God pulls through just in time

Well, my friends, I am thrilled to report that I have found and purchased a wonderful car. It's a 2005 Honda Civic, with all of the features that I wanted to find in a car, in excellent condition, and at a reasonable price. I am very excited, my first car ever! God is good, very good. The salesmen at this dealership were very helpful, pleasant to work with, and very accommodating in helping me navigate through the complicated process of buying a car in Virginia in the midst of moving to Tennessee. What a relief!

God's timing was a little too slow for me, but it was His perfect timing and He has got me covered. Because I went to the dealership when I did, and they had had the car for a little while, the salesmen were looking to make a sale and very open to price negotiation which was such a blessing. This might not have been the case had I discovered this car a few weeks ago.

Every time that I need to trust God will provide for my needs, every time when He is stretching my trust, I have to remember that "those who trust the Lord will not lack any good thing" ~ Psalm 34:10. Because it is true that He takes care of His children, and covers us with His providential care. I need to remember that the Lord has been abundantly faithful in providing everything from housing to transportation to friendships in the past and that He will continue to provide every good thing for me as I journey into the unknown.

If you are in the midst of a trial that is testing your patience and perseverance, remember the faithfulness of the Lord; even if it is through gritted teeth, press forward and know that it will come together in His time. Over and over again, though the process is often wearisome and discouraging, the Lord has proven that He will deliver on His promises, solve our quandaries, and provide for our needs. It will not come a minute too soon, nor a minute too late:

"For the revelation awaits an appointed time;
it speaks of the end
and will not prove false.
Though it linger, wait for it;
it will certainly come
and will not delay. "
~ Habakkuk 2:3

Thank you Jesus.

"

Surrender is hard work

We've all heard countless times that the key to our peace in any situation, large or small is that we surrender our will to God's will. We have to trust in His providence, and abandon ourselves to His providence and He will take care of the rest.

For the weary, exhausted person tired of dealing with the challenge at hand, the idea of surrender is quite appealing. When I finally reach the point of letting go of a particular trial in my life, I think that in the back of my mind, I am expecting that now that I have decided to surrender, the hard work on my part is over. God will just take care of everything. I'm off the hook.

Unfortunately though, this is not usually the case. Surrender does not mean that we will immediately be freed from the grunt work and our problems will be miraculously solved.

This hit me hard today as I continued on my car search. I spent six hours this afternoon (my brother kindly lent me his car to drive around to various dealerships) trying to find my way to unfamiliar places in the pouring rain, getting lost, having my phone battery die on me while I was trying to get directions, dealing with the tiresome antics of car salesmen, and the list goes on. I found myself thinking, "Really God! I have surrendered this to you! Why does it continue to be this hard?"

Then I realized that sometimes it's even harder to trudge through the grunt work after you have intentionally surrendered to God, because you expect Him to take all of the grunt work out of your way, pronto. But really, surrender is more of a disposition of the heart; an ability to climb the mountains in front of you with renewed faith. God might not move the mountain in front of you, but He will give you the extra grace to get over the mountain. Or maybe He'll give you a shortcut. But He won't necessarily bail you out in the way you imagine He should.

"Our peace...does not mean that we shall longer longer fight. Temptation will still be temptation, suffering will still be suffering, the world will still be the world...but the world will not destroy us.  The peace of Christ is Christ. There is no other. 'I have said this to you that in me you may find peace. In the world you will only find tribulation, but take courage. I have overcome the world.' How often in Christ we see peace and tribulation together...The risen Christ shows his wounds and bestows his peace in one gesture of love. " ~ Caryll Houselander

There is a saying, "Work as if 90 percent of what happens depends on you and 10 percent depends on God. Prays as if 90 percent depends on God and 10 percent depends on you."

Feet on the ground, eyes to heaven, Lord, give me your grace.

The end of an era

flickr/by Sapphireblue

The Willard Hotel, on Pennsylvania and 14th Street.

I often walk down this block on my commute to work, and this is one of my

favorite architectural structures in Washington, D.C.

 It was with a bittersweet heart yesterday that I marked the last day working in downtown Washington, D.C. For as many challenges I have had in my job, and I many things that frustrated me about working amidst the hustle and bustle of the city, it really was a special, grace-filled 13 months for me.

Plopping my contemplative heart in the middle of a loud, chaotic, secular work-a-day world was quite a stretch for me. Not to mention working in our Nation's capital with it's unique busyness and goings-on. But the ways in which God spoke to me, penetrating the concrete buildings, busy city sidewalks, roaring traffic and the seemingly endless hours of data-entry was such an experience of spiritual growth for me.

"Seek the Lord while He may be found. Call upon him while he is near." - Isaiah 55:6

Having spent the last six years in Catholic colleges I was used to being able to seek the Lord in distinctly sacred settings, namely Churches and chapels and religious talks. Yet this past year I discovered the unique and exciting challenge of seeking the Lord in the secular day-to-day sphere. And you know what I learned? The more secular the place, the more powerful the manifestation of His presence becomes. When you seek God inside a church, you have a greater expectation of His response. But when you seek Him in what seem like unlikely places, His presence is all the more amazing. You begin to not just experience God's presence simply confined to a church, or in your 10 minutes of prayer time, but walking with you step-by-step, each street you cross, each smile you encounter, each tender word you hear, enveloping you with His spirit.

What a gift it has been to seek a contemplative spirit in the city. I pray for others who continue to be His hands and feet in the most urban, unlikely places - that He would transform them and guide them. And I pray that as I segway into this next chapter of my life (I head to Nashville next Friday), God will reveal to me the new ways in which I shall seek His face.

Saints Hall of Fame

Happy All Saints Day!

What beautiful examples we have in the Saints to spur us onward in our earthly journey. The beautiful thing about the saints is that their struggles, joys, experiences, and teachings can touch our hearts in a very personal way. We can always find a saint to identify with during something in our life that we are going through; their holy wisdom, lived out in very concrete ways gives us such inspiration in this valley of tears. The Church triumphant prays for all of us pilgrims striving towards our heavenly goal.

Which saints make your hall of fame?

Some of my favorites are the following. Most of these saints I have developed a devotion to through their spiritual writings, which have really resonated with me.
 
St. Therese of Lisieux
St. Edith Stein
St. John of the Cross
St. Bernard of Clairvaux
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton
St. Alphonsis Ligouri
St. Elizabeth Lesuer
St. Gianna Molla
St. Joseph
St. Zita

All you holy men and women pray for us!

The call to spiritual motherhood

For all you single ladies out there, longing for a vocation to motherhood to begin, or all of you married women who are unable to conceive a child, take heart in this beautiful meditation from Caryll Houselander. Whether God has asked this special sacrifice of yours for a little while or has asked you to bear this lifelong cross of barrenness, may you find inspiration to the noble calling you have received ~

"For some, marriage is a vocation; it is a superb vocation, on it depends not merely our race going on, but the Christian life going on in the world. But there are others who have the vocation to be spiritual mothers. Sometimes they are married women too and learn this spiritual motherhood from their own children, but sometimes they are unmarried, either from choice or circumstance. I say 'circumstance' because it is a cruel mistake to suppose that if a woman would honestly like to marry but circumstances make it impossible, that she is merely frustrated and should devote her life to toy dogs, bazaars and acidity.

Circumstance is the one reliable test of God's will for us, and a clearer indication than any 'attraction' we might feel.

For the woman, then, who does not marry, is motherhood a vocation? It most certainly is, and God forbid that anyone should read into those words condoning of that fussy, grasping interfering attitude that passes so often for 'spiritual motherhood'. The essential thing is this, that the mother instinct, the capacity for love, be awake, alive.

This means suffering. It is easier in the long run to dry up the life in us than to develop and direct it. The woman who will be truly a spiritual mother will feel in herself, in her body and in her soul all the desire and necessity for a child of her own.

In this very passionate longing, in this aliveness of love her purity will consist. Indeed it is the essence of virginity, for we do not lay dead ash on the altar of sacrifice but burning fire. The same intense aliveness gives her a constant suffering. All maternity involves pain and sacrifice, spiritual motherhood as much as any other.

Then again she has to think this, that it is for the sake of the spiritually motherless children that God asks her to suffer this lifelong depth of feeling, which so far as her personal gratification is concerned will always be unsatisfied. He wants her to be hungry and thirsty all her life. This is achieved only by the development of her nature and complete abandonment to his will.

For whom is this hunger and thirst? For whom does God ask women to develop their human nature to its full warmth and tenderness and to sacrifice it? For the child Christ.

The child Christ lives in many souls, disregarded, unfostered, unhelped. It is not only in the sinner that he needs a mother, but in timid and ignorant sould, in while where innocent life is suffocated by worldliness, in souls surrounded by subtle temptations to so compromise with faith and holiness that were there no mother to help and counsel and make strong, his life could never be more than a sickly colourless flower growing in a dark cellar."

~ Caryll Houselander
in the essay "Mother of the Unseen Christ"
found in the book "Lift up your hearts".

The great car search

Well, for every bit easy as my job opportunity in Nashville came about, the preparations leading up to moving have been every bit as hard. I guess I naively expected that because everything flowed so easily with the job offer aspect, everything else should follow suite. Not so. Saying 'yes' to God's call is just the first step, it's just getting the ball rolling. Once the rubber hits the road it's a whole different story.

I've never owned a car, but I absolutely need to get one for Nashville, since I am pretty sure that public transportation is not as prevalent as in D.C. My brother and I have visited 7 car dealerships over the past few weeks, trying to find a reliable, quality car in my budget with no avail. Nothing in my price range seems to be satisfactory, and dealing with the smooth-talking, game-playing salesmen day after day has proven very trying. The other day I left the car dealership we went to nearly in tears, so frustrated that the car search that has dragged out for weeks (and months, really, because I started looking for a car before I even had Nashville on my radar) with no success.

The feeling seemed strangely familiar though. I felt dejected, discouraged, and weary. Then I remembered that this was the exact same feeling I had when I was in the midst of my job search a few weeks before I submitted my application to the Nashville position. And yet, within a short time after this deep discouragement set in, I quickly received a job offer for just the sort of job I'd been looking for.

It's that God's timing thing. He asks us to preserve so we might grow in faith and mature in trust. Just when we think we're smooth sailing, He asks for more surrender. So I am trying to remember that my heavenly Father knows all that I need. He knows how many hairs are on my head, and what car I need. I will try to "wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord." (Psalm 24:14) I will try to remember that everything will ultimately fall into place in His perfect time, even as I fight restless impatience as I wait.

In the meantime, no thank you, Mr. Car Salesman, I do not need a car with a blue tooth device, or fancy features.

And if you want any facts about the reliability of used compact cars, just let me know. I pretty much have the consumer reports memorized.

God's prism

Change certainly provides a unique opportunity to look at your life in a different light. It's a bittersweet thing, because in preparing to move on to the next step, you are able to to appreciate more deeply all of the blessings that you have been given in this time; yet it also means moving from your current blessings to new blessings, and saying farewell to dear friends and people who have made a beautiful impact in your life in a day-to-day basis.

In thinking about my three years in Washington, D.C. and the wonderful friends I have made, colorful acquaintances I have developed, and the sweet co-workers that I have learned so much from, it struck me how God has used so many people here to speak His love to me. And I see how in each of these people God has touched me in myriads of ways. No two people have manifested God to me in the same way. Rather, each with their own charism, they have shown me the face of Christ, whether implicit or explicit; whether they were Catholic, Protestant, or atheist.


I am awed by the way God speaks to us through one another, answering our prayers through the Body of Christ. I am so thankful for all of these people; the ones who encourage; the ones who challenge; the ones who entertain; the ones who console; the ones who serve; the ones who inspire; the ones who beckon; the ones who affirm; the ones who witness.

Hans Urs Von Balthasar talks about how "The Old Testament spoke in similar terms of God's wisdom permeating the whole of his creation; it was always the same, unique wisdom, belonging to God alone, which is multiplied, as it were, through the multiplicity of creatures, and - as Paul says - is split into many colors."

flickr/by *paylamaginaire*

It makes me think of how the Body of Christ, the Church, is like God's light shining through a prism, manifested to us in the thousands of colors of those around us. How beautiful and rich our lives are because of the way each individual person casts his or her unique hue. And even more beautiful still is the way that God orchestrates these rays in perfect time, that their we encounter the words or actions of specific people who speak to our hearts in times of difficulty, in response to a new calling, or in answer to a prayer.

Von Balthasar speaks to the unique way which God's people witness His love to one another:

"But each one, being absorbed by his task, which is one part, one charism,
within the Church's great mission in the world,
acquires his distinctive and personal face...
For God is always the Unique One, and all he gives his creature bear this stamp:
it manifests and embodies his uniqueness."

Let your light, your own light, shine bright. There is no telling how God will use it to create a dazzling display of light to others.