Celebrate Closed Doors: Trusting God’s Plan
Many of us have been in this situation. Life is good (or not). Then suddenly life is great! Finally you get some ‘good luck’, and things seem to be going well. Perhaps it’s because you’re a good kind person, and after many years, at last there is goodness around the corner.
After years of bad and sad times, tragedies and nothing wrong right, everything’s wonderful. Then boom! A spanner goes in the works, and back you slide down again. Is this random? It is a curse for not going to church, or is it bad karma?
You don’t know. So you pick yourself up and decide to keep ‘making your own luck’. And boom! More bad things happen. And eventually you become despondent. And decide that you’re either for sure ‘cursed by someone or something’, or you must have done something bad in a previous life. And that’s your lot. And you’re stuck with it.
Not so fast!
Of course, first of all don’t feel guilty for feeing that life is against you. Having self-help gurus telling you that you should feel because others are worse off, won’t do any good. Perhaps if you were in a better place in your life, you may be more able to help those worse off. So sort yourself out first, to help others.
There are three reasons (realistically and logically) that your life is the way it is. Let’s look at all three:
It’s just life (random)?
Could be this. Some people say nothing is random, but others point to whole countries that are starving. Have they all been cursed or got bad karma? It’s more likely that they live in countries witih corrupt regimes, and western governments are doing little to practically help.
If you walk down the road and get hit by a drunk driver, this could be due to lax drink-driving laws or bad weather that caused freak weather that sent a car off the road.
It could be (simply logical reasons) that you suffer. If you have very low self-esteem and continue to stay with someone who knocks you around, it’s going to continue until you get help.
It’s a curse from God?
Unlikely. God is a nice guy, and would not want you to live your life suffering. Animal suffering doesn’t happen because God wants it to. It happens because people cause suffering – even if they pretend they’re religious.
One non-believer once told a Christian ‘I can’t believe in God because of all the bad things that happen in the world’. So the believer asked ‘Ok, so now God doesn’t exist, who’s causing it all’. He replied ‘People’. She replied, ‘So why when you put God back in – is everything His fault?’
There are many people who have suffered, who now don’t believe in God. But paradoxically, many people who have suffered have more of a faith in God.
Immaculée Ilibagiza lived in a room with many other girls for several months in Rwanda, after her whole family was massacred during the genocide. She prayed the Rosary and even met the people responsible years after, forgiving them. Hard to do, but she did. What about the six million Jews killed during the Second World War? They didn’t become atheists, they are still Jewish (those that are still alive).
Some believe that animal and human suffering is a consequence of humanity’s original sin, which disrupted the entire universe. And in fact that those that cause suffering (saying they are from God) are anything but. Possibly from the other side, even if they don’t know it.
Catholic Concern for Animals is an organisation fuelled by love for other species, but also for God. Remember Saint Francis of Assisi (and our own Northumbrian Saint Cuthbert) both lived their lives for help other creatures.
It’s bad karma?
Again, highly unlikely. Karma is more of this world (cause and effect). Aussie writer Andrew Matthews once wrote karma in a nutshell in most cases: ‘If you smile at someone, they will smile back at you. If you hit someone in the face, they’ll hit you back’.
Karma is more again an energy (a country at war is going to have more bad things happen). Children in Africa are not starving because they were evil in a previous life. There is enough (wasted) food to feed everyone on earth.
We have billions of people on earth now, and we have not had enough people in history for them to be reincarnated from. Same with the animal kingdom.
Many of us empaths often feel like this day-long. It’s impossible to go through life without perhaps accidentally hurting others (from emotionally wounding old friends to choosing the wrong vets for a sick animal). From accidentally treading on insects and killing them, when you didn’t mean to.
How to feel better?
It’s more about creating habits, and that’s where mindfulness can help. It can help you not to ‘overreact’ to everything. If you see something that upsets you, an emotional person may then have an outburst, and create a circle of events that then tumble into worse ones.
Say you have a friend who has upset you. Instead of going off for a walk and practicing mindful thought, you may lash out, and lose that precious friendship forever. Or you may falsely accuse a partner of having an affair.
Or you may chastise a vet for misdiagnosing your animal friend. Or you may be angry at someone for eating meat when there are vegan bacon alternatives available (after seeing pigs in a lorry en-route to the abattoir).
Or (especially in today’s climate) lash out at anyone who doesn’t share your beliefs on politics, people on boats, immigrants, climate change or Trump.
Of course being angry never helps. It just sends people in the opposite direction from love.
How to break the cycle if you feel cursed
If you feel that life is overwhelming and you can never seem to get your life out of its present rut, follow the advice that ‘stupidity is doing the same thing over and again, and expecting the same results!’
Instead:
- Let yourself feel like you feel. Whether that’s sad, angry, ashamed, guilty or indecisive. All of these are normal feelings. Let them occur, to feel them and then heal to let go.
- Stop making dramas in your brain. Obviously big events are big events. But you don’t have to feel like everything in your world is broken. Try to focus on the next few hours, on what could go right.
- Look after the basics. If you eat well, exercise, and avoid smoking and excess alcohol (and get enough sleep), often life will feel better the next day anyway. Try to sleep, before making big decisions.
- Try to separate how you feel from what’s actually happening. People may be avoiding you because they are going through their own stuff. Not because they hate you, don’t care about you or wish to cause you hurt.
- If you find it difficult to deal with stuff alone, find a trusted friend to talk to. If you don’t have anyone, pop into a local church to pray, call the Samaritans or even talk to a professional, if needed.
- Know that when bad things happen, nobody is ‘punishing you’ from above. You may have lessons to learn (self-esteem, boundaries, balance). But nobody is up there ‘waving a stick at you’ if you messed up. All the universe is love, and love always wants to help.
Often the feeling of ‘cosmic punishment or bad karma’ is due to childhood beliefs (you’ll burn in Hell if you don’t do what we say!). Or cult-like organisations that tell you that you have to follow what they believe, to avoid punishment in the next life. No ‘karma’ is punishment’, it’s lessons of love.
To get over the ‘domino effect’ of cascading into several bad things happening at once, just don’t do anything! Just live a simple balanced life and don’t make big decisions, until you can get your mind in a calmer place. Mindfulness is good, as it avoids anything to do with religious beliefs, which can help some, but can trigger bad memories for others (often of guilt and shame, especially from a Catholic background).
Rather than try to figure out everything yourself, know that God has a plan for you, and sometimes He closes doors, in order for you to move on from bad situations, and embrace better things to come.
Have you ever wanted something, not got it – then found out months or years later, that it was a blessing that you never got what you prayed or wished for? That’s the beauty of closed doors.
Joel mentions a woman who is complaining about her day. One is that her alarm doesn’t go off, so she is late for work. Then she finds out that if the alarm had gone off, she would have been hit by a drunk driver on the road that morning.
What if you look at life differently?
- Instead of being disappointed that you were fired from a job – it was because God says you have something better and more important to do.
- Instead of being heartbroken over someone leaving you – it was because God said perhaps that person was not to be trusted. If you had stayed, your heart may have been smashed to pieces.
- Instead of feeling down if someone sends nasty words to you – it was because God wanted you to know that you are kind and sensitive, and you deserve to be around people who are nice!
- Instead of being upset that you had a diet-related illness – it was because God wanted you to take care of the body that God gave you – to nourish it with good food, take gentle exercise and rest.
When one door of happiness closes, another opens. But we often look so long at the closed door, that we do not see the one which has been opened for us. Helen Keller
If the door closes, quit banging on about it. Whatever was behind it, was not meant for you. Consider the fact that maybe the door was closed, because you are worth so much more than what was on the other side. Anon
Never look back, unless you are planning to go that way. Henry David Thoreau
I waited patiently for the Lord, he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit… set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Psalm 40: 1-3
Don’t Run from the Lord (if you’ve made life mistakes)
Heaven Meets Earth is an illustrated journey through the Nicene Creed, the powerful words of declaration and belief ‘We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth’) that have been handed down through histories to bolster faith and teach truths.
This 40-day devotional journey includes a short phrase from the Creed to meditate on, thoughtful reflections, colourful art and a dedicated prayer.
Josh Nadeau is an artist and writer from Canada’s west coast. After completing a doctorate from the ‘school of hard knocks’, he used addictions to cope with life, and finally wanted ‘the big sleep’.
But instead he found a more hopeful way of communing with Jesus, took a Master’s in Theological Studies, and now writes books, teaching others how to turn their lives around.
Running from God don’t count as cardio.
You can always come home, no matter how far you go.
His grace is super, hope in the Uber, He ain’t departing bro.
So pull up (pull up), pull up (pull up), you ain’t got far to go.Faith Child
Many people never talk or pray to God (nor go to church or confession) because they feel they’ve messed up their lives, and are beyond hope.
Whether that’s guilt, heartbreak from a life lived to the values of others, or they’ve done something really wrong – the whole notion of the Christian faith is based on love and forgiveness – that’s the very reason why Jesus died on the cross, to forgive all our sins.
You would not think that, if you listened to the way some people talk about others, professing to be Christian.
If you’ve made huge mistakes and really made a complete hotpot of your life – that is the exact time when it’s best to find God, not run away from Him!
These days people are asked to stay positive and manifest this or that. It’s all too much. Life problems are sometimes enormous, and often the simplest thing to do is to go down on your knees, and surrender. The songwriter Sam Smith had it right, when he wrote ‘everyone prays in the end’.
Acknowledging that in most cases, you can’t fix your own life problems without help from above, is sometimes the very thing you need to do. Try it – and you may be surprised by some surprising serendipities – the very ones you were hoping for, when reading ‘manifesting books!’
Perhaps the most well-known convert from sinner to saint was Blessed Bartolo Longo, who was born in southern Italy. While studying law in Naples, he joined up with ex-priests to oppose the Pope and church, eventually moving from the occult world to become a satanist (promising his soul to a demon).
His family sent a Catholic professor to convince him to see a Dominican priest, and after 3 weeks of talks, he went to confession and became a third-order Dominican himself. He built a shrine in Pompeii, founded orphanages (and a school to give children of criminals a better life).
And it was from his writings that the name ‘Luminous Mysteries’ was given to The Rosary (a prayer used by Catholics using beads). He was beatified as a saint in 1980.
Saint Francis of Assisi (the patron saint of animal welfare, ecology and simple living) was a real party boy! Born in a wealthy family in Italy, he only gave away his possessions and became a saint later on life. It was said that birds would listen to his word, and fish would leap up from the sea, to hear him preach!
St Alban (the town in Hertfordshire is named after him) was a pagan, who was so impressed by a priest that he sheltered, that he converted himself. The first-ever Christian martyr, he was killed for his faith.
There is a story that St Alban’s execution was delayed, as the fast-flowing river that he could not cross dried up, allowing him to escape. When he was eventually beheaded, his head rolled down a hill and a spring immediately created fresh water.
The executioners were so surprised, they began to revere him as a saint, and the well still stands today at Holywell Hill. Who needs reality TV?
What is the Sacrament of Reconciliation (confession?)
This is what Catholics do, they visit their local church during confession times. It’s nothing to be scared of, and you’ll come out feeling a lot better!
You basically wait your turn, then go into a little box. In most cases, you don’t even see the priest. He will be behind a grill or around a corner. You simply tell him (in confidence) anything that ails you, and he will ask you to say a short prayer that is usually written down in front of, along the lines of:
Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. And with the help of your Grace, I will not sin again.
The priest will then bless and forgive you in the name of God, and ask you to say the Lord’s Prayer or the Hail Mary (or both) and perhaps something more. Then when you leave, all your sins are forgiven. How cool and simple is that?!
True Stories of Confession with Padre Pio
Padre Pio was an Italian saint, renowned for performing many miracles, and had the stigmata (blood on his hands, like Christ when crucified). He would spend hours each day in prayer.
Fellow friars said he often appeared in several places at one time, and when not performing miracles, he would often be seen to hear confessions (12 to 15 a day). He said that when people confessed their sins, he would smell flowers!
Carlo Campanini attended confession in 1950, but Padre Pio told him ‘Begin in 1936’. The man replied ‘But I confessed a few days ago’. Padre Pio again said ‘I told you to begin 1936’. Suddenly Carlo remembered that he had done something in 1936, that he had been too ashamed to confess to the priest.
He did so, and later said ‘That confession changed my life, and I haven’t missed Mass since’.
God runs after the most stubborn souls. They cost him too much to abandon them. Do not dwell on sins that have already been confessed. Jesus has forgiven them. Padre Pio
