Not Up to Me

If it were up to me I wouldn’t be writing this blog post.

If it were up to me I wouldn’t even be at the University of Virginia. If it were up to me, I would be finishing up my third year at Villanova University. I wouldn’t be pursuing a degree in public policy, but I would instead be studying in their business school. If it were up to me, I would have missed out on the opportunity to make some of my best friends–friends who have helped me become a better Catholic. If it were up to me, I never would have been a TA and I would have never discovered my love for teaching. If it were up to me, I would not be the person I am today.

I’m glad things weren’t up to me.

Going into my senior year of high school, I was dead set on going to Villanova University; another kid from my high school was going there and he loved it. But when it came down to actually choosing colleges, Villanova turned out to be double the price of UVA and so I made the decision to enroll at UVA. While I’m sure Villanova would have been a great school for me, UVA has been everything I could have hoped and more.

I looked back throughout my life and I recognized that there are a lot of times where–despite my meticulous planning–God seems to throw a curveball my way and uproot everything that I wanted and instead, give me something even greater. And really, that’s how my whole faith journey began.
I’ll be the first to admit that I haven't always always been Catholic. Sure I was baptized at a young age and received the sacraments all Cradle Catholics do, but I wasn’t living a Catholic life. This all changed one day during one of my religion classes. Me, being the stellar student I am, I stopped paying attention one day and decided to just flip through the Bible and see what I could read. I ended up landing on Luke 16, and more specifically, the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. In sum, the parable is about a rich man who lives his whole life ignoring the poor man, Lazarus. They both end up dying and the rich man looks up from Hell to see Lazarus in Heaven with Abraham. After the rich man pleads with them to have mercy on him and to warn his family, Abraham finally says, “If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.”

Since that day, this verse has always stuck in my mind. One reason is that reading that was the moment I began to take my faith more seriously; it was a momentous occasion in my life. The second reason (and arguably more important) is that it helps me remember every day that my life is not up to me. One of my favorite quotes comes from St. Francis of Assisi (I went to a Franciscan high school, sorry Dominicans). He says how the only thing he owned that was truly his was his sin; everything else was a gift from God.

The life that we’re given is a gift from God–and God won’t just give us such a great gift if he didn’t have a plan for us. When Adam and Eve committed that first sin, God began to set in motion a plan to draw us back to Him–a plan to redeem us. The culmination of which was Christ’s resurrection. Just like the prophet Isaiah said, we are the clay and God is our potter, and God doesn’t make crappy pottery. While it’s not easy to surrender your life to God–I still struggle with it every day–it’s one of the most rewarding things there is.