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. 

because we need a patron saint of the anxious

 

 

When our middle daughter was in college, she spent Spring semester of her junior year studying at Queen Mary University in London, and we visited her. It was a charmed trip with many unforgettable moments. 

 

A highlight for me was traveling to the coastal region of Norfolk and visiting the Church of St. Julian in Norwich, made famous by its history with Catholic mystic Julian of Norwich. 

 

Although we don’t know exact dates, Julian was born in December of 1342, and likely lived until 1430. At the age of 30, as Julian describes, “God sent me a bodily sickness” so grave that she expected to die. 

A priest brought her a crucifix, and Julian looked at Jesus and was healed. That’s when she experienced sixteen “showings,” messages from God. She spoke candidly with Christ on the cross, even asking Him questions.

 

These intimate, direct conversations with the Lord are Dame Julian’s greatest gift. In her best-known conversation, Christ told her, “All shall be well, and all shall be well. And thou shalt see thyself that all manner of thing shall be well.” 

 

Julian’s revelations took place during the span of a few hours, but it took her 40 or more years to ponder and write, Revelations of Divine Love. For the final 25 years of her long life, Julian became a hermit, living in a cell attached to the Church of St. Julian--and most likely taking the name of Julian from that saint. 

 

Dame Julian, as she was called in her time, received frequent visitors seeking spiritual instruction, “for the anchoress was an expert in such things and could give good advice,” Margery Kempe explained in her autobiography. As Pope Benedict XVI observed, Julian “had become a mother to many.”

 

She is fittingly hailed as “patron saint of the anxious” by author Hannah Matis. “If we can bring ourselves to believe her… we can become more aware of the quiet, insidious extent of our habitual anxieties and how they have unconsciously affected our understanding of Christ. Julian challenges us to ask ourselves how much good of God are we really prepared to believe.”

 

Julian’s words comfort me, but also persistently provoke me. 

The confident trust she professes in God and in God’s movement in life’s details, is not romantic optimism or positivity. Hers is a confidence grounded in reality, as life truly is. 

 

It is an affirmation that, yes, all things will be well—not because they will turn out as I want them to, but because no matter what comes next, God is with me. 

All is grace. God transfigures all, converts all, even suffering and anxiety, into grace and goodness. 

 

Julian’s confident trust that “all shall be well” is grounded on acknowledging God and God’s care for us, in our particular reality. She reminds me that this God of Love speaks to us, reveals Himself to us, precisely in the most intimate, quotidian details of my life. 

 

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This column was first published in the February 2021 issue of Liguorian Magazine, as the regular  column, “Just Live It”

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Notes on the icons / images above – image 1: Lady Julian of Norwich, icon by Anna Dimascio; image 2: This quote from Dame Julian has been taped to my bathroom mirror for years!; image 3:  Dame Julian and Margery Kemp, icon by Brother Leon of Walsingham

#WeRemember: the 25th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing

When I first arrived at the site of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, to report on the Oklahoma City bombing for Catholic News Service, police lines and makeshift shelters had already been drawn by emergency crews.

Budding spring gardens downtown had instantly succumbed to military tents, hastily erected to serve as temporary morgue, as ATF/FBI evidence gathering sites, and as a canteen for rescue workers. 

Law enforcement and fully armed military personnel lined the streets, carefully eyeing every approaching person. Breathing masks, bloodied bandages, and much broken glass testified to the human carnage that had taken place there just a few hours earlier. Thick grey dust covered everything.

Overhead, helicopters circled the downtown perimeter, accusingly pointing a flood light at the streets.

The sounds of sirens, voices, and motors blended with the humming of drilling equipment at the site—where workers used lighted cranes to cautiously proceed with rescue operations around the clock.

Northwest of the building, a block-long square area had instantaneously become an international media center, camera crews mixing with fallen debris, van food vendors, and smashed up cars demolished by the blast. 

Reporters talked on mobile phones to frantic editors; photographers pointed their high-powered telephoto lenses at rescue operations on the site; and television crews staked out their live, on-the-spot, reporting areas.

When I first saw the building, I stood speechless before the sight of human evil.

"It's worse than the most horrible Friday the 13th movie you can imagine… You can't walk out of this theatre," 25-year-old Steve Mavros told me as he sat on the sidewalk. 

Mavros and his trained dog Bucephalos, members of the Oklahoma Canine Search and Rescue out of Tulsa, were some of the first deployed to the site to identify the location of victims.

"We would have a hit—a human find—but only find a piece of a body,” described Mavros, silently petting Bucephalos.

On that fateful spring morning, 168 people died—19 of them children, in addition to three babies still in utero. Hundreds of survivors were maimed, injured, forever scarred.

For the first few weeks after the bombing, Oklahoma City held its breath. Functions were canceled. Businesses silently closed. Professors discharged classes. Students attended prayer services. A week after the bombing, a tire shop owner declared, “businness is just dead. No one is going anywhere.”

Several days after the around-the-clock coverage, a local sportscaster, faced with the nightly litany of scores, verbalized everybody’s feelings when he spontaneously admitted, “I’m sorry. I just can’t do scores tonight. It just seems meaningless.”

It is important that we remember April 19, 1995. 

Remember the lives of those who died, not only where they died. Remember the victims' families. Remember those who survived, and those still struggling to heal. 

Remember the tireless rescue workers who risked their lives in the still-trembling building to find survivors, and eventually, to bring the dead home. Remember how they would silently bow their heads in impromptu prayer before leaving the bomb site.

Remember TV and radio journalists openly sharing their faith on the air; volunteers serving food to weary teary-eyed firefighters; ‘Thank you for your work of love’ scribbled on a boarded up window near the site.

Remember how there was no looting in that wrecked downtown, and how crime was virtually non-existent for several days in this city of 500,000. “Pray” silently proclaimed on billboards throughout the city.

Remember how the money turned in after the blast from the Federal Employees Credit Union vault housed in the Murrah building exceeded the money originally held in that vault. 

We must always remember— remember that the stories of human goodness, generosity, and compassion overwhelmed and conquered one despicable act of evil.  

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Want to hear more stories of HOPE?  Check out my first book — "Their Faith Has Touched Us: The Legacies of Three Young Oklahoma City Bombing Victims" 

my dear friend... a letter for you, from God

 

"Come to me, all you who labor 

and are burdened, 

and I will give you rest"

my dear friend [insert your name here],

Yes, come for rest. But stay for rest, too. 

Stop all feverish haste and be calm and untroubled. 

Come unto Me, not only for petitions to be granted but for nearness to Me. 

Be sure of My Help, be conscious of My Presence, and wait until My Rest fills your soul. 

Rest knows no fear. Rest knows no want. Rest is strong, sure. The rest of soft glades and peaceful flowing rivers, of strong, immovable hills. 

Rest, and all you need to gain this rest is to come to Me. So come! [all emphasis mine]

~from God Calling, A. J. Russell

daily devotional, entry for today,

September 25

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When I look over my recent posts here, it is obvious that for the past several months, my energy and time has gone elsewhere! I am sorry for the radio silence.

As re-charging as writing is to me -- and it is truly a graced avenue that God uses to fill and renew me! -- I have been in one of those moments in life where only silence and stillness could fill up the in-between times, those critical moments when we ponder what we are living. 

And there has been so much going on! 

Merely since my week-long silent retreat in early July, there has been so much...  Completing my cardiac rehab (woo hoo!); trips to connect with and celebrate milestones with family; a new Grand born!; pilgrimage to Guatemala for Blessed Stanley Rother's feast day; many doctor visits; a special visitor from Cuba; buying a new home (more on that later!); making time with the Grands -- you get the idea. 

I find that the older I get, the deeper I feel things and the easier it is to recognize how important, how life-altering each of our life moments really is--wether huge or quotidian, every-day life. 

Yet there is no substitute for time, for be-ing with God in stillness and silence. That is the one way, the only way, to really ingest this life as a grace and blessing from God. 

NOTE: all photos from our pilgrimage to Guatemala, and to Santiago Atitlán, where Blessed Stanley Rother was martyred. Want to know more about the first U.S. martyr? Check out my book, "The Shepherd Who Didn't Run: Blessed Stanley Rother, Martyr from Oklahoma" (OSV Books). 

resting in the Love which began it all

”What feels hopeless — is where you meet more Jesus... What they call the dark night of the soul may feel as endlessly black as the limitless cosmos — but darkness isn’t God, darkness isn’t infinite.

Darkness has limits, darkness has an end, darkness has borders. 

And sometimes you exhale like the expanse of a night sky, like even your breath calls your Father’s name, YWHW. 

And you breathe: All darkness has shores and there is always laughter on the other side. You have to believe this.  

And when you can’t believe— just breathe. 

Next breath, next thing, next step — and you will get through now.

He knew: He made your every breath to be the sound of His name, the endless song that comforts your only soul.”  

                                               ~Ann Voskamp

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“I have heard your prayer and seen your tears. I will heal you.” ❤

~2 Kings 20: 5

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“[T]he true consolations of religion are not rosy and cozy, but com-forting in the true meaning of that word: com-fort: with strength. Strength to go on living, and to trust that whatever Joy needs… is being taken care of by that Love which began it all.”

~Madeleine L’Engle

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For the past few weeks, I have spent a considerable amount of energy and time learning how to live with my new heart.

If it sounds dramatic, it’s because… well, that ‘s how I have felt. Not dramatic in the sense of melodramatic, or theatrical. But the past month has been a dramatic experience for me, as in… intense, striking, vivid, life-changing.

One way that I have been able to describe it to my Hub, is that I have experienced several life-altering physical experiences in the past – surgeries that flipped my life upside down, for example.  But this was my first life-threatening physical reality.

So in the midst of reading many texts to learn more about my condition, and reading texts to learn about my new meds, and journaling to process my emotions, and doing cardiac rehab three times a week – in the midst of all of it, I have given myself as much time as possible to breathe and to just be. 

But more importantly, I have given myself time to breathe and to be still… in the arms of the One who loves me most, and the One who knows me best.

With each deep breath, I am keenly aware of my beating heart. Sometimes the heartbeat is so strong that my whole chest feels like it’s bursting. At times I am even aware of a flutter, as if I can literally and acutely feel my heart beating, at least, like I never have before.

I don’t so much feel like I’m walking in painful darkness. There are too many stars, too many moments of light and goodness, in the most unexpected moments and sources—a melody, a written note, a Scripture prayer, a TV show!

But I know there is still much to sort through.

Like a bursting Oklahoma thunderstorm, my emotions and thoughts have been fast-moving, unpredictable, and sometimes volatile.

And when that happens, I follow the same “storm readiness steps” with my spirit that we are taught to follow here in Tornado Alley:

·      be alert,

·      listen to the warnings,

·      take precautions at the possibility of dangerous threats, and when needed,

·      go to your storm-safe place!