I grew up in Upstate New York. We lived in a small town and sometimes my mom would get restless and ask my dad to take us for a drive. We would make a loop around town that my mom called “The Grand Tour.” If we were especially daring, we would make a counter-clockwise loop instead, known as “The Reverse Grand Tour.”
There are times when I think I’ve inherited my mom’s restlessness. There are times I get in the car and just drive with no plan in mind. In fact, some years ago I was living a few doors down from a friend. She knew I was no social butterfly, so when she started to notice my car was frequently gone, she asked me, “Where do you go?”
When I think back on the times in my life that I have felt restless, all those times seem to have one thing in common.
It was during those restless times that I felt very strongly that I was supposed to be doing something else with my life.
As I’ve learned over the past year, those restless times have something else in common too. Those were the times when I followed my own path, when I was either ignoring God or had gotten so used to ignoring Him that I could no longer hear Him.
All that remained was this restlessness, this prickly, somewhat maddening, sensation to do something different with my life.
But what?
Not once during those restless times did I ask God what He wanted me to do.
Which isn’t to say that God didn’t reach out to me during those times. I was in college when I first dreamed of God’s plan for me. In my dream, I was running through campus, crying and when someone stopped me to ask why I was so upset, I replied, “Because God has called me to the ministry.”
I wasn’t foolish enough to ignore such a plainspoken dream, but after analyzing my options (again without consultation of God), I moved to Florida instead and got a job teaching.
Over the past few years, God has also tried the more subtle approach, leading me in Barnes and Noble to a display of Barbara Brown Taylor books, Barbara Brown Taylor being an incredible author and oh … an Episcopal Priest.
But when God led me to Hope, He left the subtlety of bookstore trips and dreams behind. When I walked into Hope, God said “Here is your church and oh remember that thing, that really, really important thing I’ve been wanting you to do, that priest thing, now’s the time. You’ve had more than enough time to wander your path and can you honestly say it has made you happy?”
Today’s gospel reading from Matthew 4:12-23 detailed Jesus’ call of Peter and Andrew, James and John. “Come follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” Peter never looks at Andrew and says “Who is this guy?” James never asks John “Should we?”
All four dropped what they were doing without a word, without hesitation, and followed Jesus.
It’s funny how easy and hard a thing that is to do. It’s hard because it requires complete surrender, giving over control of your life to God, but it’s easy too, because once I made the commitment when I walked into Hope last Easter to do whatever it is that God asks me to do, all that restlessness faded away.
Now my restlessness serves as a good barometer. Whenever I feel restless now, I know that I am not on the path that God intends for me. Whenever I feel restless now, I know to go to God and ask Him what it is He wants me to do.
And I think back to my confirmation, when Bishop Hugo asked me if I was happy and when I declared that I was, he warned me, “If you turn your back on God, you will never be happy again.”
"I know," I answered him.
