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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 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.
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