found on theysaid

[kleenexwoman]

The God Who Loves You
Carl Dennis

It must be troubling for the god who loves you
To ponder how much happier you’d be today
Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.
It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings
Driving home from the office, content with your week—
Three fine houses sold to deserving families—
Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened
Had you gone to your second choice for college,
Knowing the roommate you’d have been allotted
Whose ardent opinions on painting and music
Would have kindled in you a lifelong passion.
A life thirty points above the life you’re living
On any scale of satisfaction. And every point
A thorn in the side of the god who loves you.
You don’t want that, a large-souled man like you
Who tries to withhold from your wife the day’s disappointments
So she can save her empathy for the children.
And would you want this god to compare your wife
With the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus?
It hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation
You’d have enjoyed over there higher in insight
Than the conversation you’re used to.
And think how this loving god would feel
Knowing that the man next in line for your wife
Would have pleased her more than you ever will
Even on your best days, when you really try.
Can you sleep at night believing a god like that
Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives
You’re spared by ignorance? The difference between what is
And what could have been will remain alive for him
Even after you cease existing, after you catch a chill
Running out in the snow for the morning paper,
Losing eleven years that the god who loves you
Will feel compelled to imagine scene by scene
Unless you come to the rescue by imagining him
No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend
No closer than the actual friend you made at college,
The one you haven’t written in months. Sit down tonight
And write him about the life you can talk about
With a claim to authority, the life you’ve witnessed,
Which for all you know is the life you’ve chosen.

Comments

[anivad.livejournal.com]

...<3

[squonk.livejournal.com]

Nice.

[sir-dave.livejournal.com]

Interesting, but also not getting to the point.

I find that there are two things that define my life.

The biggest one is the extent of my own obstinacy, and the belief that I know best. As long as I bow to that, I can wonder in retrospect whether my decisions ever made sense, when I find out that my life is not what I had hoped. This is the biggest one only because it is my absolute right to make my own decisions, if I want, and by doing so I will find out just how fallible I am.

The second is reliance on God, which is a choice I can always make. In doing that I get short term perplexity about the insane and crazy things that happen when I pray. But the more I do it, the more I sit back and let them happen, because in the long term I see that God has done better for me than I ever could, knowing in advance the consequence of every action, things that I can never imagine. Indeed life has shown me that the things that actually happen are very rarely the ones that I could have imagined.

So the more I rely on God to guide my decisions, knowing that he can see the way ahead when I cannot, the more relaxed I get, and the better my life turns out, long term. The difficulties on the way are nothing to be compared with where I am going.

I can always look back and rue the thing I did by first convincing myself that God agreed with me, and that his warnings were just coincidences; I married Elizabeth, and through our children (who are marvelous, but abused and used as pawns) she has wrecked 18 years of my life, after which most of the prospects that I can imagine remain utterly hopeless - except that the God I rely on knows more ways forward than I can ever imagine, and that's where I am going.