Category: hope

In The Heart of Our Darkness

In The Heart of Our Darkness

My heart is filled with so much longing.

Is it the season of Advent which fills it with yearning and anticipation? Or is it the state of my being at this time? Or is it simply what it means to be human?

Regardless of the cause, I am left in the agony of waiting during these shortening winter days. In some ways, anticipation is delightful, inviting a sense of looking forward to something and a source of hope for the future. Yet in other ways it can be draining, one’s being filled with a fervent desire for a fulfillment which is not yet here and the remembrance of that lack is persistent. While we cannot change that we wait, we can change how we wait. In recent days, two things have come into my mind and heart which have invited me to consider how I’m waiting even if they don’t completely change my experience of it.

The first was a moment in prayer a few weeks ago. It can be easy for me to feel that while God has a plan for me, He has perhaps overlooked moving forward with the next step. Yet I know that God wastes nothing, forgets nothing, overlooks nothing, and is in no way negligent with any aspect of any person. So what came into my prayer was the image of my whole heart, my whole being, every drop of my present life and circumstances being poured out into His hands. Like a bucket of water, it flowed from me and was captured tenderly, completely in His cradled hands. As individual drops moved toward the edges, seemingly prepared to fall carelessly to the ground, Our Lord managed to keep them all within the crevice of His hands.

Nothing was lost.

No fleeting emotion was unworthy of His attention, no aching wound escaped His notice or care, no mundane moment of my life was devoid of His presence and acknowledgement. I’ve come back to this image many times. My whole life, the complexities of my heart, the things I love and hate are all held by Jesus. Nothing escapes His notice or loving gaze.

The second is the idea of not letting my heart be troubled. It has come up in various ways and in different devotionals I’m listening to or reading. What has caught my attention most recently is the idea of letting my heart be troubled. So perhaps my life is filled with waiting and uncertainties. At least I can strive to not be troubled by the lack of clarity, to receive what is offered from the Lord and trust that He will provide. The storm can rage around us, but we can seek to not let the storm become interior. Not being troubled becomes an incredibly active thing rather than the passive thing it might sometimes seem to be.

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Windows to the Soul

Windows to the Soul

I was struck by their eyes.

Glancing around the table for a moment, I saw several pairs of gentle, thoughtful eyes. Creases radiated from the corners, shooting outward toward countenances which had faced much sorrow, misery, and difficulty. Yet, here, in this moment, these eyes were content, hopeful, seeking a fulfillment which had seemed elusive in the past.

I commented with a laugh that one of them looked incredibly intense as he carefully outlined a design on a poster, adding flourishes and details, colorful letters unfolding in a practiced artistic script. Another had kind eyes as he shared a gratitude for life which was a hard-fought accomplishment, a thankfulness borne of recognizing he could easily be dead if circumstances had transpired differently. Yet another had brilliantly dark and quiet eyes, settled into a fiery calm and carrying tremendous depth and treasured secrets.

One after the other, I am peering into pairs of eyes which have seen things I hope to never witness and have sought a hope I, too, fervently desire. Soaking up the moments, the snatches of conversation between sips of coffee and theological ponderings between deft strokes of a marker on posterboard, I found myself incredibly grateful for this glimpse of humanity. I think people wouldn’t believe what we talk about or what these men are like, I thought to myself as I heard them share their stories and answer questions.

The human person is a many layered being. I am not proposing that at this prison retreat there were only men who have completely repented of their wrongdoing or who will live lives on the straight and narrow forevermore. However, where can we look and see such a group of people? Instead, I am continually amazed at how they are taking their situations, brought on by their own choices as well as circumstances outside of their control, and seeking to grow. For some, this means striving for sobriety and personal betterment during their remaining prison sentence before concluding their time or being released on parole. For others, this means wrestling with a life sentence and how they can be involved in their families while incarcerated or seek personal fulfillment within the prison walls.

From the outside, flipping through tv news reports or online articles, it can be easy to simplify humanity. We hear about horrifying and shocking crimes, quickly bemoan the state of society, and want people locked away forever. Yet sitting at a table with them drinking cups of coffee, handing them slices of toast which are only offered on this retreat, watching their eyes fill up with tears as they speak of how they are seeking to be good fathers despite facing a life sentence in prison, and hearing them push themselves to share a story with the group regardless of their nervousness all makes it much harder to categorize them all as “bad” and slam the door shut on them.

Humans are complex and, thankfully, have the capacity for growth and change.

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You Can Waste It

You Can Waste It

Not too long ago, I was helping with a retreat and someone at the table was commenting about experiencing a cold shower that morning. It wasn’t presented as a major concern, but it was definitely something not desired by the individual. Another person at the table mentioned that he could offer up the cold shower. His reply was, “I don’t want to.” And I, quick with a witty and brisk response, jabbed, “You don’t have to offer it up. You can waste it.”

My own words have kept, for lack of a better word, haunting me over the weeks since that moment. Alongside it is the recurring question, Am I wasting it? Am I wasting my present suffering?

It is incredibly easy to look at someone else’s life and to see the moments when they should choose virtue. While it might take some learning and study, it is simple to offer words of wisdom, guidance for how one ought to live. Yet it is remarkably difficult to choose to accept one’s own wisdom or to live in the way one knows one should. The words which easily rolled out of my mouth have continued to stare back at me, probing me and provoking me, asking if they bear any resemblance to my own life.

I don’t want to waste my suffering.

Yet it seems that to offer up my suffering means I need to really be aware of it and consider it more deeply. If I’m going to offer it to the Lord, I need to recognize it. This, however, it not what I want to spend my time doing. Ignoring the present pain is a bit more comfortable. Instead of staring my longings and unfulfilled desires in the face, I want to avoid them and distract myself with something else. I think I tend to waste my suffering because I don’t want to keep acknowledging it and relating it to the Lord.

Underlying this avoidance of facing my suffering is perhaps the fear that if I keep looking at it, really seeing the tender point of pain and longing, then I might be prone to bitterness. It is already far too easy for my heart to grow bitter, with the Lord or anyone else. I think there is a worry woven into my heart that if I keep seeing this suffering and keep offering it back to the Lord that I will instead just tire of the process and get angry. If I avoid it, the slow-burn of annoyance will maybe just stay in the background. If I continually confront it, who knows what it will become?

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Answering Prayers We Didn’t Pray

Answering Prayers We Didn’t Pray

Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, ‘You are lacking one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’

The rich man in today’s Gospel received a beautiful, difficult blessing. He was able to ask Jesus how he could inherit eternal life and then he was told the answer.

It seems, however, that the rich man was hoping for a different response. Perhaps he wanted Jesus to say, “You don’t need to do anything else–you will inherit eternal life.” Or maybe he wanted Jesus to have some small request or some additional rule to follow. Instead, he is invited to follow Jesus after selling his possessions. This does not seem to be what the man had anticipated or he might not have asked Jesus the question. This good news, this call to discipleship which others received with wild abandon, is met with sadness and a disheartened turning away. The rich man asks a question, receives an answer, and then sulks away. How difficult it is to seek and then find that the cost is higher than you are willing to pay!

This is often true for us, too. We want the Lord to provide an answer to a present difficulty. Hoping for guidance and direction, we implore Jesus to show us the way. Yet when an answer, a path, or a gift is offered, we quickly realize it isn’t what we hoped we would receive. His ways and thoughts are far above our ways, yes, but we keep hoping, over and over again, that they will match up. We find ourselves desiring that just once our meticulously crafted and very comfortable plan will be the one the Lord has also been preparing for us. Many times we, like the rich man, ask questions with specific answers in mind or ask for grace but are focused on very particular graces.

Jesus sees this man wholly. He knows him through and through. The deep desires of his heart and the secret dreams and imaginings are known perfectly to the Lord. It is in light of this knowledge that Jesus offers the answer of sell what you have, give to the poor, and follow Me. Jesus doesn’t need more information to offer a better response. He offers the answer which is perfectly crafted for this man’s heart. Jesus looked at him, loved him, and then placed His finger on the very point which needed His attention right then. The Lord invites him to eliminate what separates them and to become His disciple.

Perhaps before every hard thing that enters our life, the same situation unfolds. Jesus looks at us, loves us, and then points to a lack in our hearts. He does this not to hurt us or to unnecessarily grieve us or to cause us to turn away from Him. Instead, it is this abundant love and great knowledge of our innermost being which causes Him to offer us a grace we didn’t ask for and mercies we didn’t expect. They often come wrapped in problems, accompanied by heartache, and bathed in tears. We don’t want them. We generally desire to resist them. And yet they come, through various means and different channels, from the hand of the Lord.

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Honey From the Rock

Honey From the Rock

I looked up from my sink of dishes to see a plump baby bird and his mom perched on the railing of my deck. The squat baby tipped his head back, opened his yellow-orange beak, and received what the mom graciously offered. The mom’s intense blue-black head flickered to the tree and then to the sky, cautious and attentive, before bolting away in search of more food. Meanwhile, the baby bird hunkered down on the railing, no squawk or complaint issuing from his mouth as his mom left him.

For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation. He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be greatly moved.
(Psalm 62:1 RSVCE)

This little bird, trusting in the faithful return of his mother, made me see again how I should be with God. Every time the mother took flight, the baby waited quietly, resting in the firm and certain knowledge that she would return. The most squawking happened when the mother had landed on the railing and the baby chirruped incessantly, eagerly clamoring for the food which was soon to be given. Otherwise, he was silent. He hardly moved. He never made an attempt to go get food on his own or to make any sort of search for his mother. He just waited in confidence.

Or perhaps he simply followed his bird instincts that said his mom would return with food. Yet how much more should I wait hopefully on the Lord, trusting that as He has promised, so He will deliver. The Lord will not abandon me or forget me. He can be completely trusted and relied upon. Though He might seem absent or far away, He is always laboring to provide the very best possible in each moment.

I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.
(Psalm 81: 10 RSVCE)

No conversation, no questions, no complaints. Just a neck craning back and a beak opened wide to receive whatever the mom was going to give him. And the mom provided each time. Sometimes she took part of the food back out, held for a bit in her mouth, and then deposited it again in his waiting mouth. Whatever she gave was received as good. I didn’t see the baby spit it back out or question if he would like what would be offered. Simple receptivity.

In these actions, repeated several times as the dirty dishes passed through my hands and became clean, I found a challenge offered to me from the Lord. Would I be like that little bird and receive all that He would offer me? Would I not question if it was really good or if I would like it or if there was anything else, but would I instead just receive from the Lord all He gifted? Could I trust the God of all creation, Who has led me up out of my own Egypts many times, as simply as the little bird trusted his mother? Will I take the offered cup and drink fully?

But my people did not listen to my voice; Israel would have none of me. So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels. O that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways! I would soon subdue their enemies, and turn my hand against their foes….I would feed you with the finest of the wheat, and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.
(Psalm 81: 11-14, 16)

Recently, I’ve been pondering the truth that God is always giving us our greatest good in every moment. It isn’t something new I learned, but it isn’t something I have often found myself considering. While I often don’t receive fully what the Lord is offering, it has been renewing my perspective of life events and situations when I try to view it from this perspective of unfathomable goodness.

The priest who spurred this pondering shared a story which I have also been ruminating over. He mentioned praying for rain as a child and how this nearly destroyed his belief in the goodness of God since the rain often didn’t come or was delayed. As a child, his perspective was that if God heard enough people, He would give what they were asking for or be convinced to give them what they wanted. Yet he offered a more Christian perspective of what prayer should be with the Lord. When begging and pleading for rain and it doesn’t come, the faithful follower of Jesus should be able to prayerfully wonder, Lord, what greater good are you doing here in this place of our need?

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Punctured With Grace

Punctured With Grace

The other day, I was surprised when the thought ‘it is good that I am single’ came into my mind. Yet in sitting with these words, I recognized there was a truth found in them. It occurred to me while in the chapel and I found that the truth was seen primarily in how much I desire them not to be true.

Over the past few years, I’ve realized that something interesting happens when a group of people is asked to introduce themselves to the rest of the gathering. Understandably, many people introduce themselves by referring to their spouse or children or even the number or kind of pets they own. Right out of college, I could get away with listing off my siblings, but the more time passes, the more odd it seems to include them in my sixty second about me for a group.

However, what I deeply desire is to have an identity that is solidly rooted in being the wife of so-and-so or the mother of whomever. The idea of having a person I can always show up to things with or children who become the focus of the conversation rather than me sounds incredibly alluring. I’m not trying to downplay the difficulty in these ways of living, but many aspects of it fill me with great longing and deep desire. For all the hard found in that vocation, there is an abundance of beauty and grace found there, too.

It is in light of those particular desires that I was realizing my singleness is a gift from God. One I hope will not continue forever and yet is most assuredly a gift.

Why?

Because my very hope and desire to have an identity shaped by my relation to a spouse or children shows how desperately I still need to root myself in Christ. The goodness of the Lord is found here, in my current situation, and I am being given a privileged chance to become more assured of my identity in the Lord. I don’t get to hide behind attachments or people who I very much desire to be part of my life. And that ever-present ache can be a piercing reminder of my need for God, one which can’t be assuaged by cradling an infant or a date night with my husband.

It is incredibly, boldly present from the fact that my students address me as Miss (or Mrs. but I am reminded of their wrongness when they do it, even if I rarely correct them) to the fact that I’m not helping children through the serving line at family gatherings. The gaping ache can, if I permit it, become a place the Lord can fill, a place of pure desire surrendered to God, recognizing my own inability to fulfill myself. It can be become empty hands, waiting to be filled, trusting they will be filled, and yet acknowledging the goodness of still being empty.

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Leaning into the Longing

Leaning into the Longing

“What could you possibly want?”

I had just given a talk in prison about how the Lord calls to us and yet how there are so many other voices calling to us as well. The goal, I said, was to listen through the cacophony and follow the still, sure voice of God. Afterwards, the small group I was leading commented on my talk, saying they didn’t know I could speak like that. Then we delved into the small group discussion questions. One question asked what other voices we listen to apart from God. I shared that sometimes I listen to the voice of comparison, which causes me to focus on what other people have that I wish I had or experiences they’ve had which I have not.

“What could you possibly want?” one of the guys in my small group asked, with the most sincere look of befuddlement on his face. “I heard you talk and you spoke like no other girl I’ve known. What could you want that you don’t already have?”

This sincere question struck me in two different directions. One aspect was that I should be grateful for the many gifts I’ve received and stifle more ardently that insidious voice of comparison. Having just given a talk about how we should listen to voice of God and not the other voices clamoring for our attention, I was forced to consider how often I do not do that very thing. Here was someone in prison asking what else I could possibly want when seeing a glimpse of my life. And I couldn’t argue that I lacked much considering my position in life.

Yet the other thought that came to mind was surprise that to someone I seemed to have everything. I wanted to pour out a lengthy list of all the things or experiences I long for yet do not have. Marriage, children, a job that completely satisfies me, a published book or two, the perfect work-life balance, the ability to run a marathon, a large built-in bookshelf with a ladder like in ‘Beauty and the Beast’, a perfectly planned upcoming vacation, no mortgage, and the list could go on and on. However, I wanted to tell him that even when one follows Jesus, there are still longings we have for other things, even if we strive to live an ordered life. The desires we experience should be responded to in such a way that we are led to reach for goodness, truth, and beauty instead of making us ungrateful for what we have by focusing on what we lack.

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To Waiting

To Waiting

At a recent Christmas party, the host invited the guests to share toasts for the new year (and simply life in general) by setting a theme and encouraging us to toast to various things. Standing there, cupping a glass of mulled wine, I listened to people make toasts to fruitfulness, the fullness of faith, wonder, the Eucharist, the Holy Spirit, and so on. After the person would give their ferverino related to the toast, he would lift his glass and say “To fruitfulness” (or whatever was being toasted) and the rest of us would repeat it.

Partly preparing for the potential of being randomly called on and partly because it was a beautiful idea, I pondered what I would toast to and how it could be connected to the previous toasts. So, lucky random readers, you shall hear my toast!

To waiting. The gift of fruitfulness comes only after a period of waiting. A slow, quiet growing (sometimes painful, sometimes joyful) which gives way to newness. The world waited for a Savior and even after the Incarnation, there was still a period of waiting for redemption, waiting for an epiphany. Our lives are filled with waiting, manifold opportunities for glorious encounters wrapped in the seemingly mundane trappings of daily life. May this waiting not be passive, but may it be an active experience of longing, of hoping for what is to come, and trusting that it will indeed come.

To waiting!

—

Photo by Al Elmes on Unsplash

Two Bearers of Hope

Two Bearers of Hope

So often I find that when I am teaching my students, I am actually teaching myself. I listen to the words come out of my mouth and find that I am convicted to live in a new way. It isn’t as though I talk about the Gospel and the Lord all day long and pat myself on the back. Rather, I find myself over and over having to admit that I am falling short of living the Good News fully.

One of my classes is finishing up a section on martyrs. They researched fairly recent martyrs with most of them living at some point during the 1900s. Then I showed two videos from Chris Stefanick about two priests who lived boldly during times of war. One priest was Fr. Emil Kapaun and the other was Fr. Vincent Capodanno, both of whom are at various stages of the canonization process.

Each video revealed how these men offered hope in situations that seemed hopeless. Fr. Kapaun became a POW during the Korean War and Fr. Capodanno died in a battle in the Vietnam War. In spite of persecution, Fr. Kapaun encouraged the men, leading them in prayer and risking his own safety to help them survive. As a war raged, Fr. Capodanno ran across the battlefield, offering last rites to wounded soldiers and bringing tangible peace with his presence and words. Their ability to provide hope in war changed the people they encountered. For some, it saved their lives and for others, it brought a calm in the midst of the storm.

As we reflected on these priests in class, I found myself inviting them (and by extension myself) to be hope-bearers in this world. High school can be such a difficult place for them, but the frustrations they experience are often carried into life beyond high school. What if they were people that others found hope in? What if we were able to provide a calm in the midst of the storm? A battle rages around us: wouldn’t it be beautiful if others found a place to rest when they were in our presence?

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There Is Always Hope

There Is Always Hope

I don’t recall exactly what it was about. During parent teacher conferences, I spoke with a parent and it was either about the grade, the student’s faith, or something, but whatever it was, the parent ended with, “So there’s hope?” And I, filled with a conviction that stretched beyond the moment, replied, “Yes. There is always hope.”

I felt the weight of that truth in the moment after the parent left.

Always. Hope endures despite all difficulties.

For someone who often skews toward pessimism, it is helpful to remember that hope persists, even when it seems illogical. I mean, we worship a God who rose from the dead after three days. He chose the most unlikely people to pass on the faith, who continually misunderstood Jesus and ran away when scared. Yet this Church still lasts. In spite of corrupt popes, Church scandals, intense persecutions, harsh dictatorships, and every other difficulty, we see that life can still burst forth from death just as the frozen ground will one day again yield to the gentle strength of new flowers.

The other day in class, I found myself saying, “Death isn’t the worst thing.” For me, it was obvious that this was true. I spent much of my first year of teaching hoping for death. Not in a morbid or depressed way. Rather, I was thoroughly convinced of the glory of the Beatific Vision and I was also thoroughly convinced that I wasn’t yet experiencing it in a room filled with angsty, complaint-filled teens.

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