Category: success

Try, Try Again

Try, Try Again

One day, during the upheaval of school from home, I was helping my niece with her homework. While smart and a quick learner, she didn’t appreciate the corrections I was offering as I critiqued the direction of her 2s or her S. I encouraged her to try again, despite the initial frustration of getting it wrong.

As she was begrudgingly doing it again, I thought about how so much of a child’s life is learning how to do things. Naturally, that involves a lot of trial and error as they learn to walk, read, write, ride a bike, hit a softball, do a cartwheel, snap their fingers, and the list goes on and on. Children have to start so often from a place of humble acceptance of their inability to do something they want to do.

I think I could learn a lot from that disposition.

In my life, it is easy to stay safe and do the things I know how to do or think I can do well. When it comes to looking like a fool, I’ve never been much of a risk-taker. I much prefer to watch and see how others do it before attempting something on my own. Yet some things can only be learned by trying, failing, and trying again.

Continue reading “Try, Try Again” →

The Simple Life

Each day was simple in its task.  I was to wake up, eat, walk, pray, and sleep.  Each day, I was successful.

It is difficult to not be successful with such a simple task.  Yet too often I feel as though my life is not filled with simple tasks.  Instead of checking each item off the list and falling into bed knowing I did what was necessary that day, I am often going to sleep simply because I’m too exhausted to finish the task at hand.

The Camino was simple.  Not easy, but very simple.  I don’t think my interactions with everyone I encountered were perfect, but essentially every day ended successfully.

I don’t feel this success as a teacher.  I don’t feel this success simply as a working young adult Catholic.  Most days I feel as though I am miserably failing.  Then I wake up the next day to fail again.  The stack of uncorrected papers grow, the lesson plans become less than plans and more like ideas that are half-taught.  The sleep dwindles, the time I take for prayer lessens and I fall asleep during it anyway.

I am not successful.

The world measures my life by a standard of success that I do not have the luxury of choosing.  Even if I had the option to choose my own standard, I would still fall short.

Thankfully, the Lord measures success differently.  He desires my faithfulness and not simply my apparent (or unapparent) success.  With honesty, however, I am lacking in the faithfulness department, too.

All of this draws me back to the simplicity found on the Camino.  I had no papers to grade, no lessons to plan, no time to waste on Facebook, and very little distractions apart from the beautiful scenery and the pain in my feet.  It made me wish that all of life could be like that.  That life could be a simple, clear path.  I would wake up in the morning and know exactly where I was to go and I would take the necessary steps to get there.  I would nourish my body and try to consistently be in my bed by 10 pm.  It was a forced balance that I find myself not adhering to on a regular basis.  I knew what I needed and so I did what was necessary.

How do I take the simple beauty of the Camino lifestyle, the necessary discipline encompassed within that, and apply it to my daily life?

How do I encounter success through being faithful?

How do I simplify?

One Little Success for the Holy Spirit

It is the little things that seem to make a world of difference.  I remember reading a quote by a saint that essentially critiqued the readers for allowing their emotions to control them so much.  That we allow ourselves to become unduly happy when things go well and inordinately depressed when things go badly.  Instead, we are to remain more constant, trusting everything to the Lord.

I do not do that very well.  Nevertheless, today is one of those days that I am perhaps unduly happy.  I’ll take it.  There were a couple moments today that I felt a beautiful joy.  The simple thing of placing in the classroom another tissue box decorated by a student in a Theological theme.  Silly, perhaps.  I just loved the idea that even my tissue boxes are decorated with Scripture and pictures of saints.  The little things.

Today I felt elated as I won a victory when I didn’t even know I was in a battle.  A couple weeks ago I was perusing an online Catholic bookstore.  I love books.  I love to buy books.  I wish I could buy more books.  I saw that Delivered was being sold, a book that gives testimonies of people who have fought and conquered, with God’s grace, an addiction to pornography.  I looked at the cover, read a snippet of the book, and was intrigued.  The price was $8-9 for one copy.  However, one could purchase 20 books at only $2 per book.  I love a good deal.  Good deals and good books make one of the most irresistible combinations.

Trish, do you really need 20 copies of a book you have never even read?  I was just about to say “No” when I felt something within that told me to just buy them.  So I did.  And then I impatiently waited 2 weeks for them to arrive at my doorstep.  Last night I opened the box, took off the plastic wrap from one of the books, and began to read through it.  I didn’t read the whole book, but I read a few of the stories and I was taken.  I don’t know much about pornography.  In many ways it seems like it is in a different world than I am in.  I know this crisis affects me because it affects people I interact with, but I don’t typically think of pornography on a daily or weekly basis.

The problem that remained was how would I get them into the hands of my students.  I could have the most life-changing book but unless they were reading it, it wouldn’t make a difference.  So I did what any self-respecting teacher would do.  I offered them extra credit.  The good sign was that neither class asked how much extra credit.  All they have to do is read one of the stories (10-15 pages) and write two paragraphs–one summarizing the story and another speaking about pornography and the effect it has on the world, what they think of it, or other problems that go along with pornography addiction.

Nine students from each class took the book and I was thrilled.  Just having it in their hands is a success I am willing to celebrate.  My hope is that the one story they have to read for extra credit will turn into curiosity about the other stories.  Maybe they will tell another classmate or someone in another class about the book and lend it to them.  The possibilities are endless!

This is a rather small thing considering that maybe none of them will actually follow through.  Yet it seems like a triumph to me.  I will take that triumph, minuscule though it may be, because victories do not come often or easily in this battlefield.  So perhaps the Holy Spirit is doing something great through these little books that my students are being bribed to read.

Now who says that buying an excessive number of books is a bad thing?

(Purchase your own copy of Delivered and spread the truth!  http://shop.catholic.com/catalog/product/view/id/2364/category/44/)    

UPDATE:
After the first day, I am still running on excitement.  One of my students spoke to me after class about something and as I was looking for a paper he quietly asked about the book and how I found it.  I told him I received an e-mail from a place advertising the book and I just decided to buy 20 copies.  Quietly he told me that he wished he had the book 5 years ago.  It took a moment but what he was telling me finally sank in.  He told me he plans to read the whole book.  Deo gratias!  Keep going, Holy Spirit, keep going!