Framily

Just a reflection on something that's been a daily part of my life for the last 2 1/2 years, something that has completely overhauled and remodeled my spiritual journey with Christ, and something I am pretty sure I cannot live without anymore. Thanks, God, for promising me such a beautiful gift. :)
I became a part of the TEC family on March 7, 2009. That meant I joined a community of people that started loving me right from the very beginnings of our friendships. They were kids that, along with me, realized we could truly live our Catholic faith with each other. We didn't have to hide it, or be embarrassed about it, and we could bring up God in a sentence without traumatizing anyone. In fact, bringing up God and being in relationship with Him and each other was what made our time together so fun and enjoyable and...life-giving. I made a group of friends with a real purpose: to get each other and the rest of the world to Heaven. Wow.
As some of my friendships through TEC really started to develop, I became part of a pretty tight-knit group that called itself "framily". The explanation behind the new slang term was "friends so close they've become like family." This group could easily have become a clique or something silly like that, but God's too smart and too good. The word slowly leaked out to include all of us who have joined the TEC family in the last couple of years, as well as those who were encountering Christ on the retreats long before the word ever surfaced. It is so amazing to hear people who are little more than strangers to me, say to new candidates: "Welcome to what we call the framily." Though I may not know the person using or receiving the title, it doesn't matter. What matters is that all of us know what it means.
Framily is more than just a big group of people who know and like each other. Framily is a group of people who have all had the change to encounter Christ in a similar way, and who have bonded with others through that experience. Framily is not exclusive membership into some private club, and those who might think so kid themselves in thinking that they even know what framily means. The people that framily is all about are not the originators of the slang term; they are three in One. They/He is/are completely in love with each of us. They/He has/have a bond with each one of us, and thats what makes us all family.

To share a little of my experience with the framily, I said 3 things: 1) its a daily part of my life, 2) its completely overhauled and remodeled my journey with Christ, and 3) I cannot live without it.

1) I do not go a day without thinking about and praising God for framily. They, their intentions and daily struggles are a daily part of my prayer life. I talk with many of them, I think about some of them a lot, and I am very often remembering and telling stories about past TECs, and preparing for future ones.

2) I've always known my faith was important, but my candidate TEC showed me that living my faith daily, passionately, obviously was possible. And I'm finding out that not only is it possible, its required, to get through this life, and to get to Heaven. Also, in this journey of life, these good people direct me on my path. They set excellent examples, they laugh and cry with me, and they always challenge me to become a fuller version of myself, to embrace a fuller and more perfect version of God's plan for me.

3) I say I cannot live without it. And that used to be the case. I (somewhat foolishly) used to think that, since I encountered Christ on TEC so powerfully, that was the only way for me to continue encountering Him. What a surprise to me, to be called out by a good friend (who is ironically not a TECer ;)) and shown that I can encounter Christ in ways that are not TEC. And I can share my faith through other things and avenues than forcing them to go on TEC (If I've overdone it in encouraging you to make a TEC in the past, I apologize. TEC is great, but I understand now that it may not be God's plan for you.). TEC has been the starting blocks for the race of my witness to Christ and faith journey, but this path will take many turns, some of them not TEC-related, and thats ok. :)
Having said all that, I will also say that I have a lot of passion for the TEC program. I have learned so much from it, I see a lot of good fruit being born from it, and I see that TEC is a huge opportunity for God to put people into my life that He wants me to love and serve.  I see that vision and part of the plan God has for me, and I will continue to enthusiastically share my joy for it with others. I said that I cannot live without it. But I amend that statement, and instead choose to say that I will not live without it.

I could talk for days on end about my personal journey with the framily. But I challenge you as well as myself to something better than just talking about the people with whom you've become good friends. Talk instead, about the Person who brought you to your own "framily". Whether you've been on a TEC or not, Who's face do you really see in your best friends? What/Who keeps you together, and blesses you endlessly, loves you perfectly, and is waiting breathlessly for you to be with Him in Heaven forever?
May you find yourself a group of friends so close, they've become family, if you don't have one. If you do, may your rejoice in God's goodness!
Grace to you, and peace.

More on Hope

"Lord, grant me the grace to Hope. To know in my heart that You have not only good, but the BEST in store for me. Help me to realize that, while counting my blessings is the joy of a grateful heart, assuming these blessings are as good as it gets is the sign of a prideful heart, and it means that I claim to know You and Your ways, and that I doubt Your promise that better things are coming. Give me the grace to always trust in that promise, and to know that You are Almighty God.
 Have mercy on me, Lord, and hear my prayer. Amen."

Back to the Future

One of my favorite movie trilogies…and the title is so appropriate. J

As people looking toward Eternal life, we understand that the gift of salvation is priceless: worth more than anything and everything we could offer God while here on earth. Our response to such a gift is zeal and passion for God’s life-giving love. We Catholics do not do good works to earn our Heaven, as so many mistakenly believe. We do good works in response to and thanksgiving for Jesus Christ’s having opened the gates to us freely. And one cannot be thankful for a gift one has not accepted. If we do not accept that God, and God only, can and will sweep us off our feet and carry us off to Heaven, our good works of thanksgiving are meaningless.

God is already waving free tickets to Heaven in our faces. We accept as graciously as our weak humanity can, and then we celebrate (Mass, prayers, good works…all the good stuff. J)

My point here being that Christians look to the future; our whole lives on Earth are caught up in the reality that we will someday be experiencing God fully among His angels and Saints. What an amazing reality to live and die for!

 And thus, the future is where evil tries to deter us.

“Be not afraid.”

I've been saying that lot these days. Hearing it a lot too. From friends, family members, from God Himself. And I've definitely needed to hear it and say it. Lots of stuff has happened in my life recently. Not stuff I'm either willing or yet able to bear my soul about on the internet; stuff that goes arm in arm with that paralyzing fear that knocks the wind out of me when I lay down to sleep at night. And I know for a fact that others are getting the wind knocked out of them too. I tell people and myself to trust God all the time, but when all I knew seemed to be literally falling apart about a week ago, I gained some new perspective on fear, and no longer dismiss how real and crippling it can be.
The thing about fear is that the things we fear are a very real part of our human condition. Evil exists all around us. We live in this world and are a fallen race. Many things that hurt and scare us are the difficulties we have created for ourselves as a result of our sin; other things have other-worldly influence behind them. It is not wrong or unnatural that we be alert to these things. We understand that they might pose a distraction, an obstacle to the future reality of Heaven, should we give them our undue attention. And that undue attention is fear. On the road to sainthood, these evils and distractions give us pause. We dig in our heels and stop to ponder. And fear takes over. We become consumed by how easily these things might stop us. From gaining peace, from joy, from eternal life in the future…and we forget that we’ve already stopped. We forget that we’re already holding the ticket to Heaven in our hands, because we worry about what should happen if something were to take that ticket away.

Stupid Satan. What a head trip. It doesn’t even make sense. Faulty logic!

The opposite of fear is hope. Like fear, hope looks to the future. But hope is when we barely give evil and distraction a head nod, and keep on trucking toward those pearly gates. Hope is realizing that none of the troubles of this world deserve undue attention, because that ticket to Heaven is in our hands, and that ticket is the sacrifice of Christ’s death on the Cross and His Resurrection and victory over death. Hope says to those distractions as we pass them by: “You don’t matter all that much. My future is bright, and nothing can stop me from getting there.” In other words, Philippians 4:13. Or Romans 8:38-39.

So the trick is to be not afraid. When we pause on the road to Sainthood, when we allow fear to bamboozle us, we make the decision to stop chasing God, many times without realizing it. The trick is to keep on trucking. Keep our eyes on the prize-Heaven. Keep on keepin’ on. Or, in other, more eloquent and less clichéd words,

“Be ever engaged, so that whenever the devil calls, he may find you occupied.” –St. Jerome.

I’m ready to get moving again, get past this fear. I’m ready to keep loving my friends, my family, strangers God brings into my life. These struggles I’m going through? Doesn’t matter what they are. They don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. I have hope, because I’m on my way to a bigger, brighter, greater reality than I can imagine. I’m ready to get back to the Future. ;)

May you be fearless, and hopeful on this journey to Sainthood. Grace to you, and peace.