Unanswered Prayers
“Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.”
-Garth Brooks (via Ellen_Brown – a life coach – on Twitter)
I should say upfront that I don’t believe in God, per se – certainly not the caricature of a Christian God, an old man with a long white beard who sits on a throne, on a cloud, ruling the world. I don’t subscribe to any organized religion, either. But I’m deeply spiritual. I believe that there’s a spiritual force in the universe that we can’t explain through science, or logic – something we can only know through feeling. I feel that force inside me when I’m in nature, often, and sometimes, if I’m lucky, when I meditate, or practice yoga; once I felt it profoundly during a Reiki massage.
And while I’m disavowing things – I’m no Garth Brooks fan, either. I don’t have anything against the guy – but country music ain’t my thing.
So if I don’t believe in God, and I don’t love me some Garth – then why am I featuring this quote on my blog?
Because if you replace the word “God” with whatever makes you feel more comfortable – “the universe,” for example – and you accept that sometimes, wisdom comes from unexpected sources – then there’s a lot of wisdom in that little sentence.
My translation goes something like this: Maybe we gain more than we lose when we don’t get what we want.
I’m thinking of my friends who tried every trick in the book to get pregnant – humping their husbands like bunnies (sorry, but that’s basically how they described it!), desperate to make the pregnancy happen. And still: no baby. They were heartbroken and beaten down. They felt defeated, and began to contemplate fertility treatment. At the same time, they started wondering: What if the treatments don’t work? What if I can’t ever have a baby? What would my life be like?
There was an opening that started to happen, then – an acceptance that they might not be able to will a baby into existence. And then, just when they’d allowed this acceptance into their hearts… they got pregnant.
Now, I realize this is a potentially charged and/or flawed example. I know that some people will never get pregnant – so I don’t at all mean to suggest that you just have to get your head in the right place and the results are guaranteed, or that if you can’t get pregnant, it’s because of some sort of spiritual failing on your part. I only mean to share what I gleaned from my friends’ very specific experiences.
Even if my friends’ stories had ended differently – even if they hadn’t gotten pregnant – I think they would have gotten a number of gifts that a fast pregnancy would have obscured. One friend had a huge awakening, breaking from her Type A, scripted life to realize just how little control we have over how our lives play out. This was incredibly humbling for her, someone who’d mapped out her ambitious life goals at age 20 and, until this moment, had checked each one off the list, one by one; her husband was the same way. They are softer now; humbled. Wiser, too, with richer perspective on life’s ebbs and flows. I’d even go so far as to say the experience made them into people who will be better parents.
I don’t believe everything happens for a reason, and I’m not suggesting that when life disappoints you – when your prayers, or dreams, go unanswered – that you should jump up and down with glee, or pretend the disappointment doesn’t hurt. What I’m saying is this: Keep an eye out. Be mindful of what it is you wish for, and try to observe how you and your life are affected when that wish does or doesn’t come true. Are there any gifts available in your unanswered prayers? Qualities you gain, or insight, or even new friends – people you become close to because of how well they understand what you want? What about compassion for others in your shoes? Notice these gifts. Unwrap them. Take them out to play – and see how your life gets richer as a result.
Can you think of a time when not getting what you wanted actually yielded some kind of gift?
