Footprints on the Fridge

Digging in to Dig Out

After I posted a little bit about my struggle with dryness in prayer and learning to be lonely, a few people asked me what the remedy was to such dryness.  The truth is, that is a tough question to answer in general terms, because it is entirely dependent on circumstances, temperament, and the action of a Sovereign Lord.  That's a lot of variables to try to explain.  But I have spent a lot of time thinking about my spiritual journey as I sought to learn to walk again after the devastating blows of the last year.

I think when you are experiencing what people call spiritual dryness, where suddenly prayer is unproductive, you see no forward progress in your spiritual life, and you feel distant from God, you have to dig deep to the root causes of what is happening spiritually.  Periods of dryness in prayer are often quite normal and just the Holy Spirit disciplining our Spirits and asking us to persevere.  But sometimes, when a period of dryness seems to grow longer, go deeper, and feel heavier than a simple test of perseverance, we sense that something is wrong.  We feel suddenly awkward in a relationship with a Savior we've known and loved many times over.  We fumble through prayer frustrated with the lack of intimacy because we are hungry and desperate and we need Him and He seems far away.

That is where I found myself as I journeyed through my grief process and the weeks wore to months and we added suffering to suffering in our lives.  Suddenly the God I had known and loved deeply since my early teen years seemed a stranger to me, and prayer, the language of our romance, was awkward and stilted and frustrating.

The solution to that special brand of dryness alluded me for a long while until I dug deep enough to hit the nerve center of what was going on.  I knew that grief had changed me in ways both expected and unexpected.  I knew that it had changed my relationship with God.  While my faith had brought grace upon grace, tender mercy upon tender mercy as I grieved, it had also been dealt a blow, a challenge that knocked the wind out of me and left me gasping for breath. And there were many times I felt I was a spiritual feather weight placed in the ring with the heavy weight champion of the world. 

When I began to try to recover from the near depression that stalked me for much of the early summer, I began to try to trace this dryness, this lack of intimacy, back to its roots.  I read the prayer journal that I began in the weeks after Bryce's death from its beginning to the present.  I could see the progression, the slow changes in my conversation with my Savior, but I couldn't really pin point what had happened.

I said in this post that Eucharistic adoration was the short answer to the question of how I recovered.  In June, as uncertainty swooped in and added another death-defying plunge to our life's roller coaster, Greg and I made a commitment that one or the other of us or all of us as a family would be in front of the Eucharist daily, either in Adoration or in attendance at Holy Mass.  I confess, this was a new level of commitment to me.  Getting to holy hour on a regular basis was a habitual spiritual failure on my part.  I know well it is because the very dominant Martha in me is scared to death to have to play Mary for a whole hour, sitting and listening.  And yet I also know well, it is the better part.

And so I began a regular routine of sitting silently in the presence of my God.  Outwardly silent, anyway.  It is a struggle for me to quiet myself inwardly, and often takes me half of the hour just to settle in, but as I practice more, it comes more easily.

In that continual practice of stillness before the True Presence of my Living Savior, a flashlight shone into my soul.  The deepest, quietest spaces that I had missed in all my searching were lit in His presence.  And what I began to see in those corners of my heart were stones.  Far back, way deep down, the heart that had once loved a Savior so joyfully, so zealously, was atrophied and cold.  It was normal in all the visible places that others could see.  It was normal enough that I could function spiritually on one level.  But its symptoms were plaguing me, and I knew that if I left this condition undiagnosed much longer it was going to progress rapidly.

There in the safety of the presence of Christ the King, I was able to own the lack of trust I had developed, the anger and the blame I had placed on His shoulders, and the unwillingness I had developed to let Him go certain places in my heart.  I found the places where I was digging in my heals and saying "no" to questions He had not yet asked.  I found my fear. These were not the early, obvious wounds of grief, which had already been recognized and treated with healing balms.  These were deeper, hidden wounds that even I had not really been able to articulate.

But it was in digging very deep and feeling out the cold stony places in the darkened recesses of my soul that I was able to come face to face with God again.  And realize that His gaze frightened me.

That was the beginning.  And it happened in His Eucharistic presence, where stillness and grace and tangible Divinity became the expert medical team that found what I had been unable to find on my own.

Savoring Summer with the Snoring Scholar

I'm lucky enough to be guest posting over at Sarah Reinhard's place today, and we've whipped up some quick summer fun for you that includes ice cream, flip flops, and give away!  Don't miss out. Go! Read! Grab the button.  And come play with us this summer!

How to Be an Alleluia

It's still Easter.  Do you feel it? Is the wonder of the empty tomb still fresh? Is the shout for joy still rising up, welling over, spilling out? Are you still feeling the relief of the proclamation: "ALLELUIA"?

St. Augustine proclaimed that "The Christian should be an Alleluia from head to foot" and John Paul the Great enjoined us not to despair because "we are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song."

I've been tumbling the thought of what it means to be an Alleluia over and over in my mind this Easter season.  I really, really want to get this one right. Fifty days can seem such a long time at the beginning of a resolve, but it sways by quickly in the passing of days from spring to summer, on the wings of baseball games and long days and icy treats.  Before you know it, Pentecost will be waving its red banner high and I don't want to get there and be disappointed that I never quite figured it out, that I never did have my Alleluia AHA!

I need Easter badly this year. I need the hope of resurrection, the end of death's sting, and the glory of Christ risen.  I need to dig down deep into the well of supernatural life that was given to me as pure gift at baptism and I need to cling with all my might to the grace of the moment. And I need to know, really know, how, despite the horror of the cross that still hangs heavy in the air, to live as an Alleluia. 

I think it will take a bit of fumbling on my part. I'll undoubtedly mess it up more often than I get it right. But if by chance, desire and will and grace all happen to collide somewhere in these next few weeks, I might just get a glimpse of what it all means, the breaking of the chains that bind, the freeing of the bonds of sin and death, the healing of the wounds, and the rising, the glory of the rebirth. And a glimpse would be good. But the hope, and the challenge, that the church in Her wisdom lays out for us is to take the gift of that glimpse and turn into the spiritual work of the everyday.  Mary Magdalen onl saw that angel briefly. It transformed her into an Alleluia. Thomas got to touch the heart of the Savior for only a moment. He was forevermore an Alleluia. The light shone in Saul's face for just a few minutes, but it was enough.  Enough to transform, to create, to heal, to quicken the heart with the reality of the Resurrection. And then it became their life's work to live in light of that reality.

This is our life's work.  It is the work of a grieving mother learning to find peace and joy in where life has her now.  It is the work of a woman's heart learning to abide in grace and hope rather than fear and anxiety.  It is the refusal to drink the dregs of the cup of bitterness and instead to fill the cup of gratitude to overflowing.

I've been composing a list in my prayer journal this Easter of things that make someone an "Alleluia".  These are the dispositions of spirit, the heart tone I will try to set for the rest of this season, and for the rest of my sojourn on this earth.  It is with purpose that I march to this wildly beating Alleluia song, it is so that I know the tune when it's my turn to sing it in chorus with all the angels and all the saints, with my saints, who wait for me in that place where Glory reigns and Alleluia is its anthem.

Alleluias laugh.

We had an incident in our house this Easter season that about made me come undone.  It involved a kitten we brought home from my brother's house and a band of over-exuberant toddlers.  Suffice it to say that the myth that cats always land on their feet is NOT true, but that whole nine lives thing, oh so true.

Here's the thing: in the moment, it was an agonizing crisis, with children crying and a mom on the verge of a panic attack and a dad sure he could not cope with one more thing.  Even after it was said and done and the outcome was decidedly more cheerful than we had anticipated, I swore I would never tell anyone that story. 

Less than a week later, I found myself standing in a group of homeschooling mommies who were riveted to my lively retelling of the tale of LuLu the Resurrection Kitty, and I marveled as we laughed together--as I laughed. 

The crisis has passed.  The moment is gone.  The reality is that everything is just fine. And the sheer relief of it all is a wellspring of joy that bubbles with laughter.

Alleluias laugh at things that once were not laughable.  Alleluias laugh at themselves and the sheer silliness of their own lack of faith when the truth is finally revealed.  Alleluias laugh, like Sarah did, when God does something better than they could've asked or imagined. Alleluias laugh as I'm sure David did when he danced before the Lord.  Alleluias laugh as I'm sure the Apostles did the evening of Pentecost when their tongues quieted and their hearts swelled.

Alleluias laugh because it is well with their souls.

Alleluias rejoice in victory rather than admitting defeat.

Today I chatted with a friend as I mopped my kitchen floor.  This was one of those I've-waited-entirely-too-long kind of moppings that was testing the mettle of both me and the steam mop I was using. All the while I was mopping, my internal dialogue was me fussing at myself for being such a slob, for not working harder, for not getting the job done. I huffed into the phone as I lifted the mop to change the pad for the third time, "What does it say about my kitchen floor that I'm changing the pad on the mop for the third time?"

The voice on the other end was the voice of a friend. It was the voice of an Alleluia, and it replied, "It says that you're cleaning it."

The internal dialogue changed for the rest of that mopping session, I stopped berating myself and starting enjoying the small success of a clean floor. I worked with purpose and found satisfaction in each cleansing swipe. And I reminded myself that Jesus is a victorious Savior.

We are sinners, each of us. We each have a laundry list of failures we go to bed with each night. We examine our consciences and find ample need for mercy. But we should look to the failure list only long enough to ask and receive forgiveness. The most important moment in the day is not the fall, but the decision to rise again.

And Alleluias rise to try again. And they take with them a fresh supply of grace and mercy. And in the trying, they chant the chant of victories won and enemies slain, not the lament of defeat.

Alleluias let themselves heal.

I am facing a season in my life I have never faced before. For the first time I will have a three year old without a baby here for me to tend. It is an awful, heartbreaking truth that I wish away with great regularity. But somewhere this Easter has come the grace to embrace this season, to look forward to a summer at the pool where I can actually teach my toddler to swim, to look forward to being able to watch the whole baseball game, and to a break from diapers.

Each time I tell someone close to me about looking forward to this time I feel the need to qualify the statement, to tell them that, of course, it is not without heartache that I accept this joy.  As if somehow they would actually think I was glad I didn't have my babies here.  As if somehow I am betraying my little saints by enjoying the now.

Today, as I expressed that sentiment to my husband, I realized how silly I sounded trying to explain away my peace.  After all, isn't peace and healing what we have prayed for, begged for? Is this gift not the promise fulfilled, the healing of my brokenness begun?

And so I have resolved to be okay with the fact that I am okay most of the time.  I have resolved to allow myself to heal, and not to apologize for it.  I have resolved to witness to the power of hope and faith and Resurrection, because not to do so is to cease to be an Alleluia.

Alleluias know they are beautiful now.

I spent a lot of time in my rose garden this week and it had its fair share of lessons to teach.  One afternoon as I stood admiring buds and anticipating the beautiful flourish of foliage they would soon bring, I turned to find Kolbe plucking a plump red bud from its stem.  "Oh Kolbe," I cried, "we have to leave the roses on the bush so they can get beautiful"  Confused, he looked at the deep red encased in delicate green sepals that his hand held gently and he said, "But Momma, it is boofull, now."

The Lord spent that afternoon reminding me that while He does in fact love and desire all the potential I have for beauty and perfection and sanctity, He loves me now.  Just as I am. A bud that is beautiful to His eyes right now, even still encased in all that she might become.

We find the grace to live John Paul II's exhortation to "become what (we) are" not by looking at all we were meant to be and thinking that once we get there someone will finally love us.  "No, no," reminds the Shepherd who brings the little bud to bloom, it is knowing that you are loved now that you are able to ring out the Alleluia cry, and in that cry is the becoming, the opening, the flowering of your beloved soul.

Alleluias sing.

Oh, how we sing. With all the power of the heavens joining in the song.

And the song goes like this:

Soul Sisters

I spent some time in my rose garden yesterday afternoon, tearing away a year's worth of overgrowth and revealing the hint of gorgeous color still encased in green buds.  I draped tendril up lattice and guided their climbing.  I pulled away the ugliness of weeds and drew attention to the beauty planted there. And I didn't wear gloves.

I couldn't have told you why beforehand or even have told you what, but I was compelled to feel every prick and scrapy scratch those thorns could mete out.  Something in me needed to feel their sting and process this whole relationship, the beauty in the rose and the prick of the thorn and their coexistence and the way that that relationship goes relatively unnoticed until I stick my hands in there to tend them, guide them, free them from entanglements.

And of course you know why. I had spent the weekend away. I had embraced a long time friend who had stood by my side from afar in my darkest hours.  As is our nature, we had spent the weekend telling tales and laughing, entertaining ourselves and those around us. I had made new friends this weekend, progressing from texting across the room to locate one another to standing talking for hours about everything from kittens to poop to schooling a dyslexic child.  I had shared lunch with a group of amazingly talented women whose sincerity, geniality and intelligence were refreshing and renewing to me. And I had joy. Most of these women had a peripheral awareness of all that has transpired in my life in the last eight months. I spoke my little one's name often and easily. Sweet Bryce. I accepted condolences and soft, tender embraces that spoke volumes and moved on.  This weekend was a weekend of joy.

And yet in the midst of all that joy, grief lives ever-present.  I have come to accept that. I have given up the faulty notion that one day I will heal and grief will be gone.  I will heal.  But grief is a permanent resident in my home.  Like my roses and their thorns, grief and joy inhabit my soul as sisters.  Each needs her moment in the sun, each needs tending, each barges in unexpectedly and catches me off guard.  For the most part, I have learned to let them dance their sisterly dance with acceptance and resignation. I would not have ever wished for this reality, but it is mine, and I have always held firm to the conviction that we are happier people when we just accept that we are who we are. I am a naturally joyful, funny, thoughtful, articulate grieving mother.  And all those adjectives inhabit the garden of my soul relatively peacefully.  Until the gardener steps in to do His work.

I needed to feel those thorn's pricks yesterday because it gave tangible reality to my experience this weekend and everyday.  I find a way to move forward each day, to take the next step, embracing who I am in the His perfect will for me. I know there are thorns.  But there are roses too, and they are reason enough to keep the garden going.  And then, in a most unexpected moment, there is the prick.  The stabbing, intense heart pain I did not expect.  And then its sting, the burn that lingers while I wipe back tears and try to refocus.  And sometimes there is blood, a little piece of me, of the life within me, leaked out in the agony.  These are humbling moments.  They come when I don't know they are coming.  They cause me to lose track of the conversation I was having or suddenly walk away from something purposeful I was doing.  They leave me raw and unsteady in the midst of an ordinary activity.  And they make me grieve when I want to be joyful--for someone else's pregnancy announcement or the birth of a sweet pink bundle to a momma of all boys, for someone's photographs of a gorgeous, growing babe and the siblings all smiles. 

The pricks humble me.  They make me realize how much grief has changed me, how much, like my experience raising siblings shows to be true, her sister joy is different because of grief's birth in my soul.  And sometimes I am angry with her for her prickly ways, for the way she scratches at me for attention when I am reaching to embrace her sister.  Sometimes I wish she hadn't come at all, or that she could be different from who she is.

But yesterday in that garden, in the quiet processing of the weekend and the weeks and the months and the days since grief's birth, I realized that she has been given to me, like the gift of a child.  We don't get to determine the temperament of the baby we bring home. Our Heavenly Father examines us in His full knowledge and determines whether we need the baby who sleeps the day away contentedly or the one who must be held 23 1/2 of each day's 24 hours.  We are all quite sure we need the former, but rarely do we get that baby.  I am quite sure I'd rather the gift of joy, that she is a better companion for my soul, she who blooms in beauty and opens in color and wafts sweet scents that soothe.  But the Heavenly Father, in a wisdom I cannot claim to understand, has determined that joy shall have a sister and her name shall be grief.  And for the most part, she will be a quiet companion. 

And then there will be those moments, when the Good Gardener reaches in to tend my soul garden, to cut away the overgrowth of fear and anxiety, to pull the weeds of sin, and to guide my growing in the right direction.  And in those moments, grief's thorns prick. They sting, They tear.  But yesterday reminded me that those moments, humbling as they may be, are the way the Tender One makes room.  The sisters need guidance, they are small and sometimes unruly, and often unaware of whose turn it is.  So the Merciful Lord reaches in, allows the thorn to prick and the beauty to bloom all at the same time, sweet sisters dancing their dance of intimacy in my soul, so that He can make way for their mother. 

She comes to guide them, to show them how to take turns and be gracious and hospitable to one another.  She comes to show them each their unique gift and to console the less desirable sister, dear grief, and remind her that she too is a worthy and noble gift, noble enough to inhabit the heart of the Savior, beautiful enough to live in the soul of His Most Pure Mother.

And I am grateful for her coming, this mother whose name is GRACE.

If You Give a Mouth a Toothbrush

Preface: Keep in mind the post I am about to write comes as I begin to dig myself out of the rut of first trimester yuckiness.  In those early weeks of pregnancy, I am prone to spend most of every day in pajamas, sleeping, whimpering, or gagging--sometimes combining the three into a veritable symphony of misery.  I face a terrible irony in those days in that my tongue suddenly becomes a piece of sand paper two sizes too large for my mouth and my mouth always tastes like something terrible no matter what I have or have not eaten.  I desperately want to brush my teeth all the time.  The irony is that when you add the toothbrush to the too large  tongue and the propensity to gag constantly, very bad things happen.  Very bad things that erase the momentary mintiness and leave you with a taste in your mouth that makes you want to brush your teeth.  You get the picture, right?  I spend a large portion of the first trimester trying to hide the fact that I'm brushing my teeth from my own mouth, or on the worst days, settling for Watermelon Extra chewing gum and a scrub of my teeth with the washcloth.  I know it's gross, but it's true.  So, there's your background, people.  Aren't you glad you stopped by today?

Premise: I am a firm believer that the way I dress and care for my personal appearance has an effect on the way I perform as a wife and a mother each day.  Don't tell my mother I said that.  I was so scathingly superior to her in my tender years when she would suggest, as she always did, "a little blush and lipstick".  And I teased her often about the fact that she really couldn't function well without earrings.  A day without earrings for her was like those nightmares you used to have about showing up at school without a shirt on? (Please tell me you had those nightmares, or I'm looking really foolish right about now.)  Anyway, these days my tune has changed.  I know well that people dress professionally for work for a reason, and that if everyone went to work in pajamas or workout pants every day, we'd be in one big mess right about now.  The same applies to me in my work here in my home.  It is my daily duty to bring beauty, joy, discipline, and excellence to my home.  I am much more disposed to seek these things when I am dressed for the task.  And people are much more likely to follow my lead if I look the part.

Problem: So my problem is not with the theory.  I believe wholeheartedly in the theory.  My problem is with the practice.  I go through phases when the practice seems effortless.  I rise, I groom, I dress.  Heck, I even primp a bit.  And then I go through phases where I know I will feel so much better if I put that theory into practice, but everything in my body clings to those pajama pants and hoodie like they were the source of life itself, and getting dressed for real is only for leaving the house--sending everyone in the house the message that whoever is out there is infinitely more important than they are.  Breaking out of the first trimester slump is one of those times.  Postpartum is another.  And then there are just the regular, life is overwhelming and I'm all out of sorts, and I'd kind of like to give up and crawl back into bed and my outward appearance says just that times. How do you resist the temptation to fall into sloppiness on these stretches or break it if you have given in?  That has been my dilemma.

Proposed Solution: So this morning, I started the day with the battle against the pajama pants.  The coffee had been sipped.  The prayers had been prayed.  There had been a lovely early morning chat with my sister.  Breakfast was in the making.  Little people were stirring.  It was time to shake off early morning fog and move forward.  But my body likes early morning fog these days--its slowness, its warm comfort, its lack of demands and expectations.  And so the battle began.  But early on, I gratefully remembered that I could once again brush my teeth. "Well, that's better than nothing," I thought, totally unaware that what was about to unfold was something of a circular nature much like the events that unfold in these well-loved stories.

It goes something like this:

If you give your mouth a toothbrush, it'll feel all minty and tingly and fresh inside.

It'll direct you to grab the nearby deodorant and hairbrush and make use of them.

If you have fresh underarms and tidy hair, your pajamas will seem a ridiculously unkempt match for them and they will insist that you get dressed in real clothes.

If you get dressed in real clothes and glance at your lovely self in the mirror, you will notice that a sweet necklace and pair of dainty earrings would make you look so polished.

If you put on those earrings, they will insist that they deserve the compliment of freshly pinked cheeks and glossy lips.

If you gloss up your lips, they will undoubtedly relish their prettiness and desire to stay that way.  Pretty lips stay pretty by saying kind, gentle, complimentary things.

Moms who say kind, gentle, complimentary things find themselves the beneficiaries of cooperation and respect from their children.

Cooperation and respect from children create peaceful, productive days in the home.

Peaceful, productive days enhance order and rhythm and create joy.

Order and joy are pleasing to the man who leaves the house each day to source provision for his family.

A pleased husband speaks words of praise and gratitude.

Praise and gratitude make a woman feel appreciated. 

Appreciation motivates us to pursue excellence.

Excellence is achieved in the small, daily efforts.

And so we rise again the next day and seek to shake off the morning's fog, toothbrush in hand.

Resolved: Prayer time, one cup of coffee, breakfast prep....then straight to the toothbrush, and you know the rest....

My New Daily Reflection

I am going to read this every day, I think.  Heartbreaking and breathtaking at the same time.  The way every day is when we sinful mothers take on the task of opening our hearts to the little ones He sends us.  Each day's overwhelming moments an opportunity for grace, each day's failures an opportunity for mercy.  Each day a step up the mountain of holiness, a reaching for our eternal home.  I wish I had read this before a child stole a sip of my icy orange juice, that just-the-right thing for pregnant tummy anticipation brimming, and spilled the entire glass onto the magazine I was going to read while I enjoyed it.  But alas, I too spent the evening in a heap of my own humanity, begging forgiveness from wide brown eyes and assuaging misplaced guilt.  And so today I am so thankful for her words, for this reminder of who we are called to be, even in the midst of our glaring imperfections.

The Needy

We see them mentioned so often in the weeks preceding Christmas, these needy folks.  Bells ring on their behalf and we toss our surplus coins in their pouches, relieved not to be counted among them.  Their names hang written on paper angels, we snatch them from the tree in the back of church and graciously wrap gifts to warm their hearts.  We feel good for having helped.  And we should.

But the Lord says to us:

"Come now, let us set things right, says the Lord: Though your sins be as scarlet, they may become white as snow; Though they be crimson red, they may become white as wool."

And how does this happen?  Is it our own doing?  Do we set ourselves right with the Lord?  Do we purify ourselves from our sin?

No, when it comes to salvation, we are all nothing but beggars.  We are the needy.  It is we for whom the tiny bell rings at the gate of heaven.  It is our name that hangs limp on the Tree of Life.  It is we who wait and hope that someone will turn in our direction this Christmas, not leave us bereft and empty-handed while the rest of the world rejoices.  It is we who beg for the gift-the gift of salvation, the gift of eternal value.

Let us wait with the anticipation of a child unsure of whether there will a gift for him.  Let us beg with the zeal of one who is truly hungry.  Let us lift feeble hands up to heavens, without assurance that they will be filled, in the blind faith driven by desperation.

All of creation awaits His coming.  He who will bind our wounds and heal our broken hearts.  He whose blood will erase the scarlet of sins and make us white as wool.  And it is we whose strength stands eclipsed by our weakness, we whose abilities fade in comparison to our failures, we whose victories are far outnumbered by our defeats, who are needed.  Our hearts are broken and our backs are bent.  We are the lonely this Christmas.  Our hands are empty and our mouths dissatisfied.  We are the hungry this Christmas.  We stand bereft before the Lord and wait.  The bell rings on our behalf. 

And He, unlike us, does not toss a handful of surplus grace our way.  He sees our needy little faces, our outstretched hands, our broken hearts, and He gives the best gift He has, He gives that which He loves most.  For us.  He does what we cannot do for ourselves.  And He does it in perfect love and tender mercy.

Are we groaning in anticipation?  Are we slowing ourselves enough to feel the hunger, to know the need?  Are we seeking Christ Present in the Holy Eucharist--tasting our salvation often enough that we crave it all the more? 

We are the needy.  Let us not forget.  Lord, make us aware of our need, our hunger, our loneliness, our desperation.  So that when you come, we are awake and ready.  And we are awash with relief and joy when we hear you say as you said to Jerusalem:

"Your light will come.  You will see His glory within you; the Lord will dawn on you in radiant beauty."

From The Papa's Pen...

...straight to my heart.  I read these words from Pope Benedict XVI today and could not have been more struck with the depth to which they speak to my heart this Advent.  There is much to ponder here.  I'll be spending a lot of time with this over the next few weeks I think:

"In contrast to that, true believing means looking the whole of reality in the face, unafraid and with an open heart, even if it goes against the picture of faith that, for whatever reason, we make for ourselves….

“We are rather too inclined to forget that in the Book of Job…God declares Job to be righteous — Job, who has hurled the most outrageous accusations at God — while he rejects Job’s friends as speakers of falsehood, those friends who had defended God and had found some kind of good sense and answer for everything.

“Observing Advent simply means talking with God the way Job did.  It means just seeing the whole reality and burden of our Christian life without fear and bringing it before the face of God, as judge and savior, even if, like Job, we have no answer to give about it all, and the only thing left is to leave it to God himself to answer and to tell Him how we are standing here in our darkness with no answers.”

– Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, What it Means to Be a Christian, pp. 15-20. Ignatius Press, 2006.

Please take the time today to offer prayers for the December intentions of Our Holy Father, who guides us his Church is such wisdom and holiness.

December's Papal Intentions:

General: That children may be respected and loved and never be the victims of exploitation in its various forms.

Mission: That at Christmas the peoples of the earth may recognize in the Word Incarnate the light which illuminates every man and that the Nations may open their doors to Christ, the Saviour of the world.
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Soul Nest

Today as I go about my work, I am simply stunned by the tangible presence of God around me.  I have spent my morning coffee time lately praying Blessed John XXII's Decalogue for Daily Living (you can find it on Elizabeth's sidebar) as my morning offering, reading the Psalms and journaling, and reflecting with Ann Voskamp on His presence in the ordinary.  He has moved in my soul.  And today as I go about my tasks, He speaks to me in so many small, humble ways.  I wash dishes beside a lit candle and an open window, soul-soothing piano whispering in the background.  I am so struck by the beauty of my tea mug and yellow pottery bowl perched atop a pile of dirty silverware, I almost stop to take a photo of it.  I scrub dishes, Ann's poetic reflections turning themselves over in my mind.  Her voice in my thoughts.  I am thinking, and it sounds the way she writes.  I am scrubbing the big soup pot, half full of warm soapy water and thinking about how the top half looks clean but underneath that water lies the worst of the stuck-on residue...then thinking about my soul, half-full of God, half clean, my dirtiest and most stuck-on residue still hidden from Him, waiting for a good soul scrubbing.  I pledge to lay myself bare to Him, let Him scrub me all the way clean. 

Then I am sweeping, the bare wood of my bedroom floor, finding a small group of coins tucked ever so stubbornly beneath my Victorian baseboards.  I swipe at them once, then twice, then decide to just leave them.  What difference does it make?  His voice presses into the ordinary again.  I remember the widow of the gospel who searched the dark and dimly lit corners for her one lost coin.  I stoop to free each one, gather them up collectively and place them neatly in my dresser drawer.  It's not about the value of the coins today, although I do smile at the joy they will unexpectedly bring the preschooler the next time he is deserving of praise.  But no, not about the value of the coins or the completion of the task to perfection, it's about the stooping today, taking the time to bend low, go slow, seek Him in the darkness and the dust of my life.  For His tender mercies are not as apparent as they were in early weeks of grief.  They are quieter, more intimate.  They require a certain disposition of a soul to be noticed, then to be treasured.

In the midst of the work of this day, my mind is tumbling over and over the season of Advent, the living of it, the listing of it, the anticipation of it, the slight tinge of manic mental list-making it usually evokes in me tugging at my heart-strings.  Advent tends to bring out its own nesting instinct in me.  I have a tendency to prepare for the coming of the Christ Child in much the same way I prepare for the coming of a new wee one of my own.  I think of the the lists of years past, and the nesting lists of this past year.  A wound is touched, a pain is freshly felt.  I can't do it this way this year.  I don't have the strength.  It makes my chest hurt just to think about it.  Suddenly, I am fretful, fearful.  I need to be able to ride the rhythm, grasp the familiar this Advent.  Lord, don't throw me off kilter again, please.  Don't send me to my knees again.  Don't look at the brokenness at the bottom of the my spirit, look at the top part that I have shined up so nicely for you.  Don't search into the dark, dusty corners of my heart room.  It is clean enough.  Don't stoop so low, Lord.  He stops me.  He calls to mind the refrain of my grief: "Tender is His Mercy."  He is stooping low, He is sweeping underneath my comfort zone, He is bringing to my knees.  And He is asking me if I will spend the season of preparation, the season called Advent, nesting in soul.  And I am begging for the grace to say yes, and making a different kind of to-do list this year.

• Instead of vacuuming the crumbs out of kitchen drawers, I will vacuum the crumbs of broken trust, of shattered dreams, the residue of fear from own spirit.  I will make room for the future full of hope He has promised me.
• Instead of sweeping the dusty corners of the chambers of my house, I will sweep the dust from the chambers of my heart.  I will shed light in the corners and humble myself to show Him the brokenness that hides itself there.  I will wait for His tender mercy to polish it to a shine.
• Instead of making room in my home for trees and decorations, packages, and the company of men, I will make room in my heart for the company of a humble family seeking refuge, a woman on a donkey and her hero carpenter, and their little one -- the Little One, for the company of shepherds and animals and gift-bearing kings, and for the grace they bring.
• Instead of finding comfort in new sheets, quilts, comforters, sofa throws, I will find comfort in the straw bed and swaddling clothes that wrapped the Word, the Living God.  And I will accept that salvation is not so much about human comfort as it is about the very real, very hard task of being holy, which sometimes call us to lie down in the hay, to accept the pricks of suffering, the pokes of persecution, the sad stench of our own humanity.
• Instead of seeking to light the season with plastic strings that twinkle and wax that burns into pleasant scents, I will light the season with guiding glow that leads to Him, the heavenly Hosannas of the choirs of angels, the Heavenly radiance of my Savior's little face.
• Instead of endless chatter, tinny music, and the roar of the crowds, there will be the quiet of a soul preparing with reverence, the way she prepares to receive the Eucharist, and the awed of hush of a sinner beholding her Savior's birth.

Welcome to July

 

The Mantle This Month