Peace, Joy, Humility, Love.

4 words to describe the last few weeks of my life. Very VERY blessed. Between the Cura Personalis conference I attended in St. Louis a couple weeks ago and the TEC retreat I served on, God has taught me so much. I could apologize for how long this post is, but I won't, because I really want to tell all of my story. So hang with me. :)

1) Peace. Something I realized I've not had much of since the school semester ended. I've felt rushed and overwhelmed from the very start of the summer. I kept trying to do EVERYTHING as soon as possible. Socializing with every single friend I hadn't seen in a long time, making commitments I didn't have time to keep, and when I did get the chance to relax at home, I was neglecting my family by being on the phone making more plans and calling more friends. But the chance to go on a silent retreat as part of the CP conference did so much for me. Once I abandoned distraction (which took almost a full day), I felt a lot of peace. The opportunity to simply be. Instead of making plans and time managing and trying to be productive, I relaxed, journaled, spent time with a solid group of strangers as we held silence in community. And I was able to just be with God.
I also found intervals of super profound peace while at TEC. We were blessed with the opportunity to have perpetual adoration for the duration of the retreat. During the three hour-long shifts I signed up for as a team member, and any extra time when I felt weary and tired, I struggled to pray and muster words to offer up. But God told me to simply be with Him, and that that was the prayer I needed to offer. I spent those 3+ hours at total rest: definitely not awake, but not quite asleep. I didn't think about anything, I couldn't move. I just laid in the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, something I've not experienced since I went to Steubenville almost 4 years ago. Awesome. :)

2) Joy. I sure got a bunch of this at CP. I've served several TECs, and know a lot of people through the community I've found there. But CP was great because I got to meet new people again, this time from all over the country. People from 10-ish Jesuit universities who shared unique experiences within the common thread of student faith-sharing groups at a university level. It was so inspiring to mingle with Christian college students who were all serious about leadership in service of the Gospel. I was completely surrounded by the cream of the crop. There were lots of joyful people there, people who don't take life too seriously, people who hold hope for the future. It definitely rubbed off. :)
On CP, I discovered I genuinely like meeting new people, but I also found soooo much joy on TEC 128, where I spent the weekend serving with a group of teenagers that love Christ. And I don't just mean that they like to pray every once in awhile and sing at Mass. I mean, they LOVE Christ. Fully. Passionately. Deeply. Amidst the presence of such True Love, this wheat crew, most of whose members I was familiar with, but didn't know on a deeper level, exuded such abiding joy that was amazingly infectious. Whether it came from the countless hugs I received, or the deepened friendships I gained, or the million adoration chapel visits, or the hilarious songs made up to the tune of "Hey there, Delilah" at 1am, or the Holy Spirit summonings, or even the many, many hands I held (I LOVE holding hands...such a beautiful sign of affection to me :) ), I was absolutely filled with joy. I cried that weekend. Like A LOT. I heard a quote on CP that perfectly described and carried over to TEC 128:
"When your heart is full, your eyes overflow." 
And overflow they did. So joyful. :)

3) Humility. Something I have always struggled with. I get selfish often, and when I get selfish, everything gets difficult. For myself, for others. God's plan trips me up so often and frustrates me so because of my pride and selfishness. Well, lucky for me, God warned me about what I was coming up against. When I expressed my uneasiness about the coming trip to St. Louis, He told me that the coming weeks would be an opportunity to grow in patience, in humility.
"I want you to examine your heart this week. You have more burden to lay down and more to work on than you think you do."
Ouch. But, like always, He was right. I had a lot to sort out...and more than I thought I did. I got to SLU with a mental checklist of things to think about. God allowed me to think about them. But He also let loose a couple of lessons that I had been needing to learn for quite some time, about TEC, about CLC, about some of my friendships. I was very humbled. I grew so much in understanding by simply listening to God's whisper, and watching His plan unfold in front of me. It was, in a word, beautiful.  Once I sat back and let God lead me, I was graced with the openness for humility. That is not a prideful statement, but a genuine one. When I was tempted to be frustrated, my heart was opened to the knowledge that God had a purpose in mind for each circumstance, no matter how silly it made me look, or how completely incompetent I was.
 That grace stuck with me as I left St. Louis, when my car broke down on the way home, when the credit card system at work shut down, when my cash register was $20 short, when my hair wasn't behaving itself, when the bookmarks I worked so hard to make fell apart when I got to TEC. Its like I was given foresight by the Holy Spirit: the chance to respond graciously to potentially difficult circumstances, without the frustration and pointless anger. Those responses were DEFINTELY not of me. Definitely a God thing. They made my service as wheat crew assistant director a lot easier to swallow. Fellow wheaties asked me questions I didn't know the answers to, small things like the bookmarks didn't turn out, it took me twenty minutes to figure out how to copy and paste on a Mac computer, I had to forego precious sleep and (a little) hygiene to make sure all that needed to be done was done. I can't really say how I did with being humble, but I can definitely say that I was given the grace to recognize when I was being humbled. :)

My explanations keep getting longer. And this one's the longest because it ties it all together. (Haha, unintentded Scripture reference: 1 Cor 13:13.)
4) Love. Before I start with CP and TEC, I should preface a bit. The word love stuck out to me about 6 months ago when one of my friends was talking and she said this:
"I love. It's what I do."
That simply reality echoed in my head so much I wrote it down and stuck it on my wall for the remainder of the school year. Sara's words also resounded in part of a poem by St. John of the Cross:
"...I've no flock any more,
no other work in view.
My occupation: Love. It's all I do."
This was one of those things where God messes with me a bit and plops a problem in my lap or a thought in my head with a short comment like: "Don't worry about this now. We'll get to it later!" (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8) I envision these problems/thoughts/anomalies as pieces of notebook paper. I've crumpled them up, and the paper ball must be unfolded, so that I can understand what God's telling me. I also imagine gripping these things of life in my hands with my fists clenched. If I were to open my hands to God's purpose, and let go of the things I selfishly want, I'll find peace, joy, humility...
So, I headed to St. Louis with my fists clenched, notebook paper freshly crumpled. After God's warning (see humility paragraph), I saw these images I had of my understanding of Love and I knew that they would have to change, especially as I would soon be called to serve God's children on a TEC retreat, and as I entered a new dating relationship. But those two callings were precisely what my paper was so crumpled up about. The conference was supposed to be about CLC. Was I supposed to be praying for the upcoming retreat and for my boyfriend? Why did it seem that if I chose to pray about TEC or about my significant other, that I was shorting CLC, an equally important commitment I had made? Most importantly, why did it hurt when I chose TEC over other things, even though TEC is such a powerful instrument of God's work in my life? I had clenched my fists and crumpled my paper a week or so earlier when someone made a comment to me:
"It's like TEC is your Catholicism...I don't want that come between us."
It was at CP when I brought this up that God whacked me with a Holy Spirit 2x4, one that TECers might understand better than most people.
"'No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other'(Mat 6:24). You have made TEC the master of your life, April. TEC was a huge experience for you...but other things can bring you to Me in a way that TEC cannot. And that's ok."

Wow. That conversation was beyond profound for me. I humbly realize that I've been living with the idea that one part of my life (TEC, obviously) has to capture all of my passion, and that I have to stretch that passion to include all the other parts. I would always compare spiritual experiences to TEC and find them wanting. I'd think about how I related to non-TEC friends as compared to how I related to TEC friends. I made myself feel guilty about liking CLC less than TEC, and wishing I was with my framily when I was with friends at Rockhurst. All those judgements, those choices I forced myself to make, were pointless and hurt my concept of Real Love. How silly it seems now. I enjoy CLC. I love my TEC family. I love the person my boyfriend is. I am satisfied by the things I'm involved in at school. And I cannot judge their good for me by a standard that is not God's. I cannot compare one good to another and decide that one is wrong for me, or that I must choose one and forego another. God has brought ALL these blessings to my life, and it is not my place to deny one and accept another. After all, when you are given a gift, who are you to decide the conditions upon which you will accept it? (Borrowed Theology of the Body idea.) TEC is an excellent program, and it will continue to capture a lot of my passion, but it is not my standard. It is not what determines where I find Real Love. Where I give it. How I give it. I can grow closer to Christ through TEC. But not because its the only way for me to encounter Him. I can find Him anywhere, everywhere. In fact,
"God must be found in all things." -St. Ignatius of Loyola
Talk about very profound and awesome.  These threads of understanding about love lingered in my heart as I left for TEC 128; my notebook paper ball was no longer a ball, but not quite a smooth, flat sheet of paper. My hands relaxed a little, but I still had my own meager understanding of love enclosed in my fingers. It's like I needed a solid, single sentence answer from God about all these musings I had wandered through while in silence at St. Louis University. Well, God is good and that single sentence came.
 Before the TEC weekend began, God said this:
"This weekend, I want you to love fully. Deeply. Passionately."
And so I took a deep breath, and said "Ok." Not quite as graceful and eloquent as Mary's Fiat, but I know She's the only one who managed to get me to squeak that out.
Anyways, when the time came for me to love in the way God was calling me, I hung back. I hesitated. I said I was scared. "I'm still trying to protect my heart...I don't want to do this out of selfishness...I don't know how to do this...I am afraid." What if I chose to love in this way, and no love was left for the other people in my life? I didn't think I could manage to muster up all that Christ was calling me to give. If I emptied myself completely, what would remain for me to give to others after the weekend? What if someone else deserves the love I have to give more?
And God gave me that single sentence. And He re-stated it in that beautiful passage from the New Testament.
"Love does not compete."
"Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, it is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails." (1 Cor 13:4-8)
Though I can barely hope to someday understand the love in Mary's heart when She told the angel Gabriel that She was the Lord's handmaid, I can thank Her for the opportunity to feel the love that gushed forth from my heart when God told me that Love does not compete. Loving someone means that you forget any selfish motives you have for doing so. Loving someone means you give them exactly what they need when they need it, no matter what another person might think. Real Love for a particular person does not affect the Love you have for someone else. Real Love does not force you to choose between two good things in your life, because the God who is Real Love does not and will not take your ultimate good away from you.
"All things work for good for those who love God...for I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord," -Romans 8:28

I don't have much more to say except these two things:

"My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my savior. For He has looked upon his handmaid's lowliness...The Mighty One has done great things for me...holy is His name." -Luke 1:46-49

Blessed be God.
Blessed be His Holy Name.
Blessed be Jesus Christ, true God and true man.
Blessed be the name of Jesus.
Blessed be His Most Sacred Heart.
Blessed be Jesus in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.
Blessed be the Holy Spirit, the paraclete.
Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most holy.
Blessed be her holy and Immaculate Conception.
Blessed be her glorious Assumption.
Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother.
Blessed be Saint Joseph, her most chaste spouse.
Blessed be God in His angels and in His Saints.
Here's to hoping that these 4 words, these virtues I've found in the last couple weeks may continue to grow in my life, and in yours.
Thanks for listening to my story. Grace to you, and peace.

April, come back!

Hey guys....I realized I have kinda fallen off the blogging map these days. Thought I'd check back in and give a few short updates on life...although as late as it is, they do actually have to be short. I've got a big prayer weekend ahead of me. :)

1) Perhaps most importantly (at least to me), I am in a dating relationship with a wonderful young man I met through a mutual friend. This probably doesn't sound like much, but after having been single for almost 3 years...thereby skipping out on the casual dating mess of the first couple college years, It feels like I'm doing this whole courtship/serious dating thing for real. I feel my heart coming alive. It's so awesome to truly invest in someone's friendship and to take mutual interest in helping it grow, and taking it to God to see what He'll do with it. Happiness. :)

2) I spent an entire week at St. Louis University at a Cura Personalis conference. CP means in a few short words: "care for the whole person," one of the Jesuit core values. Part silent retreat, part intense workshops for the betterment of Christrian Life Community groups on Jesuit university campuses, this conference rocked my world. I learned so much...I don't even know that I've recognized or absorbed all I've learned yet. That is still to come. I'm hoping that soon I'll be able to comprehend and express some of my findings in a more coherent form than the chicken scratch that is my journal.

3) Once again, working at good ole' Dillons for the summer. This time though, they've trained me up out in the gas station-officially termed "Fuel Center"-so I have more responsibility and a lot more room for mistakes. If that doesn't frustrate and stress me out, I don't know what does. **heavy sigh** But its teaching me a lot about what I do in my idle-ness. Between setting up pre-paid gasoline orders and placating cranky customers with cigarettes, I have to find something to do. Attempting to pray amid distraction, the kind of music I choose to listen to, how obsessed I am with checking my phone...its very interesting to reflect on my actions.

Well, those are  the 3 biggest things on the radar so far. More to come, I'm sure. In the mean time, here's a tasty tidbit to reflect on when worrying about God's will.
"God is the slowest person I know Who's always on time."

Grace to you, and peace!