Lenten post

I hope everyone has had a very blessed and profitable Lent so far!

I wanted to list some of the books I'm reading this time around:
Pray, Hope, and Don't Worry (Diane Allen)
I chose this one because I had a deep desire to know more about St. Pio... and I was not disappointed. While the stories of miraculous healings and bilocation are amazing, it was his ministry to others in the confessional that left me awed. The Lord gave him the ability to "read souls" (for want of a better term), which produced a holy fear in the hearts of all those around him. The people who came to him for confession who were repentant and humble were comforted with the love of a spiritual father... those who tried to puff themselves up, or hide their sins, or have a proud attitude, were oftentimes chastised and thrown out. It was this "tough love" that brought them back, truly repentant this time, over and over again.

My initial thought while reading this was, "I would be terrified to be in the presence of this man... what would he say to me?"

Then I realized that if my reaction to him was one of deference and fear, what more should I feel in the presence of a Holy God?

Yes, I realize that His Mercy most definitely needs to come into play, here... but it doesn't hurt to have strong reminders that He is a Holy God, and I am a sinner in desperate need of a Savior.


Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (C.S. Lewis)
I'm still in the middle of this one, and loving it... of course. So far the best quote is this one:

"All may yet be well. This is true. Meanwhile you have the waiting... and while you wait, you still have to go on living -- if only one could go underground, hibernate, sleep it out. And then... the horrible by-products of anxiety; the incessant, circular movement of the thoughts, even the Pagan temptation to keep watch for irrational omens. And one prays; but mainly such prayers as are themselves a form of anguish.

"Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith. I don't agree at all. They are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the Passion of Christ. For the beginning of the Passion -- the first move, so to speak -- is in Gethsemane. In Gethsemane a very strange and significant thing seems to have happened.

"It is clear from many of His sayings that Our Lord had long foreseen His death. He knew what conduct such as His, in a world such as we have made of this, must inevitably lead to. But it is clear that this knowledge must somehow have been withdrawn from Him before He prayed in Gethsemane. He could not, with whatever reservation about the Father's will, have prayed that the cup might pass and simultaneously known that it would not. That is both a logical and physical impossibility. You see what this involves? Lest any trial incident to humanity should be lacking, the torments of hope -- of suspense, anxiety -- were at the last moment loosed upon Him -- the supposed possibility that, after all, He might, He just conceivably might, be spared the supreme horror. There was precedent. Isaac had been spared: he too at the last moment, he also against all apparent probability. It was not quite impossible...


"We all try to accept with some sort of submission our afflictions when they actually arrive. But the prayer in Gethsemane shows that the preceding anxiety is equally God's will and equally part of our human destiny. The perfect Man experienced it. And the servant is not greater than the master. We are Christians, not Stoics."

Shirt of Flame (Heather King)
I have absolutely loved her other two books: Parched and Redeemed, so when I saw that one of my favorite authors had written a book about one of my favorite saints (St. Therese), I knew this had to go on my list. I look forward to settling in and savoring every bit of this.


Wish You Were Here (Amy Welborn)
I had the privilege of meeting Amy, her husband, and her two small sons at a blogging conference many years ago. She is a well-known Catholic blogger who wrote this book after losing her husband suddenly. While I find the subject matter heartrending and terrifying, I long to read how Jesus has carried her through even something as devastating as this.


In addition to these wonderful books that have already given me so much to think about, I downloaded Audrey Assad's new album "Heart," which has been a constant on my iPod ever since.

Need a preview? How about this:

I find the words so comforting and so haunting:

"My faith is not a fire
As much as it's a glow
A little burning ember in my weary soul
And it's not too much
It's just enough to get me home
'Cause your love moves slow

Not that I'm ever going to meet her, of course, but if I could, I would say thank you, Audrey, for writing the words I'd never be able to get out... and yet describe my inner life so well.

May God continue to bless you all during Lent!

I figured no one had noticed

I was pretty sure no one would notice if I just stopped blogging. However, I just got a call yesterday from a friend who said, "Do you know that you haven't posted since March 20th? My kids keep wondering when you're going to post something new!"

For you, Malia, I'll post something!

Lent has continued to be a big blessing here in our household, and I hope it has been in yours as well. The crown of thorns poster on our door has gone from this to this:

A lot of the flowers have fallen off (bad off-brand tape!), so it's been "refilled" a few times over.

What gets me the most about this whole thing, as I mentioned before, is that I know what I've put on this door. The rest represents a whole lot of little sacrifices done by the kids that are known only to Jesus. Now I must admit, there are a few that I do know about -- either the sacrifice done was easily noticed, or I came in when they were doing it. I can tell you quite honestly, I don't think there was ever a time in my childhood when I would have done some of the things that they have done. I'm a big "hey! Look at me and the wonderful things I've done!" sort of person, and I still lack the spiritual maturity I'm seeing in the lives of these kids that I have the privilege of raising.

I'm reading several good books, most notably A Little Daily Wisdom: Through the Year with Saint Teresa of Avila (thanks to the recommendation of Julie over at Happy Catholic) and The Weight of Glory by (who else?) C.S. Lewis. If nothing else, his talk entitled "Learning in War-Time" should be required reading for anyone like me who battles fear and anxiety on a regular basis. He covers that so well and fills me with hope every time. I cannot read C.S. Lewis and come away unchanged and unencouraged. One particular part of this talk that I loved best is this:

I spoke just now of fiddling while Rome burns. But to a Christian the true tragedy of Nero must be not that he fiddled while the city was on fire but that he fiddled on the brink of hell... [E]very Christian... must at all times face [the] question... how it is right, or even psychologically possible, for creatures who are every moment advancing either to Heaven or to hell to spend any fraction of the little time allowed them in this world on such comparative trivialities as literature or art, mathematics or biology. If human culture can stand up to that, it can stand up to anything. To admit that we can retain our interest in learning under the shadow of these eternal issues but not under the shadow of [insert fear here] would be to admit that our ears are closed to the voice of reason and very wide open to the voice of our nerves and our mass emotions.

Amen.

Another huge lesson for me was found in Psalm 73. As I was reading this one morning, I was stunned by how much this Psalm prayed out all my confusion and fears. I was especially stunned by this:

When my heart was grieved 

and my spirit embittered,

I was senseless and ignorant; 

I was a brute beast before you.

It doesn't get any more clear than this. With all of my ramblings and talking about what might happen, and how unfair it all is, and how can we possibly endure, I have to face the fact that as I do that, I am "senseless and ignorant... a brute beast." Yikes.

And yet?

Yet I am always with you; 

you hold me by my right hand.

You guide me with your counsel, 

and afterward you will take me into glory.

 

He hasn't given up on me. Even in my darkest fears, He's here. He's still holding me, just like He always has been. He is guiding me and leading me, and the end result of all this is (by His desire) my sharing eternal life with Him.

And so I'm encouraged to say...

Whom have I in heaven but you? 

And earth has nothing I desire besides you.

My flesh and my heart may fail, 

but God is the strength of my heart

and my portion forever.

May He teach me, and all those who battle fear and anxiety, to "wait in joyful hope for the coming of Our Savior Jesus Christ."

 Finally, a visual representation of how the devil uses fear and the imagination to suck the hope and fight out of every believer was made very clear to me when I found this scene from Lord of the Rings (an extended version I had never seen before):



A little bit of fact, and a whole lot of smoke and mirrors with the sole intent of rendering us incapable of fighting. Wow.

Tolkien and Lewis. Two amazing giants of men.

God bless!

Any New Year's Resolutions?

I've never been a big fan of New Year's resolutions... I don't know, I guess something about it seemed so arbitrary and fake to me. I can't remember ever making any when I was younger.

This year, however, I want to set some (what I feel to be) realistic goals for myself.

1. Be more consistent with my prayer life. I have it scheduled for when I first wake up in the morning, and an examination of conscience before going to bed. I don't think that is unreasonable for me, and in all honesty I'm sure I could be doing more, but for right now, I want to make meeting with the Lord EVERY morning a priority. I mentioned before that I was a Navigator in college, and "quiet times" were as essential as breathing. I want to get back into that wonderful habit I had in college, of reading, journaling, etc on a DAILY basis. Of course, I was single, in a dorm room, and it was very easy to maintain that sort of schedule. Later on, when I was on my own in an apartment, I only had myself to worry about, and getting up to read was not that big of a deal.

Now, it is.

Prayer time will look different at this stage. I'm dealing with a nursing infant who doesn't understand that he's cutting into my scheduled prayer time. By God's grace, if I can just manage to show up, and accept the interruptions as they come, I'll feel like I'm getting somewhere.

2. Lose 10 pounds and keep it off. I know, I know, EVERYONE wants to lose weight at the start of the new year, right? Well, I'm dealing with post-pregnancy weight, and I'm tired of it. It's hard enough to be 43 and see myself changing daily in the mirror, but I don't have to accept the fact that I'm heavier than I want to be, and just coast along. By this time next year, I want to be 10 pounds lighter, and in better shape. That's less than a pound a month. Again, I don't think that's unrealistic.

3. Maintain our homeschooling/housekeeping schedule. I saw how quickly I could go into a tailspin with the Christmas season. It was too much, and I couldn't handle all the additional clutter. As I've mentioned before, our house is small when you take into account the number of people living here. It would be like the typical "family of four" living in less than 400 square feet of living space. It's doable, but cramped. Since I don't see the Lord dropping a second storey on our house any time in the near future (although He owns it all, and could do it in a heartbeat if He so chose to do so), we have to continue to streamline, pare down, and "travel light." We've got way too much stuff, and we need to be comfortable with less. Part of my vocation as a mom is to create a peaceful home for my family, which can't be done with this much stuff everywhere. I think we were doing well when we had the schedule going, and I'm looking forward to returning to it. I will continue with the FlyLady housekeeping zones for the year, and see how we do!

Keeping with the homekeeping theme, it's time once again to pull Mrs. Dunwoody's Guide to Excellent Instructions for Homekeeping off the shelf and read it again! This is a yearly must for me, and I hope it will become one for you, too! I am inspired every time I read this!

4. Reread all my C.S. Lewis books. This is going to be a year-long project, for sure, but man, am I overdue for some inspiration from my favorite author! If they had a medal of him, I would wear it everyday. I'm not kidding. There are certain holy men and women who will bring me to tears every time I see their faces. St. (Padre) Pio is one of them. St. Therese of Lisieux is another. So is St. Maximillian Kolbe. The last is C. S. Lewis. All I have to do is see a picture, or hear something that he said, and I have an emotional reaction almost every time.

Speaking of emotional reactions, I know everyone has seen this a hundred times, but every now and then, it's good to see it again!



Emotional reactions for me: seeing Jim Caviezel as Jesus at the Last Supper (the Eucharist is what brought my husband to the Catholic faith, and it was the Eucharist that made me come back home), St. Maximillian Kolbe (by this time I'm usually in tears), and St. Therese (she prayed for me in my darkest hour... along with the Blessed Mother... and I'm forever grateful)

So how about you? Any resolutions to share?