This past September, my wife lost her job. The circumstances are complicated, but if you and I know each other well enough, I might share the story with you over a beer sometime. Maybe—and you’re buying. :)
Anyway, as you might imagine, since then, life has been pretty interesting for the Cerneka family.
I share that with you for a couple of reasons. The first is that, since our family is still in the “fog” as I’ve been calling it, we are requesting your continued prayers. After three months without a job, Erin started working again at the end of December. This isn’t a permanent solution, but it is good news. The second reason I’m sharing this information with you is so that I can reflect a bit on something I’ve noticed about myself and what happens to my own spiritual development during difficult times. I’ve observed that if I’m in the midst of something hard, I tend to become so focused on getting through or overcoming that thing, that I sometimes temporarily put God on the back burner. In a way, this played out for me in 2005. That year, I helped lead a small pilgrimage from my parish to Cologne, Germany for World Youth Day. It was a wonderful but, at times, very difficult experience. Perhaps the hardest part of it for me occurred the morning we left the vigil site. Up to this point, we had traveled to Cologne, spent eight or nine days crisscrossing Cologne and other parts of Germany, walked five or six miles to the vigil site, and participated in the overnight vigil itself, which featured almost no sleep. The morning after the vigil, we were all exhausted, but were still facing a long hike to meet up with our busses. This hike was so hard. In addition to carrying my own gear, I ended up helping others carry theirs. I’m not sure how much gear and clothing I ended up with, but it was significant. While I’m sure I was a site to behold, the worn-out faces of those asking for my help made it impossible for me to tell them no. We just had to get to the busses. We’d be able to rest then. So, I was going to do whatever was necessary to make that happen.
But I wasn’t just a chaperone for that event. I was a group leader. And often times, the best opportunity we have to process an experience is just after it has ended. That walk from the vigil site to the busses would have been a perfect chance to try and help my teens deepen their experience, or even reflect on my own. Instead, I chose to be in full-on task mode, and just work to make it to the finish line. In the end, I barely talked to anyone. I was exhausted. They were exhausted. So, I let the opportunity come and go.
That’s how I feel right now. For Erin and I, the last three months have easily been some of the hardest of our lives. Our family is healthy and we still have our home, so I know that things could be worse. Still, my ability to focus on my relationship with God and growing in my faith is not great these days. I feel bad about that and while it’s never my intention to marginalize God, I feel like I need to put my energy into focusing the needs of my wife and our children.
I believe that God understand this. The book of Psalms offers a bit of reassurance in this regard:
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me;
your rod and your staff comfort me.
-Psalms 23:4
Even if I’m ignoring God, God is always there with me, supporting me, walking with me, encouraging me, crying with me. And the same is true for you.
Let’s pray for each other that we can always recognize and acknowledge God’s transformative presence in our lives, especially when those lives are consumed by difficulty and chaos.
-Shannon