I know that God is here.

Sometimes, life feels like a mess...like a swamp you are just trudging through.  Everything is disorganized, nothing quite falls into place.  So, it is nice to be reminded, every once in a while, that God is here.  To be totally clear, I don't mean the Christian God, or any specific God for that matter, but simply a guiding presence of loving energy in my life.

So I have two stories to tell - the first is sweet and more profound and I think the second is pretty funny.  But both of them are demonstrations of how I feel like I am occasionally reminded of God's loving hand in my life.

When I got off the plane in London, I felt so disoriented and turned-upside-down and, on top of that, just totally jet-lagged.  I wandered around the city all day to stay awake.  In the evening, I happened to stumble upon a church.  I went in and remembered the experience I had had a few weeks prior, when I attended church in California with my friend Sally and had prayed to God to be healed, to feel a refreshing spirit in my life, after what had felt like a very long and perplexing few months.

Here in London, the church was having a healing service, so I decided to stay.  This church, it should be noted, is not Catholic or Lutheran (which is what I'm used to), but Anglican.  I have had very strange experiences with the Anglican church in the past, so I was a bit hesitant, but I was there and I decided to try it.  During the service, I had the option to go to the front to be blessed and anointed with oil, so I did.  Afterwards, I met a really nice girl, who had just gotten here from New York, and would be starting her first year of a master's program...she reminded me of myself last year :).  The whole experience, the fact that I had literally just stumbled upon such a beautiful church with such warm people and a healing blessing, reassured me that, even on the days when we feel most lost and meandering, God is there, guiding us in the right direction.

A few days later, while staying with a buddy of mine, I managed to lock myself in her bathroom.  This is one of those things you hear about, but has never happened to you...until it does.  I tried to turn the lock and it just fell off in my hand (yes, apartments in London are generally old and a bit falling apart).  The little square peg it had held onto inside of the door was falling out the other side.  I looked around me everywhere to try to find a pair of tweezers, something I could use to grab onto that peg, since it was what made the interior of the lock turn.  I didn't have my cell phone with me and I was a bit scared, anticipating having to hang out in there for 4 hours til my friend came home.

I kept looking over at a blue flosser thing on the counter, but thinking "no, no that's not small enough to grab onto anything."  But I kept looking at it and, after trying to use everything else I could find, I decided to give it a go.  I picked it up and, as I slid it into the open hole, it was a perfect fit.  Somehow, its square end was the perfect size and shape.  Sometimes, we have a hunch about something.  And, I guess you could call it luck.  But, I'm telling you, that blue flosser thing really did not look promising, but it just kept staring back at me, and it worked.

I think it's easy to go about our lives in a really rushed way, thinking we are controlling everything, and pushing ourselves to do everything "right" or "better."  But it's SO nice, in those moments when everything feels entirely out of our hands, to remember that - that's ok.  Because God is here.  His energy, whether we notice it or not, is subtly nudging us in the right direction.  And we can see it happening if we really open our minds wide and look.