I resolve to not go faster than grace will allow.

This was a quote in one of Fr Mike Schmitz’s homilies that I listened to recently. I wish I could remember which one so I could link it, but I can’t. I don’t listen to all of them or on any particular schedule. Just sometimes I feel a prompting to hear what he has to say and I pull it up. This was clearly one of those times.

This line really stuck with me in this season of resolutions, choosing words, setting goals, and evaluating life choices. I honestly haven’t set too many goals or resolutions for 2023 at this point, and have only begun to unpack the word that God has given me for 2023.

When I talk about listening for God to reveal His will for your life, people often wonder how that works. Do I hear voices? See writing on the wall? No. At least not in the way two people would have a conversation at a coffee shop.

God speaks through our hearts, though Sacred Scripture, though people we encounter, through what we read, and occasionally (though not yet to me) through messages from angels in our dreams.

Yet when I reflect on what shows up in my life, I start to see common themes emerge. Just like I have to wait for the cream to rise to the top after I milk my cow, messages and themes from God emerge over time. When I milk my cow and put the milk in the fridge, I can see a “cream line” by the end of the day. The cream has started to rise and sit on the top of the milk. But if I wait, the next day, there will be more. If I want more days, the cream gets thicker and less “watered down” as it separates almost completely from the milk below it.

So it is with messages from God. I might get an inkling or idea in a moment, but when I let it sit and wait to see what more comes of it, the message gets bigger, stronger, and easier to see.

In the latter part of 2022, the idea of stillness and Scriptures on stillness kept popping up: in my reading, in my prayers, in my conversations. I found Scripture on being still and letting God fight for you (Exodus 14:14) and how God is present in the stillness after the storm (I Kings 19:11-12) and the like.

As time went on and I listened to podcasts on healing and wrote about stillness and reflected on those Scriptures, I kept hearing and encountering the word “Invitation”. Sometimes it was the idea of inviting Jesus into the places of my heart where I’ve kept him out before. Other times, it was the idea of inviting stillness and quiet into my busy and noisy life. With 7 kid and a small farm, there’s not a lot of stillness, and certainly not randomly, so I knew it was a nudge to create some and savor it. I’m not called to a silent monastic life, but God still speaks to us in the stillness, so if I fill every moment of my life with sound, I run the risk of missing a chance to deeply encounter him.

Then I hear a homily by Father Mike Schmitz where he both says “I resolve to not go faster than grace will allow,” and “Process: You can’t rush it. You can only enter into it.” Man, that’s a lot to unpack, but do you see how it connects deeply to what I’ve been encountering with Stillness and Invitation? I can’t rush my healing. I can’t rush my growth. And I can’t rush feeling closeness with God. I can only enter into it.

The rest takes as long as it takes. The rest is in the hands of God. He is the faithful and unwavering one. He is the certain one. I turn to him and be still. He does the moving and the fighting. I come to Him. He gives me rest (Matthew 11:28)

And then today, I open my email and I see the free January download from Brick House in the City. I’m not affiliated with them in any way other than as a paying customer, but here’s yet another way in which God is nudging me on this common theme.

Hurry ruins saints as well as artists. That is absolutely at the heart of the message I’ve been seeing “rise to the top” in my life. See, when I get my heart and mind set on it, I want to go full steam ahead. Often times I see the solution to my problem or the direction my life is set to go, and I leap - which is good - however I get impatient at the time it takes for healing and restoration and building to occur….or I skip over it entirely. I share what I’ve learned without taking the time for it to fully take root in my life.