These Sunday Thoughts

The other day, Jesus did  not give me what I wanted, so I bowed my head and said (like such a spoiled brat), “Jesus, I’m still going to love you. But sometimes love really is a choice.” I looked up and saw a crucifix on the wall that seemed to say, “I know.”

It’s funny that love is that way. You don’t really realize how hard love is until you feel the pain that accompanies that choosing. The Cross is pure love, an offering of love to us who couldn’t know how to love, unless He loved us first.

Change of subject. Advent is upon us (week 2 now), and I have been thinking lots about Mama Mary. Imagine her in these last few weeks before the baby Jesus was to show his face to the world. Imagine the anticipation she must have felt at meeting him for the first time and seeing his precious eyes meet hers. Mother Mary, give us this anticipation! I want to be just as pumped for Christmas. Who needs mistletoe when Love himself is here? Wow, sorry; that was cheesy. But you get the point. Anyway, it was my dad who first inspired my love for Mary. And for the record, men who love Mary are just cool. In the same way men are cooler when they own 2 or 3 flannel shirts, men who love Mary are so beautiful to me. How can you not love someone who adores her? She carried Christ within her, and has become beautiful because of it. Still she calls herself the Lord’s “handmaiden,” sharing Christ with the world and teaching us how to share Him with others.

Happy Advent

Longing for Perfect

Lord, all my longing is known to Thee, my sighing is not hidden from Thee.-Psalm 38:9.

Oh, Psalmist David, I get it.

What a relief that the Lord knows about my longing! I’m not sure I know what to do with it sometimes… what do I even want? I think I know, and then 5 minutes later I have a new idea of perfect. I read this recently by a wise woman:

“I often think that the ideal of our perfection that we set up, and often go through torture to achieve, may not be God’s idea of how He wants us to be at all.  That may be something quite different that we never would have thought of, and what seems like a failure to us may really be something bringing us closer to His will for us.” -Caryll Houslander

Who is like the Lord? Only His ways are perfect. It helps to remember that He is Father, and I am daughter. I’m like a kid on a road trip with my parents. They know how to drive, they have the map, they know when we are going to eat or stop at a rest stop (ok, sometimes ya gotta tell them when). Even though this is not a trip to grandma’s, but it is in fact real life (including jobs, deadlines, relationships, tears, laughs, sin, grace, ect), I still have to remember who is driving this thing.

Who is like the Lord? He works all things for the good. He is the Father that never withholds good things from his children, but he gives us all we need for the journey. He is the only one who can recognize and satisfy the deepest longings. Whew… let’s live in that light for a change.

P.S. Happy birthday, Teresa. I love you! You make me want to live a life strewn with grace and all things beautiful. Be loved by Him today and everyday!

 

This Day

This is one of those days that life feels a little bit harder than it should be. It’s 4:00 in the afternoon and all of the lights are on; it’s that dark outside.

Everything normal is in place. I ate breakfast and lunch (which I hear many in the world go without). I worked, I had tea. I even laughed a few good non-fake laughs, but when it’s quiet, its like the sounds of my soul won’t stop screaming.

Jesus, I need you. It’s not a choice. Perhaps once it felt that way– do I give God all or not? Do I go pray now or not? But now it’s as if God and I catch eyes from across the room, and He’s reading my lips, ”I need you.”

I know we’re supposed to pray constantly, and maybe I was trying today, but I forget to really pray. The kind where you excuse yourself from the company of activity and seek the company of “I AM.” The kind of praying where you know that you are completely dependent on Him, because you can feel the stirring, that longing for a heaven that you could never have unless he gives it.

I’m pretty sure that’s why he gives me days like these when the sun sleeps behind thick clouds for hours and never shows. Sometimes he hushes all other lights and sounds that we deem sufficient, so we remember that only He suffices.

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence… We need silence to be able to touch souls. -Blessed Mother Teresa

Cooking, Cleaning, and Dusting.

Vitamins will probably never go out of style. Unfortunately for this ad, the majority of women spending their Monday-Friday cooking, cleaning, and dusting went out of style a long time ago.

Today women climb ladders and are candidates for presidency. Well, I think that that is absolutely wonderful and encouraging as I too am excited about my own career (ahem… the specifics are still to be revealed. At least I know I can skip the corporate ladder for the artist’s circle)! Still a part of me holds that women who do in fact stay at home to cook and clean are totally worth the celebrating. Especially when they do it in heels like this superwoman!

Vitamins for pep! PEP for vitamins!

Lollipops

Tonight I sat on the front porch and watched a perfect summer rain sink into these green 30+ acres. I’ve been doing some thinking lately about the present moment. I don’t know if it needs me, but I need it.

God’s plan unfolds to the extent that you let it. I am that girl–  screaming and resisting while the doctor is trying to give the shot that will make everything feel better. While resisting the cross makes it a chore, embracing the cross makes it the only medication worth having. I realize that I’ll never have all the answers, and as I grow up, the pile of questions grows too. One is answered to have three more appear. Doubts come with much more frightening possibilities than truth; and when you’re relying on your own strength, possibilities become essential to consider. But as soon as I sit there quietly and let God do what he’s known all along is the best thing, I feel the pinch until it vanishes and becomes the joy of the lollipop.

I know some people hate going to the doctors, but I actually enjoy it sometimes. It’s nice to know that someone knows my body better than I do. Isn’t that how it is with God? Perhaps that’s why people avoid church. It’s a scary thing to be known, especially when it comes with “shoulds and shoudn’ts.” But I’ll take it. Someone who knows me better than myself, please tell me how to live my life, because obviously I have no idea what I am doing.

My Simple Life

Maybe I’m getting old (that’s a weird thought), but the more I live, the more I want to live simply, and look for God in everything I do. To see the beautiful things I used to walk past. To talk to strangers like they’re friends. To eat food that’s never seen a lab. To share what I have, knowing it was never really mine, but always God’s. To know that my Father in heaven will take care of everything, and he forgets when he forgives. Then to watch the sun sink and sparkle over the Puget Sound and think, “it really can’t get better than this.”

My Silver Lining

The sky cleared enough, and I can see some stars, or maybe they’re airplanes. Seattle. I don’t know why new opportunities become overwhelming like covered desks.

There’s not a thing in this world I can call mine, but you, Lord. And the more you are mine, the more I recognize how I’ve never really been yours at all and I wish I was.

I still wonder where compromise crosses over into the land of settling. My opinions are really not that sacred to me, until I feel like my integrity is being challenged. When they ask me why, “I don’t know” is all that comes to my head. I really believe that sometimes intuition is more powerful than facts, and the best way I can explain myself is to have you watch me live. But who has time for that?

Someone told me in a letter that things will get darker, as long as our life is taking up the cross, that the life I’m living isn’t an imitation of a great story, but the very thing the storybooks attempted to be. And so here I am, awake enough to know I’m still pretty unconscious, but unconscious enough to fall asleep in the arms of the Father, who takes care of everything I can’t change.

Peace to all souls awake and asleep! God loves you.

Live from Baltimore

Here in Baltimore, FOCUS Conference #3 is alive in the Hyatt on the harbor. It’s just as amazing as the last two were.

As the conferences go on, I am more tired, but the crucifix tells the story of Christ’s surrender to us. I don’t have blood dripping from my hands yet- but he is teaching me how to desire that kind of surrender.

I can’t let any moment go to waste- but do everything for love of Him who loved me first! My omnipresent God is even found in hurts, the confusion, and the mundane, waiting to meet me there! What wondrous love is this?!

“For the great majority of men, to be holy consists of sanctifying their work, to sanctify themselves in their work, to sanctify others with work, and also to find God on the road of their life.” -St. Josemaria Escriva

Live From St. Paul

A hotel with huge empty rooms is filled with tables, chairs, drape, signs, a stage with lights, and all the things that make up a FOCUS conference. Then come in the 1000 college students, the religious sisters, brothers, and priests, and Catholic organizations who set up their booths. The speakers speak, the listeners listen, the priests say mass, the and the people come. The people confess and God forgives. The adorers adore, and He adores back. Then 1000 college students load into buses and go home.

And I’m still here. The papers on the floor, the stained table cloths, signs lying on the hotel carpet are all evidence  of what happened here at the Crowne Plaza Hotel this weekend. But what happened in the hearts of those who attended, I can’t be sure yet. But I do know 1000 college people encountered their Savior in adoration this weekend. And I know that none of them can walk away without being moved by this encounter. Perhaps FOCUS Conference only planted seeds or perhaps it inspired full blown conversions, but either way, the Word will not return void.

In the biting cold of a St. Paul January, this hotel was glowing with the joy of Christ. As I speak 1000 people are taking their lights back home to share. Live from St. Paul – Jesus Christ be praised!

A Tiny Piece of Light

Thank you Catholic Church for reminding me to celebrate. Today the Church celebrates the Immaculate Conception of Mary. And so I am reminded to have hope. The night has ended, and she is the break of dawn. She will give her child to every weary soul.

There’s a line from the Mat Kearney song, “All I Have,” that goes,

“Rip a little corner off the darkness, just to crack a light in the middle of it all.”

I think today is that tiny piece of light that says just what Isaiah 40 says… prepare the way of the Lord! Perhaps we have become tired. But He has not. No, the Everlasting God has not forgotten us.