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 a spiritual director and an MBA taught me about being overwhelmed
I have a personality type that leads me to feel overwhelmed a lot. I’m ambitious but lazy; I have a latent perfectionist streak that comes out at unexpected times; I’m an Olympian procrastinator; and I’m so non-confrontational that I often find myself saying “Yes, I’d love to help with that” when what I should be saying is, “I CANNOT EVEN FIND TIME TO BRUSH MY HAIR RIGHT NOW, LET ALONE SIGN UP FOR ONE MORE FREAKING THING.”
Because God looks out for people like me, I’ve had some very wise counsel in this department over the years. For one thing, my husband is an MBA with a gift for managing difficult situations. Earlier in his career he wanted to be a turnaround CEO (an executive that takes failing companies and makes them profitable), so he gained a lot of experience wading into hot messes and getting things under control. Then there was my great spiritual director, who never failed to help me shift my view of any situation to see it through the eyes of Christ. Thanks to the two of them, I can usually dig myself out of overwhelming situations before I reach the meltdown zone.
I’ve gained a great perspective on how to parse through complicated situations, the details of which I once wrote up here. But I realized recently (when I found myself in over my head yet again) that the most important addition to my life toolkit is what I think of as the Burnout Emergency Gas Mask. If you were in a room that was filling with toxic gas, the first thing you’d do is put on a gas mask. You’d do it immediately, without any further analysis, to preserve your health and give you some breathing room (literally) so that you could calmly evaluate the situation and make prudent decisions about what to do next. Through my husband and my spiritual director, I’ve learned a set of steps to take when I begin feeling overwhelmed that function the same way: If I do them immediately, without any further analysis, the process gives me the breathing room to collect my thoughts so that I can make prudent decisions about how to remedy the situation.
Since we’re approaching prime burnout season with the Fall in full swing and the holidays just around the corner, I thought I’d share what I’ve learned:
The 4-Step Burnout Gas Mask
1. Get your physical environment in order
I find it to be critical to do this step first. I used to think that a messy environment didn’t bother me at all, but I’ve come to believe that living in chaos is objectively bad for the spiritual life. When I’m feeling overwhelmed, it goes a long way toward bringing me peace simply to get my house in order. I don’t mean achieving Martha Stewart levels of perfection, but just clearing out obvious piles of clutter and wiping off messy surfaces to get things looking basically orderly. (And yes, I turn to Fly Lady when I need inspiration in this department.) In situations where the whole house seems to be out of control and it makes me even more stressed to imagine dealing with all of this, I focus only on the kitchen and the bedroom: Waking up to a tidy room and making breakfast in a clean kitchen invariably gets the next day off to a much better start, no matter what else is going wrong.
2. Get some sleep
One of my husband’s biggest mantras is, “Don’t think about your problems when you’re tired.” I need to have this tattooed on my hand so I never forget it. As I’ve said before, I’ve been known to reason my way into believing that the entire universe is falling apart at the seams when I’m tired, only to find that I have a completely different perspective after a good night of sleep. Especially if you haven’t been getting good sleep for a long period of time, pull every single string available to you to make this happen. Even one solid night of catchup sleep can give you an explosion of energy.
3. Pray — preferably outside of the house
We should, of course, pray without ceasing. I know that when I’m overwhelmed, I toss up all sorts of scatter-brained prayers asking God for assistance (and, okay, making sure that he is aware of JUST HOW TERRIBLE everything is that I’m dealing with). However, in order to truly “put on the mind of Christ,” I need to shut the door on everything else that’s going on in my life, and give the Lord my full attention. In particular, I find it to be critical that I actually follow the A.C.T.S. model of prayer (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, then Supplication); otherwise I tend to blather on and on about what I want God to help me with as if he’s my personal assistant, rather than listening for what he may be trying to tell me.
Also, it doesn’t work well if I try to do this at home. When I feel like I’m surrounded by chaos, it’s super helpful to pray outside of the house at least once, either in our church or at the Adoration chapel. If I try to do one of these “gas mask” prayer sessions at home, my prayers tend to go something like, “Lord, I praise you for your...laundry! Who knocked over that basket of laundry that I just spent an hour folding?!?!”
4. Talk through it
After I’ve gotten my house (or at least my bedroom and kitchen) in order, gotten a good night’s sleep, and spent some time in focused prayer, the final thing I need to do in order to set a path forward is to talk through everything with my husband or a close friend. I note from much experience that it is important to make this the last step, otherwise I tend to initiate the conversations with proclamations about how horrible everything is, then ramble for a while with an incoherent series of aimless, self-pitying statements. And, like with prayer, it’s also important to carve out time for this conversation so that both of us are calm, and so we’re not interrupted a bunch of times. (In other words: When I catch my husband at work when he’s late for a client meeting and I’m shouting over the sounds of five screaming kids, it tends not to be a very fruitful discussion.) But when we actually do have time to have a positive, focused discussion, it can work wonders for helping me test what I’ve discerned in prayer, think through new possibilities, and come up with a clear plan to bring peace back into my life.
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So those are my four “gas mask” steps that I take as soon as I catch the first whiff of burnout in my life. What are your tips for when you’re feeling overwhelmed?
The week in pictures
Who’s up for a photo post? I actually did things this week outside the three-foot radius that surrounds my couch, so I thought I’d share photographic evidence.
On Wednesday I went to my first Theology on Tap get-together.
I love the concept for this group: they host informal gatherings to chat about Catholic philosophy over drinks. The casual nature of the events lends a welcoming atmosphere, so people of all backgrounds feel comfortable attending. Usually there’s a speaker, and then a chance for Q&A and socializing afterwards. I’ve heard rave reviews of Theology on Tap events, and now I know why.
This week we had Rocco Palmo in all the way from Philly to speak. He’s a well known Catholic writer and commentator whose blog, Whispers in the Loggia, gets half a million unique visitors per month, and regularly scoops the mainstream media. It was a pleasure to finally meet him in person.
His talk was as inspiring as it was entertaining. I’d planned to just sit back and listen, but it was so good I had to take notes.
I took my notes the old fashioned way, but the guys from Austin Catholic New Media went the high tech route and live-tweeted the talk.
Throughout the talk, Rocco’s love of his Church and his Faith came through in every sentence. This was especially refreshing, given that he covers Catholic current events, and thus hears about the bad as well as the good. In fact, in the Q&A, someone asked if he ever gets discouraged by hearing all the dirt about the Church. His response was dead-on: He admitted that, yes, it’s always a bummer to hear about bad stuff within the “engine room.” But are those bad things not within him — and within every one of us — as well? The Church is composed of people, and people sin.
He also pointed out that people tend to talk about bad news more than good news. He told us, from his insider perspective, that for every horror story you hear, there are at least 10 other stories going unreported of people throughout the Church humbly serving the Lord and making the world a better place.
In addition to the talk, I loved having a chance to talk to the Austin Catholic New Media folks.
How’s this for an inspiring mission? From their website, their goals are to:
- Network – Connect with others and collaborate on new and existing new media projects in the Central Texas area
- Create – Develop new media projects that will entertain as well as catechize
- Promote – Promote what others are doing in the realm of new media by featuring their work
- Educate – Provide those who are interested in new media with education and support to get a new media project up and running
- Serve –Serve the Church and do all we can to spread her message of God’s love and mercy. We submit to the authority of the Magisterium and our local Bishop to ensure our message is faithful and orthodox.
With a group like this, it’s no wonder that the restaurant owners had to (politely) kick us out when it was time to close up.
Then this weekend was the parish Fall festival. There was a bunch of good stuff going on (in which I would have included the makeshift sports bar they set up to watch the Texas-OU game, but now we all have horrible memories of that). But there were Ballet Folclórico dancers!
My dad grew up in Mexico, and one of our favorite things to do when we’d go down there to visit friends would be to check out the Ballet Folclórico. Seeing the dancers today brought back warm memories.
Our church has been praying for rain for months and, naturally, it came right as the festival was getting in full swing. But that didn’t stop the intrepid dancers:
Then, finally, we went over to my grandfather’s house and created a concrete tablet with all the kids’ hand prints in them — even the baby’s!
And after we all left, my grandfather asked my dad if the cement was still wet enough to add one more thing: He wanted the number 38 inscribed in the corner of the piece. Because, he explained, he and my late grandmother were married in October 1938, “and that was the start of this wonderful family.”
I hope you all had a great week as well.
Prayer: Because sometimes you need to be dog-whispered
Back when we had cable, I used to be a big fan of the Dog Whisperer show. I don’t even have a dog, but it was fascinating to see how Cesar Millan could take all these bad dogs and turn them into happy, obedient pets. One of his most common techniques is to pinch a dog quickly on the side of its neck while making a sound that is hard to convey in writing, but goes something like, PRSSSSCHT!!!
By mimicking the corrective nip that the top dog in a pack might use to keep his subordinate canines in line, Millan gets the dog’s attention and snaps him out of whatever he might have been fixating on. It’s amazing how well it works. In one of the last episodes I saw, this one dog had a problem with obsessing about rocks. He would run up to one, growl at it, bite it, run around it, bite it some more, and this could go on for almost an hour. Normally he was pretty good about listening to his owner, but when he’d come across a rock, it was all over. You could practically hear the dog thinking, “NO SHUT UP DON’T TALK TO ME I’VE GOT TO GET THIS ROCK! ROCK! IT’S THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD! ROCK! ROCK! ROCK!” And then Millan would dog-whisper him with that PRSSSSCHT!!! thing, and he’d break out of it and look up at his master like, “Oh, hey, sorry about that! I guess that rock isn’t that important after all.”
I hate to admit this, but the dog kind of reminds me of me.
Whenever I’m good about sticking to regular prayer times, it breaks me out of whatever I’m fixating on. In fact, I usually don’t notice that I am fixating on anything until I stop what I’m doing and focus on God. I’ll be walking around, just like the dog, saying, “NO SHUT UP DON’T TALK TO ME I’VE GOT TO GET THIS ROCK! ROCK! IT’S THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD! ROCK! ROCK! ROCK!” Just replace “rock” with some item from my to-do list, and that’s me.
Then the hard stop of prayer time comes along, and it’s like Cesar Millan’s PRSSSSCHT!!!
When prayer time first approaches, I shrink away, convinced that I simply must keep obsessing about whatever it is that has captured my attention at the moment. But when I actually enter into silence, both internal and external, it’s such a drastic change from my normal mode of living that it startles me into a new frame of mind. Contemplating the eternal instead of fixating on the temporal requires such a huge shift of mental gears that it breaks me out of whatever short-sighted rut I’d been in. Like the dumb dog, I finally stop chewing on my silly worries of the moment, and pay attention to what my Master is trying to tell me.