Once I left home for college, I had freedoms I did not have in my parents’ house. One of the biggest was a television of my own. I could decide exactly which shows I wanted to watch. My parents’ house was on the smaller side, so there was not really a way to watch TV while anyone was sleeping. My dad’s bedtime was early, since his workday started around five in the morning.
I am pretty sure I watched some TV in college just because the show was on late, not because I liked the show or because it was even any good. It was just that I could exercise my newfound freedom to watch TV on my schedule.
Once I got married, I was back to sharing the TV with my family. I do remember when the kids were very young, I made a huge deal about Star Trek: The Next Generation. It came on Sundays at five, and it was an hour-long show. I was normally happy to enjoy life with the family, but once it was time for Star Trek, it was an absolute must that I be in front of the TV and free from all distractions.
It might be Sunday afternoon and we were having a great time as a family, but once it was time to head back home to be in front of the TV set, I turned into a big grumpy bear to get the family moving back to the house. The VCR was not reliable enough for me, so I had a very hard stop at five on Sundays.
Virtually every weekend I was able to watch Star Trek, but there would occasionally be things that got in the way. Unexpected friends stopping by. A child who was not well. I treated those things as interruptions of my freedom. I referred to my ability to watch that show, on my schedule, as freedom.
It was not freedom. It was a thing I could not put down. I messed up a lot of Sunday afternoons with my family because I would not miss an hour of television. The people in the room were waiting. The show was running the house.
A person is not free just because they can do what they want. A person is closer to free when they can say no to something they want. If a desire cannot be set down when someone in front of you needs you, the desire is in charge. I called that freedom for a long time. I was wrong.
That same pattern showed up in how I thought about God. I was fine if Jesus followed me around and answered my prayers. Me giving up control? I was not interested. I wanted a helper. I did not want a king. Subjects follow their King.
In Luke chapter 9, in the story of the people who say they will follow Jesus, the pattern is the same. Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem. People offer to follow him, and then they add a condition. One wants a place to stay first. One wants to bury his father first. One wants to say goodbye first. None of those requests sound wicked. They sound reasonable. Jesus still treats them as attachments that keep a person from actually following. Following is not “I will come after I finish what I want.” Following is whether the thing you want still gets to set the clock.
I recognize myself in those delays. The show at five was a small version of the same thing. I will be present after this. I will be a husband after this. I will follow after I finish what I want. After never quite arrived.
Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is one way the Church has of saying, “I will follow you. You lead.” It is not a decoration. It is a decision about who is in charge. That devotion eventually led me to pray a seventy-two-day rosary novena with a simple intention. I said to Jesus, “I will follow you. Just lead the way.” At the end of those seventy-two days I was irritated, because I had not been given any sort of guidance on what to do. I needed to grow in my understanding of what it means to follow. Once I expressed that irritation in prayer, I did get something back, loud and clear. What I heard was, “You have to wait.” That was about ten years ago. My life has been filled with surprises and chaos since then. Through it all I have learned to give more and more control of my life to Jesus. Waiting is what a person does when they have stopped running the schedule.
If you have a thing you have to get back to — the show, the phone, the project, the plan — while the people in the room wait, you already know the feeling. You can be a decent person the rest of the week and still become a grumpy bear at five o’clock.
Start by naming the current Sunday-at-five. Write it down if you have to. Not the generic idea of “I am too busy.” The actual thing: this show, this scroll, this project that gets to override the people who are already in the house. If you cannot name it, it will keep running the afternoon while you call it freedom.
Then pick one upcoming time when that hard stop usually rises, and decide in advance what you will do instead. Stay at the table. Finish the conversation. Sit with the child who is not well. You are not throwing the desire away forever. You are finding out whether you can set it down for the length of the thing you were about to protect. If you only decide in the moment, the old hunger will win. The decision has to be made while you are still calm.
Tell the people who live with that hard stop what you are trying. They already know the grumpy-bear version. They should not have to guess whether this Sunday is different. If you fail the first week, do not use the failure as proof that you are not free and never will be. Use it as information. The desire is stronger than you thought. Try a shorter window the next time — twenty minutes, not the whole hour — and keep the promise you made to the people in the room.
The same work applies to God. If you only want a helper who answers prayers on your clock, you will treat every delay as a broken contract. Following includes waiting when you wanted a map. You can say, in prayer, the thing I said: I will follow. Lead. Then notice whether you immediately start negotiating the terms. The negotiation is the old five-o’clock talking.
Being able to do what you want is not the same as being free. I learned that from a television show I thought I could not miss.
This is a pastoral reflection, not clinical care and not a substitute for it. If you or someone you love is in immediate danger, call 988 or local emergency services.Drawn from a homily first preached at a Sacred Heart enthronement. 