A Hitchhiker's Guide to God's Love

Where's the tea?

Oh dear. There’s something about returning to writing after over a year of radio silence that makes me feel the most bumbling. In my head, I’m a lady Arthur Dent, fumbling around to understand and be understood, wondering where’s the tea and why am I still in a bathrobe.

Kidding. I don’t own a bathrobe. But I do know where my towel is, so maybe there’s hope for this hoopy frood yet.

This past year has been one of the hardest in my life, absolutely saturated with the beautiful, the baffling, and the heartbreaking. And while I probably won’t ever be ready to take the bathrobe off fully and lay myself bare here (to belabor the Hitchhiker’s references), I do miss sharing this space with you, oh mysterious people who keep subscribing to this ghost of a substack, per my email notifications.

So let’s hop to it, shall we? The Vogons are coming.

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I have unexpectedly been invited to speak at my old parish. A woman contacted me via Instagram, asking if I’d be interested in coming to speak at St. Catherine’s in Simsbury. At first I thought it was a joke. My older boys have recently been delighting in doing things like creating fake emails to Rick Roll the family, creating fake phone numbers to call family members about their cars’ extended warranty, and general buffoonery involving technological tricks far beyond my ken. I thought that creating a fake Instagram account to invite their mother to give a fake talk at a former parish was a bit subtle for their testosterone-addled minds, but really it’s best not to underestimate them.

But no. It turned out to be a real person (I think. Honestly, the talk is the middle of the month, and I may show up to an empty social hall, doing an unexpected John Travolta)

I’ve been asked to talk about my conversion experience, which is hilarious, because a couple years ago, I was still thinking that whole thing was something in the rearview. I’d converted, heavy emphasis on the past tense, as in, it was a completed event.

Oh sure, I could spout off the platitude- conversion is a lifelong process, we’re to be turning more fully toward God every day, everyone is a convert blah blah

b l a h

But now? Now, Cari sitting on this couch the day before Divine Mercy Sunday, desperately trying to finish this essay before the house wakes up (and I can hear someone stirring in the girls’ room already) knows what a honking mess of a fake I was. For years I was, intentionally or not, resisting conversion. I was holding Christ back with a pointed stick, scanning the surrounding area for some way for me to do things on my own.

Bluntly, I had allowed myself to create a nasty little idol of self reliance and was worshipping the hell out of it. Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t something I consciously did. I’m no Aaron (did you read that “A-A-Ron”? Because that’s how I spelled it in my head),

deliberately building a golden calf to dance around, but I built one nevertheless.

Oh sure, it was couched in good intentions at first. “If I can get more organized, it’ll be a better use of the gift of time.” “If I don’t lose my temper at all today, it’ll be proof that I’m growing in holiness.” “If I just create a more peaceful home, my family will be more peaceful/joyful/loving.” Things like that. Things that are objectively good, but only if they’re ordered toward God and- here’s the big thing- cultivated with God.

Cause yeah. There’s no way my magpie brain is going to develop organizational skills without a massive dose of Jesus. Likewise my temper, or any of the dozen other self improvement tasks I set before myself. I could try all the tips, tricks, and strategies I wanted, but once you turn your head away from your Creator, improving yourself becomes idolatry. I wasn’t attempting to create a better me as an offering to the Lord, as a useful exercise while walking this path to my eternal Home, I was doing it for me alone, with me alone, through me alone.

Guess how that worked out?

It was, of all things and places, some dumb low effort meme on Instagram. You know the type- bland landscape picture with a tweet slapped over it. I don’t remember who posted it. I don’t remember the exact words, but the message was this:

Jesus loves me

Stop the presses, I know. Basic preschool catechism stuff. But my false idol of perfection (though I NEVER would have called it that at the time. It wasn’t perfectionism! That’s for thin, hyper, type-A people! Not a human hobbit like myself!) had left me feeling empty and dark and so, so unlovable. Funny thing that- it’s almost like our Creator forbids us to worship false gods because it’s bad for us. These dreary little gods we create for ourselves never return the love and attention we pour into them, do they?

There was just something about that particular meme, on that particular day that rankled me. I scoffed at it. I rolled my eyes at it. Still, it wouldn’t be dismissed. I got on my shoes and went for an indignant walk with it. I couldn’t shake it. So finally, I looked it full in the face, this ridiculously simple phrase. Jesus loves me.

And I didn’t believe it.

I remember exactly where I was, by an outcrop of glacial rocks, thick coated with moss and lichens, on a nasty bend in a tiny country road that people always drive with cheerful aggression. I think my mouth hung open, actually. Very Arthur Dent.

It felt so dangerous to admit this realization. I didn’t believe Jesus really loved me. How could He? I was selfish and short tempered and disorganized and lazy and flabby and frumpy and there was a pile of dishes in my sink at home and kids I probably had failed in some way or another twenty times already that morning.

Jesus loves me?

The thought moved more slowly than those ancient rocks once had, dragged along the New England landscape in the belly of a glacier. I didn’t believe Jesus loved me because my false idols told me I was unloveable. My false idols told me I could only be worthy of His love once I got my act together. Which would happen probably never because I’m such a dumpster fire of a person. I would simply have to keep trying, admittedly fruitlessly, to earn God’s love.

But what if all that was wrong? What if I never could earn God’s love because He already poured it out on me? It never could be earned because it didn’t need to be.

The feeling that flooded over me at that point was so freeing, so joyful, that I’m only slightly embarrassed to be sharing this spectacular failure of Christianity 101 with you. The realization that I didn’t have to keep all these failures and shortcomings tucked up close to my heart, that I could lay them all down and just accept that I’m a mess and none of that changes Christ’s love for me.

Do you know how wild and reckless it feels to accept God’s love? To realize that you don’t have to wear your failures like armor as a way to avoid being rejected by Him? That you’re not rejected. You’re chosen and intentionally made and so, so loved.

Probably you do, because you are most likely good and faithful Christians who don’t need remedial catechism lessons. But maybe, maybe you can relate? Maybe there’s that thing about yourself that you’re ashamed of. Some vice you just can’t shake. Some personality trait you are desperate to change. Maybe, during the longest part of nighttime, you think that if only you could change that thing, then you would feel like you’re worth God’s time, worth His love.

If you can relate, try this: go outside. Somewhere you can have a bit of quiet (cheerfully aggressive New England drivers notwithstanding). Allow yourself one second of believing that you are loved. Try it for just one second. For one second, let yourself believe that the Creator of the heavens and earth, of stars and glaciers, of mice and men, loves you. That He made you on purpose, that He sees every single part of you, even that part you try to hide, and He loves you more than you will ever know.

For one second, let yourself feel loved.

In that one second, conversion begins.

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