Catholic & Single An Alternative Route

Aug 18, 2010

Dear Anthony, I really thought that I had found “the one,” but things didn’t work out. In trying to find peace in this, I find myself increasingly frustrated. How could God allow me to go so far astray? I want to do God’s will, but I also want to shake this feeling like God knew everything that would happen and allowed it.

This is a painful thing to go through, so I am very sorry to hear this and offer you my prayers. It is so challenging to be ready to make a commitment to marriage and have invested so much in someone, to the point of falling in love, only to have this person you believe is the one for you be taken from you.

Be careful about the notion of God knowing everything in the sense of having control of the situation, or the sense of predestination. Your question seems to be if God already planned for this man to NOT be the one, why does it seem this man WAS the one?

It's true that God knows what is going to happen, but that is only because he is outside of time and has seen our entire life happen. He has worked to influence our life, but also has seen our decisions (whether with or against His will), and has tried further attempts to help us via each decision (if they are not compatible with His will). We are in time, so we have to wait for life to play out. He has seen our life, but He was also there in every moment.

So here we are right now, facing decisions, and experiencing God's influences. He is working on us and for us right now. We have not yet made our decisions for the day, and God is not choosing for us. But He does know already what we will decide because it has already happened for Him (being outside of time, He can see it).

Isn't it frustrating when someone says to you "I knew you were going to do that." We are frustrated because we say "How could you know? I didn't even know what I was going to do." But the person knows you so well that they just knew. It does not surprise them. But you don't like someone knowing you so well that they know what you are going to do or say. Love binds two people so much that this really happens. The deeper the love, the greater the knowledge of the other person, including anticipating their thoughts and actions.

The difference is, despite how much we might know someone else and ability to anticipate their thoughts, actions and feelings, we don't really "know" absolutely, nor do we know how the future will be affected. God does. He knows us so well and knows what we are doing to do or say, but He also knows how our moments could play out for the next moments. So He works to help our next moves via our decisions in the moment. Yet, He knows how all moments will play out, regardless of His influences. We can never know that. God can.

Some people find peace in knowing God knows all things, and how our lives are going to play out. Some people don't like that at all. The ones who do probably understand that they have a free will and that God is sending His grace at all times to help them in their decisions. Their peace is in knowing that no matter what they decide, God works out for the good those who put their trust in Him and stay close to Him. Even if they fall from grace, God loves them so much that the Holy Spirit convicts them of sin, and inspires them to turn back to God to ask forgiveness and His mercy and to change their life or correct that wrong or bad decision.

Those who don't like it that God knows all things about our lives are frustrated because they are attached to their own plans that they want God to accept and make happen. They don't like not having control. Perhaps a part of them thinks they really don't have free will, since things will happen as they are going to happen anyway. Or perhaps they think that no matter how much close they stay to God, other people mess things up by their bad decisions, thus messing up your life as well.

God's ultimate will is that we get to Heaven, and He is always working on our alternative routes to get us there, should we ever veer off the road of His will as He plans for us. It is a comforting thing, isn't it? He will make sure we always have an alternative route to Heaven, as long as we want to be with Him. That is the primary roll of our free will as God gave it to us; to choose God and to be with Him forever. Our time here on earth is about accomplishing that. Anything we want or choose that does not accomplish that is an abuse of the purpose of the free will gift God gave us. So any person, place, thing, thought, desire, etc., that does not work in God's plan for us is a threat to our eternal salvation, and God has to do something about that for our own sakes.

But if we don't choose the road He planned for us and where He is waiting for us, He loves us so much that he creates another road, an alternative route, that will get us to Him and where He now waits. God is all action. That is one of His attributes. He never sleeps, he never waits. He acts. He is always right here with us, working on us, working with us, always loving us. If we ask Him to leave us by our sins, He still loves us enough to inspire us to come back to Him. We must choose it though. That is the only thing God waits for. He waits for us to choose Him, and then (very often) that is the only time He can take the action that is His will for us or others (i.e., waiting for certain prayers or the offering of certain sufferings in order to save the souls of others). The Holy Spirit is always working on us to inspire us to make acts of love by our own free will.

It is really frustrating when we were convinced God did certain things to get us to some point and that something that we wanted or expected to happen does not happen. We "knew" it was what God wanted for us or what was meant to be, but it does not go as we thought. How can that be? How could we have gotten it so wrong? Does that mean we are actually further from God than we thought? Does that mean God does not really want us to have what we want?

Unfortunately, the only answer to these questions is that we are not God, and no one has privy to what God is going to do. Jesus said that even He did not know the time of the end of the world, but only the Father. It stands to reason that only God knows what He is going to do, and the "why" of it.

St. Therese of Lisieux said that God would not give us a desire that cannot be fulfilled. In other words, the desire itself is of God, if it is a good desire. The best desire is to be with God forever in Heaven, and to serve Him in this life. If we desire that, than God cannot help but grant us our heart's desire. Every other desire is subjective. If we desire to have a certain person in our life and don't get that person, does it mean that God gave us the desire for that person but intended to never give that person to us? Not exactly. It might not be the right timing, and perhaps we are ruining the desire by wanting it fulfilled in our time, not God's time. Or we might not see the full effects of having that person in our life, and God in His mercy and love for us, seeing that this person will ultimately be to our ruin, does what He can to make sure we do not have that person, as a good Father would. Because we don't see the full affects, we can only see that God does not want our desire fulfilled, and that makes us sad or mad.

We are not God, therefore we should be humble before Him and accept the suffering of not getting what we want. We should trust in Him and have unwavering peace. Ultimately, if we remain friends with God and fulfill His commandment to love one another as He has loved us, and live the sacramental life we are called to, we will successfully pass our test of being in this world, and end up with God forever in Heaven.