media allows us to spontaneously share our daily experiences---even if in appearance there's nothing extraordinary about them. Twice during the course of this week, twice on seemingly unremarkable uneventful uninteresting instances I clearly saw God's hand taking care of my personal interests.
Last Wednesday, April 14, I was unusually sleepy. Totally drowsy. Nothing noteworthy, glamorous, or appealing about it, correct? On the contrary, it was annoying, frustrating, and inconvenient--mostly for me who, although aware that it's wrong, cannot avoid thinking like Thomas Jefferson that the time we sleep is time we waste. I do realize that God created day and night for a reason and that it's useless to try to go against nature. Yet, I'm proud every time I get something done during night hours.
Well, on Tuesday evening I fell asleep earlier than ever--and slept all through the night. I barely woke up a little in the morning as needed. I vaguely remember partially going through meds and breakfast--and falling back asleep on my swivel chair with my feet on a footstool underneath my desk . . . without even being able to get started on my computer.
Worst of all, there was an email I very much wanted to write and send. I thought I needed to. I thought such an email might prevent a problem. When I was a child I used to think there was something adventurous and appealing about problems--as if difficulties provided us with good opportunities to prove ourselves . . . but that was only because I had too much of everything, starting with too much love--and no problems at all. Now I no longer find anything fun about having problems. So, I like to be proactive--and was trying to be one step ahead and diffuse a potential problem before it even started.
Yet, I wasn't much more awake in the early afternoon either. Not even able to get myself to make it to the kitchen and improvise something real simple for lunch. But I managed to make it outside the house to the mailbox. In it there was a big manila envelope. And the communication inside the envelope was all I needed to see that there was absolutely no problem. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.
Immediately, I realized something. Had I written and sent the email I had in mind, I'd have only complicated things. It was way better not to have done anything.
Now, that extreme drowsiness I had been experiencing up to that moment had been totally unusual. There was no factual or medical reason for it.
And yet, I could clearly see that there was a much more powerful, much more forceful reason for it. Obviously, God had prevented me from making a mistake that wouldn't have been in my best interest. No, I hadn't gotten much done that day---but at least, I had not misguidedly embarked myself on a complication that would've caused me unnecessary anxiety and would've involved unnecessary time and effort to resolve.
And in a totally different context, something similar happened yesterday. On one of the several Catholic Social Teaching groups I'm a member of someone had posted something really good denouncing hatred in today's society. I was about to post a very laconic comment in support of the post when I noticed an unclear comment by another member right above my own. So, I started editing my comment and adding a kinda long elaboration pointing out that my own comment was in support of the post and not in agreement with the ambiguous words preceding mine. To make the long story short, before finishing and updating my edited comment, I ended up losing it. I was about to rewrite it--and then realized that the author of the ambivalent comment had deleted it. Obviously, they had realized their error. So, had I uselessly digressed on the frivolity of a preceding comment that no longer existed, I'd have only embarrassed myself.
I just reposted my initial one-word comment in support of the awesome post.
And I wonder . . . Who had made me lose the unnecessary much longer comment I was about to update?
I'm just one person--but God was taking care of this one person . . . as He takes care of absolutely every single one of us.
