The Wal-Mart Heart Change

I could feel it increasing in my heart.  My fingers tapped on the shopping cart as the impatience within escalated.

Standing in the speedy checkout line at Wal-Mart, I was feeling pressed for time.  I hadn't wanted to stop at Wal-Mart, but I needed glitter.  Never in my life have I purchased glitter, so it took a bit of meandering before I found what I needed.  A few other items found their way into my hands and then I was at the checkout.  Waiting.

The sense of urgency was palpable in Wal-Mart.  I could feel it because I had places to be, things to do, and the rush of shoppers waiting at the checkout lines declared that they had similar situations.  The clerk tending the cash register was taking care of one customer and it seemed to take a while.  His credit card wasn't accepted and he was on the phone.

Minutes passed.  I kept eyeing other lines, watching them line up and pass through while I waited.  Finally, the woman ahead of me moved forward in line.  Change needed to be dispensed into the tray and we watched her unroll two packs of quarters.  Then the cashier counted the gifts bags.

1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8...9...10

10 gifts bags.  Then she swiped one.  And repeated the act seven more times.  She stopped and began to count the number of bags on the screen.  But she must have lost track of which line she was on so she took a piece of paper, holding it up to guide herself line by line.  The customer told her that she had only scanned eight but there were ten.  The cashier finished counting, swiped another, and then keyed in another.

I'm feeling impatient, inwardly reminding myself that it is Advent, the season of waiting.  But for some reason, my time feels more important.  Perhaps it is part of the human condition.  We are quick to hurry others, almost insulted that they should waste our precious time.

I will my heart to stop pounding with impatience.  Almost like hushing a baby, I remind my heart that there is enough time for what is necessary.  Slow down, slow down.  Do what you tell your students to do: practice patience, seek holiness in the simple, ordinary things in life.  Be faithful in small matters.

And my heart slows.  When I approach the cashier, I am greeting her as though I never waited.  I am striving to not make myself the most important person in the situation.  The anxious tapping of impatience is brushed away for a moment, and I try to hang onto this as I navigate the parking lot and the line of cars waiting to exit.

Later, I will lose this patience and peace.  I will rush about, attempting to do in a couple hours what should have been done in days.  And I will miss the joy of the present moment and seek to tend to things rather than to people.  But for all the missteps that will later follow, I am reminded of that moment in the checkout line.  That moment when my agitated heart encountered the peace that it was always meant to have.

Say to the fainthearted, "Take courage and fear not. Behold, our God will come and will save us." -Isaiah 35:4

There He is: saving me from myself in the Wal-Mart checkout line.

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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God is in the detail

"The Devil is in the detail" is a phrase I've heard but never really used.  It came to mind today and I thought, "Actually, God is in the details."  Turns out, "God is in the detail" was the first phrase and the devil one is a spin-off.  Just like him, too.  Never being creative, simply sloppily redoing something of God's genius and trying to pawn it off as his own invention.

God is found in the details of everyday life.  The other day, I was driving back to my house and took a moment to look around the road I was on.  I mean--to really see.  I noticed the pieces of icy snow alongside the road, the way the sun was shining on the cars driving under the bridge, and the lines of watery dust dried on my windshield.  It was a moment where I stopped and saw.  Too often I skim over the details.  I'm lost in my thoughts as I drive or I will drive past the exact same scene and never notice it really.

Today I went to Mass at the hospital, and I was absentmindedly staring at the stained glass at the front.  For as many times as I've seen the window, I should be able to draw it from memory.  But I couldn't, even though my mind has often wandered to finding the different patterns in the window.  Or the other day, I was driving to the interstate ramp and noticed that the trailer court extended much further than I realized.  The stoplight consistently forces me to read the entrance sign for the trailer court, but that day as I drove by, I glanced back and saw how far it extended.  It was an entire community that I had only thought of as a handful of trailers settled near a busy road.

I realize that it wouldn't be possible to notice all of the details all of the time.  With the rows of houses and flashing digital signs, I would be inundated with too much stimuli if I truly took all of it in.  However, I can do a better job at noticing my surroundings, of taking the time to pause, look around me, and truly see.

God is in the details of my daily life and maybe I am just not truly seeing Him at work.  My goal is to slow down and see the beauty that is found simply in the present moment and place.

Gratitude for Community

At different times I find myself missing college.  While it was stressful and filled with numerous papers, I miss the unique setting that is found in living in the dorm and sharing my daily life with many others.  The fact that a perpetual adoration chapel was only a short walk away was also a major benefit.  Sometimes I was overwhelmed by the constant stream of people around campus, prohibiting any chance of being alone and filling my melancholic soul with stillness and silence.  Despite that, I found it invigorating to be surrounded by young people my age who desired to zealously live out the faith.  Of course they failed, but it was to my never-ending joy to be able to enter into deep theological discussions at the drop of the hat.

Once experiences the beauty of such an environment, everything else seems to not compare.  Now I don't live in a place that is teeming with young Catholics.  I have a real job and I have to concern myself with money.  The goal now, as opposed to the liberal spending of college, is to earn more than I spend.  College was a steady stream of cash poured from my pockets and from the pockets of a couple banks.

Yet every now and then I am able to recognize the beauty of the present moment.  I remember that I live with three young women that are on fire for the Lord.  That we do engage in deep conversations, that we are sharing our lives together, and that we can challenge each other to delve deeper into our faith.  Last night we had a women's prayer group meeting at my house and I was filled again with a sense of gratitude.  Women from different jobs, places, backgrounds, and lives came together to be rooted in prayer.  At one point I was concerned that our conversation would be offensive to some of the new ladies but I was even more encouraged to find out they weren't.  We could talk about praying outside Planned Parenthood, contraception, ObamaCare, medical ethics, Catholic hospitals, and much more without any tension or conflict.  We seemed to be in one accord.

I thanked the Lord that I didn't live on my own but with women I can grow with.  I am not alone in my faith or without Catholic friends, but rather the Lord is increasing and strengthening these friendships.  My community may be small, but it is sufficient for me.  The Lord provides.  He knows what I need and He is supplying.  Perhaps not in the abundance that I dream of or desire, but in the amount that is perfect, necessary, and manageable.