I'm tired.

This last weekend I spent a very short 24ish hours at home...running errands, shopping for a dress for a wedding (yay! Only 4 more days till Paul and Torie tie the knot!), writing a 10 minute meditation that I gave very nervously the next day at a TEC gathering, hanging out with one of my best friends and my cat, and playing some awesome multiplayer Tetris with my brother barking orders from the kitchen while he cooked us 3 fabulous meals. :) What should have been a fabulously peaceful weekend was indeed, enjoyable...but it wasn't peaceful. I could not for the life of me get rid of the small voice of anxiety that gave me a spiritual twitch all weekend. I wanted a plan and I wanted to get items A through Q off of my to-do list. I'm tellin' ya, when the human makes a plan it all goes downhill...
This seems to be the common theme of my spiritual battle lately...and its wearing me down. Though sometimes, things really don't go the way I want and I'm consciously fighting with God about it, this weekend was just exhausting. I didn't even realize at the time that I was being so anxious and controlling (or grasping at the illusion of control anyway), and I didn't know what it was doing to me until I had spent a miserable Monday morning in class and work study. I have never been so mentally out of it and tired...and it has never been so difficult to bounce back from a weekend for me. It occurred to me that futilely fighting with the Master of the Universe feels deceptively like "exhausting one's self for the sake of the Kingdom" (a concept I used in my meditation the day before), a trick that I'm sure the Evil one uses to his advantage. The main difference is that my pride and brokenness fuels the former and inhibits the latter. Its just another hilarious bit of God's humor that the Kansas/Missouri weather these days is being equally deceptive...
In all seriousness though, I'm literally tired of being so stubborn. Some days, its funny when I argue with God and He answers with His omnipotence and makes things happen supernaturally. But in the long run, I'm tired of mistreating my best Friend with the sarcasm and flippancy that is characteristic of my human nature. I spent all weekend spinning my wheels, and for nothing. I got items A through Q off of my list, but at His pace and in His time. I certainly selfishly accepted those blessings without thanking Him, and becoming aware of all He does for my without even my acknowledgement shows me what a wretched sinner I am. Ouch.
I can only be humbled by the fact that God sent His only Son to die for me. That realization literally brings me to my knees its so cripplingly humbling (I'll never understand what Protestantism's issue is with "Catholic calisthenics;" we pray with our bodies...duh). And what's even better, He rose again, because He thinks I'm worth bringing to Heaven.  I don't know what He's thinking, but I guess that's the whole point of being human.
May you tire yourself in humble service to our Lord and Savior, not in foolish pride.
Peace and grace to you!

Loneliness vs. Solitude

I realize how ironic it is, but I promise I did not write this post as a result of the day/night I put it up…I am single this Valentine’s day, but I am joyful because I know that Jesus’ Sacred Heart burns with love for me…and that beats chocolate and flowers by a landslide (like KU this evening. Ha.) Anyways….

            What is the difference between loneliness and solitude? At first glance, they seem to mean the same thing: being or feeling distant from those around us that normally feel or are nearby. The definition for solitude as defined by dictionary.com is “aloneness,” but NOT “loneliness.” I’m in a philosophy class and a logic class this semester, so bear with me while I make these distinctions. Aloneness simply means being absent from others; loneliness on the other hand, is more like the feeling one has about aloneness. Loneliness is normally synonymous with abandonment and despair….but not with solitude. Why not?

            I have a theory that is maybe best explained if an example is used first. I came off of a wonderful weekend that was very tiring and simultaneously very relaxing recently. I found myself in the midst of the same group of people that I normally spend Sunday nights with at school…but something wasn’t right. I felt a tug in my heart, pulling me from where I was. I felt disconnected from my friends and at odds with them, even though I hadn’t seen them in a couple days. In the midst of perfectly good company…I felt lonely. Though I didn’t understand it at the time, I felt the need to get away from people, to seek solitude. That desire for peaceful solitude and paradoxically, an end to my loneliness, led me to the chapel, where I spent some much needed unwinding time with God, who was with me through the entire ordeal.

            The differences between solitude and loneliness are not the literary connotations or definitions we English-speakers assign to them.  The difference between solitude and loneliness is the persons or Person we are seeking. When we seek for fellow humans to fill our lives, we feel that they let us down and abandon us…or that we have somehow let them down and are not worth their time. This is a clever tool that Satan uses to isolate us from our Lord. God is the only who can fill us, and so He leaves us a little less than full, so that sometimes we’ll seek Him in the quiet places of our lives-like the chapel-and the quiet places of our hearts-in our aloneness and solitude.

“Bitterly she weeps at night, tears upon her cheeks, with not one to console her of all her dear ones; her friends have all betrayed her and become her enemies.” ~Lamentations 1:2

Who is she, Jerusalem, seeking? If you check out chapter 1, Jerusalem is abandoned and disgraced because “the Lord has punished her for her many sins.” (vs 5) Sin is what makes us feel truly, spiritually lonely. Satan is the one who makes us feel emotionally lonely…he convinces us first, to be filled by the worldly things and imperfect humans around us, and when it does not work, he then seeks to turn us against each other, insisting that it is either someone else’s fault, for abandoning us, or our fault, because we are not worthy of love.

“…I sought him…I found him whom my heart loves. I took hold of him and would not let him go…” ~Song of Songs 3:2, 4

Who is she, the beloved, seeking? Her lover, the One who might fill and fulfill her. And if you’ve read the book Song of Songs at all, she is definitely not lonely. But she seeks solitude in a garden, in a tower, in so many different places; she searches for her lover there, in the quiet places of her life and heart…in solitude. So who are you seeking? And how do you feel about it?

Grace to you in your aloneness, and peace!

Ouch.

My friend Jesse mentioned once how chock-full of wise goodness the book of Sirach was...so I thought I'd give it a shot. I am slowly, slloooooowwwwwwlllly and sporadically making my way through Sirach and made it to chapter 10, verse 12 the other night:

"The beginning of pride is man's stubbornness in withdrawing his heart from his Maker."

"Ouch."
"Oops."
Those were my first two articulate reactions to this verse. Stubbornness is not a personality trait I would normally attribute to myself. But after recent repeated arguments and at least one outright fight with God, what else can I call myself? Proud.
Double-ouch.
The very BEGINNING of pride is my stubbornness. And not just my stubbornness of will-the days where I tell God how I want His plan to go. Pride reigns in my heart when I refuse to let the love and peace of Christ control it instead. My pride begins (began) when I withdraw my heart from God...when I refuse to let Him love me. When I withdraw my affection from the One who IS Love, who loves me more completely than I could even imagine.
If a dear friend were to withdraw their affections, their heart from me, how would I feel?
Well, I'll be taking that one to confession. Peace and grace to you!

Humility

2 instances of this ridiculous concept that God calls us to/drags us toward while we're screaming with fingernails digging into the floor/literally knocks us to the ground with...

1. He totally ruined my day last Wednesday. Everything-I kid you not-EVERYTHING went wrong...because God scrapped my plans and said, "Here's what I want you to do instead..." Though I threw a childish fit about it, (hence, my screaming with fingernails image) He managed to get me to daily Mass (NOT part of the original plan), found me a perfect Bible verse for my troubles that day (Colossians 3:17), fixed said troubles, read my thoughts and literally answered them out loud through my good friend Emily, and ended this horribly humbling day with a surprise trip to a perpetual adoration chapel (those are few and far between in the KC area) where He stared me in the face and asked, "Will you let Me love you now?" Whoa.

2. A less comical example. Here I am in this picture, snoozing in THE Marian shrine of America, the largest Catholic Church in the country, the basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington D.C.

 We were there for the Pro-life vigil the night before the March for Life. With several other thousand people, we celebrated a 2 1/2 hour mass...which, of course, was awesome. We got there 2 hours early, long enough for a short nap, and we still had to sit downstairs, outside the crypt church, in the VERY back against the wall. We couldn't even see the TV showing us the altar. And there was little ole' me, a tiny speck in the midst of the largest peaceful protest in the nation...cat-napping in front of...well, God and everybody. My position inside that basilica was so perfectly illustrative of my part in the March.

 

“I am only one, but I am one.

I can't do everything, but I can do something.

The something I ought to do, I can do.

And by the grace of God, I will.”

-Edward Everett Hale

And I did. I was only one of 400,000 people-most of them born after the Roe Vs. Wade decision-to march on the Supreme Court building that day (See http://www.ewtn.com/vnews/getstory.asp?number=111182). My own self disappeared and I joined in a cause that is bigger than all of us put together can even imagine. I was a just a miniscule part of the witness to a culture of life, to a deeper respect for my own humanity, to the call of a life completely open to God's grace and life-giving love. God's work is so perfect in the pro-life movement. As more and more and more people join in this fight, one person means (in a manner of speaking) less and less and less...the louder the testimony of this pilgrimage becomes, the more humbling it is. What a lesson God is teaching us! The more of us that fight for Christ, the more glory we bring Him and the more we-together with our brothers and sisters-build His Kingdom, the less glory we are able to take for ourselves. WHOA!

"Father God, we praise You and thank You for the virtue of humility. By becoming smaller, help us to see and enjoy and adore more of Your greatness. Amen."

"He must increase, I must decrease." -John 3:30

May you decrease, to make more room for God in your life!