🫛 Peas that surpass all understanding: Does God Like... Puns?

Last July, I got a "message" from God about... peas?

I am always looking for meaning.

What is God trying to do? Why is this happening? What is the purpose of this? What is the purpose of this suffering?

And very often, in the process, I will think God is trying to do something that He isn’t trying to do at all.

You may recall, for a good chunk of my tooth infection saga (read about it in peace that surpasses all understanding), I thought that God was trying to tell me that in order to heal all of my health problems, I had to take out and replace all four of my corroded titanium implants, through 12 major surgeries and an unimaginable amount of money. I thought, ohhhhhh dear. God is telling me that this is what I must do to finally heal. It’s going to be horrible but then when I am through, my health will finally be pristine. No more titanium ruining my life.

Turns out, that wasn’t what was happening. I didn’t have to do that. (Or… maybe I still should do that, but that wasn’t what God was telling me at the time. I don’t think… I hope not…)

Anyway, my point is, I’ve gotten it wrong in the moment, looking for the meaning in the moment. Looking for the sign. Looking for the succinct reason why this is happening. And when I’ve been wrong, I’ve been able to look back and see things in a new light.

So. When I started having this new perspective on God and faith and Jesus, I thought… ohhhh wait maybe THIS is why I haven’t met the right person yet!? I am supposed to end up marrying a Christian man. That’s why nothing has worked out yet. This is what was supposed to happen. And this is what is now going to happen. 

I was almost 35 at the time of my conversion. I thought… this is it. This has got to be it. I am going to go on dating apps, match with Christian men, and finally get married and have kids at the 11^th hour.

Any optimism wore away quickly though, because if you don’t know, dating apps are really a slog. I mean really a slog. What I found, is that it’s a lot of time spent talking to people that, once you finally meet in person, you realize that you’d never have agreed to meet them in person, if you had ever met them in person before.

And sadly, dating Christian men seemed to be going just as badly and weirdly as it had ever gone on dating apps. A lot of duds, a lot of weirdos, and, to be fair, a good handful of very nice guys who I still never cared to see again. My idea that God was going to let me meet someone in the 11th hour was shifting. Maybe not. Maybe not at all, actually. Maybe that’s just what I hoped was happening. Maybe I was just searching for meaning. And it was all just wishful thinking. Maybe God just needs me to accept being single forever.

Prayer and Idols

I had a lot of frank discussions with God: God why are you doing this to me. Do you want me to die in my garden. Do you really want me to torture myself on more bad dates? For how long? How many more dates? How many more years? 2? 5? 10?!

Praying doesn’t always feel fruitful. Often it feels like I’m talking into a void. And I just have to trust that, even though I don’t feel anything, it is still worth praying.

But often enough, I do feel a shift inside of myself, in the very least. Especially when I am upset or anxious. I get an emotional shift from the prayer: A peace. A comfort.

And sometimes, though rarely, I actually get an answer where I actually feel like God is telling me something specific. And through my praying about how much I hated dating, it hit me. I got the message that unfortunately, I had been making love and marriage into an idol. 

What’s an “idol”? Depending on how Christian your vocabulary is, you may already know this. But if you don’t, it’s something that stands in the place of God, as our God. Something we make the most important thing. In many ways, we worship it. We expect and hope that it will make all our pain go away. Love. Money. Beauty… Almost all of us assume, without deeply examining it, that if we had those things we would be happy. And yea, they’re nice things. But happiness? Contentedness? Peace? They won’t give us that.

I mean, I hadn’t actually been putting love above other things, in real life, because I always had remained single anyway. I wasn’t a love addict by any stretch of the imagination. But still, all my life it was the thing I wanted the most. It was the thing I’d been praying for since I was young. The thing that I thought… when it finally happened, I’d be able to relax. If only by stopping having to freaking go on dating app dates. 

And yet, it was the thing that just seemed to not happen. Only a few melodramatic heartbreaks, one short relationship, and lots of months spent liking the wrong people, as well as countless mediocre dates from dating apps spanning over a decade.

In the past, with my previous new age spiritual beliefs, I thought that it wasn’t happening because I didn’t have the right outlook. I didn’t have the right mindset. I still had limiting beliefs that were keeping me attracting the wrong people, or I wasn’t giving people enough chances, or I was spiritually blocking myself from manifesting the love of my life and the life of my dreams.

Making romantic love an “idol” is very common, if not universal. Romance and sex is nearly the God of our culture. It’s what almost every song is about. Almost every movie is about. And the thing we all think will truly and deeply fulfill us, once and for all, once it all works out. 

And I knew it. I knew I’d been doing that. I was not actually putting God first. Whatever that actually looks like, I don’t exactly know, but I knew that I wasn’t. Instead, I was still hoping that God was my genie. A means to an end, to get the thing I really wanted. Yes health. Yes a career. And abundance of joy and comfort or whatever. But most importantly… love. A husband who thought I was funny. Or something like that.

And so, knowing that God was most likely trying to, like.. do a thing in my heart with this realization, I said, “Oh God. I… really don’t want to surrender this thing. I really don’t want to. I mean, yes I want to surrender it to you to take care of. I want to put it in your care. But I really really don’t want to surrender this thing to you, especially if you actually don’t want me to have it at all. But… I … will. I will. I will surrender it to you. Even if you don’t want me to have it. Just… just please let me know sooner rather than later? So I can stop trying because I freaking hate dating apps, and so if it’s actually going nowhere, I don’t want to have to do them anymore. Just tell me what to do. Help me to trust you.”

Permission to Get off Dating Apps, Please

What I wanted the most was a sign from God that it was all going to work out. That I’d meet someone eventually. But a big part of my question for God was about dating apps. Because I had grown to dread them. And I wanted out.

After 10 years of gnarly dates from dating apps, I was in the very least, hoping for a sign that it was time to give up dating apps. I wanted permission to stop. I wanted to just stop trying at all. I’d just let God do whatever He was going to do. Maybe He would bring me someone eventually. Maybe He would help me to be content just growing peas in my garden. But I really was sick of slumming it on dating apps. And in the very least, I wanted clear direction that I had permission to stop.

I was halfway through being 35 now. I’d been trying to date Christian men through B umble for about…8 months. And I was losing steam.

Since coming to believe in this personal God, I’d had many prayers about love and dating. In most of them I got exasperated. I cried. I got mad. What do you want me to do? How am I supposed to navigate this without losing my mind? Please just help me or tell me to stop because I’m going to lose it.

One night I tacked another little prayer onto the end. It was a prayer fueled by doubt: Are we all just stupid? How are we supposed to navigate any of this if you won’t just show up and tell us exactly what we need to hear? Why won’t you just SHOW UP AND TELL IT TO US STRAIGHT.

I texted my frustration (with God) to my friend Lauren. She was someone I’d been talking to a lot about God and Jesus during the prior few months. She was an ex-new age friend who I’d met through the online witchy workshops I’d participated in. And she was now similarly wary about all of the things we had learned and engaged in. She was seeing the same darkness I was seeing — a darkness that had been obscured. A darkness that always looked so alluring and spiritual and healing. A darkness that had presented itself as light.

Lauren and I had been trying to figure out this Jesus thing together for the past half year. She had been an amazing person to be able to talk through everything with — all our doubts and questions and lightbulb moments.

So that night, after my exasperated prayer, I texted her: 

“What I want to know, is why won’t God just SHOW UP and TELL IT TO ME STRAIGHT.”

Message From God

The next morning, I woke up to a long text message from her. She told me, 

…What?!

What!

What does she mean do I grow peas? She has to know I grow peas.

“What do you mean Lauren? You haven’t seen me posting on instagram about my garden peas every single day for the past two months?!” 

I’d literally been posting nonstop pea content on my instagram stories. They were practically my only successful garden crop at this point. And they were growing prolifically. 

“No! I’ve been MIA and drowning. I really rarely go on instagram or see anything on there these past few months.”

I knew she had been overwhelmed and had totally dropped off the planet for a bit, to deal with big family and work stressors. I hadn’t seen her on instagram in the past few months at all. And we had only started chatting again recently when she resurfaced after months of overwhelm.

Hmmmmm. I wasn’t fully convinced. Well, I mean, I believed her that she thought she didn’t know about my peas. But… what if she did see them once, and this was all just subconscious? 

God? Was that really you? And if it was… why was “peas” the best you could do? …Everyone knows about my peas????!?!?!?!

She sent me an audio message, going over the experience she had again. (You can listen to it here, actually, because I posted this whole thing in my instagram stories.) But essentially, she was saying that as crazy as it sounds, it felt very real to her. And she was supposed to tell me.

He hears you.

Wow. I wanted to believe it. I really did. I mean, all I wanted to know is that God hears my prayers, that I didn’t need to worry, and that it’s all going to come together. And, I literally asked him to show up and tell it to me straight and then immediately, he… did? Did he really?

God of Puns

That same day, I posted about it on instagram. I said, “guys, I know this is crazy, but… hear me out…” I told the whole story. Again, you can click through the telling of it, if you want.

And someone responded: “What if he meant peace? And not peas?”

Oh. Woa. Wait. Wait wait wait.

That’s it.

PEACE.

That is the thing — the change — that only I know. My eyes welled up.

Until I made that realization, I was confused and kind of annoyed about the pea thing. Like, thanks God? Glad you like my garden peas? But… huh??

But here is the thing I realized: if God had said, “Tell Caroline I like her peace,” it would have felt too trite. Too obvious. Anyone could say something basic like that. Anyone could have guessed that maybe you feel peace from God. Lauren would have doubted the message more. And so would I have. But he said peas. And for Lauren, that was confirmation that there was something to it, because she didn’t know about my peas.

But I realized he may have said peas, but also meant peace, and that it might have been a … joke? A double entendre? Wait! Was that why he was smiling?!?!?!? She said he was smiling!?!?!?! When he told her to tell me he liked my peas?!?!?! IT WAS A JOKE??!?!? DOES GOD JOKE!??!? DOES HE TELL PUNS!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!

Does he? Is God breaking into Lauren’s prayers, just to give me a message that is mostly a JOKE, but also assuring me that he hears me and not to worry? 

I felt like this was it. It finally clicked.

But it quickly became even more clear, because soon after, I decided to try to catch up on some “Bible Recap” podcast episodes. I had been trying to read the Bible in a year, and was listening to podcast episodes that recap the readings. But I was losing steam, and at this point I was many weeks behind. I was so behind that I’d stopped doing the Old Testament readings altogether, and instead I’d binge the recap episodes, just to get the general overview of the Bible story.

So, later that day, as I was listening to the Amos recap, the host talked about how, in the original Hebrew, God was telling a pun. …A Pun?! Amos uses a word that means "summer fruit,” and God replies with a word that sounds the same, but means "end.” And the wordplay was used to convey his message. 

STOP IT. 

That was it. I had doubt with the peas. I even had some doubt with the peace — I mean, was I pushing this? Did I just want this to be a real MESSAGE FROM GOD? And was willing to believe anything just to cling to the hope that God was telling me he hears my prayers? Was it a stretch that God would tell a pun?!

But now I was getting an answer to my question if God tells puns, and the answer is a resounding YES.

Believe me. I’m always so so tempted to continue to write thing like this off. I don’t want to be an idiot. I don’t want to get caught up in wishful, magical thinking. But what that also means, is that I BEG for God to show up, and tell it to me straight, and then he DOES, and I say… Nah. Not good enough?

I mean. In some ways it’s not good enough. I want more. I want a direct reply to an email. I want him to appear in a vision to me right now. I want him to knock at my door. I want him to appear to me whenever I want to answer my questions. I want him to snap his fingers and take away all my pain and suffering and confusion, whenever I want. But, I don’t get to run the show.

I am not the ruler and creator of the universe. He is. And, I had been begging him to tell it to me straight, and then he came to my friend, in a vision, and told her to tell me that he hears my prayers. Not to worry. That it will all come together. And that he likes my peas. And my peace.

Not only that, but it was Jesus. And he was smiling. Laughing. Joking. 

That is pretty amazing. 

And so God, I would like to formally say… thank you.

Immediate Answered Prayer?

No joke, one day later, I went on the first date from a dating app that I’d actually enjoyed — where I actually wanted to go on a second date. Where we both mutually were enjoying our date, clearly, and more than usual, and both wanted to go on a second quickly. That happened so rarely. Mutual interest, right off the bat?

Over the years, I’d gone on many second dates from dating apps, but I’d never actually wanted to. I just… did because I was constantly trying to be open minded.

Wait — was God answering my prayers already? That fast?

Well… maybe not. Probably not.

The guy lived in Alaska, and was just visiting his family.

So I got mad at God again.

(Story finishes behind the paywall!)