I love you, don’t give up. I want you to stay here so I can read about your life. I know its hard right now. Believe me, I know. I’m here listening, please speak away, just don’t give up. And I don’t have to know you, because you’re one of God’s children, and he loves you, and so do I. Don’t give up.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Hail Mary
Freaking out and saying a Hail Mary works too…you may even find yourself calming down!
Undercover Boss
So true. Think about it. He’s OUR undercover boss. He knows what we’re thinking, all our intentions, what a day in our lives is really like. We can’t hide from Him. And that’s not supposed to be scary…He also knows exactly what went wrong and how to heal us so we can do better next time, if we only ask Him.
26 Struggles Anyone Raised Catholic Will Totally Understand
Another thing I found on Pinterest–this one is about being raised Catholic. It made me laugh: http://www.buzzfeed.com/javiermoreno/catholic-born-and-raised
Southern Catholic shirt on Pinterest
I found this shirt on Pinterest, and as someone who moved to Colorado with a Southern drawl (and just as a Catholic in general…) I thought it was seriously funny. Despite the fact that the parts of the Mass have been re-translated.
Forever
Originally posted on The Fickle Heartbeat:
A beautiful feature post by Single Strides. ” I want to know that if I were to love you, I’d see it in your eyes before I heard it in your voice. I want to…
abba (n).
I love this. I disagree with some of the lines, at least in my case, but I feel like this describes my search for 10,000 reasons pretty well.
I am trying to unlearn, and then re-learn you
Me with my finite body and tiny mind, I have tried
to define you, and in that, confine you
to a god that serves and acts, instead of a God that is.
I am trying to unlearn, and then re-learn you
Your words less a binding law and more a poem
Your house less a building and more an ocean
Your mood less frantic and more playful.
I am trying to unlearn, and then re-learn you
Me with my limited scope and spectrum, I have tried
to trick you with my questions until I realized
My stubborn (and foolish) doubt is not troubling to you.
I am trying to unlearn, and then re-learn you
Now that I see you do not keep to your hallowed chambers
Now that I see you are not concerned with our shaking, dirty hands
Now that…
View original post 11 more words
God Is…Savior
The theme of the Steubenville conference last weekend was “God is…” so all the talks were centered around that. The first one was called “God is Savior.” Being me, I took notes on all of them, so I can tell you all about them here.
We started by praying. The speaker then began to tell us how he grew up in a very Catholic family–his dad was a youth minister, his siblings were all super holy, his family was involved in the church.
“Every dad at church was like, ‘Date my daughter!’ ”
“Just by walking out the door,” he told us, “I had Catholic street cred.” He said that he did nothing to earn it besides being born into the family–everyone just assumed he was a good kid because of his family, and he BASICALLY was a good kid. He said that he, also, assumed he was a good kid. Since his whole family had a great relationship with God, he automatically assumed he was going to go to Heaven with all of them.
Finally he realized that you don’t go to Heaven by association. After telling us that the Bible is what God is SPEAKING to us, the church (as opposed to spoke) and that the Bible is relevant even today, he read us the story of the rich man and Jesus from Mark 10: 17-31:
As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before him, and asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answered him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; you shall not defraud; honor your father and your mother’.” He replied and said to him, “Teacher, all of these things I have observed from my youth.” Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, “You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to [the] poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” At that statement, his face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.
From the New American Bible Revised Edition Catholic Youth Bible
He compared himself to the rich young man in Mark–the rich young man was asking, “What do I HAVE to do? What’s the minimum amount of work I can do and still get into the kingdom of Heaven?” He said that he was basically asking God, “Where’s the line between heaven and hell, God, because I’m aiming for a C here. I wouldn’t mind a little bit of flames licking my toes, just a little.”
As a meaning of Jesus’s words “Why do you call me good? Only God is good?”, he offered that it meant “You want to go to heaven? You want to call me good? Then understand who I am.”
The speaker said that the commandments are usually the things we worry about in confession–not about whether r not we know God. Jesus lists examples of sins for the rich young man (the commandments he tells them to follow); these commandments are the ones most of us struggle with.
The rich man replies with the equivalent of, “I’m pretty good, I’m pretty good, I’ve been doing all that since I was a kid!”
Jesus tells him, “No, you’re not ‘pretty good’.”
Jesus hates it when we’re lukewarm. Be passionate or don’t. But “good enough” is never good enough! God knows us.
The speaker told us,
When I look at what God wants to do in my life, he’s not trying to stop me, he’s trying to love me into being who he created me to be.
In the sentence “Jesus, looking at him, loved him,” Jesus is telling the rich man, “Get rid of everything. Let me all the way in. I want to be the thing you rely on.”
“Tonight,” the speaker told us, “God is saying to you, ‘I don’t want to just be the God of your religion, or your ticket to Heaven. I don’t want you to go to Heaven just to avoid Hell. I want to be your Savior. I want to come and take over, but I can only do that if you let me into your heart and give up everything to me.”
If you put all your security in one thing, what happens when that thing goes away? You can’t fill your life with other things. “I can’t live without you,” is not love, it’s co-dependence. And if you really can’t live without something, maybe that something is taking God’s place in your life. When whatever it is crumbles at last, you finally have to ask to hear FROM God, not about God.
“Think about who God wants to be in your life,” the speaker told us. “The rich young man couldn’t let go of everything else he’d put his faith in and walked away. God won’t force himself into your life, because LOVE DOESN’T FORCE ITSELF. “
“I Want To Be A Sister”
The host of the Steubenville conference I went to this weekend had a great admiration for consecrated religious sisters. He told us a story about how, when he was in Amarillo, Texas, staying with a group of sisters, they offered to take him out to dinner before his flight back to Colorado. He accepted and thought it would be fun. So they took him to a restaurant, and they got seated, and ordered drinks. After the drinks came, one of the sisters told the waiter, “Thank you for serving us tonight–in serving us, you make us see God in you.” The poor waiter was totally flustered and stood openmouthed for a while, until he finally said, “I’m Catholic!” (because that was definitely the logical thing to say! ;))
At this, the sister asked whether he had been to Mass today–it was Sunday. He replied that, no, he had been too busy, and had had to work during all the times Mass was offered.
“Well,” the sister said, “let’s pray now then, and make sure you get to Mass next week.”
Then–wham!–she pulled from her pockets a copious amount of holy cards (“more holy cards than I thought one person could have on her body”) and started flipping through them and handing the waiter cards she thought might be helpful. When she was finished her holy card distribution, all the sisters stood up and prayed over the man, and he left to go get their food.
After dinner, the sisters told the waiter, “Tell your manager that this has been a lovely dinner and we are so grateful for the wonderful food and excellent service.”
The waiter said, “You can tell him yourself! I’ll go get him.” He brought the waiter to their table and the sisters thanked him and he said, “You know, sister, I’m Catholic.”
By this time, the Steubenville host was no longer early for his flight!
The sisters inquired whether he had been to Mass that day; yes, he had; they asked about his family; oh, he had a wife, and she was pregnant.
Wham! Out came the holy cards, and the sister was flipping through them: “This one’s Saint Gerard, he’s for your wife, patron saint of pregnant women, and this one’s Saint Jude, difficult causes, and this one’s someone else” and on and on.
Then the sisters said, “We’ll pray for your wife!” And they did not mean, “We’ll pray for your wife later, back at our convent.” They meant, let’s all stand up and gather in the aisle around this man and pray for his wife together right now. So they did. By this time the whole restaurant was staring, and somebody was probably recording it to put on YouTube.
After they finished praying with this man, they started heading for the door, and here comes this other man from one of the booths–“Sister, sister!”
So they stopped and he said, “My wife has cancer, and the doctors say she isn’t going to make it, and we’re atheists, but we’re pretty desperate now, and would you pray for us?”
Wham! The holy cards were back, and after having given the man the “proper” ones, the sisters gathered all around him and prayed for his wife.
Finally they left the restaurant, and the sisters said, “Oh, we need bread. There’s a Wal-Mart on the way to the airport, we’ll just stop there and get bread.” Our Steubenville host said, “Please, no, please, I’m late for my flight, can’t you get it later?” and they said, “oh, it’s right on our way, and we won’t have time later, and if we hurry you’ll still make it, don’t worry.”
So they got in the car, and, of course, the first thing they did was pray, and then they started toward Wal-Mart. On the way there, a stop sign had been knocked down, and traffic was going slowly. Our Steubenville host was looking at his watch and thinking, “there is no way I’m getting to the airport for my flight. Never going to happen!”
They finally got to Wal-Mart and got everything they needed. As they were checking out, the sisters caught sight of a young woman crying by the door. So they left the Steubenville host to ring up their purchases and they went to talk to the lady. He could see the holy cards flying and the praying beginning and all he could think was, “I hope they’re done by the time I check out!”
Thankfully, they were, and they told him all about the woman on the way to the car. Her husband had just left her and her three children alone without any money or anything; she had no job; no way to feed her kids; and she was standing in Wal-Mart, surrounded by all the food she desperately needed but couldn’t afford. So the sisters gave her money for groceries (as well as holy cards and prayer) and told her to come to the Catholic Charities they assisted at and they’d give her food and find her a temporary place to live and help her find a job.
As they got in the car, one of the sisters prayed aloud, “Dear God, thank you for the stop sign being knocked down, because if it hadn’t been, we would not have been in that Wal-Mart at the same time as that woman and we wouldn’t have been able to help her and show Your love to her.”
Our Steubenville host was touched, and he said, “You know what? I want to be a sister. No, I really do! You guys are so cool and holy and sweet!”
One of the sisters laughed at him and said, “You have a lot of obstacles!”
Why I Love Jesus–or, rather, what made me fall in love
Okay, I promised an explanation, and here it is. This is how everything changed so quickly–just typing it makes me smile!
I had really been struggling with my faith for a few months, saying/thinking things like, “I don’t know what to believe,” and “I’m tired of being Catholic just because my family is, I want to be Catholic because I believe or not be Catholic at all.” See, I’m a “cradle Catholic.” My dad left the Faith for 17 years before I was born and my mom getting pregnant with me brought him back to the Faith, so we’ve always been the uber-Catholic family (the ones in the front row? YELLING the responses? That was us.) and I was really tired of just doing it because I was told to. To be honest, I didn’t really care.
This might not make a whole lot of sense, but I thought maybe writing letters to God would help (and yes, I know I wasn’t sure if He was real…but people write letters to Santa Claus, and I’m positive HE’S not real), so I would pray and write in a prayer journal every day. My prayers were basically, “If you’re real, I need a reason to believe,” and when I got to Steubenville I had fairly convinced myself that He wasn’t real.
Last Friday night, we had adoration, and I was really upset. In my mind, I was basically yelling at God. I asked, “Why won’t you show yourself to me? I need a reason. You know what? One reason isn’t going to do it anymore. I need at least a couple thousand.”
Being the impatient person that I am, I got even more upset when He didn’t do anything right away and went to bed still just as upset.
The next night, we had adoration again. Adoration at Steubenville is a pretty big deal (see previous post) and even though it had by no means exceeded my expectations the previous night, I was still hoping in a little corner of my mind that tonight would be better, that tonight would be spectacular. I wrote in my prayer journal, “I don’t know if this is bad or not, but I really, really want that ‘encounter’ with you they keep talking about. I’m nervous, like what if it doesn’t happen? I don’t want to be disappointed and feel let down. My heart is pounding like an eighth grader with a crush. I want to fall in love with you like you supposedly love me…Give me the grace to experience the fullness of your love for me…I want to say that you’re my God. Give me strength to actually say that and believe that, forever and ever amen.”
In that moment, the priest processed by with the monstrance, and I felt this incredible peace come over me as I fell to my knees.
I totally fell in love right then. I mean it.
But there was still a part of me that thought, is this real? Am I just being ridiculous? How can I be in love with a person I don’t know is real? I still need my reasons!
Then they started singing this song (they did a LOT of that at the conference) by Matt Redman. Now, I know this song by heart, since we never listen to anything but Christian radio in our car (see, I told you we were uber-Catholic), but I somehow had forgotten the part that goes
You’re rich in love
And you’re slow to anger
Your name is great
And your heart is kind
For all your goodness I will keep on singing
Ten thousand reasons for my heart to find
When they got to that verse, and sang the line “ten thousand reasons for my heart to find,” I knew that was it. It was like God was telling me, “There are thousands of reasons, and now your heart can go find them yourself–just like you asked for. Now believe!” It was the huge sign I was asking for.
I was so happy, and so in love with Jesus, and singing, and crying (yes, at the same time). It was awesome.
And you know what else? I felt like maybe, maybe, I could be a sister/nun/consecrated religious for which there are multiple terms and I’m not sure of the difference. I used to think I would when I was little (doesn’t every five- six- and seven- year old Catholic girl?) but I sort of dismissed it after that, and I haven’t even considered it in years.
Now, I’m not signing the dotted line yet. Don’t get all excited/disappointed/whatever your reaction is. But I did go up for the vocations call on Sunday, and I’ll be praying about it. It’s just a possibility. We’ll see what He says.
That was a long post, but there was a good reason for it (actually, there were ten thousand good reasons for it…haha?)
In Christ
Mary
Catholic Chica 