A Hallmark card for God
It was Yaya‘s birthday a couple of weeks ago, and when the time came to write up a card, I froze. How could I possibly express my appreciation for all that she does for us? This was when I was bad-busy, when I’d gotten myself in over my head with so many commitments that I considered the day a success if I remembered to feed the kids lunch. So finding the right words to tell her what I wanted her to know for her birthday seemed impossible.
I went down to the store, and headed for the greeting card section. I felt immediate relief as I looked at all the options. There was such a variety of sentiments inscribed in the insides of these cards, I knew I’d be able to find one that said what I was trying to say.
I finally found one that fit the tone and ideas I wanted to get across, and when I brought it home, I underlined key phrases to indicate my personal signoff on the pre-printed message. I then added a brief, hand-written note at the bottom that echoed the sentiments written in the card, and signed my name. As I slid it into the envelope, I was so grateful that I’d found a card that conveyed what I could not. I’m sure Yaya would have been blessed by a basic “Happy birthday! Love ya!” message in an it’s-the-thought-that-counts way, but it was a blessing to her and to me to have the fullness of what I was bumbling around to express articulated so clearly.
I keep thinking of this example whenever I sit down to pray.
My prayer life hasn’t been great lately, and I realized that part of the issue was that I was drawing a blank every time I’d sit down to share some dedicated moments with God. I found myself uncharacteristically tongue-tied, starting my prayers with statements like, “God, you are good. So, so good. Yup…pretty good — err, umm, really good!” (Technically there’s the option of simply being still, and communing with God without words, but I’m not yet at a level of spiritual maturity where I can hook that up on any kind of regular basis. It always degenerates into this ridiculous split personality thing, where I’ll have a thought, then one part of my brain says, Shhhh! It’s silent meditation time!, then the other responds, Then why are you talking? YOU shhh! Yeah. It’s absurd.) Anyway, I know that all of my attempts at prayer were pleasing to God, even if they sounded to me like something out of an insipid haikus contest. And I realize that prayer is not all about me. But, per the advice of my spiritual director, I also needed to be realistic about where I am in my spiritual life, and admit that if this kept feeling so wrong, I was probably not going to continue setting aside time for prayer on a regular basis.
And so, rather than banging my head against the wall trying to express everything that was on my heart, I turned to the prayers of the Church. I had forgotten how many options there are! I could get back into the Liturgy of the Hours, or simply pray a daily Rosary. There are all the great litanies and novenas, not to mention the basics like the Our Father and the Glory Be.
The first thing I was drawn to was the Litany of Humility, and as I read it, my mouth formed the words I’d been trying to say all along:
From the desire of being preferred to others…Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being consulted…Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being approved…Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being humiliated…Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being despised…Deliver me, Jesus.
Then, one day after receiving the Eucharist, I remembered that I had a card with the words to the Anima Christi in my purse. I almost got teary-eyed as I moved my lips silently to say:
Soul of Christ, sanctify me,
Body of Christ, save me,
Blood of Christ, inebriate me,
Water from Christ’s side, wash me,
Passion of Christ, strengthen me…
Later, the prescribed meditations of the Rosary forced me to stop thinking about myself and meditate on the Lord; I started a novena to the Holy Spirit, and it instilled me with a new awareness of our great Advocate; and the Our Father, of course, helped me say to God everything that needed to be said.
This process reminded me of the card I’d picked out for Yaya. Just as I’d underlined phrases and added a hand-written note in the card I gave to her, with my prayers I closed my eyes and poured passion into the words that most perfectly articulated what I’d been trying to say, and then at the end I added my thoughts (though they were often about as articulate as “Yeah. That. Amen.”) For times like now when I can’t quite seem to find the words to express what I need and want to say to God, I’m so thankful that the Church offers me these “Hallmark cards” that I can send instead.
What I did this weekend
For those of you who aren’t familiar with them, I want to introduce you to my friends, the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist. Today I went to a party to welcome some of the sisters back to the Austin area after they’d been a the mother house in Ann Arbor for the summer, and I was reminded of just how wonderful this order is.
More than one of the sisters has told me that they have to plan for their trips to the grocery store to take double the time they might expect, because so many people stop them and want to talk to them about faith. Aside from all the amazing work they’re doing, the simple fact that these women are out in the world, wearing their full habits, is an incredible witness in and of itself.
Here I am with Sister Elizabeth Ann, her baby nephew, and baby Pamela Scholastica. I had the privilege of talking to Sister Elizabeth Ann’s identical twin sister, Dr. Katie O’Reilly, at the party as well — you can read the story of how they shared similar paths to totally different vocations here.
My dad came, and took on the arduous task of being Chief Baby Holder.
And my aunt, Lisa Whitney, came all the way from Atlanta just to help us out this weekend since she knew it would be a crazy one (pictured here with Sister Jude Andrew). I’m so fortunate to have such supportive family members.
The party was also a great chance to meet up with some local folks like my friend Martina Kreitzer, who’s a contributor to the Austin Catholic New Media blog, as well as being a founder of a great new group blog called Catholic Sistas (if you haven’t seen it yet, go check it out!)
Even though it’s not a great shot, I just had to post this picture of Fr. Daniel Liu, a super sharp young priest who is one of the many reasons that the Diocese of Austin is a great place to be.
Oh no, it’s Sister Maria Rosario WITH A BIG SCARY OGRE!!!! Oh, wait…that’s just me.
My three-year-old daughter loved chatting with Sister Maria Christi.
Sister Elizabeth Ann told us about the plans they have for a new convent in the Austin area, assuming they can raise the money they need. We’re incredibly fortunate to have them in our area.
At the end of the event, the sisters regaled us with a gorgeous song that was actually written by one of the sisters!
I am so amazed by the Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist. I first encountered them that day I was locked out of the Adoration chapel, and have been a big supporter of theirs ever since. If you’d like to find out more about the great work that these sisters are doing, how you can support them, or how you can find out if you’re called to be one of them, visit their website here!
First, you must be willing to lose it all
I’ve received a lot of feedback in response to my post called Finding God in 5 Steps. Of all the interesting and insightful things that people shared, there was one email that hit me right between the eyes, and made me realize something that I’ve hardly gone a day without thinking about. It was from a young man who fell away from faith for many years and had only recently returned to a close relationship with God. He said that he agreed with what I wrote in that post, but thought that I missed one thing:
There was one thing that was essential to my reversion that you do not mention. One must be willing to give up everything for God…I believe that the biggest problem people have with finding God is that they are not willing to give up earthly desires to find Him. People want the best of both worlds. They want a relationship with God and be able to hang on to worldly desires. I think this is all to often overlooked.
Wow. Yes.
Until I received his email, I don’t think it had ever occurred to me what a key aspect of the conversion process this is; I hadn’t even realized that I went through this step myself. But when I look back, I see that before I could accept the truth, I first had to be in a place of willingness to lose it all.
One of the things that’s different about seeking the truth about God as opposed to, say, seeking the truth about a mathematical equation is that the truth about God is personal and transformative. If you’re seeking the truth about mass-energy equivalence and you discover that e=mc², it doesn’t mean anything for you personally. You don’t need to live your life any differently just because you now know that the mass of a body is a measure of its energy content. But not so with God. Because God is the source of all that is good, to know what God is is to know what Good is. Religion has almost always been understood to be about moral codes because a moral code defines what is good and what is not, therefore it defines what God is and what he’s not.
That’s why the search for the truth about God is always personal. It’s always going to bring in all your insecurities, issues and attachments, because your life will be forever shaped by whatever truth you encounter.
Here’s a rough analogy: Let’s say that a woman was seeking God, and she came across a belief system that taught that it’s morally wrong to own a car; something about car ownership, they said, was contrary to God’s nature, and therefore objectively wrong. Naturally, her first reaction was, “That’s absurd!” But then she found a lot of other reasonable stuff in the belief system, so she took another look at that crazy car teaching. To her surprise, it ended up being not as unreasonable as she’d initially thought; in fact, she had to admit that some of the defenses she read really got her thinking.
But in the back of her mind there was always this voice that said, I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT A CAR! There was no way. She even thought through it a couple of times: She needed it to run errands, her husband needed his car for work. And she couldn’t just take the kids out of all their activities. Nope. The life that she had carefully crafted would completely fall apart if she gave up having a car.
As you can imagine, this line of thinking would bring her investigation into the anti-car belief system to an end. There’s this idea out there we can will ourselves into automaton mode and make evaluations about any kind of subject with perfect objectivity. But it’s not true (except maybe in matters of math or science, and even then I think our biases come into play more than we’d like to admit). To use the example of the woman in the car, there is no way that she is going to accept the belief system that includes the teaching against cars, even if her rational mind believes that it’s true…unless she’s willing to let go of her car, and therefore her entire lifestyle.
Again, the analogy is rough, but I think it conveys the process that many of us experience on the road to conversion. When I was first researching religion, for example, some of the Catholic Church’s teachings sounded just as crazy to me as the idea of not owning a car. At first I dismissed them as absurd. But even when I came to see that the arguments in their defense were incredibly compelling, I was still not that close to admitting that they were true, because, deep down inside, I knew that they would turn my life upside down if they were.
Around that time, everything fell apart: We faced major financial problems, then medical problems which compounded the financial problems. We had to move in with my mom, which meant that I lost touch with many of my friends because I was in a different part of town. With my health, finances, and social life all a big hot mess, I discovered the freedom of having nothing left to lose. Of course I did still have plenty of great stuff like a supportive family and a first-world existence, but I’d lost so much so quickly that I’d received a crash course in detachment. And that’s when I could finally allow myself to see the truth about God.
And so I whole-heartedly agree that that Finding God in 5 Steps post is missing a step, one that is perhaps the most important: First, you must be willing to lose lose it all.
6 Questions My Spiritual Director Would Ask
I’ve mentioned a few times that I had an amazing spiritual director named Christie. Unfortunately, she’s gotten busy with other commitments and I haven’t been able to meet with her lately, so I’ve been without a spiritual director for a while now. I hope to find a new person soon, but in the meantime I’ve been thinking back on my conversations with her, particularly when I’m trying to discern the right path for some big decision where there’s no clear right answer. When recalling our meetings, I realized that Christie almost always asked me the same few questions, and that prayerfully considering my answers to each one always helped get me off the fence and make a good choice. I thought it might be helpful to others to share what they were.
1. Have you prayed about it?
You would think that this question wouldn’t be necessary, but, alas, we’re dealing with me here, and Christie quickly learned that we might want to cover this base before moving on. With embarrassing frequency I’d come to her and pour out my angst about some conundrum, throw up my hands in frustration, and announce that God did not seem to be helping me here. Then she’d gently asked if I had prayed about it; specifically, if I had set aside the time not only to place my petition before God, but to calmly wait and listen for an answer. The answer was often “no,” which gave me an obvious place to start in my discernment process.
2. How does it impact your primary vocation?
I can’t overstate the importance of this question. It’s brought more peace to my life than any other thought exercise. The Catholic idea of vocation is that the meaning of life is to serve others, and your vocation (e.g. married life, religious life, priesthood, etc.) is the main way that God intends for you to serve. It’s his primary path for you to find peace and fulfillment — and, therefore, no legitimate call from God would negatively impact your vocation. For example, God would never call a parish priest to do something that made him feel burdened and resentful of offering the Mass on Sunday, he would never call a father to something that made him feel tied down and frustrated by his wife and kids, etc. It doesn’t mean that the only things you ever do are directly related to the duties of your vocation, simply that those duties are your top priority.
On many occasions I’ve started pursuing opportunities that seemed great in theory, but made my life as a wife and a mother harder. I would walk around the house snapping at everyone, feeling angry that I didn’t have as much time as I wanted to work on these projects, bemoaning the basic duties that come with my vocation, etc. Thanks to the advice from my spiritual director, I would take this to mean that this wasn’t where God wanted me. And, sure enough, every time I made changes that improved my ability to live out my vocation well, I’d find myself on a far better path that made me much happier (and, surprisingly, often led to more success with the project than when I was sitting around fixating on it to the exclusion of my family).
3. What does your spouse think?
Christie always reminded me that God often speaks through our spouses. I’ve experienced this many times myself but, like with #1, I’d often get so caught up analyzing something that I’d forget to sit down with my husband and get his thoughts. (For people who are not married, an alternative might be to ask your parents, siblings, or a trusted friend.)
4. Are you taking care of yourself?
One of the most interesting conversations we ever had was when I told Christie how terrible my prayer life had been lately, and her first questions were about how I was taking care of myself. Was I eating well? Sleeping enough? Getting some exercise? Upon further examination, it came out that I was running myself ragged: I was stuffing myself with junk food all day, spending too much time online, staying up way too late, never exercising, then pounding coffee to help me muddle through each day. She pointed out that while God certainly blesses us when we suffer (e.g. in the case of chronic illness), self-inflicted suffering is different. Basically, it would be like if I’d been sitting around and hitting myself repeatedly with a hammer, then crying, “I feel bad and never feel like praying! So weird!” After I improved my diet, got my relationship to the internet in check, and changed my views about exercise, not only did I feel 100% better physically, but I found that my spiritual life was much better as well.
5. Are you making decisions based on fear or anger?
The Holy Spirit does not bark at us in a voice of anger. He doesn’t instill us with fear. He doesn’t make us feel bad about ourselves. Yet too often, I found myself making decisions out of these kinds of feelings — thankfully, Christie was there to point out that this was not of God. For example, at one point I was discerning whether or not to homeschool, but so much of my thinking was fear-based: I was worried about something I’d heard about the local school, worried about how one of my kids would do in public school, but also sure that I was too lazy and incompetent to teach my children, terrified of messing up their educations, etc. I couldn’t even engage in a rational analysis of the pros and cons of each path because my thoughts were consumed with fear, fear, fear.
Christie encouraged me to let go of those feelings and make a conscious effort to trust that God would lead us down the best path for us, and that he’d bless whichever path that was. Once I did that, I was able to let go of all those fearful thoughts, which freed my mind to objectively look at what I thought would be best for our family, as well as to listen to God’s promptings. In the end we have ended up homeschooling after trying a couple other options, but this time I’ve had complete peace about it, because I was no longer letting angst and fear drive my decisions.
6. Which path would bring you the most peace?
Similar to the above, Christie would sometimes ask me to imagine myself going through each of the various options that were before me in some dilemma, and to consider which one would bring me the most peace. Fairly often, I would find that when I actually took the time to do this, one option made me feel filled with the peace of the Holy Spirit, whereas other options that might seem better on paper left me riddled with anxiety — and the peace-filled option always ended up being the right path.
Additional Resources
I usually get a lot of great questions when I bring up the subject of spiritual direction, so here are some additional resources:
- If you’d like to find a spiritual director or find out more about what spiritual direction is like, here’s a post I wrote about that.
- This spiritual direction blog is a wealth of information on discernment and the spiritual life. Definitely worth bookmarking and reading regularly.
- This post called 9 Things to Do When Needing Direction has some great tips on this topic.