This.

I trust in what is.

That’s a quote that came to me this morning in meditation.

Growing up as a religious Jew, I was always taught what God is. I was also taught that someone else knows Him better than I do, that someone else experienced Him, and that I should ask them, learn from them. And while tremendously valuable, this also carried a risk for me.

As someone whose search is still ongoing, I’ve come to realize that they never knew more than me. Nobody knows more than anyone else. We are all wired to look for it, wired to find it, wired to cherish it, and each of us gets there in our own way.

They can inspire us. They should light our souls. But they don’t know better than us.

It has become more apparent to me than ever that the God I’m searching for will not show up for me the same way He may show up for someone else entirely. Even this writing - if it were an attempt to define what God is - would probably be idolatry. What I can say is only this: this is how I experience Him. This is my lived experience.

Through many struggles, I would raise my eyes and my voice to God and say:

What? What do You want from me? Just tell me and I’ll do it.

And if I was quiet enough, He would respond.

Always the same thing.

This.

This moment in front of you.

This pain.

This uncertainty.

This uncomfortable situation you find yourself in.

That is exactly what I want.

Oddly enough, I found comfort in it. In a strange way, it calmed me. As if to say: you do not need to do anything other than face what is. I don’t have to attach a story to it. I don’t need to give it meaning. It doesn’t have to be some cosmic divine message.

It just is.

And living this way has cost me things I was once certain I would never lose.

Today I think it goes even deeper. This, this very moment, this exact situation, is the closest I’ve come to experiencing God Himself. God, for me, is always unreachable, unattainable. I can’t grasp Him. He is too beyond me. So either I would shut the search down, only to restart again weeks later, or I would dig further and still find no salvation.

But if I believe there is a Creator, a designer of it all - which I do - then the closest I can come to Him, from my own understanding & not anything inherited, is reality itself.

Trusting in what is.

Sitting in reality, no matter its sound.

Not praying the problem away.

Not making deals with God to relieve my discomfort.

Because to me, that would be idolatry: asking something I do not see to remove me from what the Creator I’ve come to know has designed for me.

איש