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Someone wrote me the other day and asked me to write about how to be loving and kind to a family member that is annoying and selfish. Here are my thoughts... Right before Christmas, I was sitting in LAX waiting to get on a flight back home to Kansas. I'm a people watcher, so I never sit with my head buried in my phone. At first, I started picking apart each person. There were so many annoying things and if you would have taken a picture of me, I probably would have had a scowl on my face. Then, I looked across from me. This young guy and I locked eyes for just a second and he smiled. I smiled back. It was clear that he was most likely cognitively disabled. I then watched him look out at all the people. As I watched, I noticed how he just continued to smile at each person. Rather than being critical of each person and mentally creating a litany of annoyances about everyone, he was just watching people with an expression of joy. I thought in that moment: What if someone is doing what I'm doing and their eyes landed on me? They could deem me the annoying-scowly faced woman who is clearly silently wishing that she could fix everyone so that they wouldn't annoy her anymore. Then I would be annoying to that person. So, I decided to change my attitude and I started looking around at everyone with the eyes of the guy across from me. I noticed a mom and her teenage son laughing together. I noticed a soldier talking to a loved one on their phone. I noticed exhausted parents trying to sneak a quick lunch while their baby napped in his stroller. Suddenly, nobody annoyed me and I was filled with a deep love for all these flawed people. For just a brief moment, I saw them not as people that needed to fix themselves so that I could like them. Instead, I saw them as people that needed to be loved. We all struggle with being loving to people that get on our nerves. I know I do. Selfish people are hard to deal with. What we must remember, Catholic Pilgrims, myself included, is that it is selfish of us to want people to be just so in order for us to love them.
Continue ReadingLast week, during our evening Bible reading with our son, my husband read the part where Jacob wrestles with God. After this wrestling, Jacob's name is changed to Israel which means, "wrestled with God." Now, I'm not here to go over the theology of whether this was an angel or God, that's for the theologians to hash out. Either way, Jacob was wrestling with a spiritual being. So, we asked our son, "Why do you think Jacob had this wrestling match?" He thought for a long moment and then said, "I think he was maybe mad about something." "What was he mad about?" "I think he knew he had't been that good and now he wanted to go home, but he knew he couldn't go home the same way. Something like that. Maybe he was mad that things hadn't turned out all that great for him, because he wasn't always honest." My husband asked, "So, who all had Jacob wronged?" "His brother. He lied to his dad. And he wasn't totally honest with Laban either." So, I said, "When we've allowed ourselves to become less than who God created us to be, we hate facing ourselves. But, if we ever are going to be better, we must face who we've become and, in that process, we will wrestle with God. When we finally break down to see ourselves for what we truly are, there will be a battle within us. Ultimately, that battle is with God." The battle is never fun, Catholic Pilgrims, and oftentimes, we will leave with a wound, just like Jacob did in his hip. However, once we have this battle and we face ourselves and truly desire change, growth and transformation will happen. We will be better. Jacob got a new name because he was no longer the same old Jacob. The wound is there to remind us of the battle and that we don't want to go back to who we were any more. If we are too afraid to have this battle, especially if we've really been down the wrong path, we will stay stagnant the rest of our lives. Best to wrestle it out with God so that we can be changed for the better. Live the faith boldly and travel well this Monday. *Painting by Alexander Louis Leloir (1865)
Continue ReadingIn preparation for Season Five of my podcast "Journeying with the Saints," I reached out to the different shrines in the US associated with St. Frances Cabrini. I got to chat on the phone with the executive director of the St. Francis Cabrini Shrine in NY. I loved hearing from Julia about Mother Cabrini. During our conversation, she said something that really struck me. "Mother Cabrini saw difficulty at the start of a mission as a good sign, because it meant the work had been sealed with the Cross." You wanna hear Saint talk? That's it for you, right there. That mentality of hers sliced through me like a knife. All around us--ALL AROUND US--we are told that if something is difficult or hard, if barriers are put up in your way, abandon ship because God obviously doesn't want you to do it. If He did, it would be an easy path. This is a lie. I've been whining about having to be stationed in the desert again and how hard that is and how it isn't super, big fun for me. Yet, Saints welcome challenges and sufferings. If you are experiencing hardship and difficulties in your mission or vocation, it's been sealed with the Cross. I mean, what kind of talk is that? It's utterly stunning to me and so very inspiring. We have this notion in our heads that Christianity is supposed to be this comfortable, easy path just because we believe in Christ. But, when at any point was Christ's life easy? It wasn't. It just wasn't. Yet, He carried on because the mission was too great to not see it through. The suffering was redemptive for us all and He loved us that much to not give up even though it was hard. We've been talking about living out virtue and how our culture has twisted virtue into self-serving, dressed-up vices. All of what is served up to us is meant to be easy, comfortable, and shallow. Yet, we have Saints that are saying, "Bring on the sacrifices and suffering because that means this mission has been sealed with the Cross of Christ." That is love, my fellow Pilgrims. That is an attitude I aspire to and hope to emulate, because anything else is just self-serving rubbish. Live the Faith boldly and travel well this Thursday.
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