A Glance Is Not Enough

The ladies of Velvet Ashes are talking grief this week. Join us?

So grief. If you have read here at all, you're probably pretty aware that grief is a topic near, if not dear, to my heart. It tends to creep its way into my reflecting, my writing, my experiences. It makes me vulnerable and I often feel a little embarrassed that it plays such a huge part in my story. 

As a matter of fact, I wasn't going to write this week. I was going to slide an old post on grief in to the link up and join the conversation and declare myself grieving but all good. Which I mostly am right now.

But that's the thing about grief. I've said it a million times. Grief is a fickle, unpredictable friend. She rips you open to make a space for herself in your soul without asking your permission. She shouts so loud at times the rest of your life goes mute. Sometimes she prefers to play hide and seek, lurking in the dark corners and keeping you on edge for the moment she jumps out and startles you. Sometimes she just thumps a constant beat in your heart that irritates you until anger rises and spills out. And it often seems grief spends her days scraping you from the inside out with sand paper. Leaving you raw and sensitive to touch and feeling way too vulnerable for your own comfort.

We live grief in stages, that is well-documented. But I don't think we talk often enough about the difference between acute grief, the expected grief that follows an obvious loss, and chronic grief, the grief that builds up over a lifetime of losses, both great and small. The grief that is the lasting pain after a tragedy, the grief that is the cumulative pain of our brokenness, failed expectations, silent hurts and hard good-byes.

I feel like I have lived dogged by grief for a very long time now, her always at my heels, jumping and nipping at me. I have had great losses. The most profound being the tragic death of my son. But there have also been four miscarriages, the loss of my father, of my mother-in-law, and my older brother. Countless aunts and uncles who were big players in my story.

There have been job losses and financial failures and a life that has often not looked like the one I dreamed I'd live. There have been lots of hard goodbyes and friendships strained and wrong things said.

And they all add up to a burden of chronic grief that would easily threaten to turn from a dog at my heels to a wolf that would devour me if I let it. But I cannot let it. Because I believe the pain of the cross and the darkness of death are only gateways to the triumph of the resurrection and the crown of glory. And I must bear them until they are dissolved into eternity. An eternity where pain and death and sadness are lost in glory and every tear is wiped away.

But the question I am asking myself today is do I live like I believe that? 

I read a blog post totally unrelated to grief today, but the point at the end will not let me go. The blogger (I followed at tweet I cannot seem to backtrack, sadly) asked at the end of his post, "Are we only glancing at heaven while we live with our eyes on this world?"

And I can't stop asking it of myself. Because, friends, in this life of grief, whatever yours may be, there is one thing of which I am sure. A glance is not enough.

We will never bear this burden well, never find grace and tender mercy in the ache of grief, never find our footing and get back up when the cross drags us down with it, if we are only glancing at eternity when the skies darken with gloom or when we have a question to ask.

We have to live with eyes on eternity eternally. We have to adore God to find Easter in the clang of the nails. Adore. Is it even possible to glance at someone adoringly? No. Adoration is about absorption. We are wrapped up in someone when we adore. We are taken. We gaze, not glance.

We have to keep our gaze on eternity and long for heaven if we are to make it out of the grief of this world with grace still on our side and headed to something better. And even on my pretty good, I'm mostly all right day, I do so long to be headed for something better.

We are committed to spending an hour a day gazing on God's presence in the Blessed Sacrament in silent adoration. I admit I have faltered in being convinced this is a necessary commitment. Often regarding it as a worthwhile discipline, which it definitely is, but stopping short of giving myself over to it as necessary.

But as I turned this question around today, I felt a certainty rise within me. A glance is not enough. It is necessary to gaze upon the Lord, with our eyes fixed on heaven. We will not escape the scrape of grief in this life. But we can live through it, redeeming it with grace, growing through the pain. We can find the sacred space between here and heaven in the embrace.

But to do so, we must keep our eyes fixed on eternity. A glance is not enough.

© 2014 Berit Watkin, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio

Day 1 of 31 Days of Giving that Gives Back

I'm the kind of girl who would much rather address the proverbial elephant in the living room than skirt around an issue we all know is affecting what we are trying to talk about but we don't want to admit it. So as we begin to talk about how to change our consumer habits for the sake of others' freedom, can we just be real for today and say the hard thing we all know is true?

The best way for any of us to reduce our slavery footprint is for us to intentionally consume less. Whew. There I said it. This is the hardest part for us to tackle honestly. We all have our reasons why it just won't work to change the way we do Christmas...grandparents who will be angry, family who expects our participation, a husband who thinks we've gone a bit off the deep end. 

And I get that. This process is most effective if it is an opportunity to educate and thus affect those around us. If we alienate and anger everyone around us from our perceived soapbox, well, that's not exactly the point. Nor does it feel very much about the true spirit of Christmas.

And if our goal is renounce consumer craziness and reclaim some of Christmas' earliest message that love is born in humble places we have to be brave about making intentional changes, but we have to find ways to do it that are lavish in love and generous in grace. After all, shepherds and kings both showed up bearing their gifts for the Christ Child and they were all welcomed.

But if we are to begin, we have to begin somewhere. Here are my thoughts on how we can begin to address the hardest part of this process of giving freedom instead of consuming this Christmas.

1. Pray. I do believe that at its heart, this is a spiritual matter for all of us. Christmas and what it means. Our consumption habits and where they come from. Our expectations of ourselves and others. The way we respond to others' expectations of us. This all has to do with the state of our souls and the state of our sin and our relationship with the Lord whose coming we celebrate in the great feast of Christmas. 

When we begin to feel a stirring inside us to change, we can become just as manic about needing to get it right RIGHT NOW as we are tempted to be about consumption. We have to remember the goal here is to slow down and be more intentional about what we are doing. Not to raze Christmas to the ground with a moral wrecking ball. 

That balance is only going to come through prayer. Let's start there. Immerse ourselves in the Word and the mysteries of Christ's birth. Ask ourselves what it means to live those mysteries this season. Make room for the Holy Spirit to inspire and inform our consciences. Confess our consumer sins and willful ignorance of the past. Clean out our hearts with the same vigor we clean out the toy shelves and the kitchen cupboard to make room for Christmas' newness. 

Start living a spiritual advent now, before the consumer craziness hijacks your opportunity. Advent in its more secular form can mean a change or development. The birth of something new. Let's start now so we can make it so.

AND let's resist the temptation to turn Advent into its own consumer frenzy in order to get it right. You and I are both already thinking about just the books we can buy and the cute pinteresty things we can do to live Advent and get it right RIGHT NOW. Again. Sigh. See how insidious that urge to consume more is? 

Look, here's the November supply list:

1. a bag of fair trade coffee or tea

2. a Bible you already have

3. a pen you already have (dig it out from the couch cushions if you must and forget about whether it is colored gel ink in Christmas colors with glittery sparkles. Manger. Food trough. Barn cave. Any pen will do.)

4. Some type of paper bound together in one place. A half stack of Post It notes from the junk drawer will do. You DO NOT need a new prayer journal. Use the last twenty pages of one of the ten you already have.

(I say these things because I love you. And I get you. I am talking to myself. If you were not tempted to do any of those things above, props to you. You're one step ahead of me on this journey.)

Now. Here's where you can have a little fun. Make a space to pray and plan for this Christmas. Choose a space in your home, rearrange a bit, make it feel new and welcoming and waiting. Just like Christmas. Use things you already have as intentional visual reminders in the space about what your goal and purpose is here But your supplies from above there at there at the ready. 

And for the next 30 Days, let's go there together. Every day. And together let's seek the heart of Christmas. And ask God how He would have us change our practices. Let's ask His forgiveness for the ways our need to consume has enslaved His children. Let's beg for their freedom and for ours. Let's pray for those who fight this very real battle on the ground. And those who perpetrate this evil. Let's pray for change. And let us give Him permission to begin with us.

All posts will be linked in the introductory post for the series 
so you can follow along easily if you like

Why I Am Asking IF

Back in September at Idea Camp, I had the pleasure of hearing Jennie Allen  speak. And let me tell you something, I was all on board to sign up for whatever it was she was about afterwards. Her passion, her heart for Jesus, her honesty about being a woman and loving other women was a language I speak it deep in my heart. It is a language that has been beating its rhythm loud in my head since my friend Ann began calling us the #esthergeneration from the red clay of Uganda. Its song is being sung in my development of our social enterprise initiative and our St. Francis Emmaus Center.

So when I learned about Jennie's IF:Gathering, I got excited. If you know me, you won't be surprised that I leaped right in without looking at how deep the water was. I told you about the common ground established with people at Idea Camp. IF was an opportunity to really see that concept bloom, and I was all in.

When Jennie announced her bigger vision for IF and all the  ladies I like to read a whole lot started sharing pictures of those twinkle lights and that pretty white table, and I knew I could be a part of it from my little mountain top in faraway Costa Rica, I was doubly excited. But sad that I would be alone. So I boldly shouted that anyone who wanted to could come join me here for IF: Missions. I realize now that it is really easy to be all brave like the other girls when your proposal seems unlikely.

But then they said "yes". Ladies from varied backgrounds and different denominations said they would actually like to ask IF with me in this space and see where God led us. And then, as I tend to do when I jump into something with all my heart, I panicked a little. Not about having company. But asking myself if this was what God was doing, or what I wanted.

And so I did what I do when I am panicking about God. I prayed. I sat with Him. I searched my heart and I searched His Word. And He led me to the answer of why my heart simply must ask IF. That answer is three-fold.

1. My Morning Offering makes me an offer. For as long as I can remember I have prayed a Morning Offering that begs for the "unity of all Christians". But I have not every often asked myself what my responsibility was to what I was praying for. If we are honestly praying for unity, it seems to me that we need to be actively working toward unity, no? And how do we find unity if we never meet? Never sit at the same table and see one another for who we are. If there is no relationship, how can there be unity?

I want that unity. I want to be able to sit with sisters in Christ outside the lines and the boxes that have been drawn for us and see anew what unity could mean. I want to sit at a table that is about conversation not conversion to one way of thinking. I want grasp what is good and lovely and noble in the sisterhood of Christ and shake it up like a bottle full of dormant sparkles and watch it mix and float and become something breathtakingly beautiful. Because I believe in a God that unites. And I believe He does it in ways that are not systematic but surprising, in ways that are much less about what we bring to the table and much more about what He has to serve us, in ways that challenge the deepest parts of us and yet lavish us with love and generous grace. Because His purposes, His heart, His love are already triumphant. If we can just let Him win, the world will change. Hearts will heal. Stereotypes will crumble. Timid voices will find their vibrato and sing. And oh, how I would love to sing in the chorus of united sister love, in the #estergeneration's choir.

2.  Acts 2 asks for all. "When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them." That is what His Word says.

I believe that if ALL the disciples were in one place the day the Holy Spirit set them on fire and the church was born, that there were women there too. And the flames dances on their heads and their mouths opened and they were ALL IN ONE ROOM and they left from there and set the world on fire. Acts does not tell us their stories. And rightfully so. It is named Acts of the Apostles for a reason. It has a purpose and it has its story to tell. 

But who is telling ours? Because there is a story left to be told, the story that we are writing, the distant daughters of the women with flames dancing over their heads and the fire alight in their hearts and their tongues loosed with the power of God and the whole world waiting to hear what they have to say. And I want to be one who tells that story because I know in my deepest being that it is full of the glory of God and the kingdom come and heaven's hope. 

And I think it has start right there where it did in Acts 2. "They were ALL together in one place." In the days before division and denominations built walls between us, the Spirit came in full force when they were all together in one room. And the world was a changed place because of it. And I know from my own life that the Word of God is extensively repetitive. We go back and do what He did and what they that named themselves His name did, Christians, and the Word is alive again and our God lives and the flames dance and the fire falls and the world changes. And I want to be there waiting.

3. Romans 8 yokes me with an obligation.  If we are the distant daughters of they whom the Spirit descended upon and we claim life in Christ, then we live governed by the Spirit. My favorite book of the Bible then says in verse 6 that "The mind governed by the flesh is death,but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace". A mind governed by the flesh is death. Sin, division and fear have their origins in death. Life, peace, love, and unity are the thoughts of the mind governed by the Spirit. And so in verse 12 Romans tell us that we have an obligation: an obligation to live according ot the Spirit. To live life and peace and good and hope and unity and fire dancing, life changing risks. 

And Romans ends its brilliant treatise of life in the Spirit with this: "For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God...Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory." 

And for this we will gather. We will suffer through the unknown and the strangeness and the things that divide God's children with our Jesus. We wonder why about one another and find things hard to swallow in our differences. We will feel the brokenness in the Body of Christ and wish there were away out of it. Because we know that there, in that place, his glory will shine. 

And wherever the glory of God is, I want to be. And I want to lift my hands and hear the wind of the Spirit rise and watch the flames dance in eyes of my sisters and speak the words of life in their foreign tongues so that they will hear. And I want them to do the same for me. 

So, me, I am asking IF. But I think God is already giving me a glimpse of the answer. 

Fasting and Praying

Joining our Papa in fasting and prayer today. Here's why. Join us? You don't have to be Catholic to fast and pray with us for peace. And to beg the Lord to show you where you can be more of a peacemaker in your own life.

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury,pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.


O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen

A Letter to Emma (and Her Mama)

Dearest Emma,

Your mama, she saw Ann  hugging Katie today, and she got scared again. Scared of you, dear. Do you know why she's scared of you? She's scared because she sees a girl so ready to let God wreck the young life she's living and by default, wreck her mama's. She sees a girl with a fire in her heart and the flames dancing in her eyes, big dreams, big hopes of faraway places and blessed feet bringing the Good News. And she wonders how to help you live where you are now, how to pour everything into you she wants you to have, how to connect you to home enough that you'll always long for it. So that when the time comes for you to run away with Jesus and wreck your life, and by consequence hers, you'll know who you are and where you come from. And you'll take it all with you and come back to it all when you need it.

And this is what I want to say you, darling. Let her. Let her your mama love you and teach you and lead you and guide you. Do the dishes when she asks. Camp out in the backyard with your brothers and laugh at their goofy jokes. Go on dates with your Dad. Share confidences with your sister. Plant a vegetable garden for you mom. Serve the poor in your own neighborhood until you know them by name. Do algebra and geometry problems with vigor. Read about history. Learn the lives of the saints and some solid theology. Make the waiting worth the while.

Because in all these things, the real lesson is this: Submit. Be obedient. Be faithful. And find joy in the ordinary. And do you know what, beloved girl? You're going to need to those lessons. If there is anything I wish, it is that I had allowed myself to learn them better than I did. We, the girls with the fiery spirits and drifting dreams and the wide eyes full of distant shores, we sometimes lose the forest for the trees. We sometimes forget that if we save the whole world and lose ourselves, it is all for naught. We drop the ball on our own sanctity in pursuit of the will of God. We worry so much about God's plan for our lives we forget to live it, to enjoy it. We strive so much for the extraordinary that we lose the grace of the ordinary. We forget that we serve a God who makes himself present to us in simple bread and wine. The greatest miracle in the most ordinary of things. And that we must live equally. We are hounded by the feeling of "not enough".

But, sweet Emma, whether God calls you to the married life, the religious life or the single life, living it will be all about those three lessons: submission, obedience and faithfulness. You will always be stuffing down the desire to do what you feel like doing in order to do His will. You will always be fighting the desire to rebuff wise counsel you know is right for the doing in the now. You will always be tempted to look for more, to want to be somewhere further doing something bigger, than to love what and who there is to love where you are in the moment. And the only thing that will keep you where you need to be is the daily discipline you have practiced over and over and over again of obeying the will of another.

Because you know what I want you to know, Emma? The mission field is more often like the drudgery of daily life at home than not. Only on steroids, Emma. The bathrooms stink more and more quickly. The dishes get dirtier and there is no dish washer. The clothes have to be washed earlier and put on the line and brought back in before it rains and if you forget to pay attention, you have to start all over again. And if you do that twice in a row, you find yourself at Mass in someone else's fuschia velveteen sweat pants and your husband's polo shirt. Ask me how I know, Em. Ask me.

You know what, sweet girl? Most days saving the world is a lot more like solving an endless string of algebra problems that it is like being Wonder Woman. Most days it looks a lot more like sore feet and itchy legs and toilet paper than needs to burned and someone at the door right when you were about to take a shower. And you have to have practiced a lot to know the order to put things in. To know whether to add inside the parentheses of your home first or multiply your giving first. To know whether to subtract time from chores or prayer before you divide yourself to serve. Know how many chapters to read and how many chapters to write and how many chapters to live in one day before you implode into emotional mush. You have to see the comprehension questions in the Word of God and know how to answer them, for the love. And you have to know when life demands a comma, a period, an exclamation mark or a question mark. You can't just live in all caps and never take a break.

And, Emma, your mama, she knows a thing or two about that. And she wants to teach you. Let her, sweet one. And don't regret a moment of it. Soak it all up. Because if God is doing in you what we all think He might be doing, one day you might be far away and full of the the world's pain and the love of Christ to the point of bursting, and you will want nothing more than a warm bath to soak it all out and someone to talk to. All you'll use the newest to gadget to send an S.O.S. to the world out there for a little love, a little encouragement to keep going and you'll hope and hope that your mentors and your friends will show up to cheer you on. And they won't, Emma, they won't. And your eyes will sting with the tears of loneliness and your whole body will hurt from the desire to just be held. And you'll have practiced. You'll have done your homework.

So you'll run to Jesus and you'll read His word and you'll sing His praise and you'll see Him in the simple bread and wine. And your faithfulness will be what gets you to other side. And your obedience will be what keeps you in the place He has you when you want to run. And your submission will be what lets you sit in that place and wait until He moves you rather than going your own way and screwing it all up.

And then, your little gadget will light up with a ray of encouragement to cheer you on. Someone will reach across the miles to be the balm your lonely heart needs. And do you know, what, Emma? 9 times out 10, it'll be your mama.

See this girl right here in this video? She is me at my core. She is who I always dreamed I would be. I'm forty, Em. Do you know how many of my days have actually looked like this? Only a fraction, my friend, only a fraction. But do you know what? Every time I get to live one, it makes the dishes and the mopping and the walking dusty roads and getting blank stares in return and the pain of loneliness and the suffering and the struggling so worth it. Do you know why? Because those things make me look like more like Jesus and less like me. They force me to give me up until He can shine through. And how awful would it be if I finally got to a day like this and brought them me instead of Jesus? I've done it enough to to know, Emma. It sucks. The pain of repentance is so much harder to bear than the waiting and the learning. Ask me how I know, Em. Ask me how I know.




Oh, and Emma, one more thing. Get ready, girl. Because after all that waiting, when He does finally move? Girl, it's like you don't what the heck hit you. You're all, "Wait, wait, wait a minute, Lord. I just need to get a few things together and catch my breath. I didn't finish Algebra yet!" And He's all, "Oh no, honey, we're going. Now." And all I can say is, hold on for the ride, Emma. Cling tight. Because it will be wilder and more glorious than you have ever imagined. And it will good, Emma. So, so good. And I hope I am  there to see it.

And, Em, if you're reading, will you let me make letters to Emma a regular part of my writing? I like talking to you. You help me think. You help get my thoughts together and get them out of my head where they're driving me crazy. And you know, Emma, I've got enough crazy to last me a lifetime.

With the greatest of Love, the peace that surpasses understanding and the highest Hope of all,
Mrs. Mitchell
aka

On Growing Up, Grief and Grace: Part 3, Grace

There's one last post to be written in this series about how growing up, grief and grace have changed me as a person, and as a missionary.

I've had a hard time wrapping my head around how to write about grace. It's not like God suddenly invented a new grace that has made this leg of my missionary journey easier. It's also not like I've suddenly become a saint and I don't want to write in such a way that anyone would ever think that. In fact, I've stalled on writing this post, because I've been struggling to keep up the discipline of the very practices I want to write about.

It comes down to this. I have always known that living the life of grace, both the sacramental grace offered by the Church and the grace of turning our daily walk into something sacred, was the both battleground and the victor's circle of the spiritual life. It is where we fight to stay strong and to persevere, it is where we get up again when the knock-out punch rings loud in our ears, it is where we dance with joy in our victorious moments and where we wipe away the tears of our failures. It is where we learn to walk in the light and where we learn to keep walking when there is no light.

But in my young faith life, this was all pretty much theory. I got the grace thing. But whatever the ups and downs of life were at the time, my hopes and dreams and boot straps were still enough to pull me and keep me going day to day. Then there was all that growing up and grieving. And those little bits of self weren't enough any more. I wasn't enough for me any more. I was really utterly dependent on God to sustain me for the first time in my life. And I learned what grace really was. 

I think back to the days after Bryce's death, of the cloud of grace that carried me through to the other side of the darkest days of my life, and I am humbled to the point of tears. I think of coming home from a D & C to a cleared out house and mound of suit cases and departure for the mission field looming four days ahead, and the grace that carried me forward to the hospitality of waiting friends, the love of people who wrapped my babies in their arms and held them for me so I could grieve once again, and the grace that made my feet go when my head could not think straight.

These memories, when I think back on them, feel like a dream. I know they are real experiences, but the memories is not sharp and painful like some memories. They are soft and wispy. Bittersweet. But sweet. They are surrounded in a cloudiness. It is grace.

And that cloud has surrounded this whole first year here in this mission post. It has not been easy. Neither were those things I just described above. It has not been without its ugliness, mistakes, and failures. I have battled self long and hard here. I have been disappointed and hurt. My husband lost his mother. My brother fights a terrible disease daily and I am not there. And yet, the walk through all of that has been made possible each and every day. And I have found peace and consolation in being where I am each and every day. This is grace.

I can point to three things that have kept me living in that cloud of grace over the last year. Habits that have been formed in the years of growing up and grief and learning to live dependent on grace. Habits that have become a focus and cornerstone of our life over the last year because of the strong leadership of my husband and the faithful spiritual direction of a holy priest. Habits that dear sisters mentored me to form. All gifts. Gifts given to me by someone else's love, sacrifice, sharing.

Because isn't that the essence of grace? It is the redemptive work of mercy in action. Sacramental grace is won for us by Christ's ultimate sacrifice and administered to us by the shared faith of our Church. And the actual grace that comes into our lives too most often comes my the love and service and sharing of another.

The first gift is the gift of speaking grace. I am user of words. Lots of words. Verbally. Written. Read. I like words.  I have learned from some of the loveliest women the power that encouraging, building-up words have to transform those around us. And to transform our own perspective. When we make a commitment to speak of our daily walk in a way that highlights the beauty and the grace we find in it, the world is made better by it. So I have worked hard to cultivate the habit of using my love of words to communicate all that I see as good and lovely and noble and true about the journey we have been on for the last year. And it has transformed the way I look at the journey. Shrouded it all in that cloud of grace that makes both the hard and the bitter sweet. Progress on the verbal end of this habit is still faulty and flawed. I have that punched in the gut feeling when I relive my own words in my head way more than I would like. But imperfect progress is still progress and I am going to keep honing this habit of speaking grace.

The second is gift if finding grace. I used to think that grace was something that appeared miraculously in over lives, happy moments that were sure signs that God loved us and was with us. And then there were the days of little wooden coffins and still ultrasound screens and miracles that flitted into our lives and faded out before they were real. And if I was going to continue to call myself a believer, grace needed redefining. And there was this voice in my life. This melodious gift of words that told me that grace is found where we look for it. That we can count the ways He loves in the lovely but we can count it in the ugly dark too. This voice that told me that to walk in grace is to realize that eucharisteo is about brokenness, not the warm smell of fresh bread, that the fragrance of the hurting and wounded heart who seeks His presence right there in the hard places is a perfume for the spirit. A voice that said, " Don't just look casual. Don't stumble upon grace accidentally. Don't hurry through the hurt and the chaos and the confusion. Live it. Look it in the face. See that He is there. Over and over again. In myriad ways. And count them. One by one. Count them. Until there are a hundred then a thousand, then more. Until you are forever changed." And I did. And I have been.

The third gift is the gift of the greatest grace. When my husband told me that our spiritual director was suggesting that we make an hour of prayer in front of the Eucharist a daily habit for our family in mission, I chuckled. A cynical chuckle. A chuckle that said, " Clearly, he's a good guy and a smart guy and holy guy and doesn't have a clue." Because getting myself to holy hour once a week for silence I relished and savored was already a bewildering conundrum and getting my boys through 15 or 20 minutes every now and then was enough to rob me of the grace earned in that hour.

But they were stalwart these two men. Stalwart in the face of my I-know-so-much-better-than-you pride and stubborn will. And we arrived in this mission post and we put feet to dusty road and we went. Every morning we went. Just us. Sometimes silent, sometimes begging repentance and conversion, sometimes singing praise. Some days boys slept and some days they sneaked outside and climbed high in the limbs of trees before we noticed. It was not perfect. But there before Christ, there was more than enough grace for all those imperfections. Grace to cover loneliness and loss and worry and fear and pain. Grace to keep us near to Him and remind us to stay out of His way. Grace to remind me that the miracle is not in the big Hollywood action scene life but in the daily walk on the dusty roads that says to others, "I am still here", just like His quiet presence in the silence of our Churches says to us.

These last few weeks have been a bit off kilter for us. Our schedule has been flipped on its side and spilled into chaos by sickness and surprise runs to immigration office and a million other things. I have failed to live the greatest grace--the going to Him there fully present, divine and real, and drinking of the fullness that fills and drowns out all that is broken and ugly in me. And in the midst of it, I feel myself creeping in, getting in the way, wanting it my way, seeing the ugly and not counting the grace, speaking the ugly and not the lovely.

But the good news? I recognize the way out. I know where to find the cork that will plug my grace leak. It's in heading back to the greatest grace, breathing in the fullness of Christ present in the Eucharist, breathing in the air of perfection, the light of hope, listening to quiet whisper of His voice that says, "Don't run so fast next time, and maybe you won't fall as hard." That says, "You know, breathing is good. When was the last time you checked to see if you were still breathing. Be quiet. Breathe with purpose. Breathe grace. That is where you will find strength. I am the Breath of Life."

And in a great mercy, I see it now. When I start to feel the shoulders tighten and the jaw clench. When the thoughts flow ugly and mean long before the words ever do. When there is so much me I am too heavy to carry, I want to run to Him. Sit under the protection of grace. Be called back into a life of grace by forgiveness of my sins, wiped clean by the grace of confession, my emptiness filled by the bread broken and blessed, the Eucharistic body of Christ.

Sometimes, I'll feel the weight of brokenness heavy in my heart and think, "Wait. I'm getting all in the way again. How long has it been since we went to adoration? To Mass?" And to my surprise I will realize it has been a day. And when I see how much of mess I can make of His lovely work in just one day without Him, I wonder how I ever lived, breathed, survived before this. I count the blessing of the greatest gift -- the fullness of His love and mercy made present to me every day so that it is not my boot straps that pull me back up when ugliness and brokenness and hurt knock me down but the river of mercy that flows from Him. 

And so I receive the greatest grace. And I seek it. And I count it. And I speak it. And I walk out of the brokenness and the darkness and into the light once again.

Let's Pause and Pray Often

I would venture to guess that with today's presidential elections and the future of our nation weighing heavy on the minds of many, many of us will pause often today to whisper a prayer to Lord about our hope for the future of our nation and the importance that rests in the results of today's election.

As often as we may claim that we find it difficult to find the time to pause to pray throughout the day or that life often puts us in auto-pilot mode and we forget our commitment to pray unceasingly, the truth is that when an issue looms large enough in our personal lives or our collective conscious as a family, community, church, nation or world, we remember to pray. If our spouse is on a plane or a dear friend is in labor, we remember to stop and pray. If a hurricane or other natural disaster threatens our area, we remember to pray. On the day of an important election, we remember to pray. I'll admit, I have been guilty of being selfishly attentive to prayer when something mattered to me and willfully neglectful when life was abuzz with activity and there seemed little time to slow down for anyone else's needs. But I do not want to be that way any longer. I want to battle that tendency that renders me a self-serving pray-er and be the person who pauses for the urgent needs of others, both those whose needs are close enough for me to see and those whose needs lie hidden in dark, rank brothels and trucking containers and ships in far corners of the world.

Shouldn't we strive to commit ourselves to pray the urgent, begging rescue prayer we pray for ourselves for the needs of others on a regular basis? Shouldn't we be daily pausing to beg God to pour out His mercy on a world with so many of our brothers and sisters suffering? If it was your biological brother and his family going on three years living in a tent in Haiti, would you not remember to stop and pray? If it was my younger sister missing and in danger of having been transported into a life a sexual slavery, would I know be crying out continually for her rescue and safe return? If it was my own children who did not have enough to eat today or who could contract deadly malaria at night while they slept, would I forget to pray for them? If my closest friend risked an unjustly high maternal and infant mortality rate in her pregnancy, would I remember to beg God to protect her and her baby throughout those months? The cold, hard truth is, I remember to pray when something matters to me. God, make these things matter to me. Do not let me insult the suffering and oppressed by calling them "brother" and "sister" and then bidding them to keep warm and well-fed. Press their needs upon my heart with the same urgency the needs of my biological family press on my heart. Teach me to shun self-deprecating guilt that makes me turn away from their needs as too burdensome. Keep from the temptation to put on blinders or to filter the ugly truth about the world's brokenness in order to protect my own comfort. Free me from the fear of a broken heart, for the most broken of hearts is that which keeps its hands clean by walking past the dying man on the road. Give me, Lord, the kind of prayer heart the Good Samaritan must have cultivated for days and weeks and years before the moment he stooped to lift his brother from the dirt and bind his wounds.

In her book 7, Jen Hatmaker's last mutiny against an excessive life is to slow down the pace of her life by intentionally observing prayer pauses throughout her day. Similarly, Ann has been encouraging us all to slow down and breathe, to remember that life is not an emergency, and to count all the ways He gives and loves and blesses throughout every single day. As Catholics, we live this reality in the daily prayers of the universal Church we call the Divine Office. I have been able, through grace, to cultivate a pretty good habit of praying the Morning Prayer of the Church. But that's about the only pause I remember regularly. I have many friends who are excellent about daily making these pauses and I aspire to follow their example. Technology offers us all kinds of help, like apps to pray with wherever we find ourselves at any given hour and chimes to remind us when it is time to pause. 

But I am praying to God to give me a heart that remembers. A heart that breaks for the urgent needs and real suffering of so many around the world at every given moment. A heart that shudders to think that every minute, two children are trafficked into sexual slavery on the same planet on which I live, children known and loved and named by God and destined for a future full of hope but thwarted by a perverse evil. I am going to make an effort, while I complete this series, to make my prayer pauses throughout the day, and during them, to cry out with the psalmist as he pleads for mercy on the lowly and afflicted and justice on the evil-doers. I am going to beg God to open my heart and mind so that I can pray and remember with an awareness that ignites a fire in my heart rather than locks me up in paralyzing guilt. I am going to beg God for my heart to break in such a way that I know that only He can save. And I am going to pray that I can pause in prayer so that I can be inspired to action when the moment for it arrives. 

Will you join me in pausing to pray? And let me know how you are doing with it? We can share our successes and failures and maybe help each other along the way?

Providing Meaningful Work: Helping Us Make It Happen

I want to say thank you to so many of you who are reading and encouraging me as I work to get the Blessed Zelie Martin Initiative up and running. It is a blessing that keeps me moving forward. It is hard to find the motivation to think through big projects when you feel all alone. I am grateful that I do not.

Many of you are as excited and interested in this project as I am. And while I do not have many friends who can finance the operation single-handed, we have a lot of passionate supporters who are willing to do something to help out. So I am posting some ideas here of ways you may be able to help us make this outreach happen by organizing a group event or fundraiser to contribute to the start up costs for this project.

Obvious choices for groups are things like women's prayer groups or bible studies in your church or parish, youth groups or entire parishes who may organize a fundraiser for the initiative. But other groups could be your exercise class at the gym or your running group, a group colleagues from work, your child's school class, sport team or scout group, your homeschooling cooperative or even an internet list or group with which you are involved.

Fundraising ideas can be as simple as asking the group to each contribute what they can or to promote the initiative to others and ask them to contribute. Or the group could set their sights on an item on our Wish List to purchase together.

If the group is interested in hosting an event to raise money for the project, here are some ideas:

• Bake Sales: Old news but they never fail to bring in a decent return for the investment.
• Spaghetti Dinner or Pancake Breakfast: Again, these old standards are that for a reason, they're effective. Many Knights of Columbus groups will provide a Spaghetti Dinner fundraiser for a group looking to raise funds for a worth while cause. Why not ask yours?
• Host a Mudlove or Give Jewelry bracelet sale and help two worth while causes at once
• Host a Walk A Mile In Their Shoes event -- a one mile walk where we will provide you statistics and images to post along the way about the women we will be serving and your participants find sponsors to sponsor their walk. You can even encourage participants to walk in the rubber rain boots that are the common foot wear of indigenous women and then leave them to donate at the end of the event
• Create a book club and read one of these inspiring reads together. During your the length of time that you study the books, have group members save and contribute their spare change to the Blessed Zelie Martin Initiative. (I have chosen these books based on the effect they had on me as a reader. These are not all Catholic publications. Feel free to e-mail and ask about specific suggestions before making a choice for your group.)

1. MISSION OF THE REDEEMER: REDEMPTORIS MISSIO.
2. Happy Are You Poor: The Simple Life and Spiritual Freedom
3. Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption
4. Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
5. 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess
6. Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream
7. One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
8. Undaunted: Daring to do what God calls you to do
9. Shirt of Flame: A Year with Saint Therese of Lisieux
10. Interrupted: An Adventure in Relearning the Essentials of Faith

(If you purchase from Amazon using the links posted here or in the sidebars, I will receive a small amount of credit which will go toward purchasing other items on the Wish List, so if you do start a book club, please encourage everyone to order using the link here! Thanks.)

• Host a Fast From Freedom event with a  group a group of friends or families. Choose something you will fast from for a month in prayer and solidarity with the poor and oppressed around the world -- fast food, eating out, coffee purchases, or certain grocery store indulgences and contribute the saved money to the initiative.
• Spread the Word: Have dinner and a movie with a group of friends. Have everyone bring something to share. Gather and watch the Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity For Women Worldwide film and discuss it afterwards. Show the group the the Blessed Zelie Martin Initiative page and plans. See what the Lord might do. Remember, building support doesn ot always have to be about raising a ton of money. When we create awareness and passion within the Church, the funds inevitably come.
• Pray: Don't stop praying our prayer to end human trafficking. And keep praying for the success of our efforts here and for others who are working on our behalf in their home communities. Prayer will get us where we need to be when we need to be there.

If you think you might want to help in one of the ways listed above or you have your own idea about a way to help us get going, please let me know in the comments or via e-mail and we can talk more! Thank you again for walking with me and ensuring that I do not feel alone.

Let's Offer to Help

If you want to be part of the solution in the anti-human trafficking efforts, the first thing you need to do is let people know that you are willing to help. So often we find a cause we are passionate about, see all the inspiring work others are doing, and fail to translate that into more than sentiment in our own lives. I am guilty of this as much as anyone else.

That is one reason I was totally struck and inspired when I read in Palmer Chinchen's book God Can't Sleep: Waiting for Daylight On Life's Dark Nights by his response to reading a NY Times article about the murder of albino mothers and their children in the African country of Burundi. He immediately wrote this open letter to Burundi's president:

Dear President Nkurunziza,

I write to you with a heart saddened by the tragic murder of a Burundian mother and her five year-old son.

 I write to say that these killers must be brought to justice. And I write to encourage you to pour every possible resource into protecting marginalized albinos in Burundi.

I know that you are a man of God. I know your heart is good. So I simply implore you to seek justice for the albinos of Burundi.

I write on behalf of Christians everywhere--please stop this senseless crime. I do not write to place blame or to judge; I write to encourage action.

I also write to offer the resources of every Christian in my country who cares about justice. I write to offer means to help educate a population that killing albinos in the worst kind of crime, the most senseless of crimes. Albinos, like all of us, are created by God, in His image, and they are loved and prized by God--it's just that their skin is a different color.

And only sheer ignorance would cause would cause anyone to believe that there is magic in their bones. 

I offer the resources of every Christian in America who cares about justice to help shelter and protect the albinos of Burundi.

I write to offer to partner with you to rescue those whose lives are threatened because of the color of their skin.

May God's great hand of blessing be on your life as you continue to lead with wisdom.

                                                                                                                     Respectfully,

                                                                                                                    Dr. Palmer Chinchen

Whoa. That's how we as Christians are supposed to respond to the atrocities and injustices of this world. Now, I don't necessarily think it is prudent for all of us to run off writing letters offering the help and resources of all Christians at every injustice we read about. But I do think there are very real promptings from the Holy Spirit that can make us feel spurred to immediate, passionate action and that we ignore or wait on long enough to let doubt and fear rise up and quell the spark the Spirit was igniting in our hearts. I do believe that if every Christian responded this way to just one injustice that was his/her particular passion, that we would be doing a whole world of good without any one person risking too much. And I believe our brothers and sisters would be suffering less, dying less, starving less, killing less. Because God has given us the power to stop those things in His name.

Did you ever read the beginning of the book of Acts and wonder what it felt like to be the apostles, going out in public ministry for the first time without Jesus, and to find the courage and the faith to say to the blind and the lame to see and walk? It was risky for sure. And I'm sure in their humanity they were terrified. But in faith, they believed what Jesus had said to them when He told them to do just that. And so they followed the lead of the Spirit and reached out their hands. And the power was there.

I believe the Spirit is prompting all of us Christians to hold out our hands to someone and say "walk" or "see" or "be saved" or "take and eat" or "live". And I believe there are many if us who have stood far too long with itchy, sweaty palms wondering how we can possibly be part of the solution to something so very, very big when we are so small. And when we already have so much to do. And the whole hosts of other reasons we give for not taking action.

But the bottom line is, if we are to be part of His team, we must be willing to act. I have been meditating on the first letter of St. Peter in my prayer lately. Dense that letter it is. It's taking me days to get through one small paragraph. The one I've been stuck on lately is 1 Peter : 13-16:

"So then, have your minds ready for action. Keep alert and set your hope completely on the blessing which will be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. Be obedient to God, and do not allow your lives to  be shaped by those desires you had when you were still ignorant. Instead, be holy in all that you do, just as the God who has called you is holy."

Why was Dr. Chinchen's response to reading the NY Times to write an open letter to the President of an African nation offering his help? Because his mind has been disciplined to be ready for action. I have begged God to make me alert and ready for action. I have begged Him to give me the grace to obey His leading. I have begged Him to free from the desire for approval and notice that I am prone to be motivated by in my ignorance and brokenness and sinfulness. And I have begged to be holy. As He is holy. And in His holiness, He acts. He creates. He communes. He reaches out. He sends messengers. He sends and becomes a Savior. He battles and breathes and He breaks bread and He multiplies when there is not enough. And He heals and He binds up the broken-hearted and He dies and He rises and He rules. This is the holiness of our God. The God of action. Because God is love and love acts and risks and is rejected and, when least accepted, opens a door for hearts to turn to Him.

So this week, I am taking a few risks and some action. I don't where this will lead me. I just know it is what the Spirit is leading me to do. If it goes out and never comes back, so be it. God is in that abyss. If it spirals into something big and beautiful and overwhelming, so be it. God is in that chaos.

This week, I either have already or am writing letters to people -- important people -- to let them know that I want to part of the solution to human trafficking and that I am ready to help with my time, my energy and my passion. Here's my list:

• The Code: This is a code of conduct for the tourism sector to avoid engaging in business practices that promote trafficking. I think responsibility among the tourism sector is a big part of the solution here in Costa Rica. I have written to ask how I can be part of that work here.
• Costa Rica's President Laura Chincilla: I used Dr. Chinchen's letter as a model to write the President and encourage continued action to end trafficking in Costa Rica, keep traffickers out of the country and provide programs to rehabilitate victims and reduce vulnerability. I offered my help in whatever capacity it is useful.
• Regional Office of Ministerio de Trabajo y Seguridad Social: This is the government agency under which trafficking technically fall although I am not sure how much they accept it as part of their mission. I wrote to encourage them to make it a priority and to offer whatever help I can in the area of education.
• Ambassador Anne Andrew: This one pretty much follows the pattern of the letter to the President too.
• E-mail to hotel owner in San del Sur: I don't know why this was so hard and humbing for me to take the risk to do. But I e-mailed the hotel owner where we stayed in Nicaragua and told him of my concern for the little girl on the beach. I asked him if there was a local who knew whether there was an adult who accompanied her and if not, if they might know someone who could keep an eye on her or who could inform her family of the dangers and encourage them to send someone to accompany her. That was hard to do for reasons I cannot articulate. It made me feel very raw and vulnerable to criticism, or worse yet, indifference. But it was one bit of personal action I could take. I know it was important for me to do it because the Holy Spirit wouldn't leave me alone about it. 
• Municipality of San Juan del Sur: Telling them of my experience, encouraging them to educate and protect their citizens and tourism sector, and again, offering my help. ( At this point, I am beginning to feel pretty foolish because I really have no idea what I will say if these people do accept my offer of help. I have no idea what I really can offer. But I do have some ideas. And if they're willing to talk to me, that one more person talking about this, right?)
• Bishop of Cartago, Costa Rica: We know him personally and it is by his permission that we are working here. I wrote to ask him if he is aware of any area where the Church in Costa Rica is working  on this issue and how I might be able to be a part of this work. I informed him of the work I hope to begin providing meaningful work for women and asked him if there was any more I could to help the Diocese bring awareness and invite a response to this problem in the country of Costa Rica.

So there yo have it. Feeling not just a little silly, vulnerable and humbled, I did it. I have no way of knowing what the results will be. But I did (am doing -- still working on some of those) what the Holy Spirit has been tugging me to do. And I know it was right.

To whom can you write this week to offer to be part of the solution? Your local tourism commission? Your pastor? A local ministry to vulnerable women? One of the organizations I mentioned above?

Who can you ask to join you in your fight? Are you part of women's prayer group, book club, Bible study or other group that might want to host a fund-raising event for our Blessed Zelie Martin Initiative? Could you invite others to join to pray publically at your church or in another location for the end to human trafficking and slavery?

If you want more information about how you might organize an event or a fundraiser to support the St. Bryce Foundation's efforts to get the Blessed Zelie Martin Initiative up and running and support the work of Salvando Corazones, please comment or drop me an e-mail.

Are you ready for action? If so, take it. If not, pray and meditate with the above verse from 1 Peter and ask the Spirit to make you ready and then to show you what to do. He will lead. He will answer. He will act. Because He loves. You and those who need what He is calling you to give. While you wait, why not write to thank and encourage and offer prayers to someone who is doing the work now? If you have an organization whose work you appreciate, write to the staff, let them know. If you would like to send a word of encouragement to the staff at Salvando Corazones, you can find their e-mails on the page, but I would also be happy to deliver it to them if you would like to e-mail it me or leave it in the comments.

Let's offer to help to be part of the solution with our time, our energy, our prayers and our encouragement today.

Pray With Us

I am sharing a series of posts at Suscipio this month about praying the rosary for missions. Join us as we begin by praying for Africa?

From the post:

A great way to combine these two focuses in the month of October is by praying the missions rosary. In this rosary, each decade is prayed for one area of the world, the needs of its people, and the Church’s missionary outreaches in that area. One decade is recited for each of the following areas: Africa, Oceania, Europe, the Americas and Asia.

Read the rest here.

Pictures in this post were generously offered by friends who led the Life Teen mission trip to Ghana in 2012.

Feeling Tense?

I am taking a break from my 30 Days of Action posts to write about something that has been rumbling and bubbling and then finally settling peacefully in my heart these last few weeks. Something prompted by a thought that has followed me since I read Heather King's Shirt of Flame: A Year with St. Therese of Lisieux in July. It's about being tense, or more accurately living in tension. And how that differs from but is not totally different from what we call guilt.

I have had many conversations with people who have read books or articles full of inspiring stories about people who are living radically, sacrificing everything and making huge differences in the world. While on the one hand they are inspired by these stories, on the other they find themselves battling scruples and guilt over the state of life in which they find themselves. Often overwhelmed by the latter, they toss the inspiration in order to free themselves from the weight of the guilt.

This is a feeling I am quite familiar with as a missionary. I battle with myself all the time about how much is too much for us, how little is too little and is asking too much from our kids, how much is just enough. I put things in my basket at the grocery store and then take them out. I stand at the corner giving myself the luxury of hailing a cab then wave it off when it stops and head to the bus instead. Recently, we discovered that one benefit of living in this mission with a car is that it has revolutionized food purchasing.

When we could only get to the very nearest city and that by bus, our purchasing opportunities were quite limited. Turrialba, while it is a city, still remains very typically Costa Rican and the stores market mainly typical fare in regards to food. In addition, whatever we purchased had to be loaded into recycled rice sacks and lugged to the bus where it sat for two hours on the ride home. Then we carried it on our backs to our house. Even when we had the occasional ride to the store, we were always eager not to be overbearing and so limited our purchases. Even then, we bought way more variety of food than the typical family in our pueblo.

But with our car to drive, we have a wider variety of options. One which we recently discovered is the opportunity to take a monthly trip into Zapote, a suburb of sorts of San Jose, to shop at Price Mart (this is apparently how you say Costco in Spanish -- who knew?) We went for the first time last month. After filling out our forms and having our candid snapshots printed on to plastic cards, I turned to find a long forgotten wonderland of flavored coffee creamer, donuts, toothpaste in four packs, pancake mix and maple syrup, barbeque sauce and feta cheese. I was totally overwhelmed.

We walked through Price Mart reveling in purchases we had not made in eight months. Olive oil. Syrup. French vanilla coffee creamer. Dark chocolate granola bars. We passed on the lovely cheeses, the sticky sweet donuts, and a load of other processed foods that appeared lovely in their familiar packaging but that we have learned really taste no better then the packaging itself. We bought a lot of food. Good food at good prices. We bought toiletries and medicines to last a long, long time at the best prices we have found yet in Costa Rica. We treated the kids to the cheap pizza and got an oil change for the car. We priced out some items we will need when we are sharing our mission with groups and other families. It was a good trip, and while we indulged ourselves some, I don't think we did too badly.

But in the weeks that followed, I was haunted by guilt over the French vanilla coffee creamer. I stressed about buying it. I stressed about using it up too quickly, not fully appreciating it. I scrupulously only allowed myself only one cup of coffee with the creamer and then drank plain. I would see families walking down the streets of our town and wonder how much rice I could have given them to feed their children with what I spent on my coffee creamer. I was so shell-shocked that I have not suggested another trip to Price Mart since then. Some people in my house are still lamenting not buying the big box of chocolate covered almonds they saw and I have feared I would be like some indulgence monitor, putting things in the basket and then guiltily taking them back out and stashing them on the wrong aisle, much to the chagrin of the Price Mart employees, I'm sure.

A couple of weeks after that shopping trip, I found myself sitting on a beach in southern Nicaragua reading the book 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess and pondering a lot of over-indulgence, consumerism and lack of gratitude. And how hard it is to overcome a lifetime if living in a culture that embraces all those things. My time as a missionary has opened my eyes and changed my heart in so many ways, but it has not taken away the impulse to buy more shoes than I need or the desperate craving for Coke Zero in Sonic Ice. Or my love of sticky sweet donuts and flavored coffee creamer. And sometimes, in light of the poverty I see every day, my affections for those things make me feel what in the past I had labeled as guilt.

But reading and thinking on the tenets in 7 and some of things I had read about St. Therese in Shirt of Flame has caused me to rethink what I call this haunting feeling that pervades my thoughts, my desires, my affections and makes me weigh them against the stark realities of poverty, sickness, human slavery and death. What we have labeled as guilt and thrown out as an unhealthy emotion, I think, may not be something altogether bad. Now, I am certain, as many people have commented to me in the aforementioned conversations, that our merciful Savior does not want us to live a life hindered by crippling, debilitating guilt. After all, it was precisely this kind of law that Jesus came to free us from. But I also think we have been a bit quick to toss out some really good inspiration because we were afraid to go where the initial guilt was taking us. We do not need to be a people of guilt, but I think when we begin to hear a warning cry in our hearts every time something makes us see our own ugliness and brokenness that says, "No, run, don't think about that. That's too hard. Jesus doesn't want you to feel badly about yourself" that we need to respond like Christ did to Peter when Peter shouted a similar warning at Him -- about the very hard and ugly way in which He would redeem the world -- "Get Thee behind me, Satan."

Why? Because while I think the Lord does not want us to be encumbered by a burden of guilt over which He has already risen victorious, I think He's perfectly okay with us living in a constant tension. It is the reality of our lives on this side of heaven. We live redeemed but sinful. We worship a merciful but just Savior. We serve a broken and beautiful Church. We are dying every day that we live. And we die in order to live forever. We pray to know better our Savior and He teaches us to know better ourselves. We eat bread that is His body while it still looks and tastes like bread. And we buy and we consume and we live while others beg and starve and die in a world He created. This is our reality.

And as Christians completing, as the Word telsl us, what was lacking in His sufferings, I do think we would be woefully amiss if that reality did not weigh heavily upon us most of our days. If my coffee creamer makes me think painfully of the hungry in my midst, it may not mean I need to toss the coffee creamer, but it also should not mean that I push aside the painful reminder of the poor. Perhaps there is something He is asking me to do, and the tension in my chest with each sip of delicious creamy goodness is His way of knocking. If that experience makes me think long and hard about what I purchase on our next trip and helps me to leave behind some indulgences and replace them with basic foods that can be shared, it has indeed done a very good work in my heart. And if I deliberate long and hard over each item and allow us only three indulgent purchases per trip, is it that really some kind of debilitating guilt? I don't think so. Maddening as it may be for the poor men who are forced to endure the shopping trip with me, I think it does us all some good to pick and choose intentionally as a family and to see the alternatives we are afforded when we bypass overindulgence.

Heather King says St. Therese lived in this constant tension. Feeling at once favored and special in the eyes of her Sweet Savior and alternatively small and humble and feeble in His service. Wanting with all her heart to be a missionary and yet embracing the call to the silence of the cloister. Being childish and simple and yet a spiritual giant all at the same time. If this is what embracing the tension can produce, then who I am to wave it off because sometimes it gives me a stomach ache?

I will be the first to admit that sometimes living in this constant tension does not make me the happy smiley girl I want to be. Sometimes, I just freaking want a Pumpkin Spice Latte and a Coke Zero with Cherry flavoring and extra ice. In a separate cup. There. I said it. But I have come see that that too is okay. This is where His tender mercy sweeps in and makes something beautiful of the mess that is me. You see, while I'm tempted to sulk and whine and grant myself way more indulgence I deserve in repayment for my measly sacrifices, He swoops into my struggle and draws me to Him--says to me, "Sweet Princess, there are no lattes today. But I am here. Come close. Rest from the struggle. Breathe the sweet incense of my presence. Feel better, little one? Good. Get up and do what I have asked." And then, one day when I least expect it, right in the midst of serving and doing and falling and rising, voila, a pumpkin spice latte appears out of nowhere, with the extra whipped cream I never even dared ask for even though I wanted it really badly. Because my Daddy loves me. Deeply, tenderly and intimately. And He loves to lavish me with gifts and surprise me with loveliness.

So these days, I am working at seeing all these impulses both indulgent and guilty as the forces that pull taut my spiritual heart rope, that keep me sober and alert, intentional and dependent as I try to be who God has called me to be in this crazy upside world that reeks of sin and shines with glory all at the same time. I think the Lord only pulls that rope as taut as we permit Him too. Sometimes, life demands that we let it fall slack while we put all our energies into growing a baby human inside us or rekindling love in our marriage or serving the demanding needs of our families or recovering from an illness. Other times, I think He asks if we will let Him pull it uncomfortably tight, so that it strains and stresses and pulls at us until we grow up just a little bit more. But I do believe that we are called to permit the tension to live within us, the feel its weight and to embrace it, not as guilt, but as another tender mercy meant to bring us further into the abode of His heart. And I think the spiritual progress we make is directly related to just how taut we permit him to pull our heart strings.

So if you are feeling the tension today as I am and battling the guilty grumpies as I often do, slow down rather than pushing it away. Run to Him and let Him show you what He needs you to see. Seek Him in the quiet and the stillness and, yes, the pain of your heart. Move past the guilt and give Him permission to pull your heart strings tight. And then see what He might do with you. And then happily, one day, if He is merciful enough, we might find ourselves sipping a double whipped cream pumpkin spice latte inside the gates of the Promised Land with no more pain or suffering, where our hearts strings fly loose and free in the light of His glory. Walk with me?

***P.S. Following any of the Amazon links in this post or on the sidebar and making a purchase will generate a small amount of credit for me. All credit will be dedicated to purchasing items for the Blessed Zelie Martin Initiative laid out in this post.

I have added this post to this week's Walk With Him Wednesdays link up at Holy Experience.