When you read many of the beautiful saints of the church, Many of them ask God to suffer. I do not know about you, but for a long time I found this confusing. Why would the saints ask for suffering? Doesn't God want us to be happy? I began to pray about and chew on my confusion about this desire in JOY that the saints had. When I kept running into in prayer was that the crucifixion was how God choose to show us what love is. To love someone is to suffer for them, to offer all that you are for the person, and to live it with joy. I believe that as sinners suffering is how we discover that we are loved and the beautiful way that in our excess from God we love others.
In chewing on this idea of suffering, I discovered a great call to do something radical to try and understand what little I could about what my intellect was learning. I wanted these ideas to be more than just head knowledge. I wanted to be able to live it, I wanted them instilled in my heart. I prayed about what I could possibly do and when the Lord told me what to do, I did not know if I could do what He was asking, but I gave Him my yes. The Yes was a 20 day bread and water fast - minus Sundays. (before I continue on I want to put a disclaimer, I believe that when it comes to fasting you should do what the Lord invites you to. I would not have been able to do this if it was of my own will. God has many facets and each one of us reflects one of those facets, the same goes for our relationship, just because I was invited to do this does not mean that you are too.) The last day of my fast is Monday.
As I began the fast my desire was a radical new encounter with God. I desired to know Him deeper and to be challenged to not be complacent in my faith. I wanted to know His love so that I could be me, the beautiful daughter that He has created and loves so much. What I could have never imagined is discovering the beauty of community and relationships in suffering. These desires began to become reality pretty quickly on in the fast. Growing deeper in love with God always requires moments of looking in the mirror. I noticed that in some relationships in my life I was angry and frustrated that they did not love me, but what I had failed to notice is that I had not given them the opportunity too. I had been hiding the beautiful daughter and all they truly wanted was to love her. This was the first lesson of suffering that I learned. We must offer ourselves to be in relationship and to love. We all have a beautiful mission that only we can individually fulfill, we must offer that, but for me this was difficult. I didn't want to get hurt, but God showed me that His love is truly unconditional and that He has my back. The greatest gift is knowing that we are sinners and we are going to mess up, but we are also beautiful sons and daughters of God, that are loved more than we know.
The other beauty in suffering that I learned is about community. We are communal people, we were created to be in relationship. I did not realize this, but everything I do affects the people in my life. We are constantly beings that are in relationship. I can affect things for the good and for the bad. There are many experiences of this, some I could put into words and some that are still difficult to. The beauty of suffering is that you learn how to authentically love, because excess of grace from God is the love that you are offering. There were days during the fast when temptation was almost unbearable, but I would offer it to God for whoever was on my heart at the time. This did not always happen, but every couple of days or so I would have a conversation with someone and just think, Lord you are doing beautiful things. There is truly nothing more humbling to me than when a friend tells you that she can see the grace coming from the sacrifice. We must embrace each other in our lives. We must pray for each other. If I am walking or in mass and a person comes on my heart I just say a quick prayer for them, I thank God for them and I ask that He grace them with what ever they need. A reminder to me that we are not alone and this is how God wants it to be. The greatest gifts in life are people. When we suffer in Joy for those in our lives, we learn that we are loved and we learn how to love them in right order.
The final aspect of looking at community was the idea of being a gift. He showed me through this journey that we must be detached from people so they can be gifts from God in our lives. He has given them to us for our good and to help us grow closer to Him. Maybe its a person on a street that you have a brief encounter with or a lasting friendship. People are not ours to covet, but to be in freedom with. I always think of a marriage and how it is described as two freely willed people. We must be free to truly love. Another neat aspect of looking at relationships as gifts is that they are for community again. When I am in relationship with someone, I am a gift to them and they are a gift to me, but then through that shared relationship we become gifts to others. Everything is communal, everything is for the other.
So why did the saints ask to suffer, I can not speak for them, but in my own life I found that it was to be who I was created to be. To grow in relationship with God, to discover who I am as His daughter, and then to live her and share her with all the gifts that He puts in my life. We can not discover these things without being stripped of our vices and relying on God.
Let us attune our hearts to sacrifice, even in the little ways day to day, that we might love God more deeply and all the many gifts He gives. Look for the miracles each day and for the times in little or big ways that you can offer something for the good of others. I promise you, that you will find a JOY and LOVE that are more beautiful than you could ever has imagined.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Friday, October 1, 2010
The Value of Friendship..
For the past little while I have been praying a prayer for a spouse through the intercession of St. Raphel. There is a line in the prayer that I have been pondering for quite sometime. The line is this "St. Rapael, angel of chaste courtship, bless our friendship and our love that sin may have no part in it." Bless our friendship? I began to wonder what does friendship have to do with finding a husband. In a world that is now known as the "hook up" cultural, this was a legit question. I have learned through a lot of reading and praying that we have lost the value of relationship. We have lost what it means to be male and female. When we loose site of how we have been created, we easily loose site of how we are called to be in relationship with one another. I now believe that frienship allows the freedom for God to work in relationships especially in realtionships of the opposite sex.
I have been reading a lot about Theology of the Body. I love it. A book called Heaven's Song by Christopher West was recommended to me. It is a book about the hidden talks that JPII wrote, but never gave as audiences. I have just begun to read the book, but it has already impacted my life. JPII quotes the verse from song of songs " You have stolen my heart my sister my bride.." JPII goes on to encourage all of us to see each other as brother and sister. By using this quote he argues that the lover saw his bride first as sister and then as bride. By seeing and loving each other first as brother and sister we are able to truly love. When we see each other as romantic intrests first, people become objects. By seeing people first as brother and sister, they remain persons and not objects in our hearts. JPII argues that we will always want the best for our brother and sister.. The father may reveal a deeper relationship through this openess, but JPII argues that this mindset is essential for any relationship. We must see people as persons in freedom, not objects of our own control..
Friendship creates an amazing foundation with which there is freedom for the Holy Spirit to move. I have read so much that we are called to love everyone. I found myself asking the question, how is that possible. With seeing each other as brother and sisters and wanting the best for them, I believe that this protects our hearts to love. We can love freely because we know that the Holy Spirit is alive and well within us. I believe that this is just the 3ft section of a very deep pool, but it is an essential first step. To be friends is to desire relationship and to see everyone that God places in our life as persons. Then we are truly in freedom to love..
So Father bless all of our friendships, especially those of the opposite sex. Help us to see each other as persons and not objects. AMEN!!
I have been reading a lot about Theology of the Body. I love it. A book called Heaven's Song by Christopher West was recommended to me. It is a book about the hidden talks that JPII wrote, but never gave as audiences. I have just begun to read the book, but it has already impacted my life. JPII quotes the verse from song of songs " You have stolen my heart my sister my bride.." JPII goes on to encourage all of us to see each other as brother and sister. By using this quote he argues that the lover saw his bride first as sister and then as bride. By seeing and loving each other first as brother and sister we are able to truly love. When we see each other as romantic intrests first, people become objects. By seeing people first as brother and sister, they remain persons and not objects in our hearts. JPII argues that we will always want the best for our brother and sister.. The father may reveal a deeper relationship through this openess, but JPII argues that this mindset is essential for any relationship. We must see people as persons in freedom, not objects of our own control..
Friendship creates an amazing foundation with which there is freedom for the Holy Spirit to move. I have read so much that we are called to love everyone. I found myself asking the question, how is that possible. With seeing each other as brother and sisters and wanting the best for them, I believe that this protects our hearts to love. We can love freely because we know that the Holy Spirit is alive and well within us. I believe that this is just the 3ft section of a very deep pool, but it is an essential first step. To be friends is to desire relationship and to see everyone that God places in our life as persons. Then we are truly in freedom to love..
So Father bless all of our friendships, especially those of the opposite sex. Help us to see each other as persons and not objects. AMEN!!
Living as Daughter...
Awhile ago I began to read about Marriage and the Domestic Church. I was hoping to find the keys to being the best wife and mother one day. I did and continue to find helpful perspective on those things, but what I did not expect was that in a way I had missed the whole point, the beginning piece I was running from. Being a virtuous Christian mother did not start with finding the right man and having kids, it all started with being a daughter. There where so many comparisons to Mary the Mother of God. I found myself continuously asking the question, Mary how did you do it. How did you say yes and mean it. The answer that I found is that Mary knew without a doubt that she was a Daughter to her parents, but more importantly she was a Daughter that was loved by God the Father. She knew then at the Annunciation and she knows now that she is taken care of and protected and SO LOVED... This began the last two months of healing. A lot of of hard questions and some periods of silence. The journey has been beautiful and so in this first entry I shall share attempt to put the journey in words..
Being a daughter.. The more I read about Mother Mary, the more I realized that I was running from this very thing. I could not wrap my mind around being an earthly daughter more or less allowing God the Father to love me as his beloved daughter.. I was running and had been since I could remember.. It is funny to me how easily the evil one is able to disguise distractions to what is really going on. I found myself reflecting a lot on the story of the Prodigal Son. Not many people know this, but I had a very easy life style growing up. I had amazing experiences, was able to go to a private high school and college. In my heart I have struggled alot with being in relationship with my parents. I had for so long believed a lie that I would never be good enough. When I was 15 I began to go to church again and I allowed this to become a rift in my parents and I relationship. It was and has been a beautiful journey and now I am able to pray and share faith with my parents... Even when I thought they didn't my parents loved me. We do not always understand everyone we are called to be in relationship with and we hurt people, but love is stronger... it is the greatest after all. I believed the lies that my dad wasn't around because he didn't love me, I wasn't skinny and pretty like my sisters so they didn't love me.... LIES... Cunning, YES HE IS... Back to the Prodigal Son imagery.. So I ran away... I ran first to IN and then to AZ... I had protected myself so I thought. I could choose to answer the phone or not... I could choose to be in their life or not. For a long time I have chosen to not be, and it is now for those times that I regret the most.... The moment when this all came together happened only about a week ago. I was feeling really down about not having a job and believing these LIES... So for a month I did not talk to my parents, after they had been walking with me and encouraging me... The Father had begun to work on my heart and was leading to this final light bulb.. I finally did receive a job and talked to my mom about it. She asked me if I had gotten mail from her. I told her I had not. She would not tell me what it was... I waited a couple of days after we talked to go and get the letter. When I opened the letter and as I read it, the image in my heart was of the Prodigal Son coming home and being received at a banquet. I sat in my car and tears just flowed. My mom loved me.. Even after I had not talked to her.. Her love was greater.. The topic in the letter was the very thing that I did not think she loved about me.. The Father is good. I was loved as a daughter so much... I allowed the Lord to show me the lies that had blocked this relationship... I was a daughter... I could allow my parents to love me in that way..
I have always struggled with God as Father... I do not anymore... I realized that I had projected a lot of earthly ideas onto God. I realized that I had allowed a lot of lies to control my image of my earthly father and then those images I projected onto God. A bit of a side note, but I have truly learned humility through this journey. We do not always get it right, but my parents did the best they could. As much as I could have had time back, I know because they have told me, that they to wish they knew then what they know now... I was afraid... I love to journal. I believe that this is how the Father speaks to me best and most consistently. In my journal the Father calls me his precious daughter.. He has told me time and time again who I am as his daughter. His relationship with each of His daughters is different. There are always two bible verses that remind me of this intimate relationship. The first is Jeremiah 29:11.. God has a plan for me and it is one that is full of hope. The second is a verse from Psalm 139 that reminds me He knew me before I was born and He has ever hair on my head counted. He loves me as daughter... My fiat back to Him... my yes back to Him... just as Mary's fiat.. is now to LIVE AS A DAUGHTER... This was the foundation which Mary stood on and never looked back. For the past 7 days of my life it has been my battle cry. The Father has great plans for me. There are a lot of things I am waiting on and as I continue to post they will become evident. I know one thing that is everything.. I am a daughter to my parents and to my family, but most importantly in the very way that I have been created... I am loved as a daughter and the greatest thanks I can give my earthly parents and my heavenly father is to LIVE AS DAUGHTER!!
I believe strongly in confirmations and I got one last night. At a bible study I was at last night we read St. Paul's letter to Titus. For some time we focused on why Paul would emphasis that he knows he is a Son of God. One of the participants shared that in acknowledging that he was a Son he was able to then be a father because through this relationship he knew what his mission was and how to live it out. Paul trusted as Mary trusted that being a son and a daughter meant everything. Paul and Mary I believed both served from that very foundation. While I know nothing of what it means to be a son I am learning what it means to be a daughter. I have learned that as daughters we are beautiful gifts to our world. There is such a great need for women to be as we were created to be. I believe that this journey begins not with our gifts, but with being a BELOVED DAUGHTER in our families, in our intimate times with the Father, and with everyone that God puts in our path for how ever long they are in our lives.
Being a daughter.. The more I read about Mother Mary, the more I realized that I was running from this very thing. I could not wrap my mind around being an earthly daughter more or less allowing God the Father to love me as his beloved daughter.. I was running and had been since I could remember.. It is funny to me how easily the evil one is able to disguise distractions to what is really going on. I found myself reflecting a lot on the story of the Prodigal Son. Not many people know this, but I had a very easy life style growing up. I had amazing experiences, was able to go to a private high school and college. In my heart I have struggled alot with being in relationship with my parents. I had for so long believed a lie that I would never be good enough. When I was 15 I began to go to church again and I allowed this to become a rift in my parents and I relationship. It was and has been a beautiful journey and now I am able to pray and share faith with my parents... Even when I thought they didn't my parents loved me. We do not always understand everyone we are called to be in relationship with and we hurt people, but love is stronger... it is the greatest after all. I believed the lies that my dad wasn't around because he didn't love me, I wasn't skinny and pretty like my sisters so they didn't love me.... LIES... Cunning, YES HE IS... Back to the Prodigal Son imagery.. So I ran away... I ran first to IN and then to AZ... I had protected myself so I thought. I could choose to answer the phone or not... I could choose to be in their life or not. For a long time I have chosen to not be, and it is now for those times that I regret the most.... The moment when this all came together happened only about a week ago. I was feeling really down about not having a job and believing these LIES... So for a month I did not talk to my parents, after they had been walking with me and encouraging me... The Father had begun to work on my heart and was leading to this final light bulb.. I finally did receive a job and talked to my mom about it. She asked me if I had gotten mail from her. I told her I had not. She would not tell me what it was... I waited a couple of days after we talked to go and get the letter. When I opened the letter and as I read it, the image in my heart was of the Prodigal Son coming home and being received at a banquet. I sat in my car and tears just flowed. My mom loved me.. Even after I had not talked to her.. Her love was greater.. The topic in the letter was the very thing that I did not think she loved about me.. The Father is good. I was loved as a daughter so much... I allowed the Lord to show me the lies that had blocked this relationship... I was a daughter... I could allow my parents to love me in that way..
I have always struggled with God as Father... I do not anymore... I realized that I had projected a lot of earthly ideas onto God. I realized that I had allowed a lot of lies to control my image of my earthly father and then those images I projected onto God. A bit of a side note, but I have truly learned humility through this journey. We do not always get it right, but my parents did the best they could. As much as I could have had time back, I know because they have told me, that they to wish they knew then what they know now... I was afraid... I love to journal. I believe that this is how the Father speaks to me best and most consistently. In my journal the Father calls me his precious daughter.. He has told me time and time again who I am as his daughter. His relationship with each of His daughters is different. There are always two bible verses that remind me of this intimate relationship. The first is Jeremiah 29:11.. God has a plan for me and it is one that is full of hope. The second is a verse from Psalm 139 that reminds me He knew me before I was born and He has ever hair on my head counted. He loves me as daughter... My fiat back to Him... my yes back to Him... just as Mary's fiat.. is now to LIVE AS A DAUGHTER... This was the foundation which Mary stood on and never looked back. For the past 7 days of my life it has been my battle cry. The Father has great plans for me. There are a lot of things I am waiting on and as I continue to post they will become evident. I know one thing that is everything.. I am a daughter to my parents and to my family, but most importantly in the very way that I have been created... I am loved as a daughter and the greatest thanks I can give my earthly parents and my heavenly father is to LIVE AS DAUGHTER!!
I believe strongly in confirmations and I got one last night. At a bible study I was at last night we read St. Paul's letter to Titus. For some time we focused on why Paul would emphasis that he knows he is a Son of God. One of the participants shared that in acknowledging that he was a Son he was able to then be a father because through this relationship he knew what his mission was and how to live it out. Paul trusted as Mary trusted that being a son and a daughter meant everything. Paul and Mary I believed both served from that very foundation. While I know nothing of what it means to be a son I am learning what it means to be a daughter. I have learned that as daughters we are beautiful gifts to our world. There is such a great need for women to be as we were created to be. I believe that this journey begins not with our gifts, but with being a BELOVED DAUGHTER in our families, in our intimate times with the Father, and with everyone that God puts in our path for how ever long they are in our lives.
Introduction
The Lord has led me on a beautiful journey of healing these past two months. I have so much on my heart that I thought why not write it down. Grammar and writing is not my forte. I only hope that it will not distract from the message. I write these mostly for myself, to put my thoughts in writing. I also felt led to share them. I am just a girl in search of Courageous Virtue. If something touches you I would love to know.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)