On God and human approaching towards faith

I was 22 years old, studying at college; everything seemed normal, I started going out with a woman who would later become my fiancée, I practiced sports regularly, and, even when the relationship with my close relatives was disastrous, everything was somewhat smooth. Life was, to an extent, good. Until it wasn't anymore.

One day I woke up feeling a monstrous amount of pain throughout my body; I became unable to walk, and I didn't know what was happening; my whole body collapsed leaving me almost crippled; my spinal nerves were severely compressed and I wasn't able to walk at all even taking double or triple the recommended doses of painkillers. During those four months all I can remember is being alone in the floor of the rented (shared) flat I was living in, not being able to walk nor eat, with my relatives far away and my fiancée in United Kingdom. Every day felt the same, and I was starting to lose my mind as I had to crawl to the hospital relying on cars to hold myself on. I was desperate.

I had nothing. I wasn't able to rely on my own strength nor my capabilities. The only thing remaining was to go through a surgery, which wasn't the best idea considering my age and all the risks.

And then, I came to God, weeping, crying, at the verge of collapsing in my bed. I told him to free me from that suffering, and in exchange, I would come closer to Him.

And I got better. Without the surgery. A couple days after I surrendered, my father called me telling me that there were some good therapists -very rare and specialized ones- that could help me, and, at a slow and steady pace, I became able to continue with my studies and live a somewhat normal life. 

Nowadays I'm almost recovered, with a hunger of healing that hasn't gone away and that drove me towards not giving up on my health and physical condition. And, contrary to what you might think, all this time of chronic pain has taught me and brought me so much, that I wouldn't change anything of it, because, progressively, I learned how to trust and to accept to not know.

Like I did, people tend to rely on God when everything else is fucked up, because we tend to do so when there is nothing else remaining, because this is the first step for many towards conversion and inner growth and the most common type of faith: transactional.

We usually tend to see God as a vending machine whose purpose is to exchange prayers for favors or miracles, but that is ultimately wrong, even if some people don't realize it. It is not wrong to ask, but it is to reduce God to only that.

Don't get me wrong, I was like that for many years, I am like that nowadays sometimes, even when I know it's wrong, because I am not able to fully surrender to what's to come, because, even though I understand that Christ is God, even when I have been sculpted by the sculptor, I have fear. 

So, what should be the way for us to approach God? Same as we would do with a friend or a close family member: We do not need to do extraordinary things nor esoteric rites; the key is to just keep in contact with Him through simple and honest prayer, even if we do not feel anything. We should not care about the outcome of the prayer.

Carmelite mystics such as St. Theresa of Ávila called this "recogimiento", a practice focused towards looking inwards, to find, as St. Augustine said, this ancient beauty we try to look after everywhere but remains within us. Christian faith is all about releasing control; "accepting the good and the bad", as Job said.

Praying regularly, not with complicated prayers but rather with honest words, is key to "humanize" God, to understand that He is not a weapon nor a device to achieve our goals, to stop acting like warlocks who desire control through mystic rites and formulas.

This has become, for me, the only way to accept existence as it is, as pain, death and suffering are a fundamental and necessary part of life and nature themselves, as God alone, without any additional graces, suffices, even when He seems to not answer.