The Heroic Moment: Wake Up!*
This One's for Garrett, My Intrepid Writer/Editor Hero and Friend
Every morning I experience an amnesia about God’s faithfulness in my life.
When I tell my sister Elizabeth, “I’m fighting with God,” and she always replies rhetorically “Really? Who won?”
We both know G-d always wins – as he did with Jacob.
I’m like the amnesia-suffering Drew Barrymore character in the film 50 First Dates who every morning forgets all the affection and goodness that’s transpired between her and her suitor Adam Sandler from the day they first met. Every dawn of every day, Sandler’s character woos his girl and remembers himself to her.
It’s very romantic.
That’s my relationship to God, 50 First Awakes.
My alarm clock rings, and I awake in a state of existential forgetfulness about God and me. Am I alone in all this? What’s the day hold? What about my responsibilities and the mistakes I’ve made — and my tired efforts of the day before?
By the film’s end, Sandler the husband plays for his wife a super short movie reel of her life and their life together: from happy childhood to the accident which caused her amnesia to their first date, marriage, and kids.
Happily she wakes up on a boat deck to a spectacularly snowy, beautiful Norway fjord.
If I choose prayer first in the morning, I choose a hero’s moment and a hero’s day. I see a God-made movie reel of my life: the “Oh that’s why I don’t sometimes trust God,” amnesia-causing moments and the happy heroic highlights that remember God to me — faith, great bosses, good jobs, steady friends, loving family, trips, fun dog, humor, health, funny stories, and suitors.
“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:22-3) ”
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כבחַסְדֵי יְהֹוָה כִּי לֹא תָמְנוּ כִּי לֹא כָלוּ רַחֲמָיו:
כגחֲדָשִׁים לַבְּקָרִים רַבָּה אֱמוּנָתֶךָ (Eichah 3:22-3)
Prayer reminds me of God’s love, mercy, and faith and my happy well-lived life.
Protestant friends call personal prayer devotion, and a Bible and bible study usually accompany them in it. Orthodox Jewish friends call it davening,**a Yiddish word derived from Hebrew dovaiv meaning “to move the lips,” or prayer. In Hebrew tefilah is the word for prayer and has two meanings: “to judge,” as in to reflect and to think about who one is before God – and “attachment,” as in attaching oneself again to God.
Like my Protestant and Jewish brothers and sisters, in prayer I study the Good Book, move my lips, reflect on who I am before the Creator and bond with God.
Do you live the “heroic moment” of the morning described by Opus Dei founder and Spanish Roman Catholic priest JoseMaría Escrivá in The Way? (Ch 206) “The heroic minute. It is the time fixed for getting up. Without hesitation: a supernatural reflection and… up! The heroic minute: here you have a mortification that strengthens your will and does no harm to your body.”
My brother Joel says mornings were once tough for him until God gave him his first child, a beautiful boy named Elliott Dean who changed Joel’s morning and life forever. Each morning Joel and his wife Amy had a baby to love and to hold and a little person to raise.
Elizabeth says “Yes” to God every morning and her family’s insurance business customers get swift help and peace of mind.
Joel said “Yes” to his first baby boy and now Dean the man enlivens and entertains his family and math professor with mathematical and mathy musical renderings.
Will I choose to live the heroic moment? Someone somewhere needs my early morning “Yes” – my love, my faith.
Will you live the heroic moment? Someone needs your “Yes.”
*(reprinted from carolthecatholic on Wordpress, who broke my heart!)
**http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3241/jewish/What-is-Prayer.htm