The Mercy Memo

I was driving yesterday. I drove from Rhode Island to Ohio. That’s 13 hours by car. In case you don’t know, it’s about 800 miles. And Wednesday, after spending some time with my daughter, son-in-law and two grand kids (third from their family on the way), I will drive another 800 miles to Kansas City.

Why? Might you ask? Because I want for my daughter what I could not have. You see, my 3rd of 4 wants to train horses for a living. She is horse crazy. In fact, she is so horse crazy that we actually bought her a shirt from www.wildhorsefeathers.com (a company I have known about since my 21 yo was 7 when we lived in RI) that says “here’s one little girl who would rather clean a stall than her own room”. Way to appropriate for her.

So, here I am, causing myself pain, becoming tired, bored and my shoulders are tight and my backside is so numb, it took me an hour to get the feeling back.

Why? Because I would do anything for my children. Does that mean I won’t make her eat veggies or clean her room. It just means I want to give her anything she wants.

Just like God. He wants to give us anything. We must just ask. If you are afraid of praying, then just ask like you would a parent. “Can I please have help with my weight?” Just like you would ask your parent or you would have your child ask. “Mom, will you please help me with my home work?” “Jesus, please help me understand my family.”

God is our parent. He is our tender mother, our strongest father, and our tenderest Grandparent. He gladly, became bored, tired, in pain, bled, even died, so that we could have what we want. Christ even says, “What father would give his son a stone when he asked for bread, or a snake when he asked for fish? How much greater is our Father in Heaven when we ask Him? (my paraphrase)”

Do you see? Do you have kids? Would you do whatever you could to give them what they want? Of course. I know someone who doesn’t even want his kids doing chores so that they might have what he didn’t. I believe he is hampering his children, but I understand his desire: to give to his children what he could not have or what he couldn’t give them before.

Ask your Father. Now, understand this, God will not give you everything you ask for because you don’t need everything. You really don’t need a Porsche any more than my daughter needs to eat chocolate all day every day. She would 1) die of malnutrition and 2) be fat as a house. And yes, you can be fat and die of malnutrition. So comes the truth. God won’t give us everything… only what is good for us.

And if I can drive for a little to give my daughter a gift that could help her be a great trainer, than who am I to deny her? And if God can send us His Son to die to give us Heaven… He can’t deny us because of His love.

I love you, Nichole, I’m glad we made this trip. And in similar words, The Bible says, “For God so loved the World that He gave His only begotten Son so that whosoever believeth in Him would have Eternal Life.”

What a trip. I’ll try and post tomorrow.

Augustine said that the Holy Trinity was like a clover, three lobes, one leaf. I woke this morning and prayed and a thought came to me.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like a restaurant.

Ok.

Alright, so here is what my early-morning-no-tea-muddled-thoughts-but-prayer-clear mind thought. We are like the patrons of a restaurant. We come in on the promise of really good food (the critics can’t be right, I mean, no food is as good as they say, right?). We’re skeptical, but we accept our seat (all seats are booths, but really nice ones that you don’t get stuck in). The waiters are angels. They are quick to serve, kind, polite and never get mad and no matter how demanding we are, always do what we ask them to do. They are real Angels.

The Management is top notch, The Mother of God is Shift manager, no matter when you show up. She takes the orders and passes them on to the Kitchen. She is always amongst the tables, checking a meal here, soothing a ruffled feather there, but any orders always go to the Kitchen.

The Kitchen Staff is of course run by the head Chef, Owner and Senior Manager. One Person, Three jobs. They are constantly on the floor, walking amongst the customers. They listen to the suggestions of the customers, but they don’t ever change how they run the restaurant.

The customers are cranky, demanding, rude and thoughtless. They ask for things the restaurant doesn’t have. They ask for strange and even deadly combinations of foods. The Chef always listens to the orders, suggestions, and smiles. He comes out and asks how the final product tastes. He makes sure that each and every piece of food that passes a customer’s lips is the right thing for that customer at that time.

He’s good like that. He always makes sure the food is the right food, healthy and nutritious, balanced and perfect. Always fresh.

Many times the customers well order these strange things, but every so often a customer comes in and says, “whatever the Chef will make for me” and the Chef goes wild. He pours His Heart into the order and it is a beautiful thing to behold.

Now this analogy fails in many ways. I can’t seem to account for Satan in my analogy. He is there, trying to confuse and change our prayers and the answers to our prayers (the “food orders”). I can’t seem to show the difference in the customers as much as it really matters to the Heavenly Father: That we have free will and that the choice of martyrs and saints is to give themselves wholy to the Lord… maybe a volunteer at the restaurant? I will have to think on this analogy more.

Anyway, this is what happens when I am only half awake.

God Bless

I started something that the girls hate and I love. I am charging them penalties for missed chores. So far, the Salvation Army is going to have a bountiful Christmas from my beautiful girls.

God is like that, but so much more subtle. We get tasked by God to do things, like be a mom, work at a job, help someone, and what do we do when the tasks are handed to us?

We half do them. We are given a task, like love and care for our children and we give more time to our jobs, friends or going out. Sure, we care for the kids, I mean, you go to jail if you don’t. But caring and CARING are two different things. When did you last spend time doing something THEY wanted to do, just for fun… and I am not talking about going to the arcade.

I am talking about taking a walk and just spending time, listening. Do you listen to them? Do you take the time to really get to know your kids just like when your husband courted you? Do you know and love them like they are in a relationship with you, and not like they are accessories?

That is the difference between doing the task and making the task yours. God gives us tasks and we shoud make them our tasks. Remember when you were a child and mom asked if you wanted to help with the Christmas cookies? You couldn’t wait and she had to keep telling you to wait, to not dump the flour, to not fling the dough, to not eat too much of the dough, to … well you get it.

So, when was the last time you did the tasks God had given you like you were going to help mom with the Christmas cookies? And does He really need to twist your arm to get you to do them, like I have to twist my girl’s arms just a little? I know it will change, I can see it already. Can you be like that too?

I just watched a cute, funny and good movie. Now, I am not a professional critic, so if you hated this movie, I’m sorry. You go ahead. I liked it and I liked it because it went against the Hollywood normalcy of sex, violence, criticizing the Christian faith, and anti-family themes. And it portrayed family, marriage, and prayer in a good light. That and it gave me oodles of great material for my Mercy Memos… pieces for years, if I wanted to milk it that far.

Anyway, today I want to follow along with “God” (Morgan Freeman from Bruce Almighty, driving Miss Daisy and other movies) in a quote: “Let me ask you something. If someone prays for patience, you think God gives them patience? Or does he give them the opportunity to be patient? If he prayed for courage, does God give him courage, or does he give him opportunities to be courageous? If someone prayed for the family to be closer, do you think God zaps them with warm fuzzy feelings, or does he give them opportunities to love each other?”

I have had this happen to me: I used to ask for patience, but I don’t anymore. Because He will give me plenty of practice. I used to ask for… well, you get the hint. Smart folks don’t pray for patience, or courage, or faith… because the Lord knows we need to find chances for it, before we’ll grow.

It’s all about growth. If I really want to be a better person (more faithful, more courageous, more loving, more prayerful) then God is going to give me chances. He’s going to give me chances to practice whatever I want, because it is ONLY through adversity and trial that I will grow.

If I want to really be more loving to my family, it would be stupid for it to be easier, because I would then not try as hard. If the kids were nicer, kinder, happier all the time, then it would be easier for me to just accept the status quo. But if the kids are struggling, having issues, angry, then I grow by being more loving and having a chance to practice that love in faith through works, the physical work of love: giving of myself, my time and my energy.

If I want to be more faithful, then it does me no good to have a church of happy people who serve me all the time. I have to put my feet to the path and walk, no matter how bad the sermon, no matter how catty the women, no matter how difficult the situation. If I put my faith in Christ in this situation, He will give me that tools, strength and love to go forth and have more faith.

In Evan Almighty, “God” said that some people see trials, others see opportunities. Have you seen an opportunity to be closer to your family today, this week, Christmas?

Pray for it all, and God will help you get there.

AMDG

I am sitting in the downstairs office, working on the laptop. I can hear the girls working on their school. One of the new bunnies is hopping around my feet. I am thinking of a conversation Jim and I had.

Jim made an interesting comment the other day. We were driving home and we had to use the GPS to navigate our way back. As it usually happens, the GPS was telling us to go a certain way and we suspected the way was different. Jim said, “I know this may sound corny, but God is like the GPS.”

I looked at him like he’s lost his mind.

“What do you mean?”

“Because He tells us to go one way, and we often go another because we know better.”

Jim is right. God lays out the course we are to drive. He tells us where to go, when there will be road blocks, and even traffic, and then says, this is the way to go. And we go another direction because we know better.

He tells us of the road blocks, He says, “There will be troubles and persecutions.” He doesn’t tell us to go around them. Nope, we’re supposed to wade right through. Same with traffic… people who are doing wrong, evil, bad things. He tells us to drive through the traffic, “There will be wolves in sheep’s clothing.” Not that they will go away… nope, if we follow Him, we will meet the wolves but go through them unharmed.

He shows us where we are, “Blessed are the peacemakers, those that mourn, those that hunger and thirst for righteousness” and where we should be, “those that have ears, let them hear” “Blessed are those that suffer for my sake.”

He never promises a smooth road, only that we will walk with Him and He will be by our side the entire way. He also promises that no matter what, unlike a real GPS, He will never get us lost.

Because, unlike a real GPS, God loves us and wants only what is best, even when it seems not to be so. So, even if you have lost your job, your friends, or even a loved one, God loves you and wants what is best.

God Bless you and Merry Christmas.

I felt really bad for Jim. Over the last two weeks, he has had so little sleep. He was really struggling to function. Last night, he broke down, took something to help him sleep and went and crashed for almost 11 hours. He’s still upstairs sleeping.

When people list those things which we need to survive, often they are the arbitrary things that make them feel good. When I fasted for days, people, well meaning people, would tell me I was going to do more damage because I wasn’t eating. I heard that fasting was bad for you, that skipping meals would lead to obesity, even that I could hurt my [heart, internal organs, name a body part] by not eating enough.

Funny thing was, they never seemed to finish the sentence with how much enough was… merely that fasting was bad.

Lies we tell ourselves.

For tens of centuries the church, the universal Christian church, has fasted as a way of denying self to glorify God. In simplest ways they have abstained from meat, in more extreme ways, men have secluded themselves and eaten merely bread and water for days, months, even years, pouring their life into prayer.

What is it that is essential? Is 8 hours of sleep? Often the great of the faithful from years ago would go on a few hours of sleep a night. they would wake at 3 am, pray for an hour and then wake again at 5 for their daily chores and go to bed after 11 pm. Daily. For their entire life of service. These men, monks, would care for the sick and opened the first free hospitals. The plagues that racked Medieval Europe were cured by these humble men. And they died in a higher proportion than any others.

What is essential? Heat? These people went through the little Ice Age in the 12th and 13th Centuries… without heat in their convents and monasteries. They had no socks, only wool and cotton grown locally and made by their hands. Only the sick got heat.

What is essential? Clothes? Hand woven wool and hand spun cotton to cover? We complain about the silk on our bodies, or the problems with this synthetic or that.

What is essential? I will tell you what is life. What is bare bones the most important thing that we must have. Love. Then comes Faith and Hope. Then comes peace, joy, goodness, kindness, gentleness and self control. These fruits of the Spirit. These life essentials. All the rest can be whittled away to almost nothing and we will be fine. With these essentials, we have what matters most. Lived in a life surrounded by prayer and other people… because we don’t live in a vacuum.

Think about what is essential in your life, and what you have that you don’t need.

Ok, here is a bit of fun:

I got a magazine from the church at Mass a few weeks ago. You know, one of those little magazines that has the passages from the Bible, a talk about a person of the day and some thoughts. They often have quotes form the person of the day. I noted one and it had a quote from Dorothy Day. No not the Actress, but the woman who founded the Catholic Worker Movement. No, that is not some socialist organization bent on over throwing the Republic that is United States of America. The Catholic Worker Movement is a collection of autonomous communities of Catholics and their associates founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in 1933. Its aim is to “live in accordance with the justice and charity of Jesus Christ.” Her quote made me stop and think for a moment. And then again.

“No one has the right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.”

By it’s nature, hopeless is selfishness. Hopelessness says “Oh woe is me, for I have lost it all, and have nothing to live for.” “What can I do, I lost my job, my home, my family. I want to die.” “I have [fill in an illness] and it’s painful and it’s hard and I feel bad and I don’t want to go on.”

While I don’t want you, dear friend, to think that I am without mercy or compassion for those who have lost everything, that is not my point.

When God cleans us out and drops us down to the barest minimum we have two choices. We can look up and get up or look down and go down. There is no standing still. There is no staying in the same place. By our nature we are never stagnant.

By sitting down, looking down and saying woe is me, we take away God’s chance to work with us in giving to others. God’s infinite grace and mercy can work through us… even in the worst.

A friend of mine told me about someone she dearly loved who was dying a horrible death from cancer. Even in this horrible situation, light is there for us to see. My friend and the family were a part of making sure she died with dignity, with peace, filled with love. There could be joy in the passing, not horror.

No hopelessness. No bitterness.

No sitting down.

So, stop sitting down. Stand up and find the place where God wants your hands to be busy. Find where God wants you to go and do. Stop sitting down, go find your work.

Moving into a house is like applying Christianity to our lives.

I am moving boxes, books, crafts and clothing. We must make some things fit into small, the kitchen and other things into large, the living room. We have moved in fairly successfully and the house looks great.

One thing I learned though, is that my life as a Christian is like moving into a new house. When we first had a home, Jim and I had 2 kids, Rachael and Gordon and we lived in a small house. We had enough to keep us with places to sit and to eat, a place to sleep and a place to put our clothing. With my previous house, I barely had even that. A bed on the floor, milk crates for furniture and my first Christmas after my divorce, I had found a pine branch and hung ornaments on it. The kids were so little, they barely remember.

We start out as Christians as if we live in a barely furnished house, our crate furniture, “charlie brown” Christmas tree. We have just enough to live, barely enough to survive. Because we have so little, we just can’t take in so much. If we do, we get disallusioned with the people who have big houses. They ask for help to put up their lights, or cut back some trees, or keep the yard clean and we say, “But they don’t need help! They have all that space and all that stuff!”

It causes us to leave. It causes us to focus on them and not on our relationship with Christ and the Church.

We need to focus on developing and growing our own house. If we want Christ to live in our house, to be a part of our house, we need to make the house as welcoming to him as possible and unwelcoming to the things and places that don’t welcome him.

Make your heart as welcoming to him by focusing on life, love, charity, humility, service… all that is noble, good.

Clean up your house and make it fit for a King and one will come and live there.

I got a video from my favorite Equine practioner. Clinton Anderson is a great clinician. He teaches you working with horses. Not riding, but working with them. I love learning how to train them. This video is titled, “Regaining Lost Confidence”. It is a video on how to come back to horses after many years absence and feel a connection to them again and not be afraid.

Often, we will spend time away from God, only touching our spiritual side for a short time. We wander away and think we’re doing ok. It goes usually something like this: we were fervent as a youth, going to church, active working, making our hands be God’s hands.

Then something happens. We lose hope because of a person, or an activity. The Priest fails us in some way. Someone at church hurts a child, or you. They preach one time too many about funds or sin or hell and you leave. You just don’t come quite so often.

Then you don’t really come at all. God is a faint whisper that you hear on the few occasions when it impacts your life directly, like Christmas, Easter, when you are asked what you believe, or how you vote or do you support abortion.

And then one day, you realize that there is music in your heart that you haven’t heard in years, there is a song, a friend, a lover who you miss and need.

Then it hits you… you don’t know how. How do you do the church thing? How do you go from nothing to something after childhood? Will they ridicule you for forgetting?

He says come. He doesn’t ask you to do it right. He only says come. He can give you the confidence you need to return home. Come to the home of the heart and step back into the work that fulfills everyone.

Regain your lost confidence and live.

I’m sitting here, waiting out the storm. Outside blows an early “Nor’ Easter”, with winds whipping the trees, and rain pelting the roof. Yet, as the sun comes up, I am snug. The dogs lie quietly at my feet, and no one is stirring as yet. My tea warms me inside as well as the heat in the house outside.

Life is very often filled with difficulties and troubles. A friend, neighbor, even our spouse hurts us, uses us, betrays us. We are injured, a family member sick, we lose our house, our job, a child. It’s all there, the storms of life. And if we allow ourselves, we all get wet. No one is immune to the water if, and this is a big one, if we go out in the storm!

I am not talking about the “Prayer of Jabez” movement which says prosperity and health are only yours if you pray for it. If that were true, then Christ’s death on the Cross was absolutely unnecessary. If we could pray away troubles, then why did Christ not pray away the Cross? Yes, he went willingly, but if he wanted us to have a trouble free life, wouldn’t he have repeated it over and over, “Pray and your troubles will cease, as mine will cease?”

Christ came to suffer the Cross but He went to the Cross having suffered through the storm. Do you think His troubles started at the Cross? He was almost stoned several times, and he was chased out of places, and even His own followers ridiculed Him. I can’t think of a more compelling reason to suffer. Because my lord suffered. “Where do you go, My Lord?” “Back to Rome to be Crucified, again.” The famous words of ‘Quo Vadis’.

The thing is, Paul didn’t stay in the storm. Christ didn’t stay in the storm. They trusted in the Providence of God and moved through the storm to the other side, home.

As I sit here, I think of all the storms in my life, abuse as a child, the ceaseless moving of my childhood, my own anger that I had to learn to put aside for a better life, abusive ex-husband, mis-treatment by others, accusations, problems, like you all, I have had them too.

St. Mother Theodore Guérin, whose feast day is today said this to the women in her care in Indiana: “Have confidence in the Providence that so far has never failed us. The way is not yet clear. Grope along slowly. Do not press matters; be patient, be trustful.” Another time, she asked, “With Jesus, what shall we have to fear?”

Have confidence in the Providence that has never failed. Focus on the home, not the wind outside and go boldly through the storm.