Tireless

The Lord isn't tired of you.

If He hasn't tired of me, then I know He isn't tired of you.

Don't we sometimes assume He is, though?

I apply human attributes to God and figure He must want to respond to me as I want to respond: grabbing me by the shoulders, slightly shaking me, and telling me to snap out of it.  Or something along those lines, sometimes more or less intense.

He is unfailingly patient.  God is able to endure our imperfections better than we are.  Where we can be short-tempered and over hasty, God is slow and long-suffering.  I think I am a fairly patient person, but at times I am the most impatient with myself.

He waits for us.

It is a struggle to extend that same act of kindness to myself.  To wait for my heart to catch up, to wait for my mind to grasp the concept, to wait for my body to gain the strength.  We want it right now and we think we should be able to conquer all now.  Sometimes, though, we need to accept that we are in a specific place.  Instead of being angry with my heart, I can acknowledge where it is struggling and be patient with it.  Instead of frustration over what my body can't now accomplish, I can see the difficulties and move forward gradually.

The heart is probably the most difficult for me to wait for.  I want it to quickly recover or never get wounded.  The Lord, in His inscrutable wisdom, gave me a heart that is very tender.  And life can be pretty rough on such a heart.  Having a tender heart isn't a coveted aspect in our culture.  Instead, we are taught to not care what others think, to do our own thing, and to take whatever doesn't kill you and let it make you stronger.  But sometimes it just hurts.  So I find myself fighting against the desire to shield my heart behind indifference or coldness.  Or I use my best-learned defense: sarcasm.

I will fight, nearly to the death, in defense of sarcasm being a valid sense of humor.  When used in the right situations, I think it is fantastic.  However, I will admit that I use it to shield my little heart all too often.  If my heart can't handle the pain of honesty or sincerity, it will hide behind quick remarks and witty comebacks.  In the moment, it is a fight or flight instinct and I guess I choose both: fly away with the tender heart and fight with words of steel.  I know that it will not help my heart, but sometimes the conditioning takes over with little regard to what I should do.

The goal is to tell myself, "Trish, today you will not hide your hurt behind sarcasm.  You will be sincere and meaningful in your words.  And you, impatient one, will be patient with your own heart.  It is a gift."  Perhaps, someday, I will listen to myself.

I need to be reminded that God sees me in a way that is different than I would initially imagine.  In Isaiah 43: 4-5a, God speaks to Israel of a love that is unsurpassed by any other.  It can be helpful to remember that this covenantal love also extends to us today.

Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you, I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life.  Do not fear, for I am with you...    

He is present, long-suffering, patient, and waiting for you.  Not for you to drag your feet, but for you to let all the many conflicted parts of yourself come together.  To wait for your heart to catch up to where the situation requires it be and to not be frustrated that it isn't there yet.  To remind the head that there is more to life than what makes complete sense.  God is working in the midst of your broken chaos right now and He isn't letting it stop Him from doing what needs to be done.

Though He is moving forward in your life, He isn't leaving any part of you behind.  Because despite all of it (the situations, the emotions, the problems, the pride, etc.), He isn't tired of you. 

A Lesson from Snow

I like to think of driving in the winter as a lesson in teamwork.  Usually, I don't like to drive in the winter, but sometimes I get surprisingly excited after a new snowfall or some slick ice.  I go out to my car and think, "Alright, Humanity!!!  You can do it!  If you don't get impatient when I turn slowly around a corner, I won't get mad when you slide through a red light because you are afraid to hit your brakes.  We will all work together and it will be OK!"

Yesterday, I was able to live that experience out again.  I was slipping and sliding up to a stoplight, praying that Jesus would stop my car before it went into the back of the vehicle ahead of me.  Then I looked in my rear view mirror to see a car careening towards mine.  It isn't going to stop in time.  I just knew it.  Sure enough, almost in a dream-like way, she slid into the back of my car.

Put car into park, activate flashers, and open car door to confront the person who played bumper cars.  She was apologetic and young while I was surprised to see no damage.  I got her information and carried on my way to school.  No yelling (not really my style, anyway) and no attempts to make her feel bad.  Besides, I had so very nearly done the same thing to the car in front of me.

The rest of the day, I was willing humanity to be patient with one another.  Yes, it is going to take longer to get anywhere.  But, if we work together, we can all get home in one piece.  At times it leads me to inordinate pride in the human race: no honking horns, no dramatic zooming away, and no freaking out over slight delays.

You did it, Humanity!!!!  You treated other humans like they mattered!  

Like I said, sometimes new snow makes me a bit excited.  It gives us the chance to show a little patience and see the needs of others as important.  And we could always use a little bit more of that.

A Shift of Perspective

I just wanted this day to be over.  It felt unnecessarily long and drawn out.  In fact, this whole week had felt tiring.

On Tuesday, near the end of my last class, I decided to start thinking that it was actually Friday.  With growing excitement, I started to wrap the class up, thinking, How could I have forgotten all day that it was Friday?  When I told them that we would discuss their assignment on Monday, I suddenly realized (spurred on in part by some confused faces) that it was really Tuesday.  Each day since then has been more of the same desire to get to Saturday.

As I followed my class to the computer lab, I internally rolled my eyes.  Such a rough day.

Then I mentally interrogated my self-pitying soul:

Why is this such a rough day?
Because the computers didn't work like they were supposed to and now we have to go to a lab.
Did you get enough to eat?
Yeah...
Did you fear for your life?
No...
Is it really that big of a deal?
No...

I'm not saying I was chipper and happy-go-lucky the rest of the day, but it helped slap me out of my first-world troubles.  The computers didn't cooperate: get over this little difficulty, get over yourself, and be thankful for what you do have.  It isn't worth getting stressed out over and it shouldn't ruin the rest of your day, but rather it was a little mishap.

The change in perspective was very needed.  Let little things stay little.

Be Perfect as Your Heavenly Father is Perfect

Confession: I have a problem with perfectionism.

And I think I am only just now realizing the depths of this noxious weed in my soul.  Perfectionism is easy to portray well and make it seem like a good thing, rather than the lie that it is.  It can actually be stifling.  While I know this theoretically, it is entirely another thing to believe it with my actions.

One memory I have of perfectionism having the upper hand is when my dad was teaching me how to drive.  I was pretty resistant.  Every teenager seems to yearn for the day when they can take the keys and drive to places on their own.  I wanted to drive, but I didn't want to learn to drive on the manual transmission car that my dad had for me.  With an automatic car, you just drive.  You focus on the road, on the signs, on the other cars, but the rest is condensed to brake and gas pedals.  Manuals will stall and quit at the most inconvenient times: like a small town stop sign after the high school graduation and everyone is behind you on their way to open houses.  If I had any hopes that my dad would give in, I would have tried to avoid learning how to drive that car and wait for him to get me an automatic.  However, I understood the stubbornness of the person with whom I was dealing; he was adamant: learn to drive this car or ride the bus.

The first time he took me out to drive, I probably sat in the car for twenty minutes before we even moved.  My younger sister was sprawled out on the deck, eagerly awaiting my driving experience.  After a few minutes, she went into the house and told my mom, "I would have been long gone by now."  My mom said that was what she feared.

My dad had demonstrated driving the car, so I could watch him shift.  I was cautious and made him go over what I was supposed to do several times.  Then I repeated it back to him because I wanted to get it right the first time.  I didn't want the car to start moving and then die, only to have to start the process all over again.  Eventually, I put the clutch to the floor, eased off the brake and onto the gas pedal, and we moved forward slowly.  And then it died.  The process happened over and over again.  I drove up the driveway and out onto the gravel road, running the car in first gear when second would have been kinder to it.

One time while I was still in the early learning stages, my dad asked if I wanted to drive to our property on the other side of the creek.  I said no because I didn't want to practice.  So he asked my younger sister if she wanted to and, of course, she said yes.

I was furious.  I wanted to get out of the car and walk home.  She was seemingly unafraid to try and fail.  At this point, I found a sudden desire to drive, but it was too late.  I was riding with my 11-year-old sister at the wheel.  To my young melodramatic heart, it was an injustice.  My desire to do it perfectly or not at all was shot to pieces by my sister volunteering to take on the challenge.

I have never actually thought that I could be perfect or that I was perfect.  My flaws (or some of them) are well-known to me.  Perfectionism doesn't mean I have a room that is always tidy, a desk that is clean and orderly, or that I'm always pulled together.  I have simply tried to avoid making mistakes.  Some of this is a good desire.  We are to strive for excellence.  Other times, it makes the mistakes feel so much more burdensome or weighty then they actually are.  It can lead to feeling hemmed in since any option could result in failure.

Nobody likes to fail, I get it.  But some do it better than others.  I read an article about Stephen Colbert and he had an interesting "motto," if you will: Learn to love the bomb.  In the midst of failing, learn to love it and not be afraid of it.

To me, that is a crazy notion, one that I want to let him run with into a nice little box of, "Well, he is a comedian, of course that would be helpful in his profession."  But, in truth, I cannot stand by that.  My mental picture of his motto is like skydiving...without a parachute.  Or one that you don't know if it will open.  And you are loving the drop, the racing heart, the pit in your stomach that tells you: This. Is. Crazy.

I prefer to be in control.  I've never thought of myself as needing to be charge, because most of the time I don't want to lead anything, ever.  Yet I do love my ability to say no or to not do what others are doing.  Sometimes, I am stubborn simply to be stubborn.  Perhaps it is so that I won't be seen as just "nice" or a push-over.  I learned the "don't give in to peer pressure" thing really well.  Few can make me do something I don't want to do.  I'll maybe even do the opposite of what you want me to do.  For some reason, I like it to be known that if I'm complying with requests, it is because it is my choice, since I could very well do the opposite.  

So what does this have to do with perfectionism?  I spend much of my life refusing to put myself in positions where I might fail.  Activities, relationships, conversations, new experiences: all things that could potentially not end perfectly or require failure in the process of learning are less than palatable to me.  Yes, I know what you are thinking, "But you can't succeed if you don't risk something."  I chalk it all up to logic: why make mistakes when you can avoid them?

Which is all fine until you find yourself in a position that requires a risk.  If you don't risk, you will definitely lose and maybe God doesn't want you to just pray it out.  Maybe He wants an action.  Maybe the lesson is in trusting yourself less and trusting more that He can and will pick you up when you fall.  Maybe you are supposed to fail.  Yet the very idea of the risk makes my heart threaten self-eviction.  I want to think of every possible outcome before I take that first step, so I can be prepared if things come crashing down.

Or the risk might turn out to be a successful leap.  It might be worth it, there might be joy, there might be happiness and peace.  What if the risk turned out to produce the best type of reward?

This quote comes to mind:

My melancholic pessimism sneaks up again and whispers, "But, seriously, what if you fall?"

As I've been writing this, I've been trying to think of a way out of a perfectionism that can feel a bit stifling at times.  How do you move beyond it?

"Be OK with failing."  Sure--but how?
"Put yourself out there."  Out where?  And when?

This is where the head and the heart are in utter conflict again.

This imperfect soul has no neat conclusion to this dilemma.  I have no solution that can be quickly applied, no wisdom to pull me out of the mire, and no lesson to contrive from these words.

In an attempt to combat this perfectionism, I'm going to end this post imperfectly.

I'm going to be striving for Heaven, but I'm going to fall on my face many, many times.  But Jesus knows that and so I'm trying to be okay with that.

***And, in unexpected irony, of all my blog posts, this post on perfectionism was the most difficult to get to the point where I wanted to publish it.

Because I wanted to at least phrase it perfectly...

In His Hands

I pictured placing my little heart in His hands.  And He held it with a tenderness that could only come from Him.

There it was: small and without adornment.

It was devoid of all excuses or justifications.  Yet it was completely known, in a way that the potter knows every intricacy of the work of his hands.  Even with knowing all that was stored away within it, the little heart was completely loved.

That was true rest.

To be loved, but to know that it is without false impressions or because you have successfully hidden your flaws.  As a member of a family, I have experienced this love to a degree.  But to have your heart laid bare with all of the not-quaint details exposed is another matter.

When the world seems to be too much and I have difficulty taking it all in, I find comfort resting in His hands.  There I am known and there I am loved and those facts still astound me.  To be known to the core and loved to the core is what we all desire.  To know that it is without merit and yet entirely good to be received in such a way is another gift.  Nothing I did caused me to be loved like this, but I am.

For a little heart doing so much seeking, it is good to simply be found.

Comparatively Speaking

When I was younger, people often compared me to my older sisters.

For the most part, I liked it.  My older sisters were involved in many activities at our small school and they were both really smart.  To me, several years younger than them, they were the type of person I wanted to be when I got older.  I enjoyed being known as the younger sister.

Following in their footsteps wasn't something I minded, even to the point of telling people that part of the reason I chose the college I did was because my sisters went there.  When I went to college, I always hoped that I would run into someone who had known either one of my sisters.  Too much time had passed, but anytime I met an alumni who attended college the same time my sisters did, I would ask if they knew them.  In fact, it was strange to be in a place where my last name meant nothing and nobody had any expectations for me based on prior knowledge of my family.

The first feelings I had of not wanting to be compared to my sisters were when they entered the convent.  People assumed my following in their footsteps would lead me to the door of a convent.  For one of the first times, I wanted my path to be markedly different than my sisters.

"When will you enter the convent?" was a question I heard more times than I can count.  The fact that I liked Mass, Jesus, and my faith in general (combined with an introverted temperament) made people assume that I was going to become a sister, too.

My younger sister responded differently to people's expectations.  She oftentimes felt annoyed by the comparison that inevitably happened in a small school.  I remember her battle cry in high school being something along the lines of, "I am my own person!  I am different from my sisters!"  And in many ways, I understand why she felt that way.  Her talents were different from mine and the comparisons she faced seemed to say she didn't measure up.  People assumed she chose her college because her sisters had gone there but she was quick to declare that was not true.  She picked her college, she said, because she wanted to go there, not because of anyone else who went there.  In fact, it almost made her choose to go somewhere else.

I try to remember these differing views on comparison when I am teaching.  Sometimes the siblings are so much like each other, I can see the older sibling in the younger sibling's expressions or phrases.  Other times, I have to keep myself from saying, "You are nothing like your sibling"--whether that is for better or worse.

For competitive souls like myself, comparison can become a dangerous road to travel.  I didn't mind being compared to my sisters when I was younger, and in many ways, I still don't.  Yet I can push the "competition" to the limits--how does one compete with a cloistered nun?

Someone even told me that one time.  I mentioned that my two older sisters were religious sisters and their comment was something along the lines of, "How can you top that?"  My response, filled with some subtle, yet biting sarcasm, was, "I can't."  And internally, But thanks for reminding me.

I believe they meant the comment in jest, but I couldn't help but walk away thinking, Why would you even tell someone that?  If I'm not planning to be a religious sister, then clearly nothing else I can do could measure up.  So many people who enter religious life feel the pressure to not enter.  My high school and college years were filled with the opposite pressure to enter.  At times I even began to feel badly about wanting to get married and have kids.

This is not how I enjoy being compared.  Who wants to have the battle over who is winning most at life, whether in a religious or secular context?  Because if I have expectations placed on me because my sisters are religious sisters, I am sure to disappoint.  But, as my younger sister recently pointed out, we love to be associated with them.  I will bring them up often and talk about their lives, but I don't want to live life trying to compete with them.  They aren't competing with me.

I want to run a different kind of race.  "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." (2 Timothy 4: 7)  One where we are running together toward the same goal.  I can look at the people around me and see their gifts and how God is using those to help the whole Church.  People like to be seen on their own merits, not on what others expect of them based on siblings or parents.

However, sometimes the person it is hardest to get to stop with the comparison game is your own self.

To Be or Not To Be....All is a Gift

It was the end of the day and one of my students was posing one of my least favorite questions.  The question is mildly manageable if I sense that the student is asking this question out of sincerity and a desire to understand God in a deeper way.

That wasn't how he asked the question.

His question was posed more in opposition to God.  It was meant to hurt our perception of God as loving and merciful.  And I find that attitude very difficult to tolerate.

"Did God use Satan to strike the people down in Egypt at the Passover?  Or did He use one of His angels?  And if it was one of His angels, how come God decided to kill so many people?"

In a certain sense, it is a fair enough question.

In another sense, it tears at my heart.

So perhaps my reply was a little more abrupt then necessary, but it was to illustrate a point.  I didn't directly answer the question at first, but I attempted to answer the incorrect aspects surrounding his perception of God.

"God doesn't owe us anything.  God doesn't even owe us life."

I think they were surprised by that response, in all its bluntness.  I reassured them of God's great love for them, but spoke of how it is never our "right" to exist.  Existence, in its entirety for humanity, is a gift.  God, in His great love and mercy, never blots out our existence.  For mere mortals, death will come.  For even the God-man, death came.  But life continues beyond the grave.

We are a people who expect that certain things are our due.  It seems an injustice to us that bad things happen, that we are not treated as we wish, and that death will come to us all.  How many people have expressed, in the throes of sorrow after the death of loved one, that it was so unfair to lose them as they did, when they did?  I do not disagree that death can be tragic or that we will be left with many, many unanswered questions and seemingly unheard prayers.  Yet isn't it the natural course of life?

I am not owed this next breath.

It is not my due that tomorrow will dawn and I will be alive to see it.

It is not my right to live until an old age, surrounded by loved ones.

In reality, God owes me nothing, because He has given me all I have in an act of extreme generosity.  It is not necessary that I am alive, but He wills it to be so, for now.

God gives life and God can take that gift away, too.  It doesn't make Him a murderer, as the question my student posed seemed to imply.  A murderer is one who does not have the right to take a life and yet does.

Let's say each month you receive $100 in the mail from a close friend.  If that friend should stop sending that money, would you then call them a thief?  Of course not!  They were generous to give the money, but as a gift, it must be freely given.  And as a gift, it can end.

All of this is not to make you question the tenderness or faithfulness of God.  He cares about you with a fierceness that is intense to behold.  Yet His ways are so often not our ways.  It can be confusing to muddle through the events that befall us and see how God is working in the midst of devastation.  It won't always be easy and we often won't understand.

But this is necessary to know: If God removes a gift, it is because He is offering a different kind of gift.  

It may not always be easy to see the beauty in that new gift, though.  When we are no longer healthy, we can experience the gift God offers in suffering.  When we experience a death, we can see the gift God offers in grief.  The gifts never cease to flow abundantly from His hands, but they may look other than we would wish.

To a generation that thinks they are owed so many things, I told them God has never been beholden to them.  Everything they have and everything they are can be chalked entirely up to the mercy and love of God.  They did not have to exist and yet they do.  And it is very good.

You are here because God desires you to be here right now.  It would not be less loving of Him for you to no longer be alive; He would simply be offering you a different kind of gift.  However, since you are here right now, God has a purpose and a mission for you.  Throughout this life, He will offer you many gifts.  You might not like them all.  But in the end, He will offer you one of the greatest gifts, life everlasting with Him.  I see that not as robbing me of something that is my due (how pale this life will seem in comparison to the Beatific Vision), but inviting me into a mysteriously beautiful gift that is entirely undeserved.

So breath in and breath out.    

Those were gifts.  Handcrafted, uniquely given to you.  Not because He had to, but because He chose to.  Someday that won't happen.  And that will be a gift, too.

Thank You, Lord, Giver of all Good Gifts.

The Gift of a Little Heart

There is a bit of my heart in everything I write.  It is how I express my heart.  Spoken words are never quite as useful for me, but if you give me some time (perhaps the most crucial element) and paper and pen (or a computer), I can describe (to an extent) the workings of this heart.

Writing allows me the chance to tidy the messiness of a heat that feels.  Too often I rail against my own heart, how the feelings it has do not line up with logic, how I cannot control where my heart is pulled, or how the heart has a power that the head finds difficult to contest.  When I write, I give my head the chance to make sense of this little heart.  I am able to wrap up some loose ends and to really consider what is occurring deep within.

Once upon a time, way back in college, I was on the verge of dating.  In the process of trying to understand my own heart, I wasn't very good at letting this man know what the internal conflict was over.  He wrote me a letter to say that perhaps it was best if we didn't date.  Although I didn't like the contents of the letter, it gave me the freedom to respond in the way that is most natural for me: in writing.  After reading through my letter, a few pages long and filled with heartfelt attempts to give a brief glimpse into my inner chaos, he said that he was able to understand me better.  Apparently, what was going on inside of me wasn't what he had thought from his outside perspective.  Granted, in any relationship you need to have the capability to sit down and have a conversation (one cannot always be stopping the conversation to pen a lovely piece of prose about what one actually wants to say), but it can be helpful to take a step back and write it out.

As self-centered as this may seem to be, this blog has always been about me.  Well, it is about Jesus, but it has always been for me.  I need to write out the workings of my heart.  I find solutions and solace when I can express myself in this way.  Yet I'm very protective of my writings, as though they are my little children.  I am detailing the movements of my heart in words that anyone with the correct web address can access.  I try not to think about it too much, but sometimes I will see where blog views come from and I wonder, what does that person in China/Russia/Germany think about this little heart way far away?  Does a heart that feels these same emotions beat within them, too?  Do they read a few lines and then scroll away, uninterested by a heart of such meanness?  (Ahem--meaning: "poor in quality and appearance; shabby")   

Yet while this blog started and continues to be for my own benefit, I am led to wonder if perhaps, like healing, the Lord is asking for it to be about you, too.  He has this interesting way of dealing with me.  The Lord knows I am slow, so slow.  He knows He must gently ease me into anything or else I will fall into a melancholic heap and pray for death (ask my parents about my first year of teaching).  Perhaps this is what He is doing in this situation, too.  He shows my heart how to express itself and then reminds me that it is not for me alone.  And who knows what He will do with that?  I don't, but I am beginning to get used to the idea that my littleness might be useful when placed in the shadow of His greatness.  Because isn't that what I've always wanted?  To somehow have a great mission even though I am little?  Perhaps He has a plan for all this littleness.

No.  Not perhaps.  He does.  

Maybe God will change the world through each of us by utilizing something within us that seems commonplace and ordinary, but can be fantastic and wonderful when in the light of His Majesty.

Perhaps all He ever wanted anyway was our littleness.  Our hearts scribbled on paper, unadorned by anything but the Truth.  A vulnerable, sincere gift of self.

"For in sacrifice you take no delight, burnt offering from me you would refuse; my sacrifice, a contrite spirit. A humbled, contrite heart you will not spurn."  -Psalm 51

In the Body of Christ, Your Healing Heals Others

Her response was something along the lines of, "It's Jesus.  Of course He was doing something for both of us."  Her certainty and lack of surprise seemed the opposite of my wide-eyed, wide-hearted realization of God's perfect planning.

On a silent retreat, I found myself working through a painful memory I had with my sister.  I had tried a couple times during prayer to get to the root of it, but I seemed to get off course.  Finally, I was in the memory and I pictured Jesus there, too.  The pain of the moment eased and I saw things from a better perspective, one closer to what Jesus must have experienced.

Instead of recalling only my emotions, I began to see the situation as she may have experienced it.  "You are the Beloved of the Father," I found myself telling her.

Then she said those same words back to me and a deep healing occurred in that moment.  Something wounded in me was restored by God, not through a conversation with my sister.

After the retreat, I decided to write her and tell her about that experience.  I didn't go into detail and I didn't explain how I had felt hurt.  I simply told her what transpired in prayer.  The next time I saw her, she brought up the letter.  She said my letter was the Lord's response to her about something she was struggling with.  As she told me that the letter was good for her own heart, I was amazed.  Our Lord took that inclination I had to write my sister and He used it to speak to her heart in a way I didn't know she needed.

My response was, "Woah."  Hers was one of confident certainty that the Lord works in exactly that sort of way.

Sometimes the Lord takes the movements of our hearts and our own healing so He can use them to speak to others in a profound way that we never intended.

Sometimes my own healing allows others to experience the grace of God.

As fallen humans, we are always seeking to repair our fragile, little hearts.  But what a different perspective I have when I think of my healing being an avenue that God uses to love others.  Beyond the fact that God desires my own personal wholeness, He has a mission for me, one that requires me to seek healing for the sake of others, not just for myself.

In a way, the Church needs you to be healed.  Our personal healing is a service to the Church.

Souls need you to pursue holiness and wholeness because, though perhaps unbeknownst to you, God will use that renewal to encounter them.

The Mystical Body of Christ is a mysterious being.  God heals us for our own good and then seeks to use that healing to bring about restoration in others.  One that may rely in part on your "Yes" to Jesus entering into those wounded parts of your own heart, areas you don't want Him to go, but which will truly revive your soul if you let Him.

Your own healing might be that catalyst for others to be healed or encounter God in a necessary way.  

And so He gently asks, "What do you want me to do for you?"  (Mark 10:51)

Your response?  Unlock that little room within your heart that you've walled away and invite Jesus into that place.  His healing, transformative presence will change you and that will change others.

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The Grace of the Present

I'm not opposed to making memories.  As an introvert, I spend a decent amount of time inside my own head, thinking over what has or will transpire.  However, the other day I was scrolling through Facebook and I was seeing pictures and albums that were presented as "making memories."  Do we prefer to make memories rather than live in the present moment?

Is something off if we spend a large amount of our time documenting for the future moments of the past?  Could it be that the present is not actually as great as we will remember it to be once it is firmly grounded in the past?

I'm sporadically reading One Thousand Gifts and the other day I read about how Ann Voskamp, the author, was struggling to encounter God's face in the moments where she is stressed and angry.  Seeing God's face in the brilliance of the morning sunrise or the contented cooing of a newborn is easy.  Yet it stretches us to see God's face in a belligerent student or a quarrel with a friend.  As I read, I thought of how just that day I had been annoyed with my students not listening to my directions.  It never even crossed my mind to stop and consider, "How are they revealing God's face to me right now?"

The present moment is the place where we encounter God.

We are making strides when we are able to go back to a difficult situation and see how God was present in that moment.  Yet it is supremely better to be able to, in that very moment, see the face of God present.  If only I could look at my students, complaining and upset about their work, and see Christ in them.  It would take re-training my mind and my heart.

In One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp reveals an experience she had with her son that changed them both.  At one point in the conversation, she tells her son that the only way to combat feelings is to have other feelings.  The central feeling we can use to combat unwelcome feelings, she presents, is gratitude.  In the midst of frustration, fatigue, anger, sadness, or annoyance, what a difference it would make if we would begin to be thankful.  Not gratitude for something of the past or the future, but gratitude for that present moment.  What would it be like if in our most trying moments we saw the face of God in His perennial presence?  Surely it would change things.

If we spend our lives trying to simply "make memories," I fear that the best moments of life will not be what we actually experience, but always events of the past.  I run the risk of sabotaging my present for the glorification of a past that never really existed.

When I look at my semester that I spent studying abroad, I don't initially recall the tiredness, the inevitable frustrations of group planning, or the desire for American comforts.  Yet those were very real aspects of my semester.  I cannot expect my present moment to measure up to my idealized past experiences.

God is present in the here and now.  In this moment, despite the commonness.  In my quiet study hall on a random Wednesday.  In the lukewarm coffee I'm still enjoying from this morning.  In the satisfaction of checking another item off my to-do list.

This present moment is a moment of grace.  Because grace is only offered in the present.

I desire to teach myself to accept each moment as the grace-filled, soul-transforming, heart-deepening, wound-healing, saint-making, God-given moment that it is.  This present moment is where we encounter God.  Let us not overlook His presence in the now in an effort to live in the past.

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A Heart Like His

When I was in high school, a Totus Tuus team would come to my parish each summer.  One year, on the night we were having Adoration, I thought about how the team would do the same program each week.  Each week they would have Adoration and I found myself thinking that it must not be that novel of an experience anymore.  If they did it week after week, they must get used to it and not be as excited as I was, since I rarely had the opportunity to go to Adoration.

Fast forward a few years and I was a member on a Totus Tuus team.  I realized how wrong my earlier assumption had been.  It was because I was closer to Christ that the night for Adoration seemed so much dearer to me than it had before.  No, it wasn't a particularly new experience, but I yearned for that hour each week when I could just sit before Our Lord.

This memory came to mind because today in my sophomore class I showed a couple clips from "The Passion of the Christ."  As Jesus carries the cross, there is a part where Mary is racing to reach Him as she recalls a similar incident that took place when He was a child.  My heart was aching with this dear mother and I found myself near tears.  Part of me thinks I shouldn't have this response anymore since I've seen the movie several times.  Yet I think it is almost a requirement that as we draw nearer to the Lord, we develop more of His Heart.  He has a tender heart.  Sin makes us harden our hearts, but Jesus gives us new hearts, hearts of flesh.

 "A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."  (Ezekiel 36:26)

Hearts of flesh feel experiences more intensely.  I find myself wanting the heart Jesus has and yet being fearful of what that will entail.  My heart is already very sensitive at times, how would it respond to being more aware of the impact of sin in the world?  Could I handle a heart like His that would be vulnerable and open to all?  Wouldn't I get wounded?

We fear being wounded.  Rightfully so, because it hurts.  Yet if we want to follow Jesus, we must carry our cross and live as He did.

And Jesus was wounded.  

His heart could truly love because it was truly open.  In my mind, I seem to imagine that Jesus had this loving heart that was also fiercely guarded, like the armor of a knight.  That is incorrect.  Jesus is the Divine Healer who allows Himself to be wounded for our sake.

The closer we come to the heart of Jesus, the more we will experience in union with Him.  Hearts of steel and stone cannot deeply love.  Jesus desires us to have hearts of flesh.  Hearts that can be wounded, but more importantly, hearts that can love and be loved.

Heart of Jesus, sanctify my heart.

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