Really, I don't know how God puts up with me.
I say that in a completely "tongue in cheek" way, the way that mothers use when referring to their kids: "I don't know how I put up with them!" which really means: "I love the heck out of them!" (and I know that God loves me more than I could ever imagine...the real blog I was sitting down to write is actually about that).
As I was sitting down to write a blog about the mystery of God's love for me, I got sidetracked by reading my last few blogs; the most recent of which was all about being more like Mary and just saying "yes" to what God asks of me. I laugh at myself because I was just having a conversation last night about how my first reaction to everything that is different or scary or that will push me out of my comfort zone is an immediate "NO!"
I mean, really. It's always no. Picture conversations between God and I going something like this:
God: Danielle, I'm sending you to Germany.
Danielle: "NO! Absolutely not. No way."
Danielle, I know it's a little scary and it will be very different from everything you know, but it will be a good opportunity for you to grow into the woman I've created you to be.
"No. Really God, I'd just rather not. I'm comfortable where I am, and I just got here and got adjusted to my life, and I'd rather just do something else. No, thanks. The offer was nice though."
...Danielle, what are you so afraid of?
"You know, God, too many things for me to list off. Not knowing anybody, the language issues, being far away from everyone I love......
Danielle, do you trust me?
"I want to..."
Don't you know that I love you? Don't you realize that I want what's best for you? That I have a full, beautiful life prepared for you, and that this is part of it?
"Yes, of course I do. This just isn't what I thought it would look like."
Danielle, do you trust me?
"sigh You know, despite all the times I try and convince myself otherwise, yes, I do."
Will you let me lead you?
"Yes."
Well, you'd better pack warm clothes, then.
Eventually, I end up seeing reason and ultimately say yes to what God invites me to. But it's usually a process of months (sometimes, years...) to get to that point. The beauty is that God is patient with me, in a similar way that parents are patient with their children. I'm reminded of my little-girl obstinate insistence on referring to a cheeseburger as a "hamburger with cheese":
Danielle, what do you want for lunch?
"A hamburger with cheese."
You mean a cheeseburger?
"No, momma, I want a hamburger with cheese."
I had great intentions, and given my limited knowledge, that's a pretty good conclusion (if I do say so myself). But I still only knew part of the picture. Mom knew better (although it still baffles me why hamburgers are named that. Where's the ham?!), but she would let me call it a "hamburger with cheese" as long as I wanted, just like she would let me think a car was run by an octopus living inside of it (how else would all the wheels turn at the same time?). God does the same thing; he will let me call things whatever I want, or make whatever plans I want, or come to whatever conclusions I want -- smiling the whole time -- knowing that I will eventually trust what he tells me, even if it takes my whole life.
It's a good thing God's timeless.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Friday, December 10, 2010
Just a quick Advent reflection:
“Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).
Lately, I’ve taken what Mary says to heart.
At Mass last week, Father said something that was one of those “very simple and obvious yet completely profound” kinds of things.
Mary said YES.
She didn’t say, “OK, great. I’ll think about it and get back to you,” when the angel told her she was going to have the Son of God. I mean, really, that’s what I probably would have said.
When we talk about discernment, or following God’s will, or whatever you want to call it, most of the time we think about it in these terms: God presenting us with some options, us weighing them for a given period of time, and then making a decision based on what makes most sense or what we’re comfortable with or what fits into our budget/schedule/life plan.
But Mary said yes! Without knowing the plan, without being sure of what it would look like, without having really any idea of how much her life would change...it was risky, it was gutsy, it was totally trust-filled. Mary isn’t the Mother of God and our Mother because she knew all the answers. She is “blessed among women” because she said yes.
God, give me the grace to live so recklessly!
Lately, I’ve taken what Mary says to heart.
At Mass last week, Father said something that was one of those “very simple and obvious yet completely profound” kinds of things.
Mary said YES.
She didn’t say, “OK, great. I’ll think about it and get back to you,” when the angel told her she was going to have the Son of God. I mean, really, that’s what I probably would have said.
When we talk about discernment, or following God’s will, or whatever you want to call it, most of the time we think about it in these terms: God presenting us with some options, us weighing them for a given period of time, and then making a decision based on what makes most sense or what we’re comfortable with or what fits into our budget/schedule/life plan.
But Mary said yes! Without knowing the plan, without being sure of what it would look like, without having really any idea of how much her life would change...it was risky, it was gutsy, it was totally trust-filled. Mary isn’t the Mother of God and our Mother because she knew all the answers. She is “blessed among women” because she said yes.
God, give me the grace to live so recklessly!
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Like a Child
This morning, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself in the middle of a children’s Mass. Sometimes, if I’m really honest, my first reaction to something like a children’s Mass is, “Great. How many cheesy songs do I have to sit through?” But today, I was encouraged to have a new perspective when Tricia looked over at me and said, “Great! I love children’s Masses! They’re the perfect start to the day!”
Armed with that little bit of good ol’ unintentional “Catholic guilt,” I resolved to drop my “I’m older so I’m holier” attitude and be open to what God had in store for me. And, like I usually am, I was surprised at how He can use the smallest things and seemingly most insignificant situations to teach me big lessons.
There were kids everywhere—altar servers, musicians, lectors...and, WOW, did they do a fantastic job! Aside from the cuteness inherent in everything (“Jesus tells us to wove evewy-won”), these were kids who knew what was going on. The little second-grade lector got through the first reading more flawlessly than I’ve heard from some adult lectors (what second grader knows how to pronounce “perverse?” “Libation?”). There was a real sense that they are being taught the faith in a beautiful way—one that allows for all the awkwardness and messiness of being a child while directing them toward the fullness of an adult faith experience. One especially beautiful moment happened during the homily, when Father invited the kids up to a huge mural on the wall behind the altar to try and pick out the saints. I had a flash of perception in seeing these kids—some of the smallest, youngest members of the Church—literally walking among the saints, getting to know them personally. I found myself excited at the prospect of what these kids are going to be like when they’re teenagers, or when they’re adults. This is what building the Church is all about!
When I started really reflecting on it, though, here’s a thought that really struck me: this is what God sees when he looks at me. Lisping my way through prayers, fumbling through hand motions, praying hilariously innocent prayers. I may think I’ve got it down, I may think I’m old enough to “know better” or to be better; but the truth is, I’m still just taking baby steps toward holiness. And the beautiful, breathtaking reality is that God still allows me—no, He invites me—to walk in the company of His holy ones, those who are considered the “leaders and perfecters of faith.” Even as I’m growing into “adulthood” (sometimes a scary thought), I need to realize that’s it’s OK to be messy, it’s OK to make mistakes, it’s OK to not be perfect. Kids are not perfect (just ask my mom). But parents love the snot out of them anyway, even as they laugh and post their ridiculously quotable moments on their Facebook pages.
And I think that, ultimately, is something of what Jesus means when He says to come to Him like a little child—knowing that I am loved in my imperfections and mistakes and that I am adopted into His family; trusting that I am good as I am and that He is molding me, through all of the awkwardness, into the holy woman He intended me to be.
Armed with that little bit of good ol’ unintentional “Catholic guilt,” I resolved to drop my “I’m older so I’m holier” attitude and be open to what God had in store for me. And, like I usually am, I was surprised at how He can use the smallest things and seemingly most insignificant situations to teach me big lessons.
There were kids everywhere—altar servers, musicians, lectors...and, WOW, did they do a fantastic job! Aside from the cuteness inherent in everything (“Jesus tells us to wove evewy-won”), these were kids who knew what was going on. The little second-grade lector got through the first reading more flawlessly than I’ve heard from some adult lectors (what second grader knows how to pronounce “perverse?” “Libation?”). There was a real sense that they are being taught the faith in a beautiful way—one that allows for all the awkwardness and messiness of being a child while directing them toward the fullness of an adult faith experience. One especially beautiful moment happened during the homily, when Father invited the kids up to a huge mural on the wall behind the altar to try and pick out the saints. I had a flash of perception in seeing these kids—some of the smallest, youngest members of the Church—literally walking among the saints, getting to know them personally. I found myself excited at the prospect of what these kids are going to be like when they’re teenagers, or when they’re adults. This is what building the Church is all about!
When I started really reflecting on it, though, here’s a thought that really struck me: this is what God sees when he looks at me. Lisping my way through prayers, fumbling through hand motions, praying hilariously innocent prayers. I may think I’ve got it down, I may think I’m old enough to “know better” or to be better; but the truth is, I’m still just taking baby steps toward holiness. And the beautiful, breathtaking reality is that God still allows me—no, He invites me—to walk in the company of His holy ones, those who are considered the “leaders and perfecters of faith.” Even as I’m growing into “adulthood” (sometimes a scary thought), I need to realize that’s it’s OK to be messy, it’s OK to make mistakes, it’s OK to not be perfect. Kids are not perfect (just ask my mom). But parents love the snot out of them anyway, even as they laugh and post their ridiculously quotable moments on their Facebook pages.
And I think that, ultimately, is something of what Jesus means when He says to come to Him like a little child—knowing that I am loved in my imperfections and mistakes and that I am adopted into His family; trusting that I am good as I am and that He is molding me, through all of the awkwardness, into the holy woman He intended me to be.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
The heartbeat of the Father
This is not compulsive blogging, I promise...I had actually been considering the idea of keeping my blog going even though I'm not an "official" missionary at the moment. Why, you ask? Well, it's not like God doesn't stop moving in my life just because my job description is "unemployed" rather than "full-time missionary" (haha. oh Mom, I'm so sorry!)
Anyway, a conversation I had with a friend yesterday convinced me that I should just go ahead and keep it up--hey, if nothing else, it will help me process, right?
And let me tell you, I have a LOT of processing to do!
I feel like I say something along these lines quite often: "That was the hardest thing I've ever done!" I think I'm just going to stop saying it, because inevitably something comes up that's harder than what I've just managed to work through. You know that saying, "God only gives you what you can handle"? Well, what they don't tell you is the part that comes next: "After you've handled that, God gives you more!" (Which makes Mother Teresa's sassy response make more sense: "I wish He wouldn't trust me so much!")
I’ve found that these last two months have been some of the most challenging I have experienced; God has “put me through the wringer,” so to speak—stretching me to grow in ways I honestly didn’t know I could live through (even now, I’m left with a sort of incredulous feeling: “How did I make it?” Guess I’m more resilient than I thought).
Without getting into too many details, I quite suddenly found myself in a place where everything in my world seemed to have been tipped upside down and backwards. I felt...well, disoriented is probably the best word to describe it. You know that feeling when you can’t tell which way is up, or you can’t quite remember what day it is? That’s sort of what I’m talking about...something akin to spiritual amnesia, if you will. I had literally watched all my plans crumble right before my eyes; which left me feeling rather dumbfounded.
What’s a girl to do?
First step: call mom and cry.
Second step: find refuge and seek good counsel.
Third step: PRAY. A lot.
This last week or so, I’ve had to fight the almost overwhelming desire to try and “figure it out”—by which I mean taking it upon myself to search for something that will fulfill me; or, at the very least, something I could suffer through until everything got “better.” I’ve learned enough over the past two years to know that going it on my own is not successful—-so I thought I’d take care of that by praying that God would reveal to me what it is He wanted me to do—-please, quickly!-—while still doing research and sending out resumes and trying to figure it out. Hey, it’s the best of both worlds, right? I’m allowing God to direct my life, while still actively living it. God’s gotta love that.
Maybe you can predict where this is going?
In His characteristic fashion, God very quickly set about letting me know that He wants more—-as a matter of fact, He wants all of me. Inviting God to be navigator just isn’t enough. God is asking me to see this seemingly crazy, senseless time of my life as an invitation—-to know more about myself, to re-evaluate, but most importantly, to know God in a deeper, more intimate way.
Before I can do anything, before I can ask God to lead me down any sort of path, God desires that I come to know him in a more profound way, that I trust him more, that our relationship grows and deepens as only a life-long relationship of love can. In one of his homilies, Father Jose used the phrase, “tuning our ear to be able to hear the heartbeat of the Father." And that is exactly the image that describes the kind of relationship I’m talking about. God is inviting me to lean closer, to rest on him, to attune my ear to hear the sounds of His heartbeat—-a very quiet, very subtle sound. Only when I am at that degree of closeness can he move me; and then it’s the movement of a dance, the natural movement of Him leading and guiding someone who is so close to him that I can do nothing but follow where he’s going. And that’s how I will get to where I’m going next.
I have been given an incredible gift: the time and the place and the means to stop and listen. The invitation to know God. The call to more. And far be it from me to waste this gift by running around and trying to do things myself. God wants more from me than that—-God wants more for me than that. I believe now more than ever that he has his hand on me, that he has set me apart for something that is unusual and wonderful and bigger than I as of yet can imagine.
And for now, I’m just resting in the Father’s embrace and trying to sync my heartbeat with his.
Anyway, a conversation I had with a friend yesterday convinced me that I should just go ahead and keep it up--hey, if nothing else, it will help me process, right?
And let me tell you, I have a LOT of processing to do!
I feel like I say something along these lines quite often: "That was the hardest thing I've ever done!" I think I'm just going to stop saying it, because inevitably something comes up that's harder than what I've just managed to work through. You know that saying, "God only gives you what you can handle"? Well, what they don't tell you is the part that comes next: "After you've handled that, God gives you more!" (Which makes Mother Teresa's sassy response make more sense: "I wish He wouldn't trust me so much!")
I’ve found that these last two months have been some of the most challenging I have experienced; God has “put me through the wringer,” so to speak—stretching me to grow in ways I honestly didn’t know I could live through (even now, I’m left with a sort of incredulous feeling: “How did I make it?” Guess I’m more resilient than I thought).
Without getting into too many details, I quite suddenly found myself in a place where everything in my world seemed to have been tipped upside down and backwards. I felt...well, disoriented is probably the best word to describe it. You know that feeling when you can’t tell which way is up, or you can’t quite remember what day it is? That’s sort of what I’m talking about...something akin to spiritual amnesia, if you will. I had literally watched all my plans crumble right before my eyes; which left me feeling rather dumbfounded.
What’s a girl to do?
First step: call mom and cry.
Second step: find refuge and seek good counsel.
Third step: PRAY. A lot.
This last week or so, I’ve had to fight the almost overwhelming desire to try and “figure it out”—by which I mean taking it upon myself to search for something that will fulfill me; or, at the very least, something I could suffer through until everything got “better.” I’ve learned enough over the past two years to know that going it on my own is not successful—-so I thought I’d take care of that by praying that God would reveal to me what it is He wanted me to do—-please, quickly!-—while still doing research and sending out resumes and trying to figure it out. Hey, it’s the best of both worlds, right? I’m allowing God to direct my life, while still actively living it. God’s gotta love that.
Maybe you can predict where this is going?
In His characteristic fashion, God very quickly set about letting me know that He wants more—-as a matter of fact, He wants all of me. Inviting God to be navigator just isn’t enough. God is asking me to see this seemingly crazy, senseless time of my life as an invitation—-to know more about myself, to re-evaluate, but most importantly, to know God in a deeper, more intimate way.
Before I can do anything, before I can ask God to lead me down any sort of path, God desires that I come to know him in a more profound way, that I trust him more, that our relationship grows and deepens as only a life-long relationship of love can. In one of his homilies, Father Jose used the phrase, “tuning our ear to be able to hear the heartbeat of the Father." And that is exactly the image that describes the kind of relationship I’m talking about. God is inviting me to lean closer, to rest on him, to attune my ear to hear the sounds of His heartbeat—-a very quiet, very subtle sound. Only when I am at that degree of closeness can he move me; and then it’s the movement of a dance, the natural movement of Him leading and guiding someone who is so close to him that I can do nothing but follow where he’s going. And that’s how I will get to where I’m going next.
I have been given an incredible gift: the time and the place and the means to stop and listen. The invitation to know God. The call to more. And far be it from me to waste this gift by running around and trying to do things myself. God wants more from me than that—-God wants more for me than that. I believe now more than ever that he has his hand on me, that he has set me apart for something that is unusual and wonderful and bigger than I as of yet can imagine.
And for now, I’m just resting in the Father’s embrace and trying to sync my heartbeat with his.
Monday, June 28, 2010
To be and not to do
I’ve been having quite a few conversations lately about why Life Teen Missions is focused on learning how to “be” instead of “doing”—admittedly, this is something that’s a little hard to grasp onto (after almost two years, I’m still trying to figure it out!). That doesn’t necessarily mean that, as missionaries, we don’t “do” anything…it’s more like focusing on the WHY behind the “what” we’re doing.
The longer I’ve been a missionary with Life Teen, the more God has invited me to know that in order to be a missionary (to do) I have to learn how to BE missionary. There really is no separating the two. Being missionary is something that involves every part of me; it is the wrapping up of the whole of my life into God’s life. The question is no longer “God, are you calling me to be a missionary or not?” but rather, “God, WHERE and HOW are you calling me to be missionary?” I suppose that may look like the same question, but there is a huge difference in both how I ask the question, and how it’s answered. The reality is, I can “go and do” as much as I want, but if my motivation isn’t Jesus, then I’m missing the point…I’m not necessarily being missionary, I’m doing good things (which is not bad, just not the fullness).
As I started to realize that mission is above all a way of life, a posture of heart, a demeanor of readiness, the activities I defined as “missionary” became different as well. EVERYTHING became about serving God: changing the toilet paper for the 1,000th time during summer camp, making beds for other people to sleep in, washing one million spoons, leading a small group of 8th graders through Stations of the Cross, repairing drywall, coming up with ridiculous skits, learning German, pulling weeds, making dinner for someone, praying the Our Father in Dutch, talking with a teenager about music, cooking with a woman who’s feeling lonely because all her children have moved out of the house. If I can do all THAT with love…well, then, that’s something. Learning how to do those small, everyday things with love is infinitely harder—for me at least—than hopping on a plane and flying over to Botswana to teach English. But as I am being refined in the fire of God’s love, I’m learning that it is in just those small, everyday things where I grow much more in holiness, and grow much closer to understanding what being a missionary means.
I will paraphrase two great Theresa’s here: “We cannot do great things; only small things with great love” (Bl. Mother Teresa)… “If you feel too lazy to pick up a bit of thread, and yet do so for love of Jesus, you acquire more merit than for a much nobler action done in a moment of fervor.” (St. Therese of Lisieux)
Missionary life is crazy. I’ve done things like operate a chainsaw and drive vehicles way too big for me. I speak German (like a 5-year-old. We’re called to be like little children, right?). I am in multiple countries in any given week. I’ve written blogs and emails and shared my life with people who are practically strangers. I’ve been part of a support system to people who are losing hope. I laugh and cry with people. I work so that people can have a place and a space to come together and pray again. I’ve told people hard things. I freak people out because I don’t have a regular job or because I’m in the church every day, or because I know German when they don’t expect me to, or because I do “risky” things like moving 6,000 miles away from family or buying a plane ticket to Poland without a place to stay.
Do I know what’s going to happen next year or 5 years from now? Absolutely not. I really don’t even know what’s going to happen tomorrow. That is both unsettling and comforting—I am completely dependent on God. And so, right now, I TRUST that if I walk forward in faith, desiring nothing but to follow God, He will bring about His will in me and through me. Do I know what He’s doing? ABSOLUTELY NOT. But I trust that He does.
I am still not completely “sure” what God wants me to “do” with my life. I do know this: God is completely and utterly moving in my life, he is actively bringing me into a deeper relationship with him, he is molding my heart and shaping my desires to mirror his plan for me. There are things I’m learning here that I would never be able to learn anywhere else–about myself, about God, about these people I suddenly find myself surrounded by. I am different in every single way from everyone else here, except for our relationship with this person called Jesus. And THAT is mind-blowing. The unity of the Church is miraculous, and something I’ve only come close to understanding because of my experience here—fumbling through Mass in German, Dutch, French, and Czech and KNOWING that Jesus still comes. Seeing how He is uniting people in community, how He is about the work of restoring and renewing the Church here. It brings tears to my eyes to see the faithfulness of people who hang on to Christ when there are comparatively few who know that relationship with Him matters.
I can see some fruits (however small they might be) in our presence here; in the times we gather and pray, in the relationships we’re building with people, in the unexpected desire for other people to know Christ more fully. And THAT is what I believe in, what I hope for, what I rely on–that wherever God “calls” me, whatever I “do,” He will bring about His fullness.
The longer I’ve been a missionary with Life Teen, the more God has invited me to know that in order to be a missionary (to do) I have to learn how to BE missionary. There really is no separating the two. Being missionary is something that involves every part of me; it is the wrapping up of the whole of my life into God’s life. The question is no longer “God, are you calling me to be a missionary or not?” but rather, “God, WHERE and HOW are you calling me to be missionary?” I suppose that may look like the same question, but there is a huge difference in both how I ask the question, and how it’s answered. The reality is, I can “go and do” as much as I want, but if my motivation isn’t Jesus, then I’m missing the point…I’m not necessarily being missionary, I’m doing good things (which is not bad, just not the fullness).
As I started to realize that mission is above all a way of life, a posture of heart, a demeanor of readiness, the activities I defined as “missionary” became different as well. EVERYTHING became about serving God: changing the toilet paper for the 1,000th time during summer camp, making beds for other people to sleep in, washing one million spoons, leading a small group of 8th graders through Stations of the Cross, repairing drywall, coming up with ridiculous skits, learning German, pulling weeds, making dinner for someone, praying the Our Father in Dutch, talking with a teenager about music, cooking with a woman who’s feeling lonely because all her children have moved out of the house. If I can do all THAT with love…well, then, that’s something. Learning how to do those small, everyday things with love is infinitely harder—for me at least—than hopping on a plane and flying over to Botswana to teach English. But as I am being refined in the fire of God’s love, I’m learning that it is in just those small, everyday things where I grow much more in holiness, and grow much closer to understanding what being a missionary means.
I will paraphrase two great Theresa’s here: “We cannot do great things; only small things with great love” (Bl. Mother Teresa)… “If you feel too lazy to pick up a bit of thread, and yet do so for love of Jesus, you acquire more merit than for a much nobler action done in a moment of fervor.” (St. Therese of Lisieux)
Missionary life is crazy. I’ve done things like operate a chainsaw and drive vehicles way too big for me. I speak German (like a 5-year-old. We’re called to be like little children, right?). I am in multiple countries in any given week. I’ve written blogs and emails and shared my life with people who are practically strangers. I’ve been part of a support system to people who are losing hope. I laugh and cry with people. I work so that people can have a place and a space to come together and pray again. I’ve told people hard things. I freak people out because I don’t have a regular job or because I’m in the church every day, or because I know German when they don’t expect me to, or because I do “risky” things like moving 6,000 miles away from family or buying a plane ticket to Poland without a place to stay.
Do I know what’s going to happen next year or 5 years from now? Absolutely not. I really don’t even know what’s going to happen tomorrow. That is both unsettling and comforting—I am completely dependent on God. And so, right now, I TRUST that if I walk forward in faith, desiring nothing but to follow God, He will bring about His will in me and through me. Do I know what He’s doing? ABSOLUTELY NOT. But I trust that He does.
I am still not completely “sure” what God wants me to “do” with my life. I do know this: God is completely and utterly moving in my life, he is actively bringing me into a deeper relationship with him, he is molding my heart and shaping my desires to mirror his plan for me. There are things I’m learning here that I would never be able to learn anywhere else–about myself, about God, about these people I suddenly find myself surrounded by. I am different in every single way from everyone else here, except for our relationship with this person called Jesus. And THAT is mind-blowing. The unity of the Church is miraculous, and something I’ve only come close to understanding because of my experience here—fumbling through Mass in German, Dutch, French, and Czech and KNOWING that Jesus still comes. Seeing how He is uniting people in community, how He is about the work of restoring and renewing the Church here. It brings tears to my eyes to see the faithfulness of people who hang on to Christ when there are comparatively few who know that relationship with Him matters.
I can see some fruits (however small they might be) in our presence here; in the times we gather and pray, in the relationships we’re building with people, in the unexpected desire for other people to know Christ more fully. And THAT is what I believe in, what I hope for, what I rely on–that wherever God “calls” me, whatever I “do,” He will bring about His fullness.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Revelations
I don’t even know how to start this blog. I feel like I have SO MANY thoughts from the last few weeks, I can’t even begin to string them into coherent sentences (which I could use as an excuse for my only blogging once a month, instead of the promised once a week…but that’s just a lame excuse). So I’ll just jump right in and talk about something that I think is rather essential in understanding me, and how God speaks to me.
I have a lot of what have come to be known as “revelations.”
Last year, the other missionaries would all sort of laugh when we’d talk about something in formation and I would start off, “So, today, I had a revelation…” It would usually be something I was really excited about, an instance where God spoke to me very clearly or powerfully, and I would usually cry at some point during the explanation. It became a typical “Danielle” thing.
Now, I don’t claim to have any new insights—I haven’t come to know anything that tons of people before me haven’t already known about our faith, or a relationship with God. My revelations—or, rather, God’s revelations to me—mostly consist of understanding the simplest things in new ways, or with a new intensity. It’s like the difference between looking at a blueprint of something and then actually experiencing the building. The drawing of a building and the building in completed form may be, for all intents and purposes, the “same thing;” but there’s quite a big difference between the pencil lines on a piece of paper which make up the idea and the wood beams, stone, plaster, insulation, electric wiring, tile flooring, water pipes and so forth that make the real thing. Looking at a picture of the Dom in Cologne is one thing; it’s nice, you can appreciate it for how beautiful it is, you can read some interesting facts about it and wonder at how long it took to make and whatnot. You can even appreciate other people telling you about their experiences inside. But the whole thing comes crashing into your reality in a completely different way when you’re there—walking across floors that people have been walking across for centuries, climbing the hundreds of stairs to the bell tower that once-upon-a-time ago, someone had to climb for real (and not for a fun tourist attraction). You no longer only have the “idea” of being able to go in—something that’s rather nebulous and intangible—but you have the concrete, personal experience of actually going into the building. Looking at it. Touching it. Smelling it. Kneeling in front of the Lord in the Eucharistic chapel. Hearing the cacophony of shuffling feet and whispers of awe in all sorts of different languages and the bells going off and hundreds of camera shutters snapping. Sweating your way up the bell tower stairs.
You have, in a word: REALITY.
And, after all, when you really think about it, that is what the thing was designed for in the first place! Imagine if we always stopped with the blueprints! What would our world be like with only ideas?
The fact of the matter is we are a flesh and blood people—a laughing and crying, an eating and drinking, a sight and sound and touch and taste and hearing folk. We were made to experience things, with our whole selves, not just to think about them.
That is the Incarnation—God becoming flesh, taking on our reality, becoming tangible. In the person of Jesus, God is no longer just an “idea” or a conceptualization, but flesh and blood. People touched Him, spoke with Him, ate meals with Him. He is a “God who is with us.” And that challenges us to engage with our whole selves in return. Christian life is about KNOWING GOD: “this is eternal life, that [we] should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ” (John 17:3). Jesus—God Incarnate—came so that we would live in the reality that is his life. It is not enough to know things about Him; Jesus made that clear in everything He said to the Scribes and Pharisees. They knew tons about God, but were unable to recognize Him when He was in their midst (“Woe to you Pharisees! You pay tithes [...] but you pay no attention to judgment and to love for God.” Luke 11:42). The people who did know Jesus were the people who ripped open a roof to be near Him, who clamored through a great crowd of people just to touch the tassel on His cloak, who bathed His feet with tears and wiped them with their hair, who yelled at Him from the side of the road to get His attention, who climbed up trees just to catch a glimpse of Him.
And so, these “revelation” moments are much more than me finally understanding things I’ve always known (the beauty of the Mass, the truth of Scripture, the mystery of God becoming flesh, the reality of evil in the world…). I am climbing the tree, running along the road, obsessively following Him from place to place—just to see, to feel…to know.
I am becoming a disciple.
“We shall never have finished plumbing the mystery of the personality of Jesus. We shall never have finished listening to Him as Master, imitating Him as an example, loving Him as Savior. We shall never have finished discovering His relevance, His importance for all the great questions of our times; we shall never have finished sensing the birth in us, as a unique spiritual experience, of the desire, the torment, the hope to be able finally to see Him, to meet Him, to understand and taste to the point of supreme happiness that He is our new and true life and our salvation…we must live in the hope of meeting Jesus as we meet a traveling pilgrim on the way, a friend we know, a brother of our own blood, a Master of our own tongue, a liberator who can accomplish everything, a Savior.” (Pope Paul VI)
I have a lot of what have come to be known as “revelations.”
Last year, the other missionaries would all sort of laugh when we’d talk about something in formation and I would start off, “So, today, I had a revelation…” It would usually be something I was really excited about, an instance where God spoke to me very clearly or powerfully, and I would usually cry at some point during the explanation. It became a typical “Danielle” thing.
Now, I don’t claim to have any new insights—I haven’t come to know anything that tons of people before me haven’t already known about our faith, or a relationship with God. My revelations—or, rather, God’s revelations to me—mostly consist of understanding the simplest things in new ways, or with a new intensity. It’s like the difference between looking at a blueprint of something and then actually experiencing the building. The drawing of a building and the building in completed form may be, for all intents and purposes, the “same thing;” but there’s quite a big difference between the pencil lines on a piece of paper which make up the idea and the wood beams, stone, plaster, insulation, electric wiring, tile flooring, water pipes and so forth that make the real thing. Looking at a picture of the Dom in Cologne is one thing; it’s nice, you can appreciate it for how beautiful it is, you can read some interesting facts about it and wonder at how long it took to make and whatnot. You can even appreciate other people telling you about their experiences inside. But the whole thing comes crashing into your reality in a completely different way when you’re there—walking across floors that people have been walking across for centuries, climbing the hundreds of stairs to the bell tower that once-upon-a-time ago, someone had to climb for real (and not for a fun tourist attraction). You no longer only have the “idea” of being able to go in—something that’s rather nebulous and intangible—but you have the concrete, personal experience of actually going into the building. Looking at it. Touching it. Smelling it. Kneeling in front of the Lord in the Eucharistic chapel. Hearing the cacophony of shuffling feet and whispers of awe in all sorts of different languages and the bells going off and hundreds of camera shutters snapping. Sweating your way up the bell tower stairs.
You have, in a word: REALITY.
And, after all, when you really think about it, that is what the thing was designed for in the first place! Imagine if we always stopped with the blueprints! What would our world be like with only ideas?
The fact of the matter is we are a flesh and blood people—a laughing and crying, an eating and drinking, a sight and sound and touch and taste and hearing folk. We were made to experience things, with our whole selves, not just to think about them.
That is the Incarnation—God becoming flesh, taking on our reality, becoming tangible. In the person of Jesus, God is no longer just an “idea” or a conceptualization, but flesh and blood. People touched Him, spoke with Him, ate meals with Him. He is a “God who is with us.” And that challenges us to engage with our whole selves in return. Christian life is about KNOWING GOD: “this is eternal life, that [we] should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ” (John 17:3). Jesus—God Incarnate—came so that we would live in the reality that is his life. It is not enough to know things about Him; Jesus made that clear in everything He said to the Scribes and Pharisees. They knew tons about God, but were unable to recognize Him when He was in their midst (“Woe to you Pharisees! You pay tithes [...] but you pay no attention to judgment and to love for God.” Luke 11:42). The people who did know Jesus were the people who ripped open a roof to be near Him, who clamored through a great crowd of people just to touch the tassel on His cloak, who bathed His feet with tears and wiped them with their hair, who yelled at Him from the side of the road to get His attention, who climbed up trees just to catch a glimpse of Him.
And so, these “revelation” moments are much more than me finally understanding things I’ve always known (the beauty of the Mass, the truth of Scripture, the mystery of God becoming flesh, the reality of evil in the world…). I am climbing the tree, running along the road, obsessively following Him from place to place—just to see, to feel…to know.
I am becoming a disciple.
“We shall never have finished plumbing the mystery of the personality of Jesus. We shall never have finished listening to Him as Master, imitating Him as an example, loving Him as Savior. We shall never have finished discovering His relevance, His importance for all the great questions of our times; we shall never have finished sensing the birth in us, as a unique spiritual experience, of the desire, the torment, the hope to be able finally to see Him, to meet Him, to understand and taste to the point of supreme happiness that He is our new and true life and our salvation…we must live in the hope of meeting Jesus as we meet a traveling pilgrim on the way, a friend we know, a brother of our own blood, a Master of our own tongue, a liberator who can accomplish everything, a Savior.” (Pope Paul VI)
Friday, May 28, 2010
"Come, eat of my food" (Prov 9:5)
We just got back from our 8-day silent retreat in the Netherlands (with all the deacons who will be ordained as priests TOMORROW!! Awesome. Please pray for Br. Ignas, Elroy, Patrick, and Hans as they are ordained!)—and let me tell you, it was phenomenal, powerful, and exactly what I needed. That being said, look for lots of blogs coming up about different things God revealed to my heart on retreat and that I’ll be praying about for some time to come (I mean, 8 days of silence are a LOT for me, and I have a lot to process!). This particular blog, however, will focus on something a little more…“ordinary.”
Let me just start by saying this: I don’t know what it is about silent retreats, 8-day silent retreats in particular, but meals are always hilarious. Maybe it’s because it’s really the only time of the day we’re all together. Maybe it’s because we know we’re supposed to be silent, or because it’s incredibly awkward to watch someone trying to eat an orange with a spoon, or because there’s a very stern-looking portrait of Sister What’s-Her-Name staring down at us from above the table. Or maybe because (unlike Br. John’s retreat where everyone looked at a different wall during mealtimes—which is almost as awkward but not quite) we’re all staring silently at one another while someone sniffs the soup. In any case, mealtimes were a challenge. I think Purgatory might be rather like a mealtime on a silent retreat, where you just want to laugh and joke and be everyone’s friend and talk about how delicious the meatballs are, but instead everyone is listening to everyone else chew and trying not to laugh.
And, one other observation: you really do not know how culturally different you are until it comes to food. When you legitimately have to ask (to yourself of course; remember, you’re silent…) “How do I eat this?” you know you’re a foreigner. What kind of meat is that? What do I do with this fork? What side of the plate do teacup handles go on? (The right…) What is that brown stuff? Oh…I’m supposed to use this napkin all 8 days?…whoops…
Now, don’t get me wrong—Europeans can EAT. In fact, I think they’ve definitely got the one-up on the U.S. in that category. What was my life like before soup every day? How could I not have known the deliciousness of Gouda with apricot jam? Coffee four times a day? Why, yes, thanks. AND, if you ever have the luck to eat with European nuns…well then, get ready for lots of new culinary deliciousness (I mean, they make lima beans taste good. Not just good…good. I think that might be one of those unnamed gifts of the Holy Spirit).
Here’s my favorite thing about the way nuns eat: it’s liturgical. It’s like praying (“so whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.” –1 Corinthians 10:31). We celebrated Pentecost during our 8-day which, as you may or may not know, is a Solemnity. It’s like the Church’s way of saying, “Pay attention to this! This is a BIG DEAL!” And we celebrate, because God is so good to us (and because everyone remembers parties the best)! Now, if we were back home, we’d probably go to Mass (maybe, if it’s not combined with the Sunday Mass that week…) and sing some Holy Spirit songs. And those are good. But the nuns CELEBRATE—from the special church bells they ring throughout the day, to the special incense and monstrance they use (we stayed with Perpetual Adoration Sisters), to the Latin they chant during Mass, right down to the food. Special rolls at breakfast and raisin bread at dinner, instead of regular bread. Giant cakes instead of cookies at coffee time. Meatballs and noodles in the soup. Soda. Just about double the number of dishes at lunch (with asparagus, so you know it’s really special) and ICE CREAM instead of pudding. What a beautiful way to make us aware—every moment, in everything—of the importance of the day, the joy of God’s gifts to us. Every bite of asparagus was “declaring the glory of God” (Ps 19). Every little raisin was “shining with joy for its maker” (Bar 3:35). Carbonation and chocolate chips, bless the Lord!
In and of themselves, all those things are rather ordinary—in our everyday lives, we hardly give a second thought to raisins, because, let’s face it; they don’t seem that special (especially when your mom is trying to get you to eat raisins instead of cookies). But because they were reserved, set apart—consecrated, in a way—they spoke of a truth much greater than themselves. They pointed us back to the reality that God gifts us with good things; not just with delicious food, but more importantly, with his presence, his Spirit (which lasts far longer than ice cream, no matter how delicious it may be). In a beautiful way, the most ordinary, everyday things became proclamations of the Gospel; the most unassuming and completely joyful missionaries. I can only pray that my life is the same.
Let me just start by saying this: I don’t know what it is about silent retreats, 8-day silent retreats in particular, but meals are always hilarious. Maybe it’s because it’s really the only time of the day we’re all together. Maybe it’s because we know we’re supposed to be silent, or because it’s incredibly awkward to watch someone trying to eat an orange with a spoon, or because there’s a very stern-looking portrait of Sister What’s-Her-Name staring down at us from above the table. Or maybe because (unlike Br. John’s retreat where everyone looked at a different wall during mealtimes—which is almost as awkward but not quite) we’re all staring silently at one another while someone sniffs the soup. In any case, mealtimes were a challenge. I think Purgatory might be rather like a mealtime on a silent retreat, where you just want to laugh and joke and be everyone’s friend and talk about how delicious the meatballs are, but instead everyone is listening to everyone else chew and trying not to laugh.
And, one other observation: you really do not know how culturally different you are until it comes to food. When you legitimately have to ask (to yourself of course; remember, you’re silent…) “How do I eat this?” you know you’re a foreigner. What kind of meat is that? What do I do with this fork? What side of the plate do teacup handles go on? (The right…) What is that brown stuff? Oh…I’m supposed to use this napkin all 8 days?…whoops…
Now, don’t get me wrong—Europeans can EAT. In fact, I think they’ve definitely got the one-up on the U.S. in that category. What was my life like before soup every day? How could I not have known the deliciousness of Gouda with apricot jam? Coffee four times a day? Why, yes, thanks. AND, if you ever have the luck to eat with European nuns…well then, get ready for lots of new culinary deliciousness (I mean, they make lima beans taste good. Not just good…good. I think that might be one of those unnamed gifts of the Holy Spirit).
Here’s my favorite thing about the way nuns eat: it’s liturgical. It’s like praying (“so whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.” –1 Corinthians 10:31). We celebrated Pentecost during our 8-day which, as you may or may not know, is a Solemnity. It’s like the Church’s way of saying, “Pay attention to this! This is a BIG DEAL!” And we celebrate, because God is so good to us (and because everyone remembers parties the best)! Now, if we were back home, we’d probably go to Mass (maybe, if it’s not combined with the Sunday Mass that week…) and sing some Holy Spirit songs. And those are good. But the nuns CELEBRATE—from the special church bells they ring throughout the day, to the special incense and monstrance they use (we stayed with Perpetual Adoration Sisters), to the Latin they chant during Mass, right down to the food. Special rolls at breakfast and raisin bread at dinner, instead of regular bread. Giant cakes instead of cookies at coffee time. Meatballs and noodles in the soup. Soda. Just about double the number of dishes at lunch (with asparagus, so you know it’s really special) and ICE CREAM instead of pudding. What a beautiful way to make us aware—every moment, in everything—of the importance of the day, the joy of God’s gifts to us. Every bite of asparagus was “declaring the glory of God” (Ps 19). Every little raisin was “shining with joy for its maker” (Bar 3:35). Carbonation and chocolate chips, bless the Lord!
In and of themselves, all those things are rather ordinary—in our everyday lives, we hardly give a second thought to raisins, because, let’s face it; they don’t seem that special (especially when your mom is trying to get you to eat raisins instead of cookies). But because they were reserved, set apart—consecrated, in a way—they spoke of a truth much greater than themselves. They pointed us back to the reality that God gifts us with good things; not just with delicious food, but more importantly, with his presence, his Spirit (which lasts far longer than ice cream, no matter how delicious it may be). In a beautiful way, the most ordinary, everyday things became proclamations of the Gospel; the most unassuming and completely joyful missionaries. I can only pray that my life is the same.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
so live your life
“We are a Resurrection people, and Alleluia is our song” –Pope Benedict XVI.
A lot of my prayer lately has consisted of me wrestling with and trying to figure out the seemingly duplicitous nature of Christian life—the fact that when you live with Christ, there is always both joy and sorrow, suffering and blessing, death and new life (working on the blog for that one...stay tuned). For the last few days though, as is fitting for the season, I've been praying/thinking/reflecting about the Resurrection—it just keeps coming up all over the place. Father Roland made a good point last Sunday at Mass: the Church celebrates Easter for 50 days, which is 10 days longer than Lent (you can always judge pretty well how significant something is by the number of days the Church sets aside for it. So even if you knew nothing about Easter, you’d know that it must be REALLY important just by the amount of time devoted to celebrating it). We, as Catholics, are a “Resurrection People,” but I don’t think I’ve ever really lived like I believe that. And so I’ve been praying this week about what it means to live, so that my life is a proclamation of the Resurrection.
“I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).
“This is eternal life, that [we] should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ” (John 17:3).
What does it mean to live?
In trying to answer that, I'm finding a lot more freedom in coming to the realization that I am not the sum total of the holy hours, prayers of intention, outreach projects, Liturgy of the Hours, ministry opportunities, invitations, appointments and Rule of Life that make up the parts of my day—that is part of the structure of my time, and many of those things are set in place to provide a chance in which to encounter the Lord. But ultimately, like John’s Gospel says, this thing we call life is all about knowing and having relationship with “the only true God”: JESUS CHRIST. It is only through that knowledge of Him, that relationship with Him, that everything else takes on significance.
That’s what it means to live—I mean, to really LIVE. My life is not about keeping track of tasks; I am not called to fulfill a long list of should’s. I can schedule all the holy hours I want into my day, but if I’m not having an encounter with the living Christ, if I’m not deepening my relationship with Him, if everything in my life is not rooted in Him, then what is the point? No; I am called to (and promised) LIFE—a glorious life of Resurrection, a life of fullness and joy that flows out of my love for Jesus.
I am created in the image and likeness of the Living God.
I am daughter and bride of the King.
I am Christ’s own portion.
I am beloved by the One who created all things beautiful.
I am filled with the Author and Animator of life.
I am a lover of Love.
I am a follower of The Truth.
So...what does that mean?
It means that I cry and I laugh, sometimes at the same time, and I feel both joy and sorrow deeply. It means that even though I don’t understand the whys or wherefores, I follow where God is leading me. It means that I get a little uncomfortable (even if I might hate it) because I believe that He who is sending me is worth it. It means I take risks because I am driven by an intense and overwhelming love for One who is greater than I am. It means that I am made for greatness, that I am favored, that there is a power in me (not of my own making) that makes evil nervous. It means, oftentimes, that I have to fight for that which is true and good and beautiful. It means that I am called to more.
“For us there is one God, the Father, from whom all things are and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things are and through whom we exist” (1 Cor 8:6).
“This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.” (John 6:29).
Praying today that I have the grace to live my “Amen.”
A lot of my prayer lately has consisted of me wrestling with and trying to figure out the seemingly duplicitous nature of Christian life—the fact that when you live with Christ, there is always both joy and sorrow, suffering and blessing, death and new life (working on the blog for that one...stay tuned). For the last few days though, as is fitting for the season, I've been praying/thinking/reflecting about the Resurrection—it just keeps coming up all over the place. Father Roland made a good point last Sunday at Mass: the Church celebrates Easter for 50 days, which is 10 days longer than Lent (you can always judge pretty well how significant something is by the number of days the Church sets aside for it. So even if you knew nothing about Easter, you’d know that it must be REALLY important just by the amount of time devoted to celebrating it). We, as Catholics, are a “Resurrection People,” but I don’t think I’ve ever really lived like I believe that. And so I’ve been praying this week about what it means to live, so that my life is a proclamation of the Resurrection.
“I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).
“This is eternal life, that [we] should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ” (John 17:3).
What does it mean to live?
In trying to answer that, I'm finding a lot more freedom in coming to the realization that I am not the sum total of the holy hours, prayers of intention, outreach projects, Liturgy of the Hours, ministry opportunities, invitations, appointments and Rule of Life that make up the parts of my day—that is part of the structure of my time, and many of those things are set in place to provide a chance in which to encounter the Lord. But ultimately, like John’s Gospel says, this thing we call life is all about knowing and having relationship with “the only true God”: JESUS CHRIST. It is only through that knowledge of Him, that relationship with Him, that everything else takes on significance.
That’s what it means to live—I mean, to really LIVE. My life is not about keeping track of tasks; I am not called to fulfill a long list of should’s. I can schedule all the holy hours I want into my day, but if I’m not having an encounter with the living Christ, if I’m not deepening my relationship with Him, if everything in my life is not rooted in Him, then what is the point? No; I am called to (and promised) LIFE—a glorious life of Resurrection, a life of fullness and joy that flows out of my love for Jesus.
I am created in the image and likeness of the Living God.
I am daughter and bride of the King.
I am Christ’s own portion.
I am beloved by the One who created all things beautiful.
I am filled with the Author and Animator of life.
I am a lover of Love.
I am a follower of The Truth.
So...what does that mean?
It means that I cry and I laugh, sometimes at the same time, and I feel both joy and sorrow deeply. It means that even though I don’t understand the whys or wherefores, I follow where God is leading me. It means that I get a little uncomfortable (even if I might hate it) because I believe that He who is sending me is worth it. It means I take risks because I am driven by an intense and overwhelming love for One who is greater than I am. It means that I am made for greatness, that I am favored, that there is a power in me (not of my own making) that makes evil nervous. It means, oftentimes, that I have to fight for that which is true and good and beautiful. It means that I am called to more.
“For us there is one God, the Father, from whom all things are and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things are and through whom we exist” (1 Cor 8:6).
“This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.” (John 6:29).
Praying today that I have the grace to live my “Amen.”
Thursday, February 25, 2010
“…now it SPRINGS forth, do you not perceive it?”
I think I am dying.
Not a typical way to start a blog, so let me qualify: as I’ve been reflecting lately and going over what God continues to speak to me in prayer (the need to wait and trust in the Lord, imagery of a refining/purifying fire, various lessons on how to love, the realization that the “mission” is first and foremost ME…), I’m realizing that one of the underlying messages is that I am really being asked to die—as in, dying to self, to pride, to knowledge, to being comfortable, to having any clear sense of purpose or direction. At the end of the day, after all that is gone, there are really only two things left: love and trust (ha—the two things I have the least of!). And only when I am stripped down to those two things can the real work begin.
Surprisingly, when I came to this conclusion today, I felt a lot of peace. Not what I expected. But I’ve been finding a lot of beauty in this realization that I am dying, along with a hopefulness in the expectancy that this is not the end. God really had a plan when He created this world we live in, and He leaves little hints all over the place that point to how death and life are all wrapped up together, and even depend on each other for true fullness to be brought about. The biggest sign that God has been calling my attention to lately is the changing of the seasons (both in nature and in the Church); He has been speaking a lot to me through the imagery of the process of growth that plants go through as the seasons change and pass.
If we were to imagine myself as a seed, you could say I was planted early on and tended all throughout my life; and last year I finally started to blossom and bear fruit (not to mention, a whole lot of weeds were pulled up along the way). It was beautiful—I felt beautiful—having a period of time that was all blooming. But (as God has ordained and nature has it), while flowers and fruit are beautiful and good, they eventually have to give way to the other stages in the cycle of growth. Now, I’m no botanist, but I’m pretty sure that when fruit finally comes, part of the natural process is that some of it falls on the ground, so that the seeds can be deposited back into the earth and new things can grow. But before anything new can grow, the fruit has to first ripen, which turns into rotting, which turns into disintegrating. It’s not pretty; it’s messy. It’s smelly. But it has to happen (I suppose, this seed could also be eaten by an animal and then come back out after a journey through the digestive system, or be thrown into a trash heap by humans only concerned with a tasty snack, but neither of those options are really either less messy or less smelly). The only way that the seeds can get in the ground and start growing is if everything is stripped away first. I feel like over the past few months, I could relate a lot to this ugly, messy, stripping-away process; God has been hard at work getting rid of everything excess and preparing me to be “planted.”
After this ugly mess, I found myself smack-dab in the middle of winter; everything becomes cold, hard, dormant. Even the tree that bore the fruit is dead (at least in appearance, if not in actuality). And thus passes a long—sometimes seemingly endless—period of what appears to be nothing: the old tree is not doing anything (no flowers, no fruit), and the new seeds have yet to grow. All you can see is a tree, stripped of all its leaves, standing rather starkly against the sky and horizon, and a frozen patch of ground around it. Depressing—although, admittedly, somewhat poignantly beautiful in its starkness, its…humility…its being there with nothing else to commend itself to your senses but itself, and itself alone. You can’t help but admire it—this bare outline is, after all, what makes the tree. Soon, though, even that beauty is jaded by the long, drawn-out COLD that just pervades everything; you start asking yourself the question, “when is it going to end?” and cursing that darned groundhog when he suddenly, arbitrarily decides upon 6 more weeks of winter.
BUT—oh, the glory of the promise in that one word—all the while, underneath the ground and deep within the core of that tree, small things have been happening, even while to the eye nothing is changed. The seed, when it first made its way into the earth, had to “die”—it had to break out of its shell, cease to be itself in a way, so that it could start the process of growing into something else, something more beautiful. The shell cracks, light and moisture and nutrients creep their way in; and slowly (VERY SLOWLY…) little roots start to push out, to explore, to extend out into the soil. And the more the roots grow, the more nutrients that little seedling needs—the roots are not very strong at first, they’re just fragile little things, brand-new and trying to make a go of it. That’s why no energy can be spent on growing up. Not yet.
But, eventually, it is time to start venturing up toward the top, up toward the light. At this point, the scenery outside is starting to change as well—it’s still cold and dark outside, but not as cold and not as dark. The snow has changed into rain, every now and then little glimmers of sun peep through the clouds, and you can start hearing the birds sing again. There is a thawing, a settling; almost as if the world were sinking into a warm bath after a long period of being sick and sad and tired, heaving a deep sigh and letting all the cold, all the dirt, all the sweat of hard work just melt away. The work is not nearly finished, but it’s a great start—like that one turning point in the darkness of the middle of the night when, oh-so-subtly, the seconds start creeping toward the light and the day instead of receding from it. Everything holds the promise of newness and life. It’s not here yet—we’re only just on the cusp of spring—but the promise of it is tangible and it’s delicious. There’s a waking up of all the senses, all the faculties: “Awake, lyre and harp! With praise, let us awake the dawn!” (Ps 57:9).
The world is full of promise—just keep watching the ground! Keep hoping! “Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom 5:5). There is a lot of work left to go—the journey up requires so much energy, pushing the way through the heaviness and darkness and wetness and dirtiness (something to consider: these are the very same things that were, at one point, needed for the seed to grow. The only thing that changes is the seed. It may seem like an immensely vast amount of difficult stuff to get through…but maybe none of it is actually working against the seed after all…it’s just time for a different stage in growth). And then there’s still the matter of those little roots—by no means finished growing. But it’s coming!!
And until it comes—until spring arrives, until those little shoots finally sprout out of the earth, until those tiny little blossoms bud on the tree—there is only waiting. But the waiting is taking on a different shade; there is no longer enduring, in the way that you trudge through the slush and sludge of winter and hope it’s over soon. Now there is an exhilarating, anticipatory holding-of-breath as we teeter on that cusp point, anxiously waiting for that rush of a moment when you wake up and spring has burst through in all its glory! This is the waiting for Easter morning.
Just keep growing. There is nothing else without that. Shade trees don’t happen overnight; there has to be growth. No cute little kids can pretend to be explorers and climb to the tippy-top without that first step. I cannot produce any fruit without first dying, and then growing out of that death. This step is hard, it’s unseen, un-glorified, un-noticed, un-remembered when the glory of the flowers and fruit come. But the flowers and fruit would not come without it, and that’s the most important part.
This is a big deal.
This is just the beginning. I am just now starting to understand my dying, looking forward in the hopefulness that it is starting to give way to a spring-time of new growth, that I am being prepared for a new fruitfulness.
And this one little seed is in it for the long haul.
Not a typical way to start a blog, so let me qualify: as I’ve been reflecting lately and going over what God continues to speak to me in prayer (the need to wait and trust in the Lord, imagery of a refining/purifying fire, various lessons on how to love, the realization that the “mission” is first and foremost ME…), I’m realizing that one of the underlying messages is that I am really being asked to die—as in, dying to self, to pride, to knowledge, to being comfortable, to having any clear sense of purpose or direction. At the end of the day, after all that is gone, there are really only two things left: love and trust (ha—the two things I have the least of!). And only when I am stripped down to those two things can the real work begin.
Surprisingly, when I came to this conclusion today, I felt a lot of peace. Not what I expected. But I’ve been finding a lot of beauty in this realization that I am dying, along with a hopefulness in the expectancy that this is not the end. God really had a plan when He created this world we live in, and He leaves little hints all over the place that point to how death and life are all wrapped up together, and even depend on each other for true fullness to be brought about. The biggest sign that God has been calling my attention to lately is the changing of the seasons (both in nature and in the Church); He has been speaking a lot to me through the imagery of the process of growth that plants go through as the seasons change and pass.
If we were to imagine myself as a seed, you could say I was planted early on and tended all throughout my life; and last year I finally started to blossom and bear fruit (not to mention, a whole lot of weeds were pulled up along the way). It was beautiful—I felt beautiful—having a period of time that was all blooming. But (as God has ordained and nature has it), while flowers and fruit are beautiful and good, they eventually have to give way to the other stages in the cycle of growth. Now, I’m no botanist, but I’m pretty sure that when fruit finally comes, part of the natural process is that some of it falls on the ground, so that the seeds can be deposited back into the earth and new things can grow. But before anything new can grow, the fruit has to first ripen, which turns into rotting, which turns into disintegrating. It’s not pretty; it’s messy. It’s smelly. But it has to happen (I suppose, this seed could also be eaten by an animal and then come back out after a journey through the digestive system, or be thrown into a trash heap by humans only concerned with a tasty snack, but neither of those options are really either less messy or less smelly). The only way that the seeds can get in the ground and start growing is if everything is stripped away first. I feel like over the past few months, I could relate a lot to this ugly, messy, stripping-away process; God has been hard at work getting rid of everything excess and preparing me to be “planted.”
After this ugly mess, I found myself smack-dab in the middle of winter; everything becomes cold, hard, dormant. Even the tree that bore the fruit is dead (at least in appearance, if not in actuality). And thus passes a long—sometimes seemingly endless—period of what appears to be nothing: the old tree is not doing anything (no flowers, no fruit), and the new seeds have yet to grow. All you can see is a tree, stripped of all its leaves, standing rather starkly against the sky and horizon, and a frozen patch of ground around it. Depressing—although, admittedly, somewhat poignantly beautiful in its starkness, its…humility…its being there with nothing else to commend itself to your senses but itself, and itself alone. You can’t help but admire it—this bare outline is, after all, what makes the tree. Soon, though, even that beauty is jaded by the long, drawn-out COLD that just pervades everything; you start asking yourself the question, “when is it going to end?” and cursing that darned groundhog when he suddenly, arbitrarily decides upon 6 more weeks of winter.
BUT—oh, the glory of the promise in that one word—all the while, underneath the ground and deep within the core of that tree, small things have been happening, even while to the eye nothing is changed. The seed, when it first made its way into the earth, had to “die”—it had to break out of its shell, cease to be itself in a way, so that it could start the process of growing into something else, something more beautiful. The shell cracks, light and moisture and nutrients creep their way in; and slowly (VERY SLOWLY…) little roots start to push out, to explore, to extend out into the soil. And the more the roots grow, the more nutrients that little seedling needs—the roots are not very strong at first, they’re just fragile little things, brand-new and trying to make a go of it. That’s why no energy can be spent on growing up. Not yet.
But, eventually, it is time to start venturing up toward the top, up toward the light. At this point, the scenery outside is starting to change as well—it’s still cold and dark outside, but not as cold and not as dark. The snow has changed into rain, every now and then little glimmers of sun peep through the clouds, and you can start hearing the birds sing again. There is a thawing, a settling; almost as if the world were sinking into a warm bath after a long period of being sick and sad and tired, heaving a deep sigh and letting all the cold, all the dirt, all the sweat of hard work just melt away. The work is not nearly finished, but it’s a great start—like that one turning point in the darkness of the middle of the night when, oh-so-subtly, the seconds start creeping toward the light and the day instead of receding from it. Everything holds the promise of newness and life. It’s not here yet—we’re only just on the cusp of spring—but the promise of it is tangible and it’s delicious. There’s a waking up of all the senses, all the faculties: “Awake, lyre and harp! With praise, let us awake the dawn!” (Ps 57:9).
The world is full of promise—just keep watching the ground! Keep hoping! “Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom 5:5). There is a lot of work left to go—the journey up requires so much energy, pushing the way through the heaviness and darkness and wetness and dirtiness (something to consider: these are the very same things that were, at one point, needed for the seed to grow. The only thing that changes is the seed. It may seem like an immensely vast amount of difficult stuff to get through…but maybe none of it is actually working against the seed after all…it’s just time for a different stage in growth). And then there’s still the matter of those little roots—by no means finished growing. But it’s coming!!
And until it comes—until spring arrives, until those little shoots finally sprout out of the earth, until those tiny little blossoms bud on the tree—there is only waiting. But the waiting is taking on a different shade; there is no longer enduring, in the way that you trudge through the slush and sludge of winter and hope it’s over soon. Now there is an exhilarating, anticipatory holding-of-breath as we teeter on that cusp point, anxiously waiting for that rush of a moment when you wake up and spring has burst through in all its glory! This is the waiting for Easter morning.
Just keep growing. There is nothing else without that. Shade trees don’t happen overnight; there has to be growth. No cute little kids can pretend to be explorers and climb to the tippy-top without that first step. I cannot produce any fruit without first dying, and then growing out of that death. This step is hard, it’s unseen, un-glorified, un-noticed, un-remembered when the glory of the flowers and fruit come. But the flowers and fruit would not come without it, and that’s the most important part.
This is a big deal.
This is just the beginning. I am just now starting to understand my dying, looking forward in the hopefulness that it is starting to give way to a spring-time of new growth, that I am being prepared for a new fruitfulness.
And this one little seed is in it for the long haul.
Friday, February 12, 2010
unplugged
Yesterday, I was challenged to ask this question: “Lord, what do I desire you to work in and through me?” Below is how I answered Him in prayer this morning. For this one, I’m not going to explain…it’s just all me, straight from the journal:
I want to be changed—ultimately and permanently, but also every day. I want to be convicted of the truth of your love—with a passionate, burning conviction that settles down into the very core of my being. I want to be confident and bold in that love—to a reckless degree.
I want others to know they are loved. I want to talk about their hopes and desires, and be with them when they discover that all of those point to you and are found in you. I want to journey with people toward you. I want to be your living heart in the world—I want to reach out to others in their time of need, in their confusion, in their rejoicing over glory stories. I want to see hearts changed by you.
I want to be able to really talk about you—in a way that’s not just talking, because we live out fully this life you’ve called us into: to work hard, to laugh harder, and to cry in both beautiful and tragic moments. I want prayer to be a joy and not a job. I don’t want to think about living—I want to do it!
I want to feel fully, deeply, with a heart that reaches out to others—I want to be moved by others; to laugh when they laugh, to cry when they cry, to dance around the kitchen with them when they’re bursting with excitement, to talk through the confusion.
I want to be able to love everyone—I mean, really, everyone. I want life to be full of people! I don’t want to think in abstracts or categories; I want to live in flesh and blood! I want to be a bearer of life!
I want to claim the freedom you’ve already won for me—to claim it fully, and live it! I want to be a woman of joy. I want to always wonder at creation and marvel at your movement. I want to always be wonderfully surprised by you—with that feeling of familiarity because you’re always surprising me.
I want to love recklessly, breathlessly—from the very center of myself and with all I have. I want to be selfless. To give, and keep on giving, and not count the cost.
I want to be unshackled by awkwardness and timidity.
I don’t want to tiptoe around convention or the status-quo.
I want the Holy Spirit that is alive and active in me to reach out and embrace the Holy Spirit alive and active in another—in the same way that John leapt for joy when encountering Jesus for the first time as Mary greeted Elizabeth. I want to live the mystery of the Visitation.
“he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him, [‘Be opened!’] and (immediately) the man’s ears were opened, his speech impediment was removed, and he spoke plainly” (Mark 7:34-35).
God, grant me the grace…
I want to be changed—ultimately and permanently, but also every day. I want to be convicted of the truth of your love—with a passionate, burning conviction that settles down into the very core of my being. I want to be confident and bold in that love—to a reckless degree.
I want others to know they are loved. I want to talk about their hopes and desires, and be with them when they discover that all of those point to you and are found in you. I want to journey with people toward you. I want to be your living heart in the world—I want to reach out to others in their time of need, in their confusion, in their rejoicing over glory stories. I want to see hearts changed by you.
I want to be able to really talk about you—in a way that’s not just talking, because we live out fully this life you’ve called us into: to work hard, to laugh harder, and to cry in both beautiful and tragic moments. I want prayer to be a joy and not a job. I don’t want to think about living—I want to do it!
I want to feel fully, deeply, with a heart that reaches out to others—I want to be moved by others; to laugh when they laugh, to cry when they cry, to dance around the kitchen with them when they’re bursting with excitement, to talk through the confusion.
I want to be able to love everyone—I mean, really, everyone. I want life to be full of people! I don’t want to think in abstracts or categories; I want to live in flesh and blood! I want to be a bearer of life!
I want to claim the freedom you’ve already won for me—to claim it fully, and live it! I want to be a woman of joy. I want to always wonder at creation and marvel at your movement. I want to always be wonderfully surprised by you—with that feeling of familiarity because you’re always surprising me.
I want to love recklessly, breathlessly—from the very center of myself and with all I have. I want to be selfless. To give, and keep on giving, and not count the cost.
I want to be unshackled by awkwardness and timidity.
I don’t want to tiptoe around convention or the status-quo.
I want the Holy Spirit that is alive and active in me to reach out and embrace the Holy Spirit alive and active in another—in the same way that John leapt for joy when encountering Jesus for the first time as Mary greeted Elizabeth. I want to live the mystery of the Visitation.
“he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him, [‘Be opened!’] and (immediately) the man’s ears were opened, his speech impediment was removed, and he spoke plainly” (Mark 7:34-35).
God, grant me the grace…
Thursday, February 11, 2010
The Waiting Game
Lately, I feel like my prayer has sounded something like the beginning of Psalm 13:
How long, Lord? Will you utterly forget me?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I carry sorrow in my soul, grief in my heart day after day?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Look upon me, answer me, Lord, my God!
(**side note: I love the Psalms. The more I read and pray with them, the more I am drawn to the honesty in their poetry—the beauty of sheer humanity crying out to God, in all conditions of the heart.**)
For what feels like an incredibly long time now, God has been speaking to me this message:
“WAIT.”
If you’re thinking that I’ve already written about this topic, you’re right—I’m just still waiting. The difference now is that my knowledge of what waiting means is taking on a new breadth and depth as I’m still being asked to wait, as I’m continually challenged in waiting, as I’ve been finding it increasingly difficult to wait and trust in the Lord. Hm. This must be really important…because everything I pray ends up being answered with that same four-letter word: W.A.I.T. (ugh). And, in my stubbornness, I reply, “How long, Lord?” (Hello, whiny Israelites, anyone? Ps 95: “When at Meribah and Massah, they challenged me and provoked me, although they had seen all my works…”)
As I was praying this morning, I felt really frustrated—like I was just yelling out Psalm 13! And all of a sudden, I had a flash of perspective; I realized that getting frustrated with God wasn’t getting me anywhere, least of all closer to being done with waiting. I began to recall my 8-day silent retreat last year—one of the questions Br. John challenged me to ask was, “Lord, how do you want me to wait?” (yes…I was waiting then as well. Seems to be a theme…).
So I started praying that instead—“Lord, how do you want me to wait?”—which is quite a different question from “How long, Lord?” Because really, this life with Christ is FULL of waiting. Pick up the Bible! Open it up to any book, and you will find people waiting: Adam waiting for Eve, Sarah (and a whole host of other women) waiting for a long-promised and hoped-for child, the Israelites waiting to enter the Promised Land, David waiting to hear the voice of the Lord, the Jewish people waiting for the Messiah, the Apostles waiting for the Resurrection, all of humanity waiting for the new Heaven and earth of Jesus’ second coming. We are a people who WAIT—and don’t like it! But God keeps asking us to do it! So really, the HOW is the key.
God is proving to me time and time again that He really does answer prayers—I just have to learn how to ask the right things! Once I stopped asking “how long?” and started asking “how?” He was ready and willing to clarify; specifically through today’s Gospel story of the Syrophoenician woman’s faith (Mark 7:24-30). To summarize: a non-Jewish woman makes a request of Jesus, and He answers, for all intents and purposes, “no” (or, really, “not yet”). Then, this incredibly bold woman renews her request (with that famous line, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps”). She knows and believes Jesus can do anything—and she’s probably heard that He’s already broken all sorts of conventional rules at this point. So she boldly and trustingly approaches Him again after His initial response, with a simply astonishing amount of humility (I mean, a dog.)…and it’s at this point that Jesus grants her request.
This is not the first—or the only—time in the Gospel when Jesus reacts like this. In fact, Fr. Jean C.J. d’Elbee points out, in I Believe in Love, that Jesus responds to professions and acts of faith, above all else: “That is the great question, the condition for the miracle. ‘Do you believe that I can do it? Do you believe that I am going to do it? [...] Because God loves you, He wants to see how far you will push your confidence. He wants to be able to say to you, as He did to the Canaanite woman, ‘How great is your faith!’” (50).
That’s the point, really. God is asking me to choose Him—that act of choosing that is at the heart of faith. To believe in Love even when (especially) He says “no” or “not yet” or “wait.” To be able to always say (even though it might be through gritted teeth sometimes), “Lord, I trust in you. I know that your plans for my life are greater than anything I could imagine. I believe and hope in your desire to bless my life. Today, I choose to wait on you, and I trust that you will answer.”
How will I wait? With a bold trust in a God who I believe can work all sorts of miracles and blessings in my life—and who wants to.
I wait for you, O Lord;
I lift up my soul to my God.
In you I trust; do not let me be disgraced;
[...]No one is disgraced who waits for you,
but only those who lightly break faith.
[...] For you I wait all the long day,
because of your goodness, Lord.
[...] My eyes are ever upon the Lord
[...] I wait for you, O Lord.
(Psalm 25)
“Do not be afraid; just have faith…” (Luke 8: 50).
“Trust God and he will help you; make straight your ways and hope in him. [...] has anyone hoped in the Lord and been disappointed?” (Sirach 2:6, 10).
How long, Lord? Will you utterly forget me?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I carry sorrow in my soul, grief in my heart day after day?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Look upon me, answer me, Lord, my God!
(**side note: I love the Psalms. The more I read and pray with them, the more I am drawn to the honesty in their poetry—the beauty of sheer humanity crying out to God, in all conditions of the heart.**)
For what feels like an incredibly long time now, God has been speaking to me this message:
“WAIT.”
If you’re thinking that I’ve already written about this topic, you’re right—I’m just still waiting. The difference now is that my knowledge of what waiting means is taking on a new breadth and depth as I’m still being asked to wait, as I’m continually challenged in waiting, as I’ve been finding it increasingly difficult to wait and trust in the Lord. Hm. This must be really important…because everything I pray ends up being answered with that same four-letter word: W.A.I.T. (ugh). And, in my stubbornness, I reply, “How long, Lord?” (Hello, whiny Israelites, anyone? Ps 95: “When at Meribah and Massah, they challenged me and provoked me, although they had seen all my works…”)
As I was praying this morning, I felt really frustrated—like I was just yelling out Psalm 13! And all of a sudden, I had a flash of perspective; I realized that getting frustrated with God wasn’t getting me anywhere, least of all closer to being done with waiting. I began to recall my 8-day silent retreat last year—one of the questions Br. John challenged me to ask was, “Lord, how do you want me to wait?” (yes…I was waiting then as well. Seems to be a theme…).
So I started praying that instead—“Lord, how do you want me to wait?”—which is quite a different question from “How long, Lord?” Because really, this life with Christ is FULL of waiting. Pick up the Bible! Open it up to any book, and you will find people waiting: Adam waiting for Eve, Sarah (and a whole host of other women) waiting for a long-promised and hoped-for child, the Israelites waiting to enter the Promised Land, David waiting to hear the voice of the Lord, the Jewish people waiting for the Messiah, the Apostles waiting for the Resurrection, all of humanity waiting for the new Heaven and earth of Jesus’ second coming. We are a people who WAIT—and don’t like it! But God keeps asking us to do it! So really, the HOW is the key.
God is proving to me time and time again that He really does answer prayers—I just have to learn how to ask the right things! Once I stopped asking “how long?” and started asking “how?” He was ready and willing to clarify; specifically through today’s Gospel story of the Syrophoenician woman’s faith (Mark 7:24-30). To summarize: a non-Jewish woman makes a request of Jesus, and He answers, for all intents and purposes, “no” (or, really, “not yet”). Then, this incredibly bold woman renews her request (with that famous line, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps”). She knows and believes Jesus can do anything—and she’s probably heard that He’s already broken all sorts of conventional rules at this point. So she boldly and trustingly approaches Him again after His initial response, with a simply astonishing amount of humility (I mean, a dog.)…and it’s at this point that Jesus grants her request.
This is not the first—or the only—time in the Gospel when Jesus reacts like this. In fact, Fr. Jean C.J. d’Elbee points out, in I Believe in Love, that Jesus responds to professions and acts of faith, above all else: “That is the great question, the condition for the miracle. ‘Do you believe that I can do it? Do you believe that I am going to do it? [...] Because God loves you, He wants to see how far you will push your confidence. He wants to be able to say to you, as He did to the Canaanite woman, ‘How great is your faith!’” (50).
That’s the point, really. God is asking me to choose Him—that act of choosing that is at the heart of faith. To believe in Love even when (especially) He says “no” or “not yet” or “wait.” To be able to always say (even though it might be through gritted teeth sometimes), “Lord, I trust in you. I know that your plans for my life are greater than anything I could imagine. I believe and hope in your desire to bless my life. Today, I choose to wait on you, and I trust that you will answer.”
How will I wait? With a bold trust in a God who I believe can work all sorts of miracles and blessings in my life—and who wants to.
I wait for you, O Lord;
I lift up my soul to my God.
In you I trust; do not let me be disgraced;
[...]No one is disgraced who waits for you,
but only those who lightly break faith.
[...] For you I wait all the long day,
because of your goodness, Lord.
[...] My eyes are ever upon the Lord
[...] I wait for you, O Lord.
(Psalm 25)
“Do not be afraid; just have faith…” (Luke 8: 50).
“Trust God and he will help you; make straight your ways and hope in him. [...] has anyone hoped in the Lord and been disappointed?” (Sirach 2:6, 10).
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
"The people were filled with expectation..."
Recently, the question, “Well, what did you expect from God?” has settled in and taken up residence in my prayer. God is beginning to reveal to me that my life, as a Christian, is full of expectancy—waiting on the Lord to fulfill His promises, always wondering to a certain extent what He’s about, hoping that He will reveal to me more of Himself. BUT, when I let that expectancy turn into expectation—when I have my heart set on something and begin to demand that God fulfill it the way I want and when I want—then I set myself up to be rather disappointed, frustrated, and probably unfulfilled.
Here’s the difference:
Expectancy involves open hands and an open heart; it’s a posture of waiting, especially waiting for the development of something. There is anticipation and excitement in the unknown, and joy in waiting for what is coming.
To expect something involves an underlying demand that requires fulfillment; so there is always concern about the thing that is expected. There’s always an element of striving, of reaching for something, and never quite feeling fulfilled—so there is usually a lack of freedom and a lack of joy in a waiting that seems to be taking forever.
(Here’s another side-observation: “expectancy” is a noun, whereas “to expect” is a verb. Just one more example that God is all about BEING rather than DOING.)
I’m learning that it is OK—good, even—to have desires. But, oh, how quickly can desires (even holy ones!) turn into expectations if I don’t offer them to Jesus! And then, how quickly can I move from a posture of expectancy to striving and expecting things.
When I start to expect things, it’s easier to believe the lies surrounding my life (nasty little things, always in my periphery...); when some expectation goes unmet, I’m all too ready to believe it’s because I’m not good enough, or not loved, or that I will always be chasing joy that I can’t have (p.s. ALL of those things are false).
But when I stop expecting, give that particular thing to God, and wait, with the expectancy that God will fulfill as He chooses, then He just makes things happen so easily. I mean...ridiculously easily. God just always has a better way, and is continuing to prove to me that He wants to provide. More than that—He doesn’t just want good things for me; HE wants to GIVE them to me. So I’m really trying to not expect things—only receive.
Mary, help my posture be one of expectancy—that I would not expect anything, but receive all things in the joy of receiving them from your Son. Be with me as I wait with expectancy for the Lord to fulfill His promises (like you did!) without knowing when, or how.
Here’s the difference:
Expectancy involves open hands and an open heart; it’s a posture of waiting, especially waiting for the development of something. There is anticipation and excitement in the unknown, and joy in waiting for what is coming.
To expect something involves an underlying demand that requires fulfillment; so there is always concern about the thing that is expected. There’s always an element of striving, of reaching for something, and never quite feeling fulfilled—so there is usually a lack of freedom and a lack of joy in a waiting that seems to be taking forever.
(Here’s another side-observation: “expectancy” is a noun, whereas “to expect” is a verb. Just one more example that God is all about BEING rather than DOING.)
I’m learning that it is OK—good, even—to have desires. But, oh, how quickly can desires (even holy ones!) turn into expectations if I don’t offer them to Jesus! And then, how quickly can I move from a posture of expectancy to striving and expecting things.
When I start to expect things, it’s easier to believe the lies surrounding my life (nasty little things, always in my periphery...); when some expectation goes unmet, I’m all too ready to believe it’s because I’m not good enough, or not loved, or that I will always be chasing joy that I can’t have (p.s. ALL of those things are false).
But when I stop expecting, give that particular thing to God, and wait, with the expectancy that God will fulfill as He chooses, then He just makes things happen so easily. I mean...ridiculously easily. God just always has a better way, and is continuing to prove to me that He wants to provide. More than that—He doesn’t just want good things for me; HE wants to GIVE them to me. So I’m really trying to not expect things—only receive.
Mary, help my posture be one of expectancy—that I would not expect anything, but receive all things in the joy of receiving them from your Son. Be with me as I wait with expectancy for the Lord to fulfill His promises (like you did!) without knowing when, or how.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Ring of Fire
I always thought Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael (also known as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego) were a little un-relatable—if not downright crazy. Every time Sunday Week One comes up in Liturgy of the Hours (or any major feast day, or the season of Christmas) and we pray through the canticle that starts, “Bless the Lord, all you works of the Lord, praise and exalt him above all forever,” I shake my head in wonder and disbelief; not because “you dolphins and all water creatures” are specifically mentioned, but because
THEY ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF A FURNACE OF FIRE!!!!
What an incredibly bold prayer—and how much pure faith these three men needed to pray it! Sometimes I forget that fact; I read Scripture stories like this one and think something along the lines of, “oh, that’s nice. They wanted everything to bless the Lord.” But that’s not the point. The point is, they were blessing God when they had nothing left, when according to all appearances and assumptions they would soon be dead, when everyone thought that there was no hope left for them, no chance, no reason to bless God. That’s gutsy. That’s what saints are made of. The more I started realizing what an amazing act of faith this was, the more I thought it was far beyond my understanding; I would never be able to attain that level of faith and trust.
So I started praying for those things. A word of advice to anyone who is thinking about praying something along the lines of “God, help me to trust you more,” or, “God increase my faith”: MEAN IT. Here’s the danger of praying like that: God listens. And He is more than ready to answer. God doesn’t skimp out on answering those prayers, because it’s exactly what He wants for and from us—for us to trust Him completely, to unite ourselves to Him—but it’s not going to look like anything you expected or hoped for. The reason I say it’s dangerous is because of how God answers; He doesn’t just give you faith or trust or love or hope (well, I’m sure He might for some people. I should say, He doesn’t just give those things to me). Instead, God gives an opportunity to love more, or to have more faith, or to trust more in Him. And that is something infinitely more blessed, but incredibly harder.
The real fire, the real furnace, that Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael were in the middle of was the fire of God’s love; of Him presenting them with an opportunity to prove their trust in Him, to make a ridiculously bold act of faith, to love God no matter what happened externally, to hope in His promises even when everyone else and all their circumstances were telling them not to. That calls to mind the chorus of a song by Shane and Shane:
“Burn us up, burn us up, burn us up; oh King, oh won’t you burn us in the furnace of your desire? We give up, we give up, we give up; oh King, oh won’t you burn us in the furnace of your desire? Won’t you throw us in the fire?”
In the song, that chorus is sung by the 3 young men in address to King Nebuchadnezzar; and while that’s really powerful, even more amazing is that those words are really a prayer crying out to God—the King. And I have (strangely, amazingly) found myself praying that same prayer lately. I think I’m beginning to understand Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael a little bit more (never thought I would say that, but there it is…). I’m by no means faced with the choice to jump in an actual furnace as a test of my faith in God; but every day God does ask me to make another act of faith, a conscious choice to trust in His plans for me, even as I don’t understand them. I can’t say I like it (fire burns!) but I know that with each minute I stay within that purifying flame of God’s love, He is melting away all in me that is not of Him:
“For he is like the refiner’s fire, or like the fuller’s lye. He will sit refining and purifying silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi, refining them like gold or like silver that they may offer due sacrifice to the Lord. Then the sacrifice of Judah and Jerusalem will please the Lord…” (Malachi 3:2-4).
That’s where the joy of being in the furnace of fire comes from—the reason those 3 holy young men are able to call upon everything in Heaven, on Earth, and under the earth to bless the Lord. There is joy in being tested in the fire of God’s love, in knowing that He is working at getting rid of all the obstacles that stand in the way of me having a deeper relationship with Him, that He is strengthening me and calling me to something infinitely greater than I can imagine or do by myself. It is painfully beautiful. It is bittersweet. It is a sacrificial blessing. And I wouldn’t change a minute of it. Through the struggle, through the questions, through the doubt, through the immense effort it takes to be able to keep on praying, “Lord, I trust you and your will for my life,” I am being made more pure and beautiful—a sacrifice worthy of the Lord—more strong and sure and confident every day of my need for Him and His provision for me.
So burn me up, oh King; won’t you throw me in the fire?
THEY ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF A FURNACE OF FIRE!!!!
What an incredibly bold prayer—and how much pure faith these three men needed to pray it! Sometimes I forget that fact; I read Scripture stories like this one and think something along the lines of, “oh, that’s nice. They wanted everything to bless the Lord.” But that’s not the point. The point is, they were blessing God when they had nothing left, when according to all appearances and assumptions they would soon be dead, when everyone thought that there was no hope left for them, no chance, no reason to bless God. That’s gutsy. That’s what saints are made of. The more I started realizing what an amazing act of faith this was, the more I thought it was far beyond my understanding; I would never be able to attain that level of faith and trust.
So I started praying for those things. A word of advice to anyone who is thinking about praying something along the lines of “God, help me to trust you more,” or, “God increase my faith”: MEAN IT. Here’s the danger of praying like that: God listens. And He is more than ready to answer. God doesn’t skimp out on answering those prayers, because it’s exactly what He wants for and from us—for us to trust Him completely, to unite ourselves to Him—but it’s not going to look like anything you expected or hoped for. The reason I say it’s dangerous is because of how God answers; He doesn’t just give you faith or trust or love or hope (well, I’m sure He might for some people. I should say, He doesn’t just give those things to me). Instead, God gives an opportunity to love more, or to have more faith, or to trust more in Him. And that is something infinitely more blessed, but incredibly harder.
The real fire, the real furnace, that Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael were in the middle of was the fire of God’s love; of Him presenting them with an opportunity to prove their trust in Him, to make a ridiculously bold act of faith, to love God no matter what happened externally, to hope in His promises even when everyone else and all their circumstances were telling them not to. That calls to mind the chorus of a song by Shane and Shane:
“Burn us up, burn us up, burn us up; oh King, oh won’t you burn us in the furnace of your desire? We give up, we give up, we give up; oh King, oh won’t you burn us in the furnace of your desire? Won’t you throw us in the fire?”
In the song, that chorus is sung by the 3 young men in address to King Nebuchadnezzar; and while that’s really powerful, even more amazing is that those words are really a prayer crying out to God—the King. And I have (strangely, amazingly) found myself praying that same prayer lately. I think I’m beginning to understand Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael a little bit more (never thought I would say that, but there it is…). I’m by no means faced with the choice to jump in an actual furnace as a test of my faith in God; but every day God does ask me to make another act of faith, a conscious choice to trust in His plans for me, even as I don’t understand them. I can’t say I like it (fire burns!) but I know that with each minute I stay within that purifying flame of God’s love, He is melting away all in me that is not of Him:
“For he is like the refiner’s fire, or like the fuller’s lye. He will sit refining and purifying silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi, refining them like gold or like silver that they may offer due sacrifice to the Lord. Then the sacrifice of Judah and Jerusalem will please the Lord…” (Malachi 3:2-4).
That’s where the joy of being in the furnace of fire comes from—the reason those 3 holy young men are able to call upon everything in Heaven, on Earth, and under the earth to bless the Lord. There is joy in being tested in the fire of God’s love, in knowing that He is working at getting rid of all the obstacles that stand in the way of me having a deeper relationship with Him, that He is strengthening me and calling me to something infinitely greater than I can imagine or do by myself. It is painfully beautiful. It is bittersweet. It is a sacrificial blessing. And I wouldn’t change a minute of it. Through the struggle, through the questions, through the doubt, through the immense effort it takes to be able to keep on praying, “Lord, I trust you and your will for my life,” I am being made more pure and beautiful—a sacrifice worthy of the Lord—more strong and sure and confident every day of my need for Him and His provision for me.
So burn me up, oh King; won’t you throw me in the fire?
More coffee?
Today, Amanda and Danielle ended up sitting around the breakfast table for hours sharing different things God’s been revealing to them—turns out, God had a lot to say to each one of them through the other. Here’s a peek into their conversation:
Danielle: So I’ve been praying lately about the idea of being pursued…and I think I came to kind of a revelation today.
Amanda: Do tell.
D: OK. So this is going to be “Danielle pouring her heart out time.” Get. Ready.
A: Hold on a second (pause. Amanda sits back in her chair, closes her eyes, and opens her hands). OK. I’m ready.
D: (laughs) OK, so I’m beginning to realize that I have the whole definition of “pursuit” all wrong. We talk a lot about being pursued, especially as women—and I think that’s good, and from God. We were made to be pursued in a lot of ways—humanity, as a whole, is being pursued by God, like Hosea says: “So I will allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak to her heart” (2:16. Editor’s note: “her” being Israel…and then, by extension, all of God’s people.) The problem is, we talk about being “pursued” in a holy way, but we’re really just living with the expectation of being pursued in the world’s terms.
A: Yeah, when we think of being pursued we’re expecting flowers, candy, grand gestures…like we’re all waiting to be “swept off our feet.”
D: Exactly. Sometimes I get caught up in focusing too much on those externals, and being dissatisfied when they’re not a part of my life. I think that those things are what I want—but in reality, that’s a lie. The world tells us that we should be made to “feel” like we’re worthy, we’re loved, we’re worth fighting for by what someone does—that our senses and our emotions should be pursued. But the TRUTH is that it’s our hearts—our souls—that are worth fighting for, and being pursued means we are loved the way we need to be loved, instead of being loved the way we want to be loved.
A: Gosh. That’s so true! If I really want to let go of my old way of thinking, to really live with Christ, and trust Him to fulfill my desires, I can’t just cling to the same old things I’ve always desired—the things of the world—and put Christian terms on them. Christ is not going to give me the things of the world, the things I don’t really need, the things that don’t satisfy my heart. If I define my wanting to be pursued in terms of what it looks like in the movies, it will just turn into something unhealthy. It will become really confusing: all of a sudden, saying “I’m pursuing you” is like saying the magic words, and I could think “oh, this is holy, this is right, this is how it’s supposed to be;” when, in reality, I’m still being pursued in the world’s terms and not in Christ’s terms.
D: Oh yeah! I prayed about that this morning! The reading for Mass was from 1 John, and this line just struck a chord for me: “Children, let us love not in word or speech, but in deed and truth” (3:18). I’m beginning to realize that really being pursued in a way that’s from God is going to look DIFFERENT—in the fullness of what being pursued actually means—and that difference is good, it’s real, and it’s what authentic love looks like. All the externals are insignificant. There have been times in my life, and in the lives of people I know, where all the right words were there, all the right “grand gestures,” as you called them, but underneath, there was nothing. We think we want someone flying across the world to stand on our doorstep to surprise us, but what we really want is someone who is not going through the motions, someone who loves you for who you are, someone who leads you to God and not himself.
A: Mmmm. Yeah. I think sometimes we’re scared that love won’t come along, and so we settle for less.
D: Yeah, and we sell out for what the world has to offer instead of waiting for what God has to give us.
A: And God wants to give us so much! It’s like what Father Roland was talking about the other day—God doesn’t call us to just survive; he wants us to live abundantly!
D: “I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).
A: Yes! And not just in Heaven! Not just in the life to come, but in this life too! That’s been in my prayer lately and it just blows me away. I always thought about God rewarding us in Heaven, but that’s only the half of it. We have to believe—I mean, because He tells us!—that He has good things for us and He wants to give them to us NOW. He wants us to live a blessed life. We’re afraid to give up the things we think we want…but when we give everything to God and let Him purify our desires, then He can really give us the things He wants to give us, the things He has prepared for us, the things that satisfy. (Editor’s note: this is a paraphrase of Mark 10:17-31. Check it out).
D: Oh my gosh! You need to hear this part of Malachi—this Scripture just keeps coming up and it talks exactly about that: “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house, and try me in this, says the Lord of hosts: Shall I not open for you the floodgates of heaven, to pour down blessing upon you without measure?” (3:10, emphasis added). Blessing without measure! Floodgates of Heaven! That’s crazy. God is sitting there, waiting to fulfill us, but He wants us to bring the “whole tithe,” all of ourselves—not just part of ourselves, but ALL OF US—to Him first. And He says, “try me in this,” like, “go ahead, try and prove me wrong; just see if when you give me everything I don’t bless you.”
A: Yeah, we have to believe that when God says things like that, He means them. It doesn’t mean that we won’t have struggles in our lives; it doesn’t mean that life is a walk in the park…but when He says He wants us to have life and have it abundantly, He means it! He doesn’t want us to settle for just having enough, for just scraping by; He wants us to be blessed.
D: Amen. And that ties back into the idea of being pursued. God is constantly calling us to more—to give more, but also to receive more. The beauty is not just that God wants so much from us, but that He chases after us to give us more than we ever imagined in return.
A: It’s like when we finally stop running and He catches up to us, He says “OK, are you finally ready to see what I have for you?”
D: And we have to trust that whatever He’s going to give us is going to be what we need, even if it’s not exactly what we think we want.
A: (pause) Well. That clears that up.
D: Thanks, God!
God, thank you for revealing yourself to humanity, for being a God who is truly with us. Help us to stop grasping at what we think we want and give everything to you. God, we trust you with all of our desires; we offer them to you, along with all our fears, our worries, our hopes, our plans, our expectations. Purify our hearts, Lord, so that we may more fully and freely receive what you have in store for us. Amen.
Oh, look! It’s lunchtime…
Danielle: So I’ve been praying lately about the idea of being pursued…and I think I came to kind of a revelation today.
Amanda: Do tell.
D: OK. So this is going to be “Danielle pouring her heart out time.” Get. Ready.
A: Hold on a second (pause. Amanda sits back in her chair, closes her eyes, and opens her hands). OK. I’m ready.
D: (laughs) OK, so I’m beginning to realize that I have the whole definition of “pursuit” all wrong. We talk a lot about being pursued, especially as women—and I think that’s good, and from God. We were made to be pursued in a lot of ways—humanity, as a whole, is being pursued by God, like Hosea says: “So I will allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak to her heart” (2:16. Editor’s note: “her” being Israel…and then, by extension, all of God’s people.) The problem is, we talk about being “pursued” in a holy way, but we’re really just living with the expectation of being pursued in the world’s terms.
A: Yeah, when we think of being pursued we’re expecting flowers, candy, grand gestures…like we’re all waiting to be “swept off our feet.”
D: Exactly. Sometimes I get caught up in focusing too much on those externals, and being dissatisfied when they’re not a part of my life. I think that those things are what I want—but in reality, that’s a lie. The world tells us that we should be made to “feel” like we’re worthy, we’re loved, we’re worth fighting for by what someone does—that our senses and our emotions should be pursued. But the TRUTH is that it’s our hearts—our souls—that are worth fighting for, and being pursued means we are loved the way we need to be loved, instead of being loved the way we want to be loved.
A: Gosh. That’s so true! If I really want to let go of my old way of thinking, to really live with Christ, and trust Him to fulfill my desires, I can’t just cling to the same old things I’ve always desired—the things of the world—and put Christian terms on them. Christ is not going to give me the things of the world, the things I don’t really need, the things that don’t satisfy my heart. If I define my wanting to be pursued in terms of what it looks like in the movies, it will just turn into something unhealthy. It will become really confusing: all of a sudden, saying “I’m pursuing you” is like saying the magic words, and I could think “oh, this is holy, this is right, this is how it’s supposed to be;” when, in reality, I’m still being pursued in the world’s terms and not in Christ’s terms.
D: Oh yeah! I prayed about that this morning! The reading for Mass was from 1 John, and this line just struck a chord for me: “Children, let us love not in word or speech, but in deed and truth” (3:18). I’m beginning to realize that really being pursued in a way that’s from God is going to look DIFFERENT—in the fullness of what being pursued actually means—and that difference is good, it’s real, and it’s what authentic love looks like. All the externals are insignificant. There have been times in my life, and in the lives of people I know, where all the right words were there, all the right “grand gestures,” as you called them, but underneath, there was nothing. We think we want someone flying across the world to stand on our doorstep to surprise us, but what we really want is someone who is not going through the motions, someone who loves you for who you are, someone who leads you to God and not himself.
A: Mmmm. Yeah. I think sometimes we’re scared that love won’t come along, and so we settle for less.
D: Yeah, and we sell out for what the world has to offer instead of waiting for what God has to give us.
A: And God wants to give us so much! It’s like what Father Roland was talking about the other day—God doesn’t call us to just survive; he wants us to live abundantly!
D: “I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).
A: Yes! And not just in Heaven! Not just in the life to come, but in this life too! That’s been in my prayer lately and it just blows me away. I always thought about God rewarding us in Heaven, but that’s only the half of it. We have to believe—I mean, because He tells us!—that He has good things for us and He wants to give them to us NOW. He wants us to live a blessed life. We’re afraid to give up the things we think we want…but when we give everything to God and let Him purify our desires, then He can really give us the things He wants to give us, the things He has prepared for us, the things that satisfy. (Editor’s note: this is a paraphrase of Mark 10:17-31. Check it out).
D: Oh my gosh! You need to hear this part of Malachi—this Scripture just keeps coming up and it talks exactly about that: “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house, and try me in this, says the Lord of hosts: Shall I not open for you the floodgates of heaven, to pour down blessing upon you without measure?” (3:10, emphasis added). Blessing without measure! Floodgates of Heaven! That’s crazy. God is sitting there, waiting to fulfill us, but He wants us to bring the “whole tithe,” all of ourselves—not just part of ourselves, but ALL OF US—to Him first. And He says, “try me in this,” like, “go ahead, try and prove me wrong; just see if when you give me everything I don’t bless you.”
A: Yeah, we have to believe that when God says things like that, He means them. It doesn’t mean that we won’t have struggles in our lives; it doesn’t mean that life is a walk in the park…but when He says He wants us to have life and have it abundantly, He means it! He doesn’t want us to settle for just having enough, for just scraping by; He wants us to be blessed.
D: Amen. And that ties back into the idea of being pursued. God is constantly calling us to more—to give more, but also to receive more. The beauty is not just that God wants so much from us, but that He chases after us to give us more than we ever imagined in return.
A: It’s like when we finally stop running and He catches up to us, He says “OK, are you finally ready to see what I have for you?”
D: And we have to trust that whatever He’s going to give us is going to be what we need, even if it’s not exactly what we think we want.
A: (pause) Well. That clears that up.
D: Thanks, God!
God, thank you for revealing yourself to humanity, for being a God who is truly with us. Help us to stop grasping at what we think we want and give everything to you. God, we trust you with all of our desires; we offer them to you, along with all our fears, our worries, our hopes, our plans, our expectations. Purify our hearts, Lord, so that we may more fully and freely receive what you have in store for us. Amen.
Oh, look! It’s lunchtime…
Monday, December 7, 2009
"...nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord..." (Is 55:8)
Question: What happens when two missionaries get lost in a foreign country with no map, a non-functional GPS, and no cell phone?
Answer: God does what He wills. (Alleluia!)
Last night, Amanda and I spent some time with all the fabulous folks from St. Tomas parish in Roermond (NL) for XLT. We had managed to get to the church no problem--even early, which is a feat in itself for us!--and counted it as a blessing from God, because we didn’t even have to turn around once. It was almost like our car was on auto-pilot to the church. Anyway, it was a great night: we prayed, we praised the Lord, Amanda shared her heart in her testimony, we sang, Jesus showed up in the Eucharist (!), and we got to know some of the teens and Core from the parish. God definitely moved--there was such a spirit of freedom while we were praying with everyone! After cleaning up and putting the church hall back together, Bernadette sent us home with some St. Nicholas candy (happy feast day!) and joy in our hearts.
After saying a prayer of thanksgiving for the night and asking for safe travels, we started driving home. Amanda and I were so excited on the way back--we were talking about how great it was to pray with everyone--and so we didn’t think much of the fact that we didn’t have directions for the way back home (we’re still trying to figure out the freeway system here…it’s not quite the same as navigating the freeways back at home). We trusted that God would get us home safely. And He did…eventually.
After several wrong turns, many variations of the question “do you remember this road at all?”, innumerable signs pointing to Venlo in all directions (still have no idea where it is), driving along the Belgian border for awhile (how many countries can you visit in one night? we’re up to 3 so far…), getting directions from a well-intending (albeit incorrect) group of Dutch men in a Burger King, a GPS navigator that could somehow only manage to say “make a U-turn now,” and 2.5 hours travel time for a trip that should have taken 30 minutes, I felt like I understood Psalm 139 in a whole new light: “my travels and my rest you mark; with all my ways you are familiar.”
When I first realized we were lost, I was frustrated. I was anxious--no, I was worried. How are we going to get home? What if we get in an accident? Do we have enough gas? It’s disconcerting to be in a completely foreign place, with no means of communication, having completely zero idea where you’re going, or how you’re going to get home. But even as I’m writing this, I’m realizing that last night’s adventure was a real-life example of what my spiritual life looks like, and how God is trying to teach me to trust more in Him--to trust only in Him.
At some moment along our journey (it might have been as we were sitting underneath a bridge in before-mentioned Venlo, realizing that REALLY, only God could get us home), God’s grace won over my humanness and I let go of all my worry. We were lost. There was nothing I could do about it but trust. Trust in the face of what seemed like an almost impossible situation. Trust even though it seemed crazy because we had nothing. Trust even though I had no idea where we would end up (maybe home? maybe Poland?), even though I was driving the car.
How many times have I prayed “God, what are you doing? Where am I going? How am I going to do this?” I don’t think I could count all of them--and it seems like the longer I live as a missionary, the fewer answers I have to those questions. But when I recognize that--when I admit that I don’t have anything, that I don’t know the way, or the why, or the how--and when I completely surrender to God, abandoning myself to Him in a way that seems like insanity, then I’m able to just enjoy the journey.
Amanda and I had a great conversation in the car. We were able to see a little bit of Belgium (and she got to read French, which she was excited about). We were able to witness in a very small way to the guys who gave us directions (”no, we’re not students, we’re missionaries…”). We learned a little bit more about what it means to “pray without ceasing” and to invoke the intercession of our guardian angels. And miraculously, just when we stopped needing it, the GPS started working and we ended up back at home with gas in the tank to spare. It’s amazing what God can do with a heart that gives Him the chance.
“Wait for the Lord, take courage; be stouthearted, wait for the Lord!” (Psalm 27)
Answer: God does what He wills. (Alleluia!)
Last night, Amanda and I spent some time with all the fabulous folks from St. Tomas parish in Roermond (NL) for XLT. We had managed to get to the church no problem--even early, which is a feat in itself for us!--and counted it as a blessing from God, because we didn’t even have to turn around once. It was almost like our car was on auto-pilot to the church. Anyway, it was a great night: we prayed, we praised the Lord, Amanda shared her heart in her testimony, we sang, Jesus showed up in the Eucharist (!), and we got to know some of the teens and Core from the parish. God definitely moved--there was such a spirit of freedom while we were praying with everyone! After cleaning up and putting the church hall back together, Bernadette sent us home with some St. Nicholas candy (happy feast day!) and joy in our hearts.
After saying a prayer of thanksgiving for the night and asking for safe travels, we started driving home. Amanda and I were so excited on the way back--we were talking about how great it was to pray with everyone--and so we didn’t think much of the fact that we didn’t have directions for the way back home (we’re still trying to figure out the freeway system here…it’s not quite the same as navigating the freeways back at home). We trusted that God would get us home safely. And He did…eventually.
After several wrong turns, many variations of the question “do you remember this road at all?”, innumerable signs pointing to Venlo in all directions (still have no idea where it is), driving along the Belgian border for awhile (how many countries can you visit in one night? we’re up to 3 so far…), getting directions from a well-intending (albeit incorrect) group of Dutch men in a Burger King, a GPS navigator that could somehow only manage to say “make a U-turn now,” and 2.5 hours travel time for a trip that should have taken 30 minutes, I felt like I understood Psalm 139 in a whole new light: “my travels and my rest you mark; with all my ways you are familiar.”
When I first realized we were lost, I was frustrated. I was anxious--no, I was worried. How are we going to get home? What if we get in an accident? Do we have enough gas? It’s disconcerting to be in a completely foreign place, with no means of communication, having completely zero idea where you’re going, or how you’re going to get home. But even as I’m writing this, I’m realizing that last night’s adventure was a real-life example of what my spiritual life looks like, and how God is trying to teach me to trust more in Him--to trust only in Him.
At some moment along our journey (it might have been as we were sitting underneath a bridge in before-mentioned Venlo, realizing that REALLY, only God could get us home), God’s grace won over my humanness and I let go of all my worry. We were lost. There was nothing I could do about it but trust. Trust in the face of what seemed like an almost impossible situation. Trust even though it seemed crazy because we had nothing. Trust even though I had no idea where we would end up (maybe home? maybe Poland?), even though I was driving the car.
How many times have I prayed “God, what are you doing? Where am I going? How am I going to do this?” I don’t think I could count all of them--and it seems like the longer I live as a missionary, the fewer answers I have to those questions. But when I recognize that--when I admit that I don’t have anything, that I don’t know the way, or the why, or the how--and when I completely surrender to God, abandoning myself to Him in a way that seems like insanity, then I’m able to just enjoy the journey.
Amanda and I had a great conversation in the car. We were able to see a little bit of Belgium (and she got to read French, which she was excited about). We were able to witness in a very small way to the guys who gave us directions (”no, we’re not students, we’re missionaries…”). We learned a little bit more about what it means to “pray without ceasing” and to invoke the intercession of our guardian angels. And miraculously, just when we stopped needing it, the GPS started working and we ended up back at home with gas in the tank to spare. It’s amazing what God can do with a heart that gives Him the chance.
“Wait for the Lord, take courage; be stouthearted, wait for the Lord!” (Psalm 27)
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Bereiten den Weg
“A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the Lord!” (Isaiah 40:3).
Welcome to Advent, everyone (albeit a bit belatedly, but welcome all the same)! Advent is all about preparation; it’s a time the Church—in her infinite wisdom, guided by the Holy Spirit—has set aside for us to really reflect about how ready our hearts are to receive Christ, and to make them ready! Prepare the way of the Lord! We’re just about one week in, and I am really loving it so far. I’m noticing that God is moving in my heart in patterns similar to the way we celebrate His movement in His people as a whole during this season; I feel like I’m living Advent!
“Preparing the way” has been, and continues to be, a big theme for us here. The truth is, God has been working here, in this area, this community, long before we ever showed up; we just get to see how things are unfolding! And so our mission is one that works with and within God’s movement in this community. We have been entrusted with the task of being part of the preparation for the way of a Life Teen missionary presence here: to pray with and for the people we meet every day, to live a life of radical trust in the Lord, to invite other people into that life, to call people to go deeper in relationship with God, to be present to everyone and love them with the love of Christ. We’re not doing anything new as far as God is concerned; we’re just here, as St. Peter says, to “remind you of these things, even though you already know them [...] to stir you up by a reminder” (2 Peter 1:12,13). But we can’t just come in and DO—there is a lot of preparation, a lot of building, a lot of prayer, communication, and getting to know people, a lot of learning that is involved in this paving of the way.
I don’t know how much you know about laying paving stones—I’m not that familiar with the process myself, but I have been able to glean a little bit of information from my time spent at Covecrest (shout-out to Jason Ball—thanks for all your sidewalk-laying wisdom!). Paving a walkway is a meticulous process; it’s not just drop-and-go, you can’t just roll out a sidewalk in one day. First you have to get the bricks to the place you want to start laying them (ask anyone who worked on maintenance this summer at camp about how easy that is sometime). Next, you have to level out the ground where the walkway is going to be—and you have to be willing to re-smooth and re-level (with patience!) if someone happens to walk onto your path, not realizing you’re laying a walkway. Only then can you start thinking about laying the actual stones down (and by this time, most people are already sweating)! If you want to create a walkway with two straight, parallel edges, you also have to cut some of the stones to fit—and if you happen to have a curve in your walkway, there’s a lot of gradual filling in with little bits of stone to make it level and even. Every stone has to fit together just so, both for the structural integrity of the sidewalk and for aesthetics—you can’t just place stones willy-nilly wherever you want! Sometimes, this involves a painstaking process of going back over the sidewalk a second or third time to make sure the spaces where the stones meet are straight. Then there’s filling in, finishing touches, and—FINALLY!—you have a sidewalk.
Gosh. I’m tired just thinking about it!
In this process of our preparing—paving—a way here, I can sometimes feel rather like I’m doing it with a blindfold on; I can’t see where we’re going or what we’re doing, how much we’ve already done or how much still needs to be done. As a matter of fact, most of the time I don’t even know where the bricks are! Someone else (that would be God in this analogy) hands them to me and tells me where to put them—if I need to move a little to the left or right, if I need to cut some of the bricks in half, or shave off a little piece to make it fit. It’s hard to not know so much—and to realize that in the big scheme of things, my job is relatively unimportant. I’m just the manual labor! God has the vision and the plan, He has all the supplies and the knowledge of how to lay a walkway in the first place! He just needs me to do what He tells me, trusting that even if I don’t do it perfectly, He will come behind me and make all my crooked lines straight.
Thank you for your continued prayers as I prepare my own heart, so that I can better prepare the way, “...while from behind, a voice shall sound in your ears: ‘This is the way; walk in it,’ when you would turn to the right or to the left” (Isaiah 30:21).
Welcome to Advent, everyone (albeit a bit belatedly, but welcome all the same)! Advent is all about preparation; it’s a time the Church—in her infinite wisdom, guided by the Holy Spirit—has set aside for us to really reflect about how ready our hearts are to receive Christ, and to make them ready! Prepare the way of the Lord! We’re just about one week in, and I am really loving it so far. I’m noticing that God is moving in my heart in patterns similar to the way we celebrate His movement in His people as a whole during this season; I feel like I’m living Advent!
“Preparing the way” has been, and continues to be, a big theme for us here. The truth is, God has been working here, in this area, this community, long before we ever showed up; we just get to see how things are unfolding! And so our mission is one that works with and within God’s movement in this community. We have been entrusted with the task of being part of the preparation for the way of a Life Teen missionary presence here: to pray with and for the people we meet every day, to live a life of radical trust in the Lord, to invite other people into that life, to call people to go deeper in relationship with God, to be present to everyone and love them with the love of Christ. We’re not doing anything new as far as God is concerned; we’re just here, as St. Peter says, to “remind you of these things, even though you already know them [...] to stir you up by a reminder” (2 Peter 1:12,13). But we can’t just come in and DO—there is a lot of preparation, a lot of building, a lot of prayer, communication, and getting to know people, a lot of learning that is involved in this paving of the way.
I don’t know how much you know about laying paving stones—I’m not that familiar with the process myself, but I have been able to glean a little bit of information from my time spent at Covecrest (shout-out to Jason Ball—thanks for all your sidewalk-laying wisdom!). Paving a walkway is a meticulous process; it’s not just drop-and-go, you can’t just roll out a sidewalk in one day. First you have to get the bricks to the place you want to start laying them (ask anyone who worked on maintenance this summer at camp about how easy that is sometime). Next, you have to level out the ground where the walkway is going to be—and you have to be willing to re-smooth and re-level (with patience!) if someone happens to walk onto your path, not realizing you’re laying a walkway. Only then can you start thinking about laying the actual stones down (and by this time, most people are already sweating)! If you want to create a walkway with two straight, parallel edges, you also have to cut some of the stones to fit—and if you happen to have a curve in your walkway, there’s a lot of gradual filling in with little bits of stone to make it level and even. Every stone has to fit together just so, both for the structural integrity of the sidewalk and for aesthetics—you can’t just place stones willy-nilly wherever you want! Sometimes, this involves a painstaking process of going back over the sidewalk a second or third time to make sure the spaces where the stones meet are straight. Then there’s filling in, finishing touches, and—FINALLY!—you have a sidewalk.
Gosh. I’m tired just thinking about it!
In this process of our preparing—paving—a way here, I can sometimes feel rather like I’m doing it with a blindfold on; I can’t see where we’re going or what we’re doing, how much we’ve already done or how much still needs to be done. As a matter of fact, most of the time I don’t even know where the bricks are! Someone else (that would be God in this analogy) hands them to me and tells me where to put them—if I need to move a little to the left or right, if I need to cut some of the bricks in half, or shave off a little piece to make it fit. It’s hard to not know so much—and to realize that in the big scheme of things, my job is relatively unimportant. I’m just the manual labor! God has the vision and the plan, He has all the supplies and the knowledge of how to lay a walkway in the first place! He just needs me to do what He tells me, trusting that even if I don’t do it perfectly, He will come behind me and make all my crooked lines straight.
Thank you for your continued prayers as I prepare my own heart, so that I can better prepare the way, “...while from behind, a voice shall sound in your ears: ‘This is the way; walk in it,’ when you would turn to the right or to the left” (Isaiah 30:21).
Monday, November 23, 2009
Einladen
Let me tell you one thing about our life here: it’s amazing! God is continuing to show up in so many uncountable ways—I love it. Our life is about to become a whole lot busier (at least externally...I feel like we’ve been busy since we’ve arrived here!) in the next month or so, as God has given us a whole host of opportunities for reaching out and building community: a Core retreat for the team here in Süsterseel in November, an XLT at a parish in Roermond (NL), and two retreats for teens and young adults in December. We’ll also be spending some time with the Core teams from parishes in the Netherlands when Chris and Erik fly out in December—so excited to see some of our missionary family! There’s just so much, I could go on and on about all the ways God is providing us to be able to invite people into deeper relationship with Him.
This theme of invitation has come up consistently in our prayer (and more than once on my blog, ich glaube...). God is continuing to prove to us that all we can do is invite; nothing we could say, nothing we could do can inspire any conversion or change lives. Only God can change hearts. Our role is simply to say, “come and see.” But if nothing else, we’re learning that this posture of invitation has incredible results!
As I mentioned, we’re having a couple retreats for teens and young adults here in December—the Core is planning the Joyful Noise retreat for the teens, and Fr. Roland is preparing a silent retreat for young adults. Thanks be to God, we’ve had amazing response from teens who are signing up left and right to go! We’ve had to print out additional copies of retreat forms so that we can give them to more teens. One of the biggest glory moments for me came when one of the teens invited her friend from school to go on retreat with her. When we were talking about it in the Life Teen office the other day she said, “I’m a missionary!” with so much excitement in her face, it brought tears to my eyes (I think we startled her a little bit when we all shouted “Exactly! Yes, you are!” at the same time...). That’s what it’s all about! Little moments of invitation, one after the other, that lead up to more and more people saying “yes” to God and what He wants to do in their lives. (oh, and p.s. her friend is coming on the retreat. Further proof that sometimes an invitation is all you need...)
I think this section from our Rule of Life defines what this mission is all about:
“Life Teen Mission bases are welcome places—a place where people are refreshed, restored, revived, and experience God; where the focus is not to escape ‘normal life,’ but to pursue the face of God and encounter Him personally. [...] Our goal is to conform our lives to the ultimate mission of the Church, the Great Commission: ‘Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations’ (Mt 28:19). We are committed to teach young people about God’s loving plan of salvation, to empower them with prayer and the truths of the Church, and to launch them into God’s mission.”
That one moment with that one teen in the office renewed my excitement for this mission, where more and more people are feeling empowered to live a missionary life—something we are all called to do—and invite people into relationship with Him. God has been doing the work long before we got here; we’re just now getting the chance—the privilege!—to watch it all unfold.
This theme of invitation has come up consistently in our prayer (and more than once on my blog, ich glaube...). God is continuing to prove to us that all we can do is invite; nothing we could say, nothing we could do can inspire any conversion or change lives. Only God can change hearts. Our role is simply to say, “come and see.” But if nothing else, we’re learning that this posture of invitation has incredible results!
As I mentioned, we’re having a couple retreats for teens and young adults here in December—the Core is planning the Joyful Noise retreat for the teens, and Fr. Roland is preparing a silent retreat for young adults. Thanks be to God, we’ve had amazing response from teens who are signing up left and right to go! We’ve had to print out additional copies of retreat forms so that we can give them to more teens. One of the biggest glory moments for me came when one of the teens invited her friend from school to go on retreat with her. When we were talking about it in the Life Teen office the other day she said, “I’m a missionary!” with so much excitement in her face, it brought tears to my eyes (I think we startled her a little bit when we all shouted “Exactly! Yes, you are!” at the same time...). That’s what it’s all about! Little moments of invitation, one after the other, that lead up to more and more people saying “yes” to God and what He wants to do in their lives. (oh, and p.s. her friend is coming on the retreat. Further proof that sometimes an invitation is all you need...)
I think this section from our Rule of Life defines what this mission is all about:
“Life Teen Mission bases are welcome places—a place where people are refreshed, restored, revived, and experience God; where the focus is not to escape ‘normal life,’ but to pursue the face of God and encounter Him personally. [...] Our goal is to conform our lives to the ultimate mission of the Church, the Great Commission: ‘Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations’ (Mt 28:19). We are committed to teach young people about God’s loving plan of salvation, to empower them with prayer and the truths of the Church, and to launch them into God’s mission.”
That one moment with that one teen in the office renewed my excitement for this mission, where more and more people are feeling empowered to live a missionary life—something we are all called to do—and invite people into relationship with Him. God has been doing the work long before we got here; we’re just now getting the chance—the privilege!—to watch it all unfold.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Ich spreche nicht.
I find myself in a rather odd predicament as I’m writing this blog: I don’t know what to say.
Just to clarify, this is new and different. Words are a big deal for me. My life seems to revolve around saying things (or not saying them, or wishing they were said, or hoping someone will say them…etc.), and so I’m not exactly sure what to do with this feeling of being speechless. But I think that it’s good, and that God is actually trying to reveal a greater truth through this experience; in fact, it parallels what God has been doing here in my own heart lately.
First things first: living in Germany, there is a need for us to learn German. Yes, I know that seems like a rather obvious thing to say; but what I’ve realized is that while it’s one thing to sit in the Mission Academy and laugh about how silly it is to say random German phrases from Rosetta Stone out loud, it is quite another thing to go to the dentist while using your very limited German, or to try to withdraw money from an ATM that is all in German, or to try and be relational and minister when all you can say is “Wie geht’s?” “Wo wonnst du?” “Was machst du gern?” “Was isst du gern?” (translation: How are you? Where do you live? What do you like to do? What do you like to eat?)
I am in a continuous position of being humbled through realizing that there is so much I CAN’T say; not because I don’t want to, not because I’m afraid of offending someone, not because I’m not sure if the other person is going to be receptive to what I’m going to say…I literally just do. not. have. the. words.
As you might imagine, this frustrates me to no end.
There is so much I want to say! There are so many people I want to reach out to, and I just don’t know how!
Ah….here is the beauty of what God is teaching me.
I was praying about this the other day, and how frustrated I was with not being able to speak, to share, to talk, wondering why God would want to bring me to this place where I can’t say anything (!); and God just spoke into that (haha, “spoke,” I know…let’s just say he revealed it to me), reminding me that in all my discerning about coming here this year, in all of our prayer in preparing for this mission, in everything He’s been revealing to all of us regarding our presence here, there has never once been any mention of speaking. I’ve been so caught up in the frustration of not being able to speak, that I’ve been missing out on all the other ways God is asking me to reach out, to invite, to love. God wants to stretch and change my conceptualization of what it means to be missionary; learning how to fulfill the Gospel call to “go out to the ends of the earth and proclaim the Good News” without words.
I’m starting to realize that I’ve been exerting so much effort I didn’t really need to exert in the first place. I’ve been thinking and acting like any of this mission depends on me or my ability to share (in a speaking sense of the word) God’s plans, and that if I can’t speak, then the “real” mission hasn’t started yet. I’ve felt like I’ve failed in a lot of situations because of my lack of ability to speak. The beautiful truth of the matter, though, is that God is bigger than any words I could use to talk about Him, and that in this moment, He is calling me to be even more dependent on Him through my inability to use words—to point back to Him through my living and acting and BEING more than through anything I could ever say.
Jesus is the Light and the Truth.
It is Jesus who converts. It is Jesus who reveals. It is Jesus who speaks.
All I can do is turn back to Him, to live as best I can the truth He’s revealed to me. All I need to do is be loved by Him and to love in return—to hope in His promises, to walk in His freedom, and to be a vessel of that hope and freedom for others.
Just to clarify, this is new and different. Words are a big deal for me. My life seems to revolve around saying things (or not saying them, or wishing they were said, or hoping someone will say them…etc.), and so I’m not exactly sure what to do with this feeling of being speechless. But I think that it’s good, and that God is actually trying to reveal a greater truth through this experience; in fact, it parallels what God has been doing here in my own heart lately.
First things first: living in Germany, there is a need for us to learn German. Yes, I know that seems like a rather obvious thing to say; but what I’ve realized is that while it’s one thing to sit in the Mission Academy and laugh about how silly it is to say random German phrases from Rosetta Stone out loud, it is quite another thing to go to the dentist while using your very limited German, or to try to withdraw money from an ATM that is all in German, or to try and be relational and minister when all you can say is “Wie geht’s?” “Wo wonnst du?” “Was machst du gern?” “Was isst du gern?” (translation: How are you? Where do you live? What do you like to do? What do you like to eat?)
I am in a continuous position of being humbled through realizing that there is so much I CAN’T say; not because I don’t want to, not because I’m afraid of offending someone, not because I’m not sure if the other person is going to be receptive to what I’m going to say…I literally just do. not. have. the. words.
As you might imagine, this frustrates me to no end.
There is so much I want to say! There are so many people I want to reach out to, and I just don’t know how!
Ah….here is the beauty of what God is teaching me.
I was praying about this the other day, and how frustrated I was with not being able to speak, to share, to talk, wondering why God would want to bring me to this place where I can’t say anything (!); and God just spoke into that (haha, “spoke,” I know…let’s just say he revealed it to me), reminding me that in all my discerning about coming here this year, in all of our prayer in preparing for this mission, in everything He’s been revealing to all of us regarding our presence here, there has never once been any mention of speaking. I’ve been so caught up in the frustration of not being able to speak, that I’ve been missing out on all the other ways God is asking me to reach out, to invite, to love. God wants to stretch and change my conceptualization of what it means to be missionary; learning how to fulfill the Gospel call to “go out to the ends of the earth and proclaim the Good News” without words.
I’m starting to realize that I’ve been exerting so much effort I didn’t really need to exert in the first place. I’ve been thinking and acting like any of this mission depends on me or my ability to share (in a speaking sense of the word) God’s plans, and that if I can’t speak, then the “real” mission hasn’t started yet. I’ve felt like I’ve failed in a lot of situations because of my lack of ability to speak. The beautiful truth of the matter, though, is that God is bigger than any words I could use to talk about Him, and that in this moment, He is calling me to be even more dependent on Him through my inability to use words—to point back to Him through my living and acting and BEING more than through anything I could ever say.
Jesus is the Light and the Truth.
It is Jesus who converts. It is Jesus who reveals. It is Jesus who speaks.
All I can do is turn back to Him, to live as best I can the truth He’s revealed to me. All I need to do is be loved by Him and to love in return—to hope in His promises, to walk in His freedom, and to be a vessel of that hope and freedom for others.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Hide and Do Not Seek
We’ve had amazingly full days since we’ve been here in Germany; I’ve been a little surprised, actually. I think I expected to have to wait around more until things “got going.” Here’s lesson number one of missionary life: God does not wait. He wastes no time diving right in if you let Him! Part of the reason we’ve had such a full schedule, I’ve realized, is because we pray so much—praise God! (just for you Fr. Paul). I guess I never really noticed how much time we set aside for prayer when I was living at Covecrest last year; everyone did it, so it wasn’t as noticeable. But now that we’re living smack dab in the middle of a whole bunch of people who don’t necessarily pray in the same way we do, we have to do things like make a schedule (what? What’s that?), and our schedule is built around prayer. I’m so thankful for the foundation that was laid last year during my formation; I’m just now beginning to realize how important maintaining a rhythm of prayer is.
Which brings me to lesson number two of missionary life: it’s amazing how much God will reveal to you when you give Him the chance! God is just beautifully answering my prayer, in ways that I never expected; I think I’m getting rather used to hearing God’s voice (even if He sometimes says things I don’t understand…)! First of all, a little background information to give you some perspective:
Two things you should know about me: I have always described myself as a take-charge kind of person, and I tend to get anxious when I don’t know what’s coming or when I don’t have control over any given situation. With these two characteristics combined, I tend to get somewhat “grabby” in unfamiliar situations and try to grasp at things or people that are familiar so that I feel I have something that kind of resembles control. Now, God has really been working on these quirks of mine over the course of the last year of formation, and I’ve come a long way. It’s easier for me to trust God with the details (or even the big chunks!) of my life that I don’t know anything about, and I’m getting more and more used to taking the backseat while God’s driving and just enjoying the ride. Fr. Jean C.J. d’Elbee says in I Believe in Love, “I have often noticed that to reward an act of confidence, Jesus gives us the occasion to make an even greater act of confidence.” So, because of how much I’ve progressed, Jesus has gifted me with the opportunity to trust Him more fully, to die to self, and to let go of control (and even vision of the future) more and more. Thanks, Jesus.
Humanly, this is incredibly difficult for me. The more Jesus prompts me to let go of control, the more something inside of me fights to have control (doesn’t St. Paul talk about this somewhere? Always doing what you don’t want to do?). Some days, it takes a great deal of effort for me to wake up and say, “God, I love you, and I trust you today. I know that you have great plans for me. You have promised to give me life to the fullest, and I trust that what you promise, you will also do. Give me the grace to live that reality today!”
But what a beautiful way to live! It’s been amazing for me to see evidence of God’s love for me; all the small ways He is fulfilling me and fulfilling His promises to me in the small, ordinary events of the day. A small example: I’ve gotten really used to an hour of Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament every morning to start my day. It’s something that I look forward to (yes, even on the days when I want to sleep in) because I’ve realized how much I need to hear God speak to me. Now that we’re living in a place that doesn’t offer Eucharistic Adoration every day (although we’ve been able to go to Mass every day, a blessing in itself), I’ve really been missing my daily holy hour. So one morning before we headed to Mass in the Netherlands, I just prayed a quick little prayer that God would give me some time during the day to just sit with him and pray. So we get to the convent where Mass was scheduled for 11:00 and, wouldn’t you know it, there was Jesus, exposed in the Blessed Sacrament. And we had a holy hour with Exposition before Mass that day. Thanks, Jesus!
That’s just one very, very small example of all the ways Jesus is gifting me—almost spoiling me, in fact—in response to my waiting for him. I’m learning that the struggle of living a life of holiness isn’t in choosing between the good and the bad, but seeing the good and then waiting for the best, the fullest of what God has in store for me. God keeps telling me to wait, to keep waiting, for Him to reveal more of His plan for me—a plan that I could not even begin to conceive of on my own. And let me tell you, it’s looking mighty good from where I’m sitting!
“‘Come,’ says my heart, ‘seek God’s face’ [...] I believe I shall enjoy the Lord’s goodness in the land of the living. Wiat for the Lord, take courage; be stouthearted, wait for the Lord!” (Psalm 27: 8, 13-14).
“Now hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what one sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance” (Romans 8:24-25).
“Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed” (1 John 3:2).
Which brings me to lesson number two of missionary life: it’s amazing how much God will reveal to you when you give Him the chance! God is just beautifully answering my prayer, in ways that I never expected; I think I’m getting rather used to hearing God’s voice (even if He sometimes says things I don’t understand…)! First of all, a little background information to give you some perspective:
Two things you should know about me: I have always described myself as a take-charge kind of person, and I tend to get anxious when I don’t know what’s coming or when I don’t have control over any given situation. With these two characteristics combined, I tend to get somewhat “grabby” in unfamiliar situations and try to grasp at things or people that are familiar so that I feel I have something that kind of resembles control. Now, God has really been working on these quirks of mine over the course of the last year of formation, and I’ve come a long way. It’s easier for me to trust God with the details (or even the big chunks!) of my life that I don’t know anything about, and I’m getting more and more used to taking the backseat while God’s driving and just enjoying the ride. Fr. Jean C.J. d’Elbee says in I Believe in Love, “I have often noticed that to reward an act of confidence, Jesus gives us the occasion to make an even greater act of confidence.” So, because of how much I’ve progressed, Jesus has gifted me with the opportunity to trust Him more fully, to die to self, and to let go of control (and even vision of the future) more and more. Thanks, Jesus.
Humanly, this is incredibly difficult for me. The more Jesus prompts me to let go of control, the more something inside of me fights to have control (doesn’t St. Paul talk about this somewhere? Always doing what you don’t want to do?). Some days, it takes a great deal of effort for me to wake up and say, “God, I love you, and I trust you today. I know that you have great plans for me. You have promised to give me life to the fullest, and I trust that what you promise, you will also do. Give me the grace to live that reality today!”
But what a beautiful way to live! It’s been amazing for me to see evidence of God’s love for me; all the small ways He is fulfilling me and fulfilling His promises to me in the small, ordinary events of the day. A small example: I’ve gotten really used to an hour of Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament every morning to start my day. It’s something that I look forward to (yes, even on the days when I want to sleep in) because I’ve realized how much I need to hear God speak to me. Now that we’re living in a place that doesn’t offer Eucharistic Adoration every day (although we’ve been able to go to Mass every day, a blessing in itself), I’ve really been missing my daily holy hour. So one morning before we headed to Mass in the Netherlands, I just prayed a quick little prayer that God would give me some time during the day to just sit with him and pray. So we get to the convent where Mass was scheduled for 11:00 and, wouldn’t you know it, there was Jesus, exposed in the Blessed Sacrament. And we had a holy hour with Exposition before Mass that day. Thanks, Jesus!
That’s just one very, very small example of all the ways Jesus is gifting me—almost spoiling me, in fact—in response to my waiting for him. I’m learning that the struggle of living a life of holiness isn’t in choosing between the good and the bad, but seeing the good and then waiting for the best, the fullest of what God has in store for me. God keeps telling me to wait, to keep waiting, for Him to reveal more of His plan for me—a plan that I could not even begin to conceive of on my own. And let me tell you, it’s looking mighty good from where I’m sitting!
“‘Come,’ says my heart, ‘seek God’s face’ [...] I believe I shall enjoy the Lord’s goodness in the land of the living. Wiat for the Lord, take courage; be stouthearted, wait for the Lord!” (Psalm 27: 8, 13-14).
“Now hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what one sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance” (Romans 8:24-25).
“Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed” (1 John 3:2).
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Danielle the Explorer
The last time I blogged, I mentioned how much of a whirlwind our first day in Germany was; and it hasn’t stopped since! There has been so much to see, so much to do, so many people to meet, so much to pray about—I really don’t know where the day goes!
Over this past week, I’ve been amazed at how beautiful this place is, how fun discovering new things can be, and how much God has really gifted me with being able to be here. I feel like every day I’m in a new episode of that cartoon “Dora the Explorer;” we’ve done or tried something new every day! Here’s the Reader’s Digest version of what our time in Germany has been like so far:
Monday—All of us slept in (praise God!), trying to get the best of jet-lag from the get-go. I’m not going to lie, it was nice to sleep until noon ☺ The church bells woke us up and then Wendy (one of the teens who goes to Life Teen in Süsterseel) came to our house. She prayed mid-afternoon prayer with us (we kinda missed morning prayer…), and then she came grocery shopping with us. It turned out to be a good thing she was there, because we forgot that going grocery shopping in Germany involves reading labels in a different language—something we’re not entirely skilled at yet (we guess a lot). Wendy was more than willing to help, and the trip ended up being a live German lesson, with all of us asking “Was ist das?” a lot, and her rattling off another German word: “mütze” “kraüter” “jacke” “blumen” etc. All in all, it was a pretty successful trip.
Tuesday—Unpacking! We spent the day getting used to living in this house, moving things around, and generally starting to try and make a house a home. We’ve been so blessed with donations from all sorts of people—everything we have was given to us—but we’re still sort of half living out of suitcases. Today was also spent trying to figure out how to work the radiators in our house. We met Gaby and Regina, who work at the church in Süsterseel, to get to know them and to try and set up our German classes.
Wednesday—Bernadette and Monica (JJ’s mom and aunt—what a small world!) came over to the house to meet us and to talk and pray about what’s going on in youth ministry in this part of the world. It was so great to meet them; hopefully we’ll have lots more interaction over the course of the year! It was also great to meet a little bit of JJ’s family (thanks for sharing them with us, brother!) and see just how far God’s family reaches. It’s been really awesome to see how comfortable it feels to meet and pray with other people who are trying to grow in faith with God; it turns out, relationship with Christ really is a universal language! We all felt incredibly hopeful after we met; we all walked away with the feeling that GOD IS HERE! and I just can’t wait to see what else He’s got in store for all of us.
Thursday—Most of the day was spent praying and talking about what we received in prayer; we joined in the Life Teen holy hour a little early since there’s such a big time difference from here and the US. God moved in holy hour (of course!) and really confirmed a lot of what He’s already revealed in prayer about this community, this year of mission, and each of our hearts. We walked away from that feeling renewed and re-encouraged that what we’re doing is exactly what God has in mind for us. Thursday night is also a big night at the Life Teen office; we have open office hours starting at 5 pm, and then a Bible study that starts at 8 pm. It was really good just to be there and see some of the teens we’ll be journeying with this year—to connect through music (a universal language!), to talk about what it means to be a missionary, and to have some more German lessons ☺ We spent the majority of the night talking with a young man named Mark who is really interested in Scripture, and who faces a lot of opposition from some colleagues at work about his faith (keep him in your prayers!). Between his limited English and our limited German, we were able to have a really great conversation, dank sei Gott!
Friday—We spent the day in Aachen (a city close by) with our new friend, Rosa, who is from Mexico, lives in Germany, and speaks great English! We had a great Mexican lunch (go figure, smack dab in the middle of German countryside on the border of the Netherlands) and then went with her to see to her husband’s beehives and pick chestnuts. We spent the day talking about our conversion stories and how we’re all trying to be faithful to where God is calling us! She is going to be one of our prayer warriors here, I’m sure.
Saturday—We went grocery shopping again (things come in much smaller quantities here) and met Wendy’s parents at the grocery store. I can’t believe how many people we’re meeting so far! In a small town, news of new people travels fast; everyone knows who we are. We found out that our German classes start next week; we have a private tutor coming to the house until January, when we’ll start regular classes at a school. We spent some time in prayer discerning what to do for the Lifenight on Sunday; there was some schedule re-arranging and we’re running our first Lifenight in Süsterseel, “Meet the Missionaries,” tomorrow. All I can say is that our night involves the “Bunny Bunny” game and a pretty funny skit involving Sr. Mary Assunta. We also went to have dinner at Gaby’s house tonight, which was so great! She has some really awesome stories of places she’s moved with her husband, who’s in the military, and she just extended hospitality to us in an amazing way. Hopefully soon we can return the favor!
Phew! It’s a lot, I know. There’s been tons of meeting and greeting and praying and learning since we’ve been here, and God is not done yet! I’m excited at the thought of just having scratched the surface of how God wants to reveal Himself to us through this community, our prayer, and the exchange of hospitality with the people who we’re now living with. I could write a whole other blog about hospitality and it’s important place in this mission (hmmm, foreshadowing?). As the Life Teen Missions Rule of Life states, “Life Teen Mission bases are welcome places;” I think now, more than ever, I’m realizing that the posture of welcoming first starts in my own heart, and only then can I open up for everyone else. Thank you for all your prayers as I wait on the Lord and how He wants to move.
Over this past week, I’ve been amazed at how beautiful this place is, how fun discovering new things can be, and how much God has really gifted me with being able to be here. I feel like every day I’m in a new episode of that cartoon “Dora the Explorer;” we’ve done or tried something new every day! Here’s the Reader’s Digest version of what our time in Germany has been like so far:
Monday—All of us slept in (praise God!), trying to get the best of jet-lag from the get-go. I’m not going to lie, it was nice to sleep until noon ☺ The church bells woke us up and then Wendy (one of the teens who goes to Life Teen in Süsterseel) came to our house. She prayed mid-afternoon prayer with us (we kinda missed morning prayer…), and then she came grocery shopping with us. It turned out to be a good thing she was there, because we forgot that going grocery shopping in Germany involves reading labels in a different language—something we’re not entirely skilled at yet (we guess a lot). Wendy was more than willing to help, and the trip ended up being a live German lesson, with all of us asking “Was ist das?” a lot, and her rattling off another German word: “mütze” “kraüter” “jacke” “blumen” etc. All in all, it was a pretty successful trip.
Tuesday—Unpacking! We spent the day getting used to living in this house, moving things around, and generally starting to try and make a house a home. We’ve been so blessed with donations from all sorts of people—everything we have was given to us—but we’re still sort of half living out of suitcases. Today was also spent trying to figure out how to work the radiators in our house. We met Gaby and Regina, who work at the church in Süsterseel, to get to know them and to try and set up our German classes.
Wednesday—Bernadette and Monica (JJ’s mom and aunt—what a small world!) came over to the house to meet us and to talk and pray about what’s going on in youth ministry in this part of the world. It was so great to meet them; hopefully we’ll have lots more interaction over the course of the year! It was also great to meet a little bit of JJ’s family (thanks for sharing them with us, brother!) and see just how far God’s family reaches. It’s been really awesome to see how comfortable it feels to meet and pray with other people who are trying to grow in faith with God; it turns out, relationship with Christ really is a universal language! We all felt incredibly hopeful after we met; we all walked away with the feeling that GOD IS HERE! and I just can’t wait to see what else He’s got in store for all of us.
Thursday—Most of the day was spent praying and talking about what we received in prayer; we joined in the Life Teen holy hour a little early since there’s such a big time difference from here and the US. God moved in holy hour (of course!) and really confirmed a lot of what He’s already revealed in prayer about this community, this year of mission, and each of our hearts. We walked away from that feeling renewed and re-encouraged that what we’re doing is exactly what God has in mind for us. Thursday night is also a big night at the Life Teen office; we have open office hours starting at 5 pm, and then a Bible study that starts at 8 pm. It was really good just to be there and see some of the teens we’ll be journeying with this year—to connect through music (a universal language!), to talk about what it means to be a missionary, and to have some more German lessons ☺ We spent the majority of the night talking with a young man named Mark who is really interested in Scripture, and who faces a lot of opposition from some colleagues at work about his faith (keep him in your prayers!). Between his limited English and our limited German, we were able to have a really great conversation, dank sei Gott!
Friday—We spent the day in Aachen (a city close by) with our new friend, Rosa, who is from Mexico, lives in Germany, and speaks great English! We had a great Mexican lunch (go figure, smack dab in the middle of German countryside on the border of the Netherlands) and then went with her to see to her husband’s beehives and pick chestnuts. We spent the day talking about our conversion stories and how we’re all trying to be faithful to where God is calling us! She is going to be one of our prayer warriors here, I’m sure.
Saturday—We went grocery shopping again (things come in much smaller quantities here) and met Wendy’s parents at the grocery store. I can’t believe how many people we’re meeting so far! In a small town, news of new people travels fast; everyone knows who we are. We found out that our German classes start next week; we have a private tutor coming to the house until January, when we’ll start regular classes at a school. We spent some time in prayer discerning what to do for the Lifenight on Sunday; there was some schedule re-arranging and we’re running our first Lifenight in Süsterseel, “Meet the Missionaries,” tomorrow. All I can say is that our night involves the “Bunny Bunny” game and a pretty funny skit involving Sr. Mary Assunta. We also went to have dinner at Gaby’s house tonight, which was so great! She has some really awesome stories of places she’s moved with her husband, who’s in the military, and she just extended hospitality to us in an amazing way. Hopefully soon we can return the favor!
Phew! It’s a lot, I know. There’s been tons of meeting and greeting and praying and learning since we’ve been here, and God is not done yet! I’m excited at the thought of just having scratched the surface of how God wants to reveal Himself to us through this community, our prayer, and the exchange of hospitality with the people who we’re now living with. I could write a whole other blog about hospitality and it’s important place in this mission (hmmm, foreshadowing?). As the Life Teen Missions Rule of Life states, “Life Teen Mission bases are welcome places;” I think now, more than ever, I’m realizing that the posture of welcoming first starts in my own heart, and only then can I open up for everyone else. Thank you for all your prayers as I wait on the Lord and how He wants to move.
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