God is always calling

  

 

Michael and I were college sweethearts, and married right after graduation. We also began expanding our family straightway. 

 

As the youngest in my family of origin and with little experience around babies, I tackled parenting as I would another college class. I researched every subject, from nutrition, sleep habits, growth charts, spirituality, to education and social development. 

 

It seemed reasonable that someday I would stop feeling deficient and inexperienced as a parent and, at the very least, grow in confidence.

 

Looking back, I chuckle at my youthful idealism and naivety. At 60, I’m still waiting for that clarity in how to be a confident parent to my now-adult children! 

 

What I received, however, through God’s abundant grace, was a profound understanding of the truths that were right in front of me, foundations that continue to color my life today -- as a wife, mother, and now grandmother, to my growing Tribe. 

 

First and above all, I cannot do it alone. In those early years, I was blessed to not only have grandparents to assist and support me, but also a reliable community of faith-filled women with whom I shared values and faith, and a desire to serve God in our quotidian lives. In them, I recognized and experienced what my friend wisely labeled, God-in-the-skin.

 

I also learned that I could not give to my four children what I didn’t have myself. In essence, I could not teach them the importance of prayer if I was not living a prayer-full life. I could not pass on the importance of service and love of neighbor, if they did not see us living those values daily. 

 

It’s like the flight attendant says, place the oxygen mask on yourself before putting it on your child. 

 

The most important lesson was quite simple. No matter how much I loved them or how much time or effort I put into my parenting, I would inevitably make mistakes. I would – and did – royally mess up. 

 

Thankfully, God does not expect me to be perfect, only to be faithful. Whether in parenting or living, when I pursue my efforts with God at my side, I can be confident that God’s grace will transform everything through forgiveness, mercy and redemption. 

 

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Note: An edited version of this post was published in the “Just Live It” column of the March edition of Liguorian Magazine. 

the loving mercy God desires

cross at Finisterre, España

“Jesus helped many people, but He was honest and straightforward about it. He didn’t persecute people after He helped them. And he asked them what they wanted from Him. Sometimes He asked why, too. He held people responsible for their behavior… I think [codependent] caretaking perverts Biblical messages about giving, loving, and helping.”

~Melody Beattie, "Codependent No More"

“Go and learn the meaning of the words, I desire mercy, not sacrifice" 

Gospel of Matthew 9:13 

I’ve usually heard these words, said by Jesus to the ever unpopular Pharisees, as some kind of criticism to them, an inside diss, if you will.

But today, as soon as I read this Gospel, I also heard my heart asking out loud—what do you really mean by that, Lord, that you desire mercy and not sacrifice?

The response was surprisingly immediate: the difference is in the attitude.

If I stop, pay attention, and I’m honest with myself, I know when my behavior—no matter how honorable it may seem—is based on an attitude of “sacrifice.”

When I act out of “sacrifice,” I’m often masking a myriad of other mindsets compelling my behavior. It’s often based on what author Melody Beattie describes in therapeutic jargon as behaving like a “victim,” usually acting out of a codependent “Drama Triangle.”

But let’s not get lost in that language either. 

The point is simple. My behavior can either reveal an attitude of “sacrifice,” centered on the self—or it can reflect a desire to act out of love, giving the self in freedom and authenticity.

This is the loving mercy God desires.

Lord have mercy, please

You know how I am about the words of the Mass, and how sometimes those same words that I’ve been hearing all my life jump out and grab me… sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in English, sometimes even in the revised English!

Today I knelt early as we recited, Lamb of God, have mercy on us… and I really heard the word mercy

Lamb of God, have mercy on me… please

Have mercy on me when I judge another person’s heart and their intentions, and I don’t even know them

Have mercy on me when I bite my tongue with lack of forgiveness for what he did to my daughter/son/husband

Have mercy on me when I self-righteously act like a martyr

Have mercy on me when I’ve been wronged, and I am full of self-righteousness

Have mercy on me when I tell the same story that happened 10/20/30 years ago criticizing her, yet expect others to acknowledge that I’m not the same as I was 10/20/30 years ago

Oh Lamb of God, have mercy on us… and grant us peace

the big red sky

“There is a lot of science one can read up on about what makes a vivid, colorful sunset. In a simplistic nutshell, sunlight is “bent” as it passes through our atmosphere. Blue light is affected the most (shorter wave length), while red (longer wave length) is affected the least. The Rocky Mountains also absorb a lot of blue light, leaving us with the brilliant reds and yellows we see here in Oklahoma.”

~Randy C.Anderson, photographer

“The simple soul who each day makes a morning offering of ‘all the prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of this day’ – and who then acts upon it by accepting unquestioningly and responding lovingly to all the situations of the day as truly sent by God-has perceived with an almost childlike faith the profound truth about the will of God.”



~Walter J. Ciszek, SJ, He Leadeth Me

Thanks to our long, low horizons (as well as other scientific reasons beyond my pay grade), we are blessed with truly stunning sunsets in central Oklahoma.

I am often overwhelmed by the big sky’s brilliant colors at that magic hour, and have to stop whatever I’m doing, or even pull over if I’m driving, to simply watch the day’s final moments of light converting our flat horizon into a Monnet-like canvas of bright color.

If I don’t pay attention, however, the big bright sun makes it easy to focus merely on the western horizon—and miss the impressive color displays taking place as the light reflects on the opposite side of the sky!

The biggest, brightest colors are often hiding, like a surprise gift, on the other side of the celestial canvas.

It made me ponder about how much this reflects the reality of God’s hand in the details of my life. I get so focused on a particular moment or event, that I forget that God’s reality, attention, and mercy is much bigger, generous, brighter, and loving that anything I can conceive or imagine.

God paints the full horizon, not merely where my eyes seem to focus.

Wherever you are when you read this, may you enjoy sunshine and beauty this autumn day! Here in central Oklahoma, we are preparing for a massive weather system heading our way that will drop our temperature by 50 degrees!

mercy, not sacrifice

  

cross at Finisterre, España

“Jesus helped many people, but He was honest and straightforward about it. He didn’t persecute people after He helped them. And he asked them what they wanted from Him. Sometimes He asked why, too. He held people responsible for their behavior… I think [codependent] caretaking perverts Biblical messages about giving, loving, and helping.”

~Melody Beattie, "Codependent No More"

“Go and learn the meaning of the words, I desire mercy, not sacrifice" 

Gospel of Matthew 9:13 

I’ve usually heard these words, said by Jesus to the ever unpopular Pharisees, as some kind of criticism to them, an inside diss, if you will.

But today, as soon as I read this Gospel, I also heard my heart asking out loud—what do you really mean by that, Lord, that you desire mercy and not sacrifice?

The response was surprisingly immediate: the difference is in the attitude.

If I stop, pay attention, and I’m honest with myself, I know when my behavior—no matter how honorable it may seem—is based on an attitude of “sacrifice.”

When I act out of “sacrifice,” I’m often masking a myriad of other mindsets compelling my behavior. It’s often based on what author Melody Beattie describes in therapeutic jargon as behaving like a “victim,” usually acting out of a codependent “Drama Triangle.”

But let’s not get lost in that language either. 

The point is simple. My behavior can either reveal an attitude of “sacrifice,” centered on the self—or it can reflect a desire to act out of love, giving the self in freedom and authenticity.

This is the loving mercy God desires.

sounds of my backyard, where I do my pondering

mercy

image from A Circle of Friends

“Our personal lives and the lives of so many people are deeply affected by the staggering lack of forgiveness in our world. People are held captive by revenge and bitterness, by hostility and alienation…
 Lack of forgiveness—the showing of mercy to others—sabotages our ability to love. And without unfettered love in our lives, we distance ourselves from God and from others, often ending in a deep estrangement from the loving person we are called to be by God.”

~Edward O’Donnell, OCD,

 in Spiritual Life, Fall 2012

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Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if I had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great/And would suffice.

~Fire and Ice,

by Robert Frost

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praying at Mass

Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala

“We know now in what way Christ would live in our humanity. Not as One who, having proved his love, has gone back to his Father leaving us a sealed tomb, but as One who, having tasted to the full the joys and sorrows of human nature, having embraced the grief of mankind, having drained death to the last bitter dregs, sets his wounded feet in the dust again, takes bread into his wounded hands again, and seizing a doubting friend’s hand, thrusts I into his sounded heart; as though saying by his every act to all who would ever tremble and doubt: “I did not wipe the tears from the face of sorrow to lay sorrow by. I did not touch pain with fierce redeeming beauty to have done with it; I cannot give myself into the arms of death to cast death aside! I made all these things my own that the glory I gave to them should be yours, that while they remain with you, I shall remain with them.” He has taken all those things to himself, and has changed them all for us.”

~Caryll Houselander, as quoted in Magnificat, April 7, 2013