"I have toiled in vain, I have exhausted myself for nothing" is a passage from the prophet Isaiah from today's first reading.
How many times have I felt that all I have done is for nothing? Countless times.
It's a feeling that I have experienced numerous times.
I do my best, or what I think is my best at that time, and I don't get the result that I want.
"I have exhausted myself for nothing".
For many years, doing my best was an unspecified concept concerning what God wants me to do.
Of course, I didn't know what God wants me to do then, and I still don't know it now, but this led me to somehow establish an "implicit contract" with Christ.
If I do what God wants me to do, then I will get what I want.
Needless to say, this is not how things have worked out, and mostly for the best.
Today's readings are particularly close to me, because they are about the birth of a child.
In the first reading, the prophet Isaiah speaks of:
he who formed me in the womb to be his servant
But it's in today's Psalm 138 that the idea of birth from the Lord is made more explicit:
1. O Lord, you search me and you know me, you know my resting and my rising, you discern my purpose from afar. You mark when I walk or lie down, all my ways lie open to you.
2. For it was you who created my being, knit me together in my mother’s womb. I thank you for the wonder of my being, for the wonders of all your creation.
3. Already you knew my soul, my body held no secret from you when I was being fashioned in secret and moulded in the depths of the earth.
It is here that I come across the comforting idea that I have not "exhausted myself for nothing", because the Lord already "knew my soul, my body held no secret from you" before I was born.
There is here the idea of a plan that God has for each of us.
I have been raised Catholic and the idea of God's plan has always been there.
Albeit not revealed plainly, somehow I have known that there is a plan that God has for me since I was a child.
What is this plan though?
And is it my plan or God's?
Another way in which today's readings directly speak to me is through the mother of John the Baptist, Elizabeth.
She was in her old age, and she was considered barren, when conceived John.
Myself and my wife have tried to conceive a child for the past five years.
Initially, we started with very little knowledge on what to do.
Most recently, and for the past year, we have been followed by a fertility consultant.
We definitely know a lot more about conceiving a child now than when we first got married, nearly five years ago, but the results have not changed.
We had several arguments about this topic, trying to push each other in the direction that each of us thought was right.
My wife is not too keen on having a child in her forties.
I have no particular motivation in itself, besides some social pressure from my parents (who want a grandchild) and for my parents (who are struggling to find meaning without a grandchild in the late years of their life).
Again, after all this it comes the feeling of "I have exhausted myself for nothing".
There is a plan somewhere, but I cannot see it.
I can see leftovers of a plan that I have putting together as I go, and that I change based on the circumstances.
I try to hold on to something for dear life, and yet this something feels like it's always slipping away.
What is then the "wonder of my being" that the psalmist mentions?
I believe it's the wonder of being born, of escaping oblivion through an act of love from my parents, the same act of love I am trying to reproduce imperfectly and with no results in sight.
The "wonder of my being" is my self writing these words and reflecting on these feelings I have.
The "wonder of my being" is God's plan of bringing me to life, when I could have not been born at all.
This is why the full sentence is "I thank you for the wonder of my being".
I thank you for being born.
I thank you for being here, at this moment, writing this, feeling what I am feeling.
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