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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 ReadingI often like to look at the Gospels through the lens of my military life. It's the life I lead, and so, it helps to see parallels. I grew up believing that I would find a Kansas man to marry and settle down with him in my home state. That was not what God had in mind. Saying "yes" to my military man started me out on a path on which I had no idea what to expect. I had no inkling as a newly-minted 2nd Lt.'s wife what I was getting ready to face. There's no one who could have really told me all the ins and outs. I just needed to trust the path. I didn't at first. I was so homesick, so lost, so lonely at our first duty station that I told my husband that he needed to do his four years and get out. But then, after some time, I came to see that this life is a mission--a mission for good. It should be viewed as a life of sacrifice and serving. I soon realized that it was wrong to dissuade my husband from the mission. What I needed to do was join along and support him and the mission in the best way I knew how. I had to be more like Mary. Her son was on the biggest mission the world has ever known. She didn't know all the ends and outs of what would happen, but she supported His mission no matter what until the very end. She still supports it by supporting us--the soldiers for Christ. My military life, as an Air Force wife, pales in comparison to what Mary and Jesus went through, but I still like to look for the parallels. Mary was the support to her Son, just as I am to be the support to my husband. In today's Gospel, she supports the mission at the wedding feast of Cana in her loving way by interceding for the needs of others. When I look to her, she gives me strength to carry on. I find when I look to her example and try to emulate it, I am given many graces. All of us, Catholic Pilgrims, are to support the mission of the Church to bring souls to Christ. Have a blessed Sunday.
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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