Knowing When You’re Being Guided by the Hand of God

When you’re doing things that don’t make sense to anyone, but they getting results, they are satisfying your needs and not hurting anyone.  When the ones you care about don’t see the point in your objectives and you can’t get anyone to listen to you.  When your life slowly, slowly rises while others falter and strangle and the proof, the only proofs you have are the results, the sure better way in a rejecting world.  You may have been guided by the hand of God.

Not being religious and not believing in the tenets of the Christian faith, this is a bold statement on my part.  But how else to explain it?  Illogical to everyone but inspiring to me.  Doomed to failure but ultimately a subtle success.  Impossible in the eyes of the wise yet being accomplished by someone with no chance of success.  With no encouragement, little help, incessant ridicule and criticism, something of lasting value is created and rises up from the ashes.  Something precious to others who are capable and sought by others with with resources, that something coming to one with no capability to attain it, no resources to secure it.  When the crazy person finds the hidden treasure and those weighted and balanced are left holding only their malice, you may have been guided by the hand of God.

The proofs that God is guiding you are very hard to see.  Mostly in hindsight they are.  Completely blemished they may be.  Never bold and underscored will they appear.  Because they are illogical and unexplainable they are wonderful not miraculous.  Because the guidance comes not from present rationale or past training and bread crumbs on the path… There will be mistaken paths…There will be harmful failures…  There will be disheartening betrayals…  There will be growth and maturity and scars…  These are the proofs.  Along with the knowledge that something went right when everything went wrong.  That someone stayed with you when everyone abandoned you.  That when all is lost you can still be found.  Just when the silence and the censor and the cynicism haunt you and seek to crush your flagging hopes and disparaged dreams, you see a light.  You get back up.  You leave the dried blood to cover your wounds.  You savor the pain radiating from you your bruises.  You seek to understand the abandonment of those you trusted.  And you get back confidently on the path…you must have been lifted and now you are guided by the hand of God.

You are a joke if you don’t think the ridiculers are funny.  You are ignored if you have an opinion without credentials.  You are crazy if you stand alone with the truth.  Being guided by unseen forces means that your intensity will almost always put you at odds with someone who is more convinced than intense.  More arrogantly right than actually correct.  More interested in self interest than self enlightenment.  Yes, order has its place, but disorder is always waiting to enter into a structure that only honors credentials and might and tradition.  No one deserves anything.  Every one is free to take.  Only the strong will get it.  But the patient and persistent and persevering can be served.  Served at a later time than the time of avarice.  The time of confrontation.  The time of win and lose.  This will seem to be the position of the weak, which I am.  All the same, it is some kind of truth.  A kind of way that balances the dominating haves with the masses of have nots.  When you can hold on to only hope as you watch the tangible blow away in the wind, you might be being guided by the hand of God.

Being disposable is a tough role to exist in for your entire life.  Having your trust, loyalty, and hard earned money pave the way for another’s pleasure or success or good life can be devastating if dwelt upon.  So don’t do it.  Let go of it.  Trust is your own mis-confection and a lesson learned for future application (too bad it is so often forgotten).  Loyalty is your own bad choice and your are surely not alone on this one (too many wars and not enough families have suffered from poor, abused loyalty).  Money?  Money is the easiest thing to fix.  Jimmy Buffett sings “I made enough money to buy Miami, But I pissed it away so fast…”.  You can always misapply your trust again.  You can always find someone or something else to affix your loyalty to…and have it slip, then slide, then fall on the floor of fate like the other loyalties that didn’t stick.  Money isn’t a matter of acquiring, it’s a matter of pursuit.  If the values in your life have no value to the non-trustworthy, disloyal, and wealthy – you are one the path, guided by the hand of God.

Loss still has to hurt.  Harm still has to draw blood.  Abandonment will still take its toll.  Make no mistake, listening to the voices no one else can hear brings more immediate hardship than listening to those who everyone can hear but bring long term but only temporary comfort.  Infestation, infection, and pestilence are part of the dynamic always going along for the sake of protection, health, and belonging.  Leaving the herd not only exposes one to the pain of rejection but also the frigid steppes of the unknown.  The cave of solemnity is also the cave of salvation.  Sit by its meager fire.  Feel your wounds slowly, painfully, blessedly heal.  Commune with the emptiness which surrounds you, haunts you, enlightens you.  These are the moments you will remember through the many stages of your life.  Stages begin and end up until the end.  But moments of clarity and maturity occur and stay.  Hold them dear.  Neither wish for them or avoid them but rather cherish them when they occur.  They are a result of you listening and holding the guiding hand of God.