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.

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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Duc in Altum: Classroom Missionary

I've spent the last two months deciding if I would continue teaching next year.  There were pros and cons on both sides and I couldn't tell which side was weightier.  Even though my mother insisted, repeatedly, that I should sit down and make a pros and cons list, doing so didn't seem to really help.  The benefits and drawbacks of either decision seemed incapable of being captured in words to jot on one side of a t-chart.  I couldn't go with my gut because it, too, was conflicted.  In the end, I chose to stay and while I'm still uncertain if that was the correct decision, it was a decision and I finally made it.  A part of me felt sadness to pass up a great service opportunity and another part feels concern that next year I will be climbing the walls of my classroom, wondering what momentary weakness caused me to sign another year of my life away.  Despite these concerns, I am beginning to make plans about what this next year of life will look like.  As a teacher, life stills comes about on a yearly schedule, broken neatly into semesters with lovely summer and winter breaks.

Last semester I was growing more and more convinced that I would love to not teach next year.  It wasn't one thing in particular, but it was a bunch of things all wrapped up together.  Yet after applying for and being offered (even if only temporarily) another job, the joys of teaching became clearer to me.  The things that I would miss stood out in my mind and I didn't even want to think of telling my department head that I would be leaving or cleaning out my classroom.  Yet I didn't want to stay just because I didn't want to do those things.

As frustrating and foolish as students can be at times, they can also be hilarious, witty, deep, encouraging, and beautiful souls.  Yes, they complain, test my patience, seem incapable of following simple directions, make me question my own sanity, and relentlessly insist on moving the far row of desks next to the wall so they have a backrest.  Yet at times we laugh together, we can reach a beautiful depth at times, we develop a relationship that is unlike any other relationship I have formed before--one of student and teacher.  Over the past three years I've grown more comfortable with my students.  Today I gave a test to my seniors and after they were finished, I couldn't help but look at them and feel pleased.  We aren't best friends, but it is my class and we do have a unique dynamic.

I don't know how long I will teach for and how long I want to teach for depends on the day.  In the midst of my crisis (the I-have-only-two-days-to-know-if-I-am-going-to-sign-my-contract-and-I-don't-know-what-I'm-doing crisis), I called my sister.  She asked me questions that I didn't know how to answer about my personal desires and feeling peace.

"Answer this as quickly as you think of an answer," my sister told me.  "If you could do anything, what would you do or be?"
Pause.
"A missionary."

Then she read me something.  At first, I wasn't quite certain what she was reading me.  After a little while, I realized she was reading me one of my very first blog entries.  "Young," first-year teacher Trish was writing about how she was a missionary of the classroom and how even as she longed for greater missions, she was called to be a teacher and minister in the seeming mundane aspects of life.  And that young teacher inspired me.  As my sister read my writing, I felt inspired to truly take up the mission of being a teacher and to live it with a radical zeal that I had forgotten.  At some point I had begun to resign myself to having a job rather than being a missionary.

So even in the midst of uncertainty, I am starting to look forward to another school year (of course, after my (I believe) well-deserved summer break) to be a missionary in a high school classroom.  Because Christ instructed us to put out into the deep and I intend to cast my nets into the high school ocean.  Because the harvest is abundant and the laborers are few.  Because the Church needs the youth.  Because Jesus says there is a millstone with my name on it if I fail to bring the little ones to Him.  Because, for some unknown reason in God's inscrutable Will, I am called to teach.

Sunflowers for the Teacher

Yesterday I probably should have been preparing or sleeping or doing something mildly helpful but instead I was watching the sequel to "Anne of Green Gables" and loving it.  She is a character that I like to think I am similar to.  While many mightn't see the correlation, it is there--the competitive streak, the stubbornness, the ability to hold grudges forever, the teaching career, the desire to write, etc.  So after watching the movie, I went out and picked some sunflowers near the railroad tracks.  I felt a little like Anne as I did so.  As I meandered into the tall grass, I tried to keep my imagination from thinking of the snakes and various animals that could lie lurking amid the grass and stickers.  I cut some sunflowers, brushing off more than a few bugs, and thought of how Anne-like I would seem as I walked home with a bunch of sunflowers gathered in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other.  I was only missing a long skirt and a head of red hair.  [Not to mention a gorgeous man in love with me since meeting me.  Alas, no Gilbert Blythe for me.  Oh, well...that is of little importance.  :) ]

The little sunflowers, now smiling and nodding happily on my desk, have been a source of joy for me this entire day.  They are drinking up some cool, clear water and rest in a vase that I found at a thrift store with my sister.  Pale translucent green and delicate, the vase dazzles with the beauty of simple wild sunflowers in it and the sunlight streaming through the window.  I had prepared the perfect words for if my students asked about the flowers so that I wouldn't have to lie and yet it wouldn't be revealed that I live at home.  I'm not certain if they even noticed them.  Nevertheless, they brought joy to the teacher.

The Lord loves me through beauty.  The beautiful look of attention on a few students' faces...the radiant sun sharing its warmth...the intimacy of Mass in a school chapel, surrounded by youth...the successful completion of my first full week of school...the satisfaction of a classroom of my own...the anticipation of family togetherness tonight...music that makes me dance or think...the knowledge that I have two blessed days that stretch out before me with no lessons to teach...time with my sister before she heads off to school...the enduring hope and eager anticipation of Heaven.  Thanks, Lord.