Inspiration from Garth Brooks?

I'm a country music fan. There. I said it. I tried to put it off for as long as possible and believe me, I tried to avoid the twangy drawls, melodramatic lyrics and saccharin story lines. Growing up in rural Ohio, you can't help but be surrounded by country music. It was at every local fair, on every radio you turned on and on every mix CD (yes mix CD, this was before the times of iPods and playlists) you could get your hands on. I resisted (on principle alone) for most of my adolescence, but I eventually caved sophomore year of high school. I sang along to Big and Rich, Martina McBride, and Reba. I had crushes on Keith Urban and Kenny Chesney and swooned to their country lullabies. I am not ashamed to admit that I attended a Taylor Swift concert last year with Carmen and was able to sing along to every single song and never every lyric. However, none of these compared to Garth Brooks.

I grew up when Garth was huge and everyone loved him. I remember seeing his Central Park concert on TV and was astounded by the 200,000+ people in attendance. And this was in New York City! I was even a fan when he tried out his ill-advised Chris Gaines phase where he grew a soul-patch, brushed his hair into his face and attempted a somewhat Emo conversion to rock music. I played his Double Live CD to the point of scratches all over it and to this day I will put it on when I feel homesick. There is something about the combination of his voice, lyrics and the tone to his music that just remind me of home.

Today while I was driving I heard one of my favorite Garth songs. "Unanswered Prayers" tells the story about a man who returns to his high school homecoming football game and runs into his old high school flame. He is reminded about all of the prayers he made to spend the rest of his life with this woman while is high school and couldn't understand why God wouldn't answer this prayer when he so fully meant them. The song goes on to reiterate the idea that just because God doesn't answer a prayer doesn't mean that he doesn't care about you.

Whenever I hear this song I think about all of the unanswered prayers in my life and how happy I am that they went unanswered. In high school I prayed that I would be the most popular girl. If this would have happened I would have been a total bitch and never learned to develop my own independence and self-worth. In college I prayed to find my husband. If this would have been answered, I would have moved back to Sycamore, never gone to grad school and would have never moved out of Ohio. In grad school, I prayed harder than I ever have before to make a relationship work that I knew deep down in my heart was never going to work. If that prayer would have been answered, I would be living a very unhappy life in Florida after following a man that was really, truly not right for me.

What strikes me the most about these prayers is that I deeply, fervently, and genuinely prayed that they would come to fruition during that time in my life. I really wanted to be popular. I really, really wanted to find a soul mate in college. More than anything I wanted my relationship in grad school to make it past the confines of BG's campus. With this in mind, I can't help but second-guess all of the prayers and wishes and intentions that I've been putting out into the world for the past few months. It makes me think about whether these current prayers will be a distant memory and whether I will look back and laugh about what a foolhardy attempt it was to control my own destiny.

I guess this brings me to the final thought of this somewhat meandering post. Maybe it's time to stop asking God (or the Universe or whatever name I want to give my higher being) for such specifics. It really doesn't serve me any purpose to ask for a better job or an easier relationship with someone or better hair or a boyfriend if that only makes me happy for a brief moment in time. All of those other unanswered prayers would have probably made me happy if they came true. Maybe it would have been for a few weeks or months or maybe even a couple of years, but at the end of the day, those intentions were not where I was meant to be.

Where I'm meant to be is where I am.

Where I'm meant to go is where I'm meant to be.

So I'm going to stop asking for specifics. I'm going to start asking for whatever God wants to give me. I'm going to start asking for humility and for patience, not answers and job offers. My new goal to ask God to put me to work where I can use what she gave me in the best ways and means possible. To be in a place and with people where I can feel totally alive. Yes, this is a super Jesuit way of thinking. I know I'm not creating a new theology here, but it is new for me. Here's hoping for a whole lot of unanswered prayers. Thanks Garth!