Adversity Calling

Originally written on June 4, 2013

One thing I absolutely KNOW about myself is I don't like being in pain.  Now, when it comes to illness or some ailment of the body, I do pretty well, though I am sure my mother would disagree.  But when it comes to pain due to working out or emotional pain...I would rather run and hide.  Tried that again this week.

For some reason, I have it in my head that exercising will kill me.  I'm serious.  I don't know where this comes from.  In the past, I have rarely pushed myself further in exercise.  My family, friends, and coaches can all attest to the fact that I am a wimp!  Additionally, when things become emotionally painful I tend to run and hide instead of dig deeper and push through it.  If it's about a man...all of a sudden I'm researching convents.  If it's about my job...all of a sudden I'm looking for a new one.  If it's about Houston Traffic...all of a sudden I'm trying to move to Denver (they think they have traffic in Denver, y'all).  The point is I have got to stop running away because it's getting me nowhere.  

So today, I went to spiritual direction and we were discussing some current events in my life.  There are things happening which are very difficult for me emotionally in addition to the fact that I have been making a greater effort to exercise more so I'm physically exhausted as well.  With everything we talked about, the pain and hurt would not go away.  Finally, I asked him, "Why can't it just go away?  It still hurts!"  I told my director about wanting run away and hide and he told me, "No, I think you need to continue on this journey a little bit longer.  You need to feel the pain and push through it.  You've been playing it safe for far too long."  It is such a contrasting point of view from what the world has offered.  I am telling you that I could walk up to any person on the street and ask them advice on my current circumstance and they would all be telling me to get out of that situation.  So why is my spiritual director advising me to stay?

Well, it's sort of a similar concept to that of gulf coast people facing hurricane season.  People who do not deal with hurricanes much often judge those precious gulf coast people saying things like, "Why do they continue to live there when they know their houses will get wiped off the map?"  And the simple answer is...they were there first.  Why should they leave?!  This is their life.  Their families all live there within ten minutes of each other.  They all face this adversity together.  If they respond to the tragedy with hope, they become an even tighter knit very loving family.

In case you haven't noticed, life is painful.  Every minute of it is packed with crazy awesome joy and crazy horrible sorrow.  You can't escape it, it will touch you.  You can waste your time and energy trying to avoid the adversity, but all you will accomplish is making yourself crazy being afraid of absolutely everything that is going on around you.  

God allows difficult moments to happen to shape us and mold us into the saints He envisions us to be.  We each have to choose to make the best out of every situation.  My cousin was caught in a huge plant explosion about 8 or so years ago.  People died, it was a very traumatic event in his life.  He could have grown from that experience or faded away.  He decided to grow and on this past Sunday he celebrated his first year anniversary of being ordained a priest!!

Looking back on all of my adversities in life, there is not one I would trade.  I have been through some hard stuff as I am sure most everyone has.  These events don't define me, but they have shaped me.  I still feel God tugging on my heart telling me to push through this hard stuff because once I do, I will find his goodness on the other side.  So I will give my heart to Him, whatever the cost, whatever the trial, and I will let him refine it in His fire.  I know that His grace will not let me falter.

Altar to an Unknown God

Originally written on June 17, 2013

This past weekend I went on a silent retreat.  This is not something unusual for me.  I used to do this annually, but I would always do something called "spiritual exercises", which meant that I was usually listening to a meditation or sermon on a significant event in the life of Jesus.  This time, I didn't have that.  All I had was silence.  

Honestly, I wasn't nervous going into it.  I was so stressed out from the events of previous weeks that I welcomed it more than anything.  I was happy to get away.  I was happy to turn off my phone, be off of Facebook, and miss whatever social event was occurring at the time.  I needed space.  

However, what I wasn't expecting was an encounter with God.  I know, sounds weird right?  I went on retreat to encounter God, but did not expect to encounter God.  Allow me to explain.  I went on retreat to encounter my perception of God.  I thought I would encounter the God that I know.  Instead, I encountered the God I don't know.  I had never met this God before.  He was messy and chaotic.  He didn't speak to me, but he merely stayed with me.  He didn't have an agenda.  He was not the cookie cutter version of God.  What he taught me was that love looks very different.  And life is not to be tamed.

Being the control freak that I am, it's almost as if I have taken a solemn vow to control absolutely everything I can.  However, after meeting this chaotic and messy God, every scenario I evaluate leaves me with one conclusion: I can't control the outcome.  Why try?  I felt as if he was inviting me on an adventure, beckoning me to follow him through his hurricane force winds.  I hesitated, wondering, where will this lead me?  Where are we going?  What will happen?  As I sat there, staring into a swirling pool of chaos, I had to decide to trust him.  My options were to trust him or to stay where I was, where everything was safe and, as a result, I would continue to shrivel up and die inside.  So I voluntarily walked into a storm with power beyond all imagination.

What I found there was priceless.  In every circumstance, be it joyful or tragic, God is waiting there for me.  In my desperation and loneliness, he is not only there, but he feels the devastation I feel.  That dead feeling I have in my heart because I have completely cut it off from loving others and loving him, he feels that too.  Do not get me wrong.  He isn't there to make me feel better or take the pain away.  He is there to suffer with me.  

I began to recall different circumstances in my life where I had been particularly heartbroken either by a person or a shattered dream.  God showed me that my own lack of love was the source of my continued pain.  What if I loved that person?  What if I loved the person in front of me always...just for who they are.    What if, through my pain, I genuinely loved them with all of their brokenness also?  If I could do that just once, I am sure I would be a saint and I know the choice is my own to make. 

This God, who I didn't know before this weekend, didn't come to ease my suffering.  He didn't come to heal my broken heart.  He came to show me how to love through suffering.  So far this is the greatest gift of my life.  

I will leave you with these tidbits from my journaling:

All this time, I thought I knew you.  I thought I knew your will, your heart, your plan for my life.  I even thought I knew your love for me.  I know nothing.  And how could I know you?  You are infinite and I am finite.  How can I ever fully know you?  You are unknowable and I will spend all of my life and all of eternity trying to scratch the surface of who you are.  

The Lord is not reckless and if He abandons you at all, He abandons you to himself.  While it may look and feel like chaos, it may look and feel like pain, it is still holy.  Stop clinging to God, you who you thought you knew, and start seeing God, who you don't know.  Love all of Him.

As you walk through life with God, you pass through a series of rooms.  These rooms may be filled with various things.  Ones that bring joy, peace, understanding, and others that bring sorrow, fear, and horror. In the midst of all of this, it's important to realize that God is present through it all.  He is always there for us to love him and to receive his love.

What do I do with my life?

Originally written on April 27, 2013

What a loaded question!  I know so many of us struggle with this one.  Last night I got into a discussion with two really solid guys about this very thing.  One friend mentioned that it is the duty of every Catholic person to discern their vocation.  True Story.  I totally agree with him.  In fact, you can distinguish the people who have really given God their hearts in vocational discernment by the peace they have in their lives.  They are living their lives with purpose.  I had mentioned in a previous note that a lot of single people today seem to be drifting from one event to the next.  They are living their lives in relation to the next party, the next service opportunity, the next career promotion, but they aren't asking God, "What do you want me to be?"  They are completely and totally adrift.

I don't sit here claiming to have all the answers or even claiming to have it all together, but what I do know is that the world needs you to discern what God is asking of you.  The reason being that whatever it is, God WILL ask you to change the world.  Maybe you will do that by being a priest or religious, maybe you will do that by being a husband, wife, or parent.  Maybe you will do that by being an honest businessman.  Whatever it is, the goal is to change the world, to make it a better place.  

Discernment requires some level of maturity, however.  You can't just say that you're discerning religious life and then go out and date a bunch of people casually just for fun.  There is a place for dating in the discernment of religious life, but I'm talking about people who do serial dating.  One after another.  Additionally, you can't discern marriage if you are simply keeping your options open all the time flirting with whoever is around like it's some kind of game.  Focus is key.  I once had a friend who told me, "You can't discern something if you're not living it."  How can you know that you like something if you've never tried it.  You have to live it!  If you are discerning being a Franciscan, go visit them and live like them!  If you are discerning marriage, then enter into a committed relationship to do so.  If you are discerning a new career, do your research, make connections, observe from the inside and do it!   There are too many people walking around not deciding to do anything and that is why our culture and specifically our generation is so inconsistent.  We can't make a decision to save our lives.

Why is it so hard for us to decide?  Perhaps it's fear, like always.  We've made decisions in the past.  Those have crashed and burned.  We find ourselves scarred from that experience.  Our fear of failure takes over and paralyzes us.  We are afraid of failure and ultimately, we are afraid of making the wrong decision and being miserable.  Well that's public enemy #1.  If you're basing your happiness on your vocation or your success in your career, you're setting yourself up for failure.  

Our happiness is found in God alone.  He alone can convince me that my life is worth it, that I have a purpose on this earth.  He fills my heart.  No vocation or career can do that.  Only Him.  When that core belief becomes your foundation, all fear subsides.  Because God is the only one whose opinion actually matters and as long as you are doing what He asked you to do, the result doesn't matter.  In the end, loving obedience is what makes you holy.

Discernment is not an action of deciding something independent of God's grace and His input.  It's about a relationship.  It's about who you want to be as a person.  It's about that desire being in line with God's 
dream for your life.  It's about finding out who you really are and the incredible gifts that God has given you to use for His glory.  It is His dream for you.  So go live the dream!

Fort Knox

Originally written on May 18, 2013

I read an article the other day and posted it twice because I thought it was so right on.  It was on guarding your heart.  I remember this being a big theme in college.  I attended Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio and the dating scene was super weird...I won't lie.  A girl could not look at a guy without him thinking she wanted to marry him and him either freaking out and running away as a result, or him relentlessly pursuing her for marriage, when, in reality, she was just trying to figure out if that was food on his face or a birthmark.  Oops.  

I credit this phenomena to the fact that there was such a strong emphasis on figuring out your vocation in life and going after it.  But somehow, we, the students, got it wrong.  And mind you, this is merely my experience of the culture of dating at this particular school.  Is it important to discern your vocation to religious life, marriage, or singledom?  Yes!  It is very important!  Why?  Because if you are not following God's plan for your life, you're going to end up hurting more people than you would have originally by just being a sinner.  Allow me to illustrate.  Boy feels called to religious life.  Boy ignores said call.  Boy meets girl.  Boy and girl start to date.  Six months later boy breaks up with girl because boy still feels called to religious life.  Boy goes to explore religious life as a possible vocation.  I saw this happen so many times.  While there is a place for dating in discernment, almost all of the cases I witnessed were completely and totally uncalled for.  The heartache could have and should have been prevented by one party altogether by being obedient to their conscience in the first place.  

So, what is the result?  The result is this really weird concept of not loving anyone until you meet the person you will marry.  And the result of that is people run around hurriedly trying to find said person.  Why?  Because we were made to love and have this innate desire to love.  When we aren't loving others we are empty and our lives lack meaning.  But because we are so afraid to get hurt again, we "guard our hearts" to avoid the heartbreak.  Then we develop this messed up idea that when we find "the one", we can breathe a sigh of relief as if we will never be hurt again.  It's just not true.

Working in a hospital and dealing very often with death, I literally have front row seats to watching people's hearts break.  Couples who have been married for 60+ years are holding hands awaiting their impending separation by death.  They tell me that they have learned to love this person so deeply over the years despite the fact that their spouse made them so crazy mad sometimes.  The biggest regret?  They wish they would have loved them more.  They wish they would have shown it more. They wish they would have forgiven earlier.  They never wish they would have guarded their hearts more to avoid this pain.  

I used to think that every time I loved a man, it would take away from the love I would eventually have for my spouse.  I thought I was giving a piece of my heart away and I wanted to save the whole thing for that one man.  Now I realize that God calls us to love everyone in front of us in every moment in the context of His great love for us.  But what if that means I will have my heart broken?  Our hearts will break.  One way or another.  There is no avoiding it, unless you build your heart up to be like Fort Knox.  

How many souls still treat Jesus with complete disregard, including ourselves, and yet he continues to carry his cross to Calvary and die.  This man made himself completely and totally vulnerable to the riffraff who would take advantage of him and who would even care very little for him.  He still died for every last one of us despite our indifference.  And his heart wasn't indifferent at all.  He was completely heartbroken.  Destroyed.

I think often we forget that love is a gift.  "We love because He first loved us." 1 John 4:19.  We are constantly looking for people who deserve our love.  I don't want you to love me because you feel like I deserve your love or have earned it.  If that's the case, then most assuredly, I can also lose it.  Love is a gift to be given freely to the Beloved regardless of whether or not love is returned.  I did read something somewhere once that we are to love always without expecting that love to be returned.  That is what it means to love like Jesus does.  Who are we to deprive others of the gift of love?

I think I'm the first person who needs to work on loving better.  I often try to decide who is worthy of my love and act accordingly.  The other day I was talking to my mom about different situations in which I felt people were taking advantage of me and how I was just going to cut off their friendship.  She responded, "You sure do put a lot of conditions on your unconditional love."  Oh snap!  That's not to say that one should allow themselves to be taken advantage of, but I can't control the behavior of others.  All I can do is make my heart right before God and choose to love others despite their behavior.  Isn't that really what we are called to do?  

Give it a try!  Open your heart with reckless abandon!  Love the people you usually hate.  Throw away your expectations.  You will be amazed at how quickly your heart will change!

What's wrong with me?!!!

Originally written on April 14, 2013

I have no idea where all of this writing is coming from to be honest with you.  I'm amazed people even read what I have to say.  This past week has been the most difficult and sincerely, the most amazing week of my life.  

I recently went to spiritual direction, very distraught and upset about some things that were going on.  I was having difficulties in friendships.  I went in there, told him all about it, and when I was finished Father said, "I'm confused.  Is this about you or is it about your friend?"  I started laughing through my own tears.  I had literally made it ALL about me.  Yeah, that sounds about right.  Here I was in the situation I was in, a friend of mine had basically fell off the face of the planet for no reason (so it seemed to me) and I was really sad about it.  But guess what, being the girly girl I am, I made it all about me!  My first reaction to this situation was, "What did I do?"  My second reaction was, "What's wrong with me?!!!"  As time went on, my reactions became more and more generic until I was convinced there was something seriously wrong with me.  

In all actuality, there was.  I was being so self centered that I didn't even stop to think, "Hmm...maybe my friend is going through something really hard right now.  Maybe my friend just needs my prayers."  Nope, there was none of that.  Wanna know why?  Because I can't control that.  I wanted there to be something I did or something that was wrong with me simply because it's easier to control.  Theoretically, I can fix those things because they are about me.  What I can't do is fix somebody else and, let's be honest, that is so frustrating and very scary.

Now, in an ideal situation, people would actually communicate with each other about these things.  "I'm putting our friendship on hold because..."  That's in an ideal world, but since we operate in reality over here, I feel it is incredibly important for us women to realize that there is nothing wrong with us.  More than likely, we didn't do anything.  Someone made a choice.  Once we accept this, we can move on knowing that we do deserve to be loved.  We can even still love that person despite the decisions they made, which, by the way, probably have nothing to do with us. 

After discovering this, I decided I needed to make peace with certain people in my life.  One of whom is a person I dated about a year ago.  He had reached out to me a few months back and I didn't respond due to things that were going on in my life (see, we do it to each other).  So I sent him an email apologizing for not getting back to him and wishing him well.  When he responded, I was so surprised to read that when he called off our relationship, his did it because he needed to deal with some things in his own heart that were completely independent of me.  And this whole time, I thought I had screwed up!  

You can't blame people for holding back that information.  It's just downright embarrassing!  I'm probably the only person I know who will say what is actually going on in my heart and reveal that to the world without caring.  I was also talking to a friend of mine yesterday who was just desperately wanting to know Why???  Again, if you sucked would you announce it to the world?  Probably not, the least of all, someone you really care about.

So what is the remedy here?  Stop making it all about you!  Go ahead and make it about them and pray for them.  If the situation you are dealing with is a guy situation and you're taking your cues from the movie, "He's Just Not That Into You"  STOP!!!!  Though it is an entertaining movie and there is some truth to it, the reality is, it shows too little.  

The Good Lord created each and every one of us.  He created us to be unique and He created us to be worthy of love.  All of my friends and family are worthy of love and no matter what they do that hurts me, I will still love them.  If they keep me at an arm's length, I will love them from that spot.  I know that nothing I can do by way of communicating or changing myself will change my circumstances, but if I LOVE UNCONDITIONALLY, meaning with no regard of whether or not I will be loved back, it will change my heart and draw me closer to the God who loved me first.  

Trusting in God's Will...and His timing...

Originally written on April 20, 2013

I had a conversation with someone today about the world and marriage.  It's an odd combo, but I think that it's important to take a look at what is going on here.  The person I was talking to informed me that after generically expressing to a friend her desire to get married, the friend informed her, "I don't think you are quite ready yet."  Wow!  That's a throwback!  I bet that guy was totally prepared for walking down the aisle!  Rightfully so, she was very upset.  Not only was it totally inappropriate given that this person, to whom I am very close, is one of the most mature, amazing, and loving people I know.  But her friend who told her this actually knows very little about her.  

Now, being that I am not married nor have I ever been, I might be wrong when I say that I don't think it has anything to do with "being ready".  At least if it does it has nothing to do with any human being's (currently existing on earth) definition of what "being ready" means.  I have seen plenty of people who I thought were not "ready" for marriage actually get married.  They are doing just fine.  There is no formula for it.  So forgive me when I say that it's a bit judgmental to say that one is not "ready" for marriage.  It's all up to God's will and His timing to bring that person into your life.  And here's the bottom line:  You have to trust Him! 

In the world, I feel people are uncomfortable with my own singleness.  It's like they are bothered by the fact that I'm single.  I can't figure out why it bothers them.  Could it be that it's kind of a scary prospect to know that one can desire something like marriage and family, but never see that dream come to fruition?  What does that mean for them?  Does it mean that there can be something in their hearts, which they desire intensely, but they may not ever see the fulfillment of that desire?  Yes...it does.  Because, honestly, the point is not being married, being single, or fulfilling our dreams.  The point is trusting in God through the good and the bad.  

The grass is definitely not greener on the other side either.  I'm so grateful for the married friends in my life.  They help keep me grounded in my search for my future spouse.  It's futile to look for a fairy tale.  There are going to be trials and difficult things to deal with along the way.  Whether we are single or married, we all have our struggles and no one struggle is greater than another.  God calls us all to trust him with our entire lives.  

I would like to say, "I've got this down".  The reality is...I don't.  It is a daily battle, just as it is for the rest of humanity.  Trusting God with my life means that ANYTHING goes.  ANYTHING could happen.  Obviously, I can't control that.  No, I would much rather fence God in and tell Him, "You can work here, but don't go outside these boundaries."  The sad part is, he listens to us.  He will always respect our boundaries and decisions.  He is a good, merciful, and loving being, he would never cross the line.  

So, today I challenge you to consider whether or not you are fencing God in.  Honestly, what is the worst that could happen if you gave him free reign over your life?  We have a God who loves us beyond all human comprehension and who wants to give us the desires of our hearts.  I'm not promising that all of your dreams will come true or your plans won't fail.  But I am promising you that a God who is bigger than your dreams and plans with dreams and plans of His own for your life will never disappoint you.

Lord Jesus I trust in you!

Good Friday

Originally written on March 21, 2013

On Good Friday I went on a walking Way of the Cross.  It was a very profound experience for me.  I realized that we all have a path to follow, but we don't follow this path in a vacuum.  The path that we follow will inevitably affect others.  I saw this on Friday as I was walking.  A woman in front of me stepped around a very small obstacle in front of her and almost caused another pilgrim to run into the wall.  I couldn't help but wonder what was so bad about that obstacle that she couldn't just face it head on.  It required effort and it's inconvenient, but the reality is that in avoiding a confrontation with this obstacle, the woman altered her path and that of her companion next to her forever.  

This is what sin does.  We all do this too.  We become so focused on ourselves that we fail to see how our sins affect those around us.  I consider it a huge missed opportunity to not try to overcome the obstacles in my path, though I fully admit that I often seek the easy way out.  The path I generally choose for myself, often leads to the confessional because of my weakness.

Another thing I realized, is that people are very politically charged right now, but in the Church, we are all Catholic, regardless of our political affiliation.  We all share the same baptism and the same communion.  The Supreme Court could rule tomorrow that abortion in any form is illegal.  What would happen with all of those "pro-life" people?  They will cheer for a day and then fade into the background thinking the battle is done.  Indeed, there will be some people who will sleep soundly at night thinking that the most heinous crime in US History has now come to an end.  And they would be wrong.  Because it was never about abortion.  It was never limited to the USA.  It's about the dignity of every man, woman, and child.  It goes deeper than political policy written down on paper.  It's in our hearts.  Look at the reason why abortion exists.  Abortion is merely the world's solution to deep and horrifying heartache, to people who are enslaved by this freedom the world touts and yet, an obstacle comes along and it's so great an obstacle that they feel they cannot face it.  They feel alone.  They step to the side to avoid it and they alter not only their path, but the paths of many others.  An abortion is another child the world will never know.  One person less to make the world beautiful and good, the way it was intended to be.  One person less to fight injustice.  

There are, of course, those select few weathered warriors in the pro life movement who "get it".  They knew it was never about abortion, but about dignity and charity.  They may, perhaps, breath a sigh of relief, but do so knowing the fight is far from over.  There is extreme poverty in the world, human trafficking, of which the USA is the sole main consumer.  Take that disgusting detail and ponder it.  There is slavery still.  There is all kinds of evil (note that I said evil and not bad policy) still in the world.  The war is far from over.  No political ideology can save us.  Jesus was not a Republican, Democrat, Independent, or green party.  He is love and love is sacrifice.  He saved the world already through his sacrifice on the cross.  If it doesn't hurt, then it isn't love.  He calls us to follow him, not vote for him.  

The problems we are facing are much deeper than what we see and the solutions can only be given by Jesus himself, at least only the ones which last.

Perhaps these two realizations are related.  Perhaps these temporary solutions are only here as a result of us not choosing to overcome the obstacles in front of us.  Perhaps these solutions are the consequences of us deciding that it requires too much effort to overcome the obstacles on our path.  Perhaps it is a result of our own offenses against charity and human dignity.  WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE FOR THAT.  We might as well own up to it.  There is no human being who ever existed who did not contribute to that problem except for Jesus and Mary.  

So, what I took away from this walk to Calvary (or the Co-Cathedral) is that the solution starts with me.  Am I allowing Jesus to change me so that when my path leads me to alter forever the path of another, it will be a positive change for them and for the world?  Let's not be afraid to face the obstacles in front of us, to climb those mountains and forge those rivers.  There is certainly a glorious sight awaiting us on the other side.