This week, I finished writing the script for one of our shows on St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. One of the things I LOVE about working on this show is the many wonderful things I get to learn as I conduct my research and create the shows. I never knew much about St. Elizabeth until recently, and what I’ve learned has made her a new favorite saint.
Like her spiritual father, St. Vincent de Paul, she had a particular trust that God would make His will known to us through circumstance and good advice. It’s quite a rational way of looking at it, I think. I mean, we don’t ALL get to be visionaries. God speaks to us if we’re still enough to listen, and He guides us in ways that can be somewhat obvious, if we pay attention. But then, there’s the worry that we get in the way, infuse our own desires into what we think we see and hear, and mess everything up, as we are wont to do.
Just yesterday, something happened in my life—in our lives—that could dramatically change the course of this show and our future. While this circumstance poses some frightening possibilities, the GOOD possibilities are so thrilling, it’s hard to give the negative much thought. This could be the it we’ve been waiting for, and while in some ways, it will make producing the show easier, it will make it more difficult in others. Still, who said it would be easy? 🙂
Anyway, I ask for your prayers, but I’d like to offer a prayer I encountered not too long ago. It was written by Thomas Merton, a Catholic writer with whom I’m not too familiar. But I found this prayer so true, so moving, I had to hold on to it.
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.