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Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Trust in God: Mountains, Miracles, and Mud Pies

A blog post by Leanna Praetzel, Fall 2011 Semester 



Forty minutes until my flight from Chicago was leaving, and I still had to clear customs, figure out where my luggage should go, switch terminals, go through security, and locate my gate number? The scenario sounded all too familiar...

Right off the bat I was behind- It turns out the airline was handing out customs fast passes while I was busy singing The National Anthem with my good friend Joe and getting yelled at for calling my Dad while still on the plane. "It's going to be okay," I thought as my friends helped me get through the line and grab my checked bag from the belt. Not knowing where to put it (I still had to fly to Cleveland), I asked the man working with the luggage. "Belt seven," he said. I knew this whole ordeal was a test of trust, and I had to make it on my plane in time, so, even though the screen read "Cancun", I put my bag on belt seven.

And then I was alone. I rode the shuttle to Terminal Two like an airport worker told me to do, and upon arriving there noticed that my flight was delayed ten minutes. My excitement was cut short, though, when I realized in the line for security that I was in the wrong terminal. I paused mid-panic, and decided I was completely going to rely on God. After getting through security, I ran. My legs were wobbling, my bags were ripping, random stuff kept falling everywhere, and (surprisingly) I was laughing! I must have looked like such a fool! Passing by another departure board, I saw my plane was delayed another twenty minutes. I felt so special... like God was making the plane wait just for me!

Of course I arrived with time to spare. I talked the whole way home to an exchange student from Prague, and was greeted by my entire family in the baggage claim area. I was not, however, greeted by my checked bag. "Maybe it didn't make it to the plane in time," my Dad said. We filled out a form and were told it would arrive the next day.

One week later and I still did not have my bag. At first I joked with my friends that it might be enjoying Cancun. But it wasn't long before I started pouting. A whole semester abroad's worth of stuff- gone? My dad figured out that I actually had not taken my bag past customs (oops... how was I supposed to know?!) and that I might never get it back. It was the day I accepted the fact that I might never see it again - the day I stopped whining and started wanting God's will- that I got it back. After a week of being "untraceable", my bag was just sitting there on my front porch!  I couldn't help but think about how much God really must love me.

This past semester, I feel like God has taken every opportunity to challenge my trust in Him... and there is no struggle anymore for me to see why.  God wants me to experience first-hand how powerful He is!  Through trusting Him to take me where He wanted me to go all semester, I've seen so much!  I've seen how He took the grotto in Lourdes- a filthy dump, a pigsty!- and, by allowing Mary to appear there, turned it into a holy shrine, a pinnacle of faith. I've witnessed Him taking the small, dirty city of Medjugorje and, through our Mother Mary, creating a glorious pilgrimage site. I take mud and make mud pies... He takes mud and makes mountains, miracles, and men!

How could I NOT trust a God like that? A God who crafted the Swiss Alps and the Austrian waterfalls, who fashioned the Italian hillsides and the German ravines? A God whose Spirit moves in every country and stands without fail by his Bride the universal Catholic Church? A God who, through his Son, passed on the keys of the Kingdom to our first pope, Peter, whose very bones still lie under the Vatican Basilica? This real and living God has shown me so much this past semester through my gradual trust in Him.. And I can't thank Him enough.