God’s Megaphone

If you are looking for a story about miracles, this isn’t it. If you are looking for a quick fix to problems, there isn’t one. If you are tired of looking and would actually enjoy finding things for a change, well, you’ve been looking at things from the wrong angle.

I thought I had an OK relationship with God. We chatted off and on, and I went to church regularly. Everyone thought I had the perfect life. I knew something was missing, but I was too busy being mildly bored with mundane daily life to pay much attention.

Then my marriage fell apart. I was suddenly scrambling to make sense of my life. In the process I read this from C. S. Lewis: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

God now had my attention. I left Sri Lanka and went home to India. In the process of opening my heart to God, I found that I was opening my heart to everything around me. I got off social media for a while and spent my time climbing mango trees with my mom, going for early-morning walks with my dad, plucking fruit with my cousins, reading outdoors in the fresh air with my faithful dog at my feet.

I slowly, very slowly, realized I was praying the wrong prayer. I was selfishly asking God for an easy way out, to miraculously fix the broken. He could have. But I would have learned nothing. Instead, God asked me to depend on Him constantly.

In the space of nine months a close friend died from a brain tumor; my beloved grandfather passed away; my best friend stopped talking to me over a misunderstanding; and my marriage of 12 years ended. I packed my life into two suitcases, left the company I helped found 10 years ago; said gut-wrenchingly tearful goodbyes to my church family, friends, and the beautiful country of Sri Lanka.

I lost everything, but I found God as I had never before, and it is amazing and real. God is drawing me so close that my external circumstances are becoming irrelevant. I don’t know what my future holds, but God knows, and that’s enough. His mercies are new and beautiful every morning.