Finding Hope When It's Hard - When the Miracle Didn't Happen

What do we do when the miracle doesn’t happen?

I spent a lot of time before writing this post contemplating what exactly are the miracles that I pray for most often in my own life. Have you ever thought about this? What are the miracles we pray for the most? Are they miracles of healing? of resurrection? of restoration or a change of heart?

It turns out that for me, the miracle I pray for most often is simply to understand. I pray most often for God to reveal to me the missing pieces of the puzzle so that my picture in a given situation may be complete. It’s what I find myself begging God for over and over again.

It’s also the miracle that most of the time doesn’t happen.

And it drives me crazy.

What are the things that I long to understand? Oh there have been so many things! For example, I spent years longing to understand exactly what led to my three boys’ hearing loss and why exactly it took five years for us to figure it out for my oldest. I also wanted to know exactly why they were blessed with learning differences and ADHD on top of their hearing loss, and why it took so long to find the people who would accept that all of those things could be true in each little body and help us figure out a plan to help them learn to read. I wanted to know all the steps I missed, all the steps others missed, and piece by piece complete the puzzle of their journeys so far.

So, that’s it. The miracle I pray for above any other one is for the latest puzzle in my life to be complete, to have every single piece I need to fully understand and grasp hold of the certainty I desire.

But that’s not how it works, is it?

Because no matter how much I want to know and no matter how much I do to help myself understand, a big portion of this life and a big portion of God will remain a mystery until the day we meet in heaven.

And on that day, I wonder, will I even care about the missing pieces as much anymore?

I want to know everything. It’s why I read, listen to podcasts, and research every question that pops up for me. So, what do I do when the answer is no? What do I do when no matter how hard I pray, the miracle doesn’t happen?

I would say my journey through the Spiritual Exercises has uniquely prepared me to tackle my discomfort with unknowing.

Near the start of the Exercises, the retreatant is invited to spend some real intentional time trying to know and internalize God’s magnanimous love for them. Before they can go anywhere else, they have to accept that God loves them as they are in all of their human imperfections, in their inability to truly be perfect, in their inability to know, solve, or make sense of everything. In the Exercises, the retreatant is invited to consider if they truly believe that God loves them, as they are, no matter what. They are invited to accept that God loves them so much that God is present with them in everything, especially their unknowing, their wrestling, their grief, and their tears. God is not only present with them in their tears and their grief but that God is, in fact, crying right alongside them. One can’t move on in the journey of the Exercises if they do not believe in this belovedness to the core of who they are.

I have to admit, this part was challenging for me. In fact, I started and stopped the Exercises three times before finally completing the journey. I can point to many reasons why I stopped each time, but I also have to acknowledge, it was always right at the part where I was being asked to accept my belovedness. As long as I held onto the fact that I could solve anything myself if I only had all the right puzzle pieces before me, I would never be able to accept God’s magnanimous love. Believing in this love required my vulnerability and trust. Believing in this love required me to accept that my most frequently requested miracle might not come true and yet I would still be cared for. I would still be loved. I would still be okay.

When I first learned my oldest son was deaf, I fought hard for genetic testing. At the time, I was also speaking regularly with someone who had gone through this all before. She told me the genetic tests would not give me what I was looking for. It would not complete the puzzle before me. Yes, it might tell me exactly what gene caused this and which parent (both it turns out) it came from. “But that’s it,” she said. “How you love your son, how he interacts in the world, how you continue to learn to communicate with one another… none of that is going to change with this test.” She went on to say, however: “I know you have to do it anyway. You have to go through it and get to the other side to truly understand what I am saying.”

She was right. The test didn’t change anything. It gave me an answer, it gave me a critical piece in the puzzle before me, but it didn’t actually change anything.

Sometimes knowledge is just knowledge, wisdom doesn’t always make the grief less or the journey shorter. More often, at least for me, being invited to sit in the unknowing is exactly what I didn’t know I needed. It’s what allows me to feel the love of the One who is sitting in it right next to me, the One who will never leave me to face any peril alone.

Going Deeper:

• Practice Advance Gratitude! Read Gretchen’s article on the ways she has incorporated advance gratitude into her daily prayer and how it can be helpful to start each day with an expression of gratitude to God.
• Find God’s presence and peace in the mystery of each day. Visit our Prayer Resources section and review our resource, Embracing the Mystery of Every Day: A Grace We Seek Path of Prayer.

What’s New - Our Advent Retreat!

We invite you to join us for our new online Advent Retreat, Standing in the Promises. As we move through each week of Advent we will be reflecting on God’s promises of presence, compassion, love and hope in our lives. As we pray with scriptures during our retreat we want to grow in interior knowledge of each of these promises. We will also reflect on ways that we share those promises with others in our family, community and the world around us. Click here to register.

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Gretchen Crowder

Gretchen Crowder has served as a campus minister and Ignatian educator for the Jesuit Dallas community for the last fifteen years and counting. She is also a freelance writer and speaker. She has a B.S. in mathematics and a M.Ed. from the University of Notre Dame as well as an M.T.S. from the University of Dallas. She resides in Dallas, TX with her husband, three boys, and an ever-growing number of pets.