When Good Things Happen Dressed Up As Bad

by Lucia Sweetland

Will versus will

Let’s face it – a lot of us feel that God’s Will is bad. Often when there is a calamity or misfortune of sorts, we say, well, it was God’s Will. How often do we make the same comment about a surprise event of good fortune or an opportunistic event? For example, what if we land our dream job or get pregnant after years of trying? We might thank God for this event, but do we see it as God’s Will that something “good” happened for us? Or do we rather see it as a kind of luck or temporary grace that we’ll have to pay for somewhere down the line with misfortune? How easily we accept “misfortune” as God’s Will and good fortune as dumb luck!

How often do we take a look at our own will? Are they different – God’s Will and our own? Well that depends on how you look at it. We have “free will”, which means that we have the power to decide, but also along with that comes the responsibility for our decisions. Can you imagine having the power to decide without having the responsibilities for your decisions? Life would be a mess – and how would we learn from our choices? So along with the power and privilege of choice comes the ability to learn from our choices by experiencing the results. Some people call this “karma” and some call it the “Law of Cause and Effect”.

Being that we are God’s children and He expresses and grows into More through us, God desires that we may make the highest choices – or the choices that will cause us the least pain and the least restriction, being that God is within us through it all, desiring to be magnificent and generous through us. But above all, God desires us to grow.

Mistakes can help us find the way

What happens when we make a mistake? What if we don’t choose the highest – maybe we choose the lowest. Maybe we choose pride in thinking we know better than God. Now instead of magnificent, generous God being through us and helping us make decisions, we are making our decisions for our self. This is like a five-year-old thinking that he can drive a car. Hopefully he won’t have to crash the car before he finally surrenders this foolish notion that he is ready and able to drive. But maybe he will – maybe that is what it will take for him to come to his senses and surrender, and allow his parent to drive. Maybe he has ignored all the loving guidance and even the loud and urgent guidance of people along the way jumping up and down and yelling “stop”! Maybe he has ignored his own fear and his own feeling of being lost, over his head and out of control. Where is he going?

So perhaps he has to come to the point of crashing the car, which breaks his pride. He is no longer on a crash-course, he can make a new decision – not to give up driving altogether, but to stop thinking that he knows better than his parents – to humbly accept their guidance, realizing that they love him and want for him what is in his own best interest. He can be patient and willing to grow into the skill of driving a car; when he is ready he can take lessons from those who already know how to drive and have a license. But for now he can concentrate on being a glorious and much loved five-year-old.

From this perspective, was the car crash a bad thing or was it a good thing dressed up as bad? Did it have to happen? No, obviously not. The five-year-old could easily have been obedient to his parents and stayed out of the car. Did his parents want him to continue driving away from their nurturing love and protection? Absolutely not. How could that be good for their son? Yet he was “driven” by a will that was not aligned with his parents’ will (his own "higher" will), and the crash happened as a result – or consequence – of that disconnection. It was not the parents’ will that their son get hurt, only that he stop his self-destructive behavior that could only take him into deeper and deeper trouble. Yet they could not stop him from getting in that car – if he really wanted to do it, he would find a way. He had the power of that choice, as well as the choice of whether or not to listen to his parents and obey.

Listening to the heart

Before we shake our fist at God because of some “misfortune” in our lives, we need to stop and ask ourselves, have I been listening to my heart where God (my Higher Self) talks to me? What would my heart tell me if I really stopped and listened? Perhaps there is a better way – a way that is better for me but I have been too prideful and stubborn to listen - to surrender my small ideas and accept that God has a grander plan. Is it God’s fault that I see myself as small? What could be more grand than a five-year-old being five – a playful, loving, innocent, creative, joyful and most beloved child being himself? Surely his parents can drive him where he needs to go. Surely God can run the universe.

God’s Will is good. Trust.

Dear God,

Please forgive me,
For ever thinking,
I knew better than You.
I am ready to listen.

Amen.