What Does God Want?

On God's will + actually finding it

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I think it was a saint who once said that it was our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

(I’m kidding. It was Dumbledore.)

The quote rings true, in my take-it-or-leave-it opinion. Life, in fact, can feel like merely one long line of choices—decisions small and large that make up your day, that make up your month, that make up your decade, that make up your existence. And as Christians, those choices can’t necessarily follow popular culture’s recommendations du jour of “following your heart” and “going with your gut”. We’re told in Jeremiah that “the heart is deceitful above all things” and anyone who can insist that their gut is some kind of magical compass of truth probably needs a slice of humble pie. A woman’s instinct is real and important and powerful; it’s not infallible or incorruptible.

So our choices wind up being a sort of tossed salad: a handful of wisdom, a sprinkle of instinct, a dash of advice. We do the best we can. We hope it kinda-sorta works out. It being the eventual goal: to follow God’s will.

How many times have we been faced with a difficult choice, leaving us to beg God to show us his will? How many times have we insisted that if only God would tell us what he wants, if only he’d deliver a neon sign with specific a-to-z instructions, we’d do it in a heartbeat?

But God’s will is easier talked about than understood.

You may be familiar with the phrases God’s perfect will and God’s permissive will.

There are entire books and degrees on the subject of God’s will but God’s perfect will is for earth to look as it is in heaven: sin is never in God’s perfect will. His will is for all people to follow his commandments, in unity with the church, and for all of us to “not be conformed to this present world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may test and approve what is the will of God-what is good and well-pleasing and perfect.” (Romans 12:2)

God’s permissive will is what it sounds like: what God permits and allows to happen, and uses for his glory.

These things are not, necessarily, the same.

I have had hard things happen to me in the past year. Maybe you have too. Maybe you’ve had a late-term miscarriage or gone through a shitty divorce or been sexually assaulted. Maybe you were the victim of a hate crime. Maybe your kid got cancer and died. Maybe you got fired and were publicly humiliated. Maybe your mom was killed in a freak bus accident. Maybe your house burned down and you lost everything in it. I’ll stop the litany-of-possible-tragedies here. Maybe your Really Hard Thing doesn’t seem as big as those things but maybe it’s very, very, very big to you.

Maybe, just maybe, a friend wanted to comfort you. They were scared and worried and a little guilty that their life didn’t have these problems. They love you and wanted to bring you peace. And maybe they dropped off a piping hot almond milk latte and told you that this thing, this path you’re walking, this season of rain and thunder, is just all part of God’s plan.

Sister, I’m sorry to be the world’s most obnoxious party pooper, but that’s bullshit.

“God did not make death, nor does he delight in the destruction of the living.” (Wisdom 1:12-14).

Death is not part of God’s plan.

Nor is abuse, or divorce, or war.

It’s not that he isn’t present and intimately involved in the back-breakingly difficult aspects of your every day life, but that is not his plan, and not his perfect will. It is, however, in his permissive will (this is probably unhelpful to say to a friend who’s struggling and didn’t ask for theological assistance; stick with the lattes).

God permits these terrible things to happen and we may never, ever, ever know why. And it can feel so incredibly frustrated to be knee-deep in shit and wondering what the hell you’re supposed to do next. How you’re supposed to respond to The Hard Thing.

Or maybe your choice is between two excellent things—marriage or the convent. This college or that one. A move or staying rooted. Neither of these things are inherently bad, or sinful, or death and destruction of the living. So what do you choose? Where do you go?

Why can’t God just whack you on the head with a lightning bolt of wisdom? Why does he leave us wondering?

It’s as if we’re staring at a path with a fork in the road. One road’s flowing with milk and honey and one is paved with skulls and despair and rot. And the choice! We don’t know which is which! It’s like some form of supernatural torture; a messed-up game show of choices and consequences.

Sister, I propose this: God may not be bestowing upon us the above-requested neon sign. But He has given us a ton of information.

We have 2,000 years of church teaching. We have the scriptures. We have the beatitudes. We have words from the saints.

There are some things God has said yes, you should always do (ie., go to Mass on Sundays, love your neighbor, etc.) and there are some things God has said no, don’t ever do this (kill people, lie, etc.) but between those two things there’s basically a canyon of personal discernment. A neon sign would be easier.

God’s will, in fact, may not be something we’re supposed to find at all. Maybe it is the shit we’re standing in, and all he’s asking for is for us to choose the holiest thing in the moment. And then do that again. And again and again and again.

There’s a book I recommend a lot called He Leadeth Me. It’s by Fr. Walter Ciszek, who was sent to a Russian labor camp for 15 years. My friend Shannon told me about it years ago, and I’ve since bought it as a gift for no less than seven people. My spiritual director recently had me read it, and then had me read it again because “it doesn’t seem like it stuck” 💀. This isn’t the kind of book you breeze through on a Saturday afternoon; it’s a book that becomes a rallying cry to your soul, a book that can change your life if you take a deep breathe and let it. To quote Katie Blackburn on a podcast I recently listened to, it’s not a book to “get through” but a book you want to get through you. Really, I think that you should just read the damn book. Multiple times. But I do want to share this specific quote with you:

“Now, with sudden and almost blinding clarity and simplicity, I realized I had been trying to do something with my own will and intellect that was at once too much and mostly all wrong. God’s will was not hidden somewhere ‘out there’ in the situations in which I found myself; the situations themselves were his will for me. What he wanted was for me to accept these situations as from his hands, to let go of the reins and place myself entirely at his disposal. He was asking of me an act of total trust, allowing for no interference or restless striving on my part, no reservations, no exceptions, no areas where I could set conditions or seem to hesitate. He was asking a complete gift of self, nothing held back. It demanded absolute faith: faith in God’s existence, in his providence, in his concern for the minutest detail, in his power to sustain me, and in his love protecting me. It meant losing the last hidden doubt, the ultimate fear that God would not be there to bear you up. It was something like that awful eternity between anxiety and belief when a child first leans back and lets go of all support whatsoever—only to find that the water truly holds him up and he can float motionless and totally relaxed.” 

God’s will is not something we seek; he does not hand us a canoe and a compass and wish us the best of luck.

God’s will is in front of us.

It’s in the difficult boss and the ill child; it’s in the frustrating neighbor and the rent that’s due. You don’t need to worry about finding God’s will because it’s happening to you right now, and all you need to do is as Fr. Walter Ciszek says—to follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit. You may not get those promptings when you want them or how you want them, and you may need to just take a leap and know that God will catch you.

This may not make sense right now, and please don’t mistake my suggestion of that fact for condescendation. Just know that for a really long time, I thought that was bullshit. I wouldn’t have said that, but when push came to shove, and it sure as hell did, I learned my faith was about as strong as a feather. And now I get it, a little better than I did before.

If you’re having a hard time making a decision, here's my only real advice for you: Pray. Read He Leadeth Me. Ask a couple of people—seriously, three max—who you really, really trust. If one of the choices you could make is a sin, don’t make that one.

And know that God doesn’t abandon you. He isn’t waiting in the wings for you to mess up so that he can destroy the rest of your life as some kind of cosmic punishment. God gives you choices, and He gives you freedom.

And God does not want something from you—he wants something for you.

Sister, whatever you’re discerning today, I pray that you can loudly hear the will of God. And if you can’t, I pray you can take a leap of faith and make the best choice you can. And I pray that if it all goes south, which it very well might, you know that God was there, and is here now. Now. Now.

On My Nightstand 

• Raising a Daughter With a Body Like Mine: I will forever love my friend Steph’s writing on parenthood. This piece about hoping not to pass on her disordered eating to her daughter is beautiful.

• Should Churches Be Beautiful?: What a thoughtful piece on the complexity of extravagant churches. “These churches have seen displays of power and exploitation; a great deal of the harmful kind of pride. But someone – some cardinal or stonemason – must have put into the making of each of these buildings a labor of love, or careful duty, love’s relative. Someone must have seen the inadequacy of it all to capture its referent, and tried to get as close as possible anyway, for love’s sake and not for pride’s. Building a house for God – how could we possibly do it adequately?”

• Episcopal Accountability and the “Spirituality of Reparation”: Our church’s attempts at reconciling with our sexual abuse crisis are so often…lacking. This sentence completely sums it up: “Rhetorically, many Church leaders remain some distance away from the pope’s vision of personal sacrifice for atonement, preferring the language of institutional responsibility and apology by proxy.”

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In case you missed these Letters:

• We Don’t Talk About Short Term Missions - for subscribers

• The Narcissism of Small Differences - for subscribers

• From Death Unto Life - for everyone

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There’s one spot left for Poland!

The New Feminism Pilgrimage to Poland will take place October 15-25, 2023. There’s one spot left, and we’d love to have you snag it. Learn more here. Registration closes June 30!

We’ll be traveling to Saint John Paul the Great’s childhood home and museum (on! his!! feast day!!!) as well as seeing the tomb of St. Faustina, the Divine Mercy image, the image of Our Lady of Częstochowa, Auschwitz concentration camp where Edith Stein + Maximilian Kolbe were martyred, and more.

The first Catholic Feminist Pilgrimage changed my life. I hope + pray that if the Lord is calling you to join us in Poland, you will give it a “hell, yes” and come along.

Questions? Holler at me by replying to this email.