Just One of Those Things

“It’s just one of those things,” my grandma used to say all the time. It meant that she heard, but she had no helpful comment or answer to my dilemma. This often irritated me, because I wanted to change the circumstances immediately, and that was outside our control. And control is a concept I covet, especially when I see my flaws.

For example, in a recent Examen, God gently showed me an unsettling defect. Grateful, I asked for the grace of courage to control it. But I received no speedy remedy. “It’s just one of those things,” echoed in my head.

In the book, First Belong to God: On Retreat with Pope Francis, Austen Ivereigh writes, “Jesus calls us on a mission to love the world in all its woundedness and failure, just as he has loved us in our woundedness and failure.” Jesus doesn’t call us to fix it or control it but to love it.

Really? I’d rather jump to resolutions rather than sit uncomfortably with my weakness. I feel ashamed of destructive words I’ve spoken to loved ones. Why can’t I figure out remedies to my failures and ways to un-say hasty words?

But time can’t be rewound. And I know God doesn’t want me to sit in shame over past mistakes. God wants me to love myself despite my failings.

Rather than turn to love, I’m tempted to self-absorption and wheel-spinning over ways I might overhaul things. Or I might deny I caused harm and shove my culpability under a rock. God offers another way. An inner voice without words conveyed these thoughts:

Look to me, not at yourself.
Look to my wonderful, powerful, and glorious majesty.
Keep your eyes fixed on me.
If you look to yourself, you will always be disappointed.
I love you in your woundedness and failures. I love the people who annoy you and irritate you with their woundedness and failures. I want you to love them too.

Jesus invites me to join him as he loves everyone—no exceptions. I get to choose to participate in this quest for love, which I will fail at times, and that is OK. Jesus uses everything for good, and only God loves perfectly.

Something else I discovered is that when I dare to tell the truth about my failures, people feel safe to be honest about theirs. Healing, compassion, and a growing closeness result. It’s miraculous.

Our culture values independence (in the sense of not asking for help) and pride. As Ivereigh combines the thoughts of Pope Francis with wisdom from the Spiritual Exercises, I see the connectedness between accepting my brokenness and embracing humbling things. Pride leads to other vices and leads me to feel that I alone must fight against my flaws. I can do it. I can control it. I. I. I.

Humility, on the other hand, tells us to surrender. We aren’t to see life as a battle and exhaust ourselves with thrashing about. We must accept when it’s “just one of those things.”

Jesus can be trusted with every situation and can take care of anything. Acceptance trusts that Jesus, the source of my strength, will get me through whatever will happen. Things won’t magically change, but I may change. Graces will flow when I trust God. And I can respond to the nagging voice inside that claims that because of my woundedness, I’m not worthy: “So what? I am broken! That is what I am, and I am loved.”

God takes my brokenness and transforms it into beauty. It’s just one of those things.