̶M̶y̶ ̶W̶a̶y̶ His Way

Emma Zanotelli

There is a two lane, seven-and-a-half-mile bridge that crosses Mobile Bay. About two years ago, I suffered what seemed like the hundredth night of lying wide awake at about two in the morning, so I got in my car and drove toward the Mobile Bay Bridge. The bridge connects the tiny city of Mobile to the southern suburb of Daphne, Alabama. It’s nothing special, just some raised asphalt that gets cars from the dry land on one side of the Bay to the other. I needed some divine intervention. I was deeply wounded. The Church that I thought I had known and loved my whole life had hurt me. After months of praying desperate prayers for God to direct, bring answers, and heal my broken heart, I had no more words to pray or articulate dreams to beg for, so I screamed my way across all seven-and-a-half miles of that bridge and then turned around and continued right back to the city where I came from. I don’t know what I hoped to accomplish in the cathartic event that comes from twenty minutes of therapeutic shouting, but I returned home and crawled back into bed, and nothing was different. No answers, no direction, no healing. Just another restless night of sleep. 

Sometime later, I quit my job as a social worker, paused my online grad school classes, and moved to Maryland on a whim. Why? There was a temporary job opportunity on a farm where a friend was working. My plan wasn’t really thought out. I packed up the things I owned that seemed most vital to my temporary life on a farm, tossed them in my car, and boxed the other half of my belongings up for storage, fully intending to return in four months to determine what I would do next in life. That was twenty months ago, and I still haven’t gone back to Alabama to collect the rest of my possessions to bring them to my (not so new) home here in Maryland. 

The second night of my living in Maryland, my only friend invited me to tag-along with her to a weekly gathering where two of her local friends (one being a priest) would gather for Mass, have dinner, and then she would play worship music for a parish event where her priest-friend would hear confessions. I had no excuse to decline and nothing else to do so, tag-along I did. I don’t remember much from that night. I didn’t say much, no one said much to me, nothing profound happened, but every Wednesday for the rest of the summer I found myself sharing Mass and meals with these humans who gently received my hesitant and restrained being. 

Work on the farm was challenging, fun, and exhausting. I spent many days in a field in the hot sun caring for growing sunflowers and learning daily the foreign life of farming. My friend (who had brought me to Maryland) moved after two months of me living and working with her on the farm. Suddenly, I was very alone and had two more months to survive before making my next move. Wednesday gatherings with my new friends were soon followed by Monday night margaritas at a local restaurant where others frequently joined, one being another priest. I didn’t say much, no one said much directly to me, nothing profound happened, but every Monday for the next two months I found myself with these humans who gently received my hesitant and restrained being. I don’t know how the four months turned into twelve months, but God kept me where he wanted me by some form of divine intervention.

Exactly one year after leaving Alabama I was sitting on a porch in Crested Butte, Colorado with fourteen humans who gathered for the sake of adventure. Not everyone knew each other, some people only knew one or two other people going. But three married couples, four priests, one seminarian, and four other people took a week off from normal life to adventure together. I could write stories about the peaks we climbed and the beauty we saw in those mountains. Somehow nothing was as beautiful as our time together at the end of the day. We gathered on the porch each evening and began to interrogate each other on the life story that inexplicably led to our arrival to the sacred deck of that Airbnb. Despite each one of us coming from dramatically different backgrounds, each person would credit the reason for his or her attendance in adventure that week to the Church. Each story recounted the moments in each person’s life where God surpassed human plans with his own. Some had thought at some point in life (maybe most of us had thought at some point in life) that they knew what was coming next or where they were going or even where they had been. But as stories were told to one another, it became apparent that the only reason we were on this vacation and able to tell the tales of our lives was because at some point everyone realized God’s plan was better than their own. 

My own story was recounted to my new friends in some manner like this: “I am here because one year ago, I moved to Maryland to work on a farm. I found that job because of a friend I met in college. That friend introduced me to many of the people on this porch who convinced me to buy a plane ticket here. I met my friend at college because throughout my time in high school I attended youth conferences at the college I eventually chose to attend. Those conferences in high school led me to seek God in a way that dramatically changed how I viewed my faith. I went to those conferences because I spent much of my free time in high school at our parish, with members of our youth group. I was a part of our parish youth group because at some point in middle school I realized the people with whom you surround yourself daily are very important and I knew I didn’t want to jeopardize the possibility of questioning God’s existence in my life…”

I spoke those calculated words and the pattern of my life that led me to Crested Butte, Colorado with those people with half-hearted effort and a desire to fit into the conversation that was happening around me. I was much more captivated by the stories of everyone else than my own. My story dissatisfied me, as what I had wanted to say to everyone was: “I am here because I am trying to understand the Church that I have been so actively involved with my whole life. I am here on this porch because the Church ruined my life, I have been deeply hurt by people I love, and I ended up in Maryland to try and sort through how to engage with the Church, I still haven’t figured it out and for some reason I stuck around. I am here telling you my life story because despite my life-long catechesis and encounters with God, I do not understand human weakness, brokenness, and suffering.” I wanted to speak those words, but I did not. Instead, I listened, and I entered the beautifully orchestrated accounts of God moving the people in front of me to this moment of profound beauty. 

I moved to Maryland with every intention to never work for the Church again, or even to let the Church become a source of relationship and friendship. The second night I arrived, I ate dinner with a priest and many other people in his home. Every Monday night for a year, I developed beautiful friendships with two priests because they lived from a space of authenticity and an unspoken conviction that their vocation clearly defined who they are as individuals living in this world. Their invitation into friendship with them allowed me to encounter them in a way that helped me love their humanity instead of hate it, laugh at their absurdity instead of feel the need to fix it, and receive from them the love that one can only receive from a Spiritual Father, from a man who has given his life to be the method by which we (and he) relate to the unrelatable. I moved to Maryland with the understanding that I would keep to myself, not share my life with others in the Church because I would just end up getting hurt. For reasons unknown to me, I showed up often on Wednesday and Monday nights, didn’t say much, and these strongly built defiant walls of protection were slowly torn down as my friends continually received my hesitant and restrained being. When I was sitting on that porch in Crested Butte, God had already begun and transformed my being in profound ways. Why hadn’t I been captivated by my own story? Why did my story bore me? I guess I wanted it to look and sound different. I couldn’t see what was happening in real time within my own being, I was still waiting for healing, for answers, for God to respond. I couldn’t witness God present in the world around me because I kept waiting for him to show up on my terms. I wanted and expected him to heal me in my preconceived way. I figured that I’ve known God my whole life so I would know clearly when he gives me answers and responds. I sold God short and obscured my vision. 

For the last twenty months (and my entire life) God has done nothing but tenderly care for me. Until a few months ago, I have been looking to encounter God and recounting witness of God on my terms. For the last twenty months, God has done nothing but surprise me, but I keep missing it. 

I screamed an inarticulate prayer for fifteen miles across a bridge at 2:00 a.m. two years ago. I didn’t pray for deep and abiding friendships with the priests I now call friends. I didn’t pray to live and work in Baltimore City. I didn’t pray to have friends reveal to me more about myself by their gentle acceptance of me. I didn’t pray for a vacation with thirteen random humans. My own terms demanded answers to other unarticulated prayers, but I am a far more whole, joyful, and full person because God answered and continues to answer my inarticulate prayer on His terms.

My unspoken version of why I was sitting on that porch in Crested Butte was laced with confusion and the bitter experience of being hurt by the Church. Well, it was laced with confusion and bitter hurt of what I thought was the Church. The fourteen people sitting on that porch were the best definition I could ever give of what the Church actually is: life centered on the Eucharist, surrounded by adventure with people trying their hardest to love those in front of them to the best of their ability. Priests who shared their life with the laity and offered daily sacraments, marriages that gave example of sacrificial love, individual people getting frustrated, forgiving, laughing, learning from one another, cooking, praying with each other, having difficult conversations, adventuring, receiving sacraments. I wanted to define the Church on my terms. I did define the Church on my terms. What a boring life I had been living.

The Church is a masterpiece of divinely orchestrated lives each impacting and affecting the other. How will I engage? Will my vision be obscured? What a gift it is to have unobscured vision and a willingness to be daily surprised by God. 

Emma Zanotelli has Maryland tags on her Rav4 these days, and you can find her hanging out around some church somewhere in Baltimore about 7 days a week.