Getting my life back

[This is a Part II to the post Putting Our Lives on Hold.]

This weekend will mark my fourth Mother's Day as a mom. It's stunning to think of how much things have changed since that first Mother's Day not that long ago. Three years and two more babies later, I see now that it was the crucible of motherhood that shattered the fragile life philosophy that I learned from the secular world, made me fearlessly seek truth and, ultimately, taught me the true meaning of life. Here are my reflections.


Back when my first child was born, I had a certain amount of angst about being the mother of a baby. It was odd. I loved my son dearly and saw the great importance of shaping another person's life...and yet, there was always this voice in the back of my mind that murmured, "What about my life?" Despite my tremendous love for my child, there was a part of me that felt like I'd hit the pause button on my life the day he was born. The full-time care that babies and toddlers require was so wearying, and I frequently commented to my husband that I couldn't wait until our youngest child went off to elementary school so that I could finally "get my life back!" I felt like there was always a carrot stick hanging in front of my nose, distracting me, promising the glory days to come when I would no longer have little ones around and I could finally get back to really living.

In my mind, the phase of life with babies and toddlers underfoot was drastically different than other phases of life. As I mentioned in my first post on the subject, I assumed that the only way to find fulfillment and meaning in life was to be self-focused. This was the default, the only way to live life to the fullest. Being the mother of little ones was a rare situation in which you were thrust into being temporarily other-focused, and was therefore something to just grit your teeth and endure until it was over and you could get back to the default.

After my second child was born in the midst of painful medical complications, life with little ones got even harder. You'd think that I would have found myself more desperate than ever to move on from this grueling time in my life, and yet, that didn't happen. This was around the time I had started to take a serious look at Christianity, and in the process of reading up on God and what he's revealed to us through his Word and his Church, I started to notice something interesting:

My life as a mother started to make a lot more sense when seen through the teachings of Christianity.

I've said many times before that reading the Christian explanation of why we are here, what we are to do and how we are to live was like reading an articulation of words that had been written on my heart all long -- and this was especially true when it came to motherhood. I increasingly found that my secular, godless worldview offered me no lexicon for describing what was so beautiful about motherhood, and why it was worth it; yet Christianity described it perfectly. I started to find some very interesting answers to that nagging question, "What about my life?"

Christianity was telling me that all those things I yearned for that fueled my self-focused pursuits -- happiness, excitement, security, youthfulness, joy, importance -- were actually yearnings for God, and that I'd never find peace until I sought him. At first that claim sounded crazy, even after I thought it was possible that God might exist. But when I took a hard look at my worldly pre-motherhood life and recalled the travel, the parties, the socializing, the trendy size 8 clothes -- all those things that were supposedly my "real life" that I was so anxious to get back to -- I started to realize something: none of those pursuits ever brought me lasting happiness. In my self-focused life without God there was certainly happiness and joy, yet it was fragile. There was always a feeling of restlessness, a never-ending search for the next big thing. I felt like I couldn't stay still too long, or the happiness might go away.

"OK, I'll bite," I thought after contemplating this for a while. "If I've somehow been groping around for God this whole time and won't be able to truly rest until I find him, how do I go about doing that?"

It was when I got the answer to that question that my entire life -- in particular my life as a mother -- finally made sense.

I discovered that the path to God is the path of agape, of self-giving love. When John wrote in Chapter 4 of his first Epistle, "Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love," he wasn't talking about just any kind of love. I "loved" traveling and sleeping in on weekends and pretty much anything that involved me doing things for me without having to make sacrifices. But that's not the kind of love John was talking about. The kind of love that leads to God, that God is, is agape: self-emptying, other-focused, inconvenient, sometimes-painful love.

When I started to seek God by seeking agape, everything changed. For one thing, the carrot stick disappeared; that siren song of the self-focused glory days to come when I no longer had children in diapers was silenced, the tension gone. My life as a mom of little ones was no longer in such sharp contrast to my future life without young children: either way, I'd be serving others. I found that this was the meaning of life, the secret to lasting happiness, the hidden key that unlocked the mysteries of the spiritual realm that I'd spent my whole life trying to find.

And, ironically, after I came to embrace the idea of a life dedicated to agape, I actually ended up with more time for myself. Because in my secular mindset the other-focusedness of the childbearing years was a temporary situation that you would extricate yourself from as soon as possible, my mentality was to just hold my nose and plow through it. I would have thought that to further embrace selflessness would lead to mental and physical collapse! But what I realized, through Christianity, was that a life of agape is not a life of running yourself ragged. To truly serve God and others to the best of your ability is to humbly accept that you are only human, and that there are limits to what you can do. Using the Rules of Life of religious orders as examples (I once posted the daily schedule of the Missionaries of Charity here), I began to see that it was simply not optional that I regularly find time for rest and prayer. I saw that the other-focused life doesn't mean that you can never take a time for recreation and relaxation -- quite the opposite, in fact. It means that you must regularly take time for recreation and relaxation, but that you put these activities in their proper place, realizing that they're not the meaning of life.

After doing it backwards for so many years, it fit like a glove to live a life that was other-focused for the long term and self-focused in the short term.


As this fourth Mother's Day rolls around and I look at my life with three children in diapers, I find that it's a perfect encapsulation of the mystery of human existence, a testament to that most counterintuitive, most important of all truths: that it is only by going through the discomfort of becoming other-focused that we will find what we're really looking for. To paraphrase the Evangelist John, it is only by knowing agape that we will know God.

I've mentioned before that I'm particularly ill-suited for this job: I'm easily irritated, disorganized, sensitive to noise, introverted, and come from a background of being a spoiled only child where I never had to lift a finger around the house. My daily life is not usually what you would call "pleasurable," at least not in the same way as my pre-kid days. I would almost certainly have reported more days as being overall "fun" or "easy" back when I had a cool career than now. From a secular, self-focused worldview, my life should be worse now than it was before. But it's not. I wouldn't say that "my life is better now," as much as I would say that "my life has started now."

Through Christianity, I understand that that the tension I used to feel about my life as a mother was the tension of resisting God, of fearing that if I emptied myself of ego and selfishness that there'd be nothing there to fill me back up. I finally understand that the life of a mom of little ones is in such sharp contrast to the typical life in our godless, secular culture because it is inherently a life of self-giving love, of being close to God.

The lessons I've learned are objective truths about the human experience, applicable to everyone in every state of life, whether or not they have children. Yet, for me, it took motherhood to teach me these lessons. I am so hard-headed and was so entrenched in my old ways that it took the tidal wave of agape that could only come with a house full of babies to break down layer upon layer of selfishness encrusted with fear, and free me to seek the truth.

Through the beauty of motherhood, I think I now understand what it's all about. And I finally got my life back.

Putting our lives on hold

When I first started exploring Christianity, one of the teachings that was most surprising and counter-intuitive to me was the notion that we are called to live other-focused lives.

A product of secular culture, it seemed obvious to me that the way to find fulfillment and meaning in life was to be self-focused (not necessarily selfish, but self-focused). The way I used to see it, serving others was only one of a variety of good and worthy a person might choose to do with his or her free time. By default, you made your life goals based on pursuing personal interests and maximizing comfort; if possible, you would try to find some ways to give back to others, but to do so for any extended period of time would be to put your life on hold.

When I first heard that Christianity taught that our lives are not about ourselves and our own wants, that we are to look to serve God and others before serving ourselves, it was a radically different message than anything I'd ever heard...so radically different, in fact, that it sounded crazy. I resisted it. Wouldn't spending too much time focusing outside of ourselves lead to misery? How were we supposed to accomplish all our big goals and do all those fulfilling things we planned to do if we never optimized around our own desires and wants?

Yet, in the process of resisting this teaching, I began to take a second look at the self-focused philosophy I'd had all my life.

I began to realize that introspecting and focusing on my wants never brought me lasting peace, and that it didn't seem to work for anyone else either. I began to notice that as I started accomplishing some of those big goals that were going to bring me so much fulfillment...I didn't feel as fulfilled as I thought I would. I'd heard before that this Christian teaching about living to serve God and others was not the personal philosophy of the religion's founders, but an objective truth. I'd heard the claim that this, like all the other Christian teachings about moral law and how we are to live, was an articulation of the law that is written onto every human heart by our Creator, a statement of truth about what is best for each individual and for the world as a whole. When I first heard these claims they sounded like so much grandiose religious posturing. Yet more and more I realized that my way wasn't working, and I started to wonder if these Christians might be on to something.

I decided to give it a try. I'd make an effort to spend a whole lot less time searching for meaning and answers within myself, making all my plans for the day, the year, and the rest of my life based on what I felt like doing. Though I would set aside time for prayer and time to myself to recharge my batteries (as religious orders do in their rules of life), I would start to think of my purpose here on earth as nothing more than to serve God and others. Honestly, it kind of sounded like a recipe for misery. But I had learned over and over again that every time I thought I knew better than God and his Church...it turned out that I did not know better than God and his Church. So I gave it a shot.

Almost immediately, I began to see the power of this teaching.

Even with my halting, far-from-perfect efforts, things began to change. For one thing, ironically, I found that everything I sought by focusing on myself and my own needs -- peace, joy, fulfillment, direction, feelings of security about the future -- I began to find only after I stopped looking inward and started looking outward.

The biggest thing I noticed, however, was that to be other-focused is to create an economy of love. Every single time we set our gaze outside of ourselves seek to serve others, whether it's something overt like volunteering at a soup kitchen or something more subtle like simply saying a sincere, kind word to the checker at the grocery store, we add a little bit of love to the world. Through these actions there is more love in the spiritual economy than there was before. The other-focused life is, ultimately, a life of love.


I've been thinking about the power of this teaching a lot lately, noticing how differently I see the world now that I understand that serving God and others is not one of a variety of nice options we might pursue with our free time, but is actually our very purpose for existing.

All of my scattered thoughts on the subject were brought into relief the other day when I had a conversation with an immediate family member (whom I don't want to identify directly). He seemed depressed and uneasy about something, and when I asked him why he said it was about his retirement account. He's deeply distressed that he won't have enough money to afford anything other than a government-run nursing home in his old age. I reminded him that my husband and I would love for him to move in with us when it gets to the point that he doesn't feel comfortable living on his own. We weren't even talking about a situation where he might need intensive medical care, yet he flatly refused to even consider the notion.

"I would never do that to you," he said. "I would never have you put your life on hold like that."

We've had this conversation many times before, yet this time, the first since my conversion to Christianity, I was hit by just what a profoundly sad worldview this reflects. I've always wanted this family member to live with us when he can no longer live on his own, and he's always refused on the same grounds. That part is nothing new. Yet this time I saw clearly that the situation goes beyond an unfortunate refusal of help: it reflects a worldview in which well-meaning people like my relative believe that the best thing they can do for their loved-ones is to not burden them with their presence, where the very meaning of life has been twisted to suck love out of the world.

One of the logical results of the self-focused worldview that is so common in the secular world is that, if we assume that the best use of our lives is the unfettered pursuit of our personal goals and interests, we therefore don't want to get in the way of others doing the same. It creates a situation in which we're all constructing our own little self-sufficient desert islands, not wanting others to get in our way but also not wanting to get in others' way. It leads us to believe that if we were ever to lose our self-sufficiency, our presence would not just be an annoyance but would in fact prevent our loved-ones from fulfilling their very purpose in life.

When I compare my life with the self-focused worldview to my life with the other-focused worldview, the difference is striking. Not that I am anywhere near some saint-like level of always seeking to serve others before myself, but simply understanding that that is the goal, that my own life isn't about me, has changed everything. It's counter-intuitive, it requires sacrifice, and it isn't always the most comfortable path. But it is clear that, truly, this is how we were designed to live. After all these years of trying it my way, it's like I'm finally operating my life according to the instruction manual. And it is ultimately a manual for how to live a life of love, written by he who is Love itself.

Lent starts now

The other day I was reflecting upon this season of Lent, as it is only the third time I've observed traditional Catholic Lenten practices, and my first since becoming Catholic. I thought about how I find this to be a season with its own simple beauty, how I actually enjoy the opportunity to deny myself worldly comforts in order to focus solely on spiritual nourishment...For about twenty days. And then I'm over it.

I'll give you an example from my weekly grocery store trip. I always go to the store hungry, and sharing a cookie with the kids while we shop is a little pleasure that I really enjoy. For some reason, every single time I have gone to the store during Lent I have forgotten about giving up wheat until I actually had a piece of the crunchy, sugar-crusted cookie in my hand. And each time, I had to make a painful choice. Here's a comparison of my thought process at the beginning of Lent, and then yesterday:

February 12: Mmmmm, this cookie looks delicious! Oh, wait, I gave up wheat for Lent and this has flour in it. Well, as I watch the kids eat it the tiny amount of suffering I experience will be a great opportunity to meditate on Christ's sufferings, not to mention the fact that I could use a little exercise in the willpower department. Indeed, what a wonderful opportunity we have in these sorts of sacrifices to keep the big picture in mind, to detach ourselves from the hollow pleasures of the world.

March 4: Mmmmm, this cookie looks delicious! Wait...oh no...is it STILL Lent?! You have got to be kidding me. Does this never end? I WANT THE HOLLOW PLEASURES OF THE WORLD BACK!

In other words, sometime around the half-way point of Lent, I stopped getting anything out of it. When Ash Wednesday first rolls around, fasting and penance actually sound good to me. First of all, change is always invigorating. It's fun to enter a different season of the year, to break out of the routine and do something new. Also, I often feel mentally and physically bloated after the decadence of the Christmas season, and for selfish reasons alone I look forward to simplifying my eating habits and my life in general. After letting the pendulum swing too far in the direction of gluttony and indulgence during the holidays, it actually sounds refreshing to let the pendulum swing back the other way during Lent.

But then, a few weeks in, the Christmas season long forgotten, nothing about it sounds good for selfish reasons. Concepts like penance and detachment aren't some new and different challenge, they no longer offer an energizing change of pace. I miss the things I've given up, and the rush that comes with doing something new no longer acts as a counterbalance to the discomfort that my little acts of penance cause me.

In some ways, I think of Lent as just now getting started.

Starting this week, I realized that I was at a crossroads: now that the newness of Lent had worn off, I could continue dragging my feet through the season to hold on by my fingernails until Easter when I could finally do the things I want to do again; or I could realize that it is only now that I have an opportunity to fully understand this season. Only now that my opportunities for selfishness are gone can this be a time of lasting conversion, of true detachment and repentance. I can muddle through the next couple of weeks, or I can stop turning away from the discomfort and push through it to see what I find on the other side.

This wouldn't be something I know from personal experience, but I am guessing that when people find Lent to be a truly fruitful time that takes their relationship with God to the next level, it is in the second half of the season that the changes occur. For me, in terms of its potential as a time of deep conversion, Lent starts now.

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AREWP Day 44: Balance requires sacrifice

[AREWP stands for "A Reckless Experiment With Prayer." This is part of an ongoing series about bringing peace to my daily life. You can read the other posts on this subject here (scroll down).]


Last night my husband and I were sitting in the living room after the kids went to bed, chatting about our days over little bowls of chocolate ice cream, and I caught a glimpse of the half-folded basket of laundry I'd set aside in the laundry room. Then I thought of those last three bills I needed to pay, and remembered that I never did get around to replying to that one email. My instinct was to get up and meander over to my desk or to the laundry basket, but I sunk back into the couch and kept chatting with my husband instead. And I thought, "So this is what balance is like."

When I used to make my semi-monthly proclamations that I desperately needed balance in my life, what I was really saying was, "I want to do all the same stuff I'm doing now, but just not be stressed about it!" Yet another huge lesson I've learned from this experiment of scheduling life around prayer (instead of vice versa) is this:

Balance requires sacrifice.

I know, to a lot of people that's as insightful as saying breathing requires inhaling, but it was actually a revelation to me. Before my commitment to make the workday end with Vespers, I would have spent that time after the kids went to bed shuffling around to try to finish the laundry, pay those last few bills, reply to that email, and undoubtedly get sidetracked with all sorts of other things along the way. It would have felt too indulgent or wasteful to just put my feet up and spend a whole hour chatting with my husband! Especially because of my tendency to procrastinate, I would have felt like I "had to" forgo relaxation time in the evening to make up for not getting enough done during the day. But the realization that a natural life is a life with hard stops, that it is only in recent years through modern technology that we have even been able to throw our lives so far out of balance by extending our working hours at will, changed everything.

These days, leisurely breakfast time ends and high-energy activity time begins with Lauds (Morning Prayer) at 9:30; high-energy activity time ends and naptime/desk work begins with the Office of Readings at 2:00; and I do one final sweep to get any lingering projects to a stopping point before the whole workday comes to a close with Vespers (Evening Prayer) at 6:00. Do I always have everything done by the time prayer time rolls around? Nope. Am I often tempted to keep working into the evening to make up for not getting enough done during the day? Absolutely. But, I have realized, such is a life of balance.

Back in this post I speculated that the reason that pre-electricity generations spoke of a life of peaceful rhythm and natural balance is because, for example, a housewife living in 1890 couldn't do laundry at 10:00 at night if she didn't get to it during the day; that by virtue of having built-in hard stops like sunset and community-centered activities, they were forced to sacrifice a lot of the things they wanted to get done and simply rest. Mimicking this life as best I can, by allowing my day to be broken into times of work and times of rest by forces larger than myself, has indeed forced me to sacrifice a lot of the things I'd like to get done. And it has given me a life of balance.

I suppose it might technically be possible to achieve such a nice rhythm by using something other than prayer to provide hard stops; but, for me, I doubt that anything else would work. Here in our 24/7 world, there's so much pressure let your life slide out of balance, to sign up for "just one more" activity, to get "just one more" thing done each day, that with my notorious lack of willpower I'm sure I would have backslid into my old ways long before now with any other type of routine. But by anchoring my days around God by joining in with the universal prayer of the Church, by letting the rhythm of the Liturgy of the Hours be the guiding rhythm of my life, three times a day I am reminded that I only have one real to-do list, and it is short; that the little sacrifices I make to achieve balance are minuscule in the grand scheme of things; that my time is not my own anyway.

To be sure, I don't mean to imply that my life is now stress-free or that I don't ever struggle with challenging days anymore (anyone who read this post or this post knows that that's certainly not the case). But I will say that it all feels more "natural" than before. Letting go of the temptation to make every hour a working hour, structuring my days around prayer instead of around the frantic pace of the world, might not have made all the stress in my life go away, but it has brought me times of guilt-free rest to act as a counterweight to the challenging times. Life has a gentle rhythm that wasn't there before. Even though there are days when it's painful to sacrifice a couple items from my to-do list that I wanted to get done, even though I have more responsibilities now than ever before in my life, I feel that after all these years, I have finally found balance.

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"WHAT YOU THINK IS OUT THERE, AIN'T OUT THERE"

A couple Fridays ago my husband and I snuck out for a much-needed date night at our favorite hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant. When I walked into the restaurant, where the owner and his assistant craft every meal from scratch, I actually got shaky: I'd had such a crazy day that I didn't get a chance to eat lunch, so I hadn't eaten in almost twelve hours. I am a pasta-holic anyway, and in my extreme low blood sugar state I whispered to my husband that if anyone came between me and the three-cheese meat lasagna there was going to be violence. I was only sort of kidding.

It was like something out of a horror movie, then, when I remembered that I'd committed to giving up all wheat products for Lent. I could practically hear dramatic music like the theme from Psycho playing as I stumbled back in horror, realizing that not only was pasta off the list, but meat was out as well since it was a Friday. As I perused the menu in a dizzy state of ravenous shock -- fettuccini alfredo, five-cheese baked ziti, beef ravioli with butter parmesan sauce -- the low-blood-sugar-having side of my personality called into question the entire concept of giving something up for Lent. I turned to prayer (it's a good thing God knows what's in our hearts, because my prayer was something like, "AAAAAAAH! NOOOOOOO!") and was quickly reminded that what I was going through was indescribably minuscule compared to what Christ suffered on the cross because of my sins. I realized the absurdity of even saying "craving pasta" in the same sentence with "Christ's sufferings on the cross," and might have even managed to feel glad that my discomfort had been a catalyst to turn my thoughts to God.

And then the waiter set a fresh-baked loaf of bread in front of me, and any bit of spiritual maturity I may have managed to muster was gone as soon as the warm aroma wafted my direction. There was that frantic, hypoglycemic devil on my shoulder again, whispering that giving up wheat is insane, that it's downright unreasonable not to eat a little bread, that I should just do some other form of penance later. Just as I was about to take a little bite, somewhere in my mind I heard my mother-in-law's voice say:

"WHAT YOU THINK IS OUT THERE, AIN'T OUT THERE!"

This is one of my mother-in-law's favorite sayings. I first heard it when she told me of a conversation she'd had with a lady who was planning to divorce her husband because the "spark" was gone and she wanted to live the high life in the dating world. Once my mother-in-law ascertained that the husband in question was hard-working, kind, and a good father, she grabbed the woman by the arm and told her of the struggles she's faced in her life, and ended her story with, "Listen! What you think is out there, AIN'T OUT THERE!" (When I asked her if this person ended up getting a divorce she said she didn't know because this was a lady behind her in line at Wal-Mart.)

My mother-in-law, whom we call "Yaya," is a tough Southern Baptist gal who is really more of a force of nature than a regular person. She's also the Albert Einstein of common sense. She had a very rough childhood, growing up in poverty in rural Texas, and ended up becoming a single mother after an unwanted divorce when her son (my husband) was still a toddler. Her only education beyond high school is a Ph.D. from the School of Hard Knocks, and it is only through tough-as-nails determination and her strong faith in God that she clawed her way out of poverty and built a better life for herself and her son. She has a passion for helping people improve their lives by sharing the life lessons she's learned, and though her methods for communicating her wisdom are often unorthodox and sometimes unappreciated, I have found that there is a lot of truth in what she says.

In particular, I keep coming back to her oft-repeated line, "WHAT YOU THINK IS OUT THERE, AIN'T OUT THERE!" (Sorry for the all caps, but it's the only proper way to quote her.) She used this line in response to her neighbor who started to gamble away his family's savings, to her friend who wanted to stop going to church because she wanted more free time, to the relative who worked eighty hours a week to try to get a glamorous promotion, and to countless bank tellers, grocery store checkers, and people in line behind her at various places throughout the greater Houston area.

What she is essentially trying to convey is this:

You will find, my friend, that the only possible way to find deep fulfillment and satisfaction in life is to make love your number one priority: center your entire life around loving others, loving He who is Love itself, and your soul will rejoice in the glory of finally finding its true purpose. Anything else is a distraction. Whether it's a hot job or a good day at the casino or a decadent meal or a nice car or a huge house, it will bring you only fragile, fleeting joy. Chasing after the comforts and pleasures of this world will lead only to frustration and emptiness. It is only by picking up your cross and seeking to follow the One who originally blazed the trail of a life of self-emptying love that the thirst from deep in your soul will finally be quenched.

It comes out as:

Listen! WHAT YOU THINK IS OUT THERE, AIN'T OUT THERE! [This statement usually accompanied by finger pointing and/or arm grabbing.]

Though her parlance is rather more rough around the edges, I find it to be refreshingly concise and easy to remember -- particularly during Lent.

That night at the restaurant Yaya's salty wisdom saved me from stuffing bread into my mouth and just telling myself that I'd do some other penance later. That night -- as well as when a friend brought over homemade cinnamon buns, when I was desperately hungry at the grocery store and watched the kids share a cookie, when I was at a church event and some of the ladies brought freshly baked kolaches -- I thought of her words, and asked myself, "What do I think is 'out there' in this food? What do I think eating this is going to do for me?" The answer, of course, was that I only wanted the pleasing sensation, which would quickly fade to nothing and leave me wanting more.

Doing something simple like giving up a certain food for Lent has made it so much more real to me that what I think is out there...ain't out there. After all the woe-is-me theatrics over the bread or the pasta or the cookie, abstaining from eating them had zero impact on my life by any metric that really matters. It's made it so clear that while there's nothing wrong in appreciating those delicious foods and enjoying the pleasure they can bring, I don't need them to be happy or fulfilled or satisfied. I don't need them at all.

This Lent, the big theme for me is detachment. I didn't exactly intend for that to be my big though topic this year, but I find that the more I immerse myself in traditional Catholic Lenten practices, the less I find myself susceptible to the siren song of "the world." The simple lesson I learn each time I'm tempted to reach for a cookie or have a bite of pasta comes to mind when I'm tempted to feel like I need a new flat-screen TV like my friend has, or those little extras at the grocery store, or that stylish new outfit. All of those things are nice, and there wouldn't be anything wrong with having them. But, like with the pasta, none of it can offer me joy of any kind of permanence.

Though giving up foods made of wheat is a small sacrifice, it has served to make me comfortably uncomfortable here in the world. On an intellectual level, I've known for a while now that this world is not our home; and now, by the simple act of letting go of some of the little material things I find most pleasurable, I feel it. I understand it on a level much deeper than just something you read about in books. And realizing just how little the material world alone can offer has stirred up a yearning for home, our true home, and the One who resides there.

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Cat vomit, temper tantrums, and dying to self

What does it mean to "die to self"? I used to ask that question a lot when I was first exploring Christianity. I had no idea what that odd phrase was supposed to mean. Frankly, it sounded kind of morbid and depressing. So I set aside the question and decided to revisit it once I had more pressing questions answered.

These days, as I come to feel like I finally have a grasp on the basics of Christian teaching and try to grow in my newfound faith, this whole "die to self" concept keeps coming up again. And I think I finally understand what it means.

It really, really clicked for me earlier this week. I had a "perfect storm" moment where it was as if every frustrating thing that could possibly occur in a day all happened within about a 30 second time period. I'd only had four hours of sleep the night before. I'd been working hard to accomplish just one little thing that morning -- cleaning off our bathroom counter -- and while I was doing so the 18-month old cleared off my nightstand and threw my books everywhere (losing my bookmarks in the process); the three-year-old launched into a major temper tantrum and broke something in the process; his tantrum woke up the peacefully sleeping baby and she started fussing; and when I walked over to go get the baby I saw an outdoor cat who hangs around our house (who is not supposed to be inside) sitting next to my bed. As I paused for a moment, the counter only half cleaned, trying to figure out which fire to put out first...the cat threw up on the floor in front of me. Then the phone rang. I saw on caller ID that it was my husband. He was going to ask how my day was going.

In that moment, I understood what it meant to die to self.

To "die" to myself would be to not let love be smothered by my selfish, sinful tendencies that had been stirred up by the challenge of this situation; to make the painful decision to let go of my heated feelings of frustration and anger and let God work through me in all my actions; to let go of the way I felt like handling the situation to instead act in a purposeful but calm and loving manner, never losing sight of the needs of the other people in this situation. It was clear that I had two choices:


1. What I knew to be the right thing to do:

• First of all, pray. Ask God to be with me in this moment.
• Then go get the baby, temporarily sequester the 18-month-old in the playpen so that she'd stop destroying my nightstand and wouldn't get into the cat's mess, and firmly but lovingly explain to my three-year-old what he did wrong as I put him in time-out.
• "Offer up" the yuckiness of cleaning up cat throw-up. Consciously choose not to dwell on the inconvenience of it.
• Answer the phone when my husband calls with gratitude for having the kind of loving spouse who calls regularly to see how I'm doing. Tell him what he may be able to do to help me get through this challenging day in a constructive way, without "dumping" on him.
• Most of all, just think of it as attending the "University of the Moment" and remember that all I need to do is turn to God in complete trust, and that what is meant to get done will get done -- nothing more, nothing less.
  

2. What I felt like doing:

• First of all, spend a few solid moments dwelling on how awful the situation is. Point fingers, trying to figure out who let the cat in.
• Yell in the general direction of the three-year-old and 18-month old as I grudgingly pick up the baby. Instead of loving guidance, just keep raising my voice until they stop misbehaving.
  
• Let out a bunch of loud sighs as I clean up the cat vomit. Dwell on it to the point that I start to feel sick myself, and then feel sorry for myself because I feel sick. Get exasperated when the two toddlers get too close and try to touch it, as if there's no way I could have seen that coming.
• When my husband calls, try to see just how much frustration I can pack into the one word "Hello?!" when I answer the phone, and when he asks how my day is going, respond with something utterly unhelpful but satisfyingly self-indulgent like, "My day is terrible! TERRIBLE!" Then proceed to rattle off a long list of every annoying thing that has happened in recent memory, culminating with a grand proclamation about the tragedy of my inability to complete a simple task like cleaning the bathroom counter.
• Sulk.

I went with an only slightly improved version of choice #2. But why? That's the interesting part: it wasn't because I felt like it would be mentally healthy to "let it all out" by releasing my negative emotions in other people's directions. It wasn't because I felt like choice #2 was the better option. It wasn't even that I felt like I couldn't have chosen option #1 -- even in the heat of the moment I knew that God would give me the grace to take the high road. So why go with the lesser option, then?

Because I didn't want the pain.

The option of choice #1, I realized, would have meant "dying to self" -- and I didn't want to experience pain of the mini-crucifixion that that would have involved. Like an addict craves the empty high that drugs can give, I craved the empty high that self-pity and anger can give. I knew it wasn't good for me. I knew it wasn't good for anyone in that situation. But I didn't want the pain of nailing the self-pitying and angry sides of my personality to the Cross, the pain of humbling myself to let go of my plans and trust in God's plans instead.

And the result? If you had some kind of meter that showed a real-time readout of the total amount of love in the world at any given moment, you would have seen a little dip that afternoon. In choosing to seek the path that involved the least immediate pain for me, in choosing to let sin control the situation, I slammed the door to allowing God to work through me. I took a little bit of love out of the world -- and a whole lot of love out of our household.

I don't know what I used to imagine "dying to self" would feel like, but I didn't anticipate that there would be real pain involved. (I can just picture lifelong Christians smiling knowingly at that one.) The more I live as a Christian, the more I am struck by how difficult it is. To borrow a phrase from fellow former atheist John C. Wright, I find that Christianity is a very inconvenient religion. To die to yourself as we're called to do -- to live in the moment with calm trust, to let go of your own ego and selfishness, to reject the empty high of sin -- is hard, hard work.

And yet, despite the difficulty and the pain, it's the only thing worth doing at all. Because it is only through the painful process of dying to self that we can let God -- who is Love itself -- work through us; we can have the pure, selfless, agape love of Christ will flow through our every action. Though it's much harder than I thought it would be, the payoff is much greater than I could have ever imagined. I hope that I can remember that the next time I am tempted to run away from the pain of dying to self.

Comments closed for Lent

A quick thought on fasting

I recently started reading The Sacred Art of Fasting by Fr. Thomas Ryan. I felt like it might be a good book to read for Lent so that I could learn more about this concept, and find out if it is indeed as spiritually beneficial as it seems to be to let everyone within ear-shot know just how much you have been inconvenienced by your sacrifices. (As it turns out, I don't think that's supposed to be part of the deal.)

Anyway, at the very beginning of the book Fr. Ryan made a comment that got me thinking: he mentioned in passing that he once participated in a Day of Fast for World Hunger, and that at the end of the day the participants met for a prayer vigil in which they gave the money they would have spent on food to a charity that feeds the poor.

When I read that, I realized that I think of my consumption of food as akin to taking buckets of water out of the ocean: my decision to take a little more or less has no noticeable impact on the total amount available to others. It occurred to me that in most other places and times it would have been an obvious aspect of fasting that by eating less yourself, there would be more food available for everyone else. (Not that that's the only point of fasting, but it certainly would have been a clear outcome.)

I really like the idea of giving others what I am not eating in some form or another. To reinstate that lost connection of one person's fast helping others, I think I will either continue to buy the foods I'm skipping and donate them to food pantries, or calculate the money I would have spent and slip it in the St. Vincent de Paul envelope at church.

I don't have much more to say on the topic since I'm only on page six of the book, but I thought I would throw that out in case others find it interesting since I know a lot of other people are fasting right now.

Comments closed for Lent

And to dust you shall return

We had a great time on Fat Tuesday. To do some feasting before the start of our first Lent as Catholics, my husband and I went to the house of some good friends. When I first arrived I felt the wind pick up and looked to see some threatening clouds on the horizon, so I hurried to get inside before the rain started. We watched the Super Tuesday election results and talked some smack about politics with our friends as we enjoyed good food, good company and good wine in the warm glow of their home. In the midst of our merrymaking the window screens would occasionally rattle as the wind whipped around outside.

I woke up the next day, Ash Wednesday, feeling a whole lot less merry from having stayed up too late. As I got ready to go to my first ever Ash Wednesday prayer service, I heard the horrible news that tornadoes had ripped through five southern states the night before and that the death toll was at 44 and climbing. That same front that had done nothing more than blow leaves around our city had in other states leveled homes, killed entire families, and utterly devastated large regions of the country. As I drove to the church I thought of how surreal, how horribly impossible it all seemed.

When I got to the church I was initially distracted by making sure I didn't do anything stupid since I didn't know what to expect from this service. But I was quickly reminded of the tragedy that had played out on Tuesday night as the distribution of ashes began. We prayed, we listened to Scripture readings, and then we all got in line. And when it came my turn the deacon smeared ashes on my forehead in the shape of a cross, looked at me, and said:

"You are dust, and to dust you shall return."

Those words from Genesis 3:19 are probably the one thing on which all humans from every place and time can agree. The modern parlance might be, "You are chemical reactions, and one day those reactions will cease," or maybe "Your body is matter, made of atoms like all the other lifeless stuff in the universe, and one day it will return to being lifeless matter like everything else," but regardless of how it is phrased it is nevertheless something we all know to be true. It is probably simultaneously the most important, most agreed upon and most ignored fact of life.

The truth of this statement seemed all the more real this day. It occurred to me that as I sat in the pew with black ashes on my face, listening to beautiful yet somber sound of Attende Domine coming from the chant schola, watching men, women, and children walk through the line to receive ashes, that at this very moment thousands of people were walking through the ashes of what was once their homes. Probably some of the bodies in the funeral homes in Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky and Alabama at that moment were yesterday people who were chatting about whether to give up chocolate or coffee for Lent. As the long line moved forward, I heard "You are dust, and to dust you shall return...You are dust, and to dust you shall return...You are dust, and to dust you shall return," over and over again. I thought of how casually I'd glanced at the darkening sky the night before, how I'd taken it for granted that my own death is far off as I heard the wind pick up outside.

You are dust.

I never intended to take Lent lightly, but I had fallen into the mode of thinking of it in abstract terms like "a time for spiritual growth" or "an opportunity to grow closer to God." But in the ashes ritual I was starkly reminded that that the storm clouds are on the horizon for us all; that to build your life around earthly comfort and pleasure is to build a house of cards.

And to dust you shall return.

The announcement of this most inconvenient, inevitable fact of life begs the question: what are we going to do with this information? And that, I now realize, is what Lent is all about.

Comments closed for Lent

Comments closed for Lent

I will continue blogging for Lent, but I am not going to look at the site's visitor stats and I will close comments*. I am so appreciative of all the wonderful, kind and thought-provoking comments I get on this blog...but my tendency toward pride makes it very easy for me to cross the line between appreciating comments and requiring them to feel at peace about what I write. Similarly, I've noticed that seeing how many readers and links I have through Sitemeter can be a slippery slope for me: I used to check it only once a month or so, and that somehow turned into once a week, which turned into a couple times a week, which turned into once a day. I could use a fast in that department. (I did this last year and wrote about some of the results here).

In case anyone's interested, I'm also giving up:

• All TV except EWTN (and a show that my mom and I enjoy following together, though I'll only watch it if it's with her for "bonding" time).
  
  
• All foods made from wheat.
  

In the spiritual growth department, I plan to:

• Continue with the Liturgy of the Hours (although that continues to work so well on a practical level that it hardly feels like it's something special for Lent).
  
  
• Not indulge in feelings of being frustrated / annoyed with other people.
  
  
• Not indulge in feelings of worry / anxiety / annoyance / stress about future events. Though ideally I wouldn't do that ever, I really want to focus on not worrying about future events since, as I wrote about here, an unbelievable percentage of the things I feel stressed out about have not even happened yet, and they almost always turn out better than expected (if they happen at all).
  

For those last two commitments, the words indulge in are operative. One of the best lessons I've learned from St. Francis de Sales is the concept that there is no sin or malice from an idea simply popping into your head, so long as you reject it (more on that in the last part of this post). So, for example, my Lenten commitment with that last bullet point is not to completely avoid ever having thoughts like "It's going to be SO horrible and difficult to take all three kids to that event we have to go to!", but rather to reject them and not dwell on them when they do come to mind.


The next 40 days are not typically ones that people look forward to, but I am actually really excited about it. This will be my first Lent as a Catholic, and one of the first since I came to know that God exists and to understand that the celebration of the Resurrection of his Son is something worth setting aside 40 days to prepare for.


* I don't think there's a way to close comments on all old posts, so I'll just avoid reading any new comments to old posts until after Lent.

AREWP Day 11: On being busy

[AREWP stands for "A Reckless Experiment With Prayer." This is part of an ongoing series about bringing peace to my daily life. You can read the other posts on this subject here (scroll down).]


A while back I was emailing with Fr. James Martin (author of the must-read book My Life With the Saints), and he casually mentioned something that's stuck with me ever since: on the topic of prayer, he told me that when someone asked St. Francis de Sales how much one should pray, the Doctor of the Church replied that you should pray a half hour each day, unless you're busy. If you're busy, you should pray an hour.

"What a pithy quote!" I thought. "You should pray more if you're busy -- love it. That St. Francis de Sales, he sure does have some great sayings!" And then I promptly forgot about it. Or I tried to, anyway.

You see, as clever as I found that quote to be, I really was too busy. That advice may have worked for those "other" people who St. Francis knew back in the 17th century -- who must have either been very holy or had a whole lot of free time on their hands -- but it went without saying that here in the real world, that advice was nothing more than a witty one-liner to keep in my "good quotes" file.

And then I had my third baby in three years, and got really, really busy. In addition to keeping up with the kids, in our house I'm in charge of bill paying, filing, Quicken data entry, grocery shopping, budgeting, thank-you note writing, investment managing, (not not mention blog posting), etc. As my responsibilities snowballed, that advice that Fr. Martin conveyed would occasionally pop into my head:

If you're busy, pray more.

I would reject this thought as one might shoo away a buzzing gnat, and promptly resume frantically running around from one thing to the next. Yet so often that line would interrupt my inner dialogue, which was usually something like: "How am I supposed to find time to put that huge pile of clothes away when I haven't even cleared out room in the closet and I think I forgot to transfer that money from our savings account I hope all those checks will clear and when am I going to find time to fold the laundry and I still need to write that thank-you note and I DO NOT HAVE TIME to bake that quiche for the potluck why did I ever sign up for that and --"

If you're busy, pray more.

I could not seem to get this notion out of my mind! It was only after I fell flat on my face, crushed under the weight of my to-do list, forced to admit that my way wasn't working, that I decided to give the prayer thing a shot. I assure you, it was not out of any kind of spiritual maturity on my part -- I just didn't have any other options. It was either that or hire someone to slap me every time I started whining about how I never get anything done, just so that I didn't have to hear myself talk about it anymore.

As I've chronicled, I started praying all three major hours of the Liturgy of the Hours. I had a lot of different factors motivating me to try to devote reckless amounts of time to prayer; I wasn't doing it to follow St. Francis de Sales' advice. Yet as I've gone through these weeks of praying more than I ever have in my life, his words have been popping into my head more than ever. And they finally resonate with me on a gut level. I finally understand that they are true, and why they are true:


Now that I'm nearing the end of the second week (third if you count the "trial run" week) of praying the Liturgy of the Hours, I'm feeling the inevitable pressure to backslide that I've felt (and succumbed to) with every other routine I've ever tried to implement. Last night, for example, I got overwhelmed with trying to make a new recipe and pay bills and answer emails all at once, and I ended up doing Vespers more than an hour late. It was tempting to just skip it altogether.

As this example illustrates, I've found that prayer is the "canary in the coal mine" for my life: the more pressure I feel to let prayer slip, to push it aside for something else, the more it indicates that I have let my life slide out of balance. When I glance at my prayer book and think "I don't have time for this!" (as I did last night), it doesn't mean that prayer is too hard; it means that I've piled too much on my plate again. The greater the temptation to skip Matins because I'm running late or Lauds because I have too much to do, the louder the alarm is sounding that something is off-kilter.

What I've found, as someone who is officially "really busy," is that there are so many potential demands on our time, especially in our 24/7 culture. And busy-ness tends to have a snowball effect, where the more commitments you make the less time you have to carefully consider what other projects you take on, and you pretty quickly end up feeling like the weight of the world is on your shoulders. There's a huge temptation to be unrealistic about how much time you have available, to sacrifice peace to get a few more things done. And you find yourself scurrying from one thing to the next, needing to shove everything aside -- including God -- just to keep your head above water.

If you're busy, pray more.

Now I get it. It's not just a pithy quote, it is a critical lesson, probably even more applicable to our current culture than it was in the 17th century. With email and artificial light and cell phones and cars, the modern world lures us to try to squeeze in just a few more things, to tell ourselves that we can do just a little bit more, and more, and more...and prayer brings it all to a screeching halt. Structuring life around prayer means making the conscious, inconvenient choice to put something else in front of the frantic desire to "get stuff done!"

I recently came across a quote where someone echoed St. Francis de Sales by saying, "If you don't have time for prayer, you don't have time for anything." I've found this to be so true. Prayer doesn't impact my ability to get things done; it impacts my ability to make unrealistic estimates about the things I'll get done.

As the newness of the experiment with prayer wears off, it is increasingly difficult to make prayer happen -- not because I don't have time, but because of my tendency to try to do things according to how much pressure I feel to do them, rather than how much time I actually have available. The fact is that God has given me the grace to more than make up for the 30 - 40 total minutes I "lose" in prayer each day. My amount of available work time is the same as it always was. The difference is that I used to live in a perpetual fantasy state where this large chunk of free time was always looming just around the corner, in a magical time and place called "later" I was going to be able to do it all. But now, where the phases of the day have distinct beginnings and ends that are marked by Lauds, Matins and Vespers, three times each day I am forced to leave my "later" fantasy and just admit that I am not going to get it all done. Morning comes to a close with Lauds, activity time comes to a close with Matins, and the whole work day comes to a close with Vespers. It's painful. But it is exactly what I need.

Today is the feast day of St. Francis de Sales. Tonight I'll raise a glass of wine and ask for intercessory prayers from this great saint, who offers us the only good advice I've ever heard on being busy.

AREWP Day 1: Priorities and sacrifice

--- UPDATE BELOW ---

[AREWP stands for "A Reckless Experiment With Prayer." This is part of an ongoing series about bringing peace to my daily life. You can read the other posts on this subject here (scroll down).]


This morning I looked at my calendar and realized that a childhood friend is going to be in town today, and she's swinging by this afternoon for a visit. I bit my lip a little bit when I realized: she'll be here for Vespers (Evening Prayer). My husband won't be home yet, so it will be just she and I and the kids.

For a moment I went into a frantic "What do I do?!" mode. We've been friends since we were eight years old. In recent years we lost touch but are now rekindling our friendship since she'll be in my area more often for the next couple of years. She has always been a deeply spiritual person but is not religious and doesn't believe in organized religion. Last time she checked, I felt the same way (except that I wasn't spiritual...in fact I was kind of a militant atheist). Let's just say that sitting around and listening to me read psalms and Bible verses aloud for 15 minutes is not what she is expecting to do when she comes over.

People who are the #4 Google result for socially awkward person do not handle situations like this well.

As I was fretting about whether to postpone Vespers, to just start the experiment tomorrow, to violate the first rule I committed to and do it hours earlier before she arrives, a thought popped into mind out of nowhere:

This is where spoken priorities become actual priorities.

I don't know where that came from, but it's true. Priorities don't become priorities by talking about them. They become true priorities by inconveniencing yourself to make them happen. Even if it means that you might look odd or foolish in the eyes of a childhood friend whose opinion you dearly value.


--- UPDATE ---

When my friend arrived we were both exhausted from long days. It's been so long since we last had a chance to really talk, our conversation was a bit stiff at first. After some hemming and hawing, I finally laid it out. Not knowing where to start, I decided to just be completely honest and tell her why saying these prayers were important to me, and let her know that I was worried about her reaction because she was such a dear friend and I valued her opinion so much.

As we walked around the house lighting candles, I told her a bit about my conversion and how much I appreciated her sharing her own spiritual beliefs with me back when I was an atheist. In the breaks between each reading I would tell her a bit more about the Liturgy of the Hours, and pointed out that thousands of other people in our time zone are reciting these exact prayers right now. She listened attentively throughout the 10 or 15 minutes it took to go through it all, and if she was bored or uninterested she sure hid it well.

Not only was it not weird, but it's exactly what we needed.

Our conversation had been stiff before, but me sharing something so personal really broke the ice and helped us move past surface-level chit-chat to really delving into the topics that were most dear to us.

I am so, so glad I didn't skip it. I will remember this lesson next time I'm tempted to push prayer aside for fear of what other people think.

A reckless experiment with prayer: the plan

[This is part of an ongoing series about bringing peace to my daily life. You can read the other posts on this subject here (scroll down).]


To reiterate what may or may not have been clear from my last post, my goal with praying the Liturgy of the Hours is twofold: to finally start praying regularly to make prayer the priority I say it is; and to bring some desperately needed rhythm and structure to my life. This second goal is one of the reasons that I'm going to go ahead and say all three major hours rather than just start with one. Because I realize that this is a big change, I make no speculation about whether or not I'll continue this after this week. I will see how it goes, judge the endeavor by its fruit, and evaluate from there.

Also, I should add that I did a "trial run" this past week to see where in my schedule there are natural fits for prayer time, and to give myself a chance to familiarize myself with the process before making any bold proclamations on my blog. :)

Without further ado, here is what I am committing to do from Monday to Friday of this week:

1. I will start praying each prayer within 15 minutes of the time I have set for it: I have written out the times at which I will pray Lauds (Morning Prayer), Vespers (Evening Prayer) and Matins (the Office of Readings). I realize that it is not at all required that I be so precise with the timing, but that's the whole idea about having "hard stops". If I commit to "praying Lauds whenever I can get around to it, sometime in the morning" it will never happen. Giving myself too much flexibility on timing makes it all too tempting to put everything else first, e.g. "I'll start Vespers after I do this load of laundry..."
   
   
2. I will light candles at Vespers (Evening Prayer), and the day's work stops then: As I said in one of my last posts, I yearn to live life in the natural rhythm of day/night cycles, yet I am not ready to make the huge step of foregoing artificial light. But what I can do is observe the ancient tradition of Vespers being the prayer said at the lighting of the lamps in the evening: I will light candles as a symbolic gesture that night has come, and work that is not finished must wait until tomorrow. (This doesn't include our night routine, dinner / cleanup / baths, which will happen after Vespers).
   
   
3. I will be prepared to make sacrifices: If a friend drops by just as I'm about to start Vespers, if the kitchen isn't cleaned up when it's time for Lauds, if I have to take my prayer book with me because I'll be out and about during Matins, I will still stop and pray. I'm prepared that this may cause some inconveniences, but that's the whole point about having hard stops, and one of the big reasons I'm doing this: to inconvenience myself and my tendencies to get distracted and put trivial matters before my true priorities.
   
   
4. I will accept imperfection: Since I am brand new at this and am attempting to do it on my own, I will undoubtedly not do it perfectly. I will make every effort to say each office correctly, but I'm also not going to let myself get derailed if it's not perfect (as I have in the past).
   

That's it. This coming week, life revolves around prayer. Though I will go through my days as usual, I will not worry about doing anything other than simply sticking to these four commitments. Will I get nothing done? Will the house be a wreck? Will the kids hate it? Will the sacrifices I'll have to make to put prayer first be just too much?

We'll see.

A reckless experiment with prayer

[This is part of an ongoing series about bringing peace to my daily life. You can read the other posts on this subject here (scroll down).]


I've mentioned before that at some point during our conversion process a family member alerted me to the fact that I am actually related to a Benedictine monk. This long-lost cousin and I have corresponded occasionally ever since, and at one point I asked him if he had any recommendations for how I could better incorporate prayer into my daily life. He told me about something called the Liturgy of the Hours (also called the Divine Office), an ancient liturgical form whose origins stretch back to Jewish worship before the time of Jesus.

He wrote of how the earliest Christians' days revolved around prayer, how they would consecrate each part of the day to God by pausing to say certain prayers (usually psalms) at certain times, setting aside their work to turn their hearts and minds to God. The practice is thousands of years old, and still today every priest, monk and nun from the Pope on down are vowed to pray these prayers each day. He encouraged me to consider this, to join him and all the other religious and lay people across the world who join their voices together in prayer throughout the day to consecrate their hours to God.

"Sounds great!" I thought. "Too bad I don't have time for that."

A few Google searches led me to see that each of the three"major hours" would involve stuff like praying psalms, reading Scripture passages, reading the works of great Christian thinkers...in other words, things that I don't have time for. I decided to just come up with some ways on my own to add some less time-consuming prayer to my days.

None of these ideas for praying more actually happened and, meanwhile, the Liturgy of the Hours wouldn't go away. I started to think that maybe God was trying to tell me something, since I couldn't seem to escape blog posts and discussions and articles about the Liturgy of the Hours. I kept trying forget about it, to push it off to the "fantasy list of all the things I'm going to do when I have tons of free time," but I couldn't get it out of my mind. In the little bit of praying I actually did (like 30 seconds at night) I began to ask God to make it more clear what he wanted me to do here. Obviously I wasn't supposed to actually pray the Liturgy of the Hours since I had too many important responsibilities that left no room for extensive prayer, but what was it? Maybe just pray one of the prayers each day? Maybe learn about it to share with others? I then promptly tried to forget about it again.

Shortly after this prayer I was reading Pope Benedict's Jesus of Nazareth, and came across a fascinating section about Jesus' temptation in the desert to turn the rock into bread. Pope Benedict talks about how this is the temptation that Christians face still today, the temptation to focus on important practical matters like making sure everyone has bread, and worry about all the God stuff later. What struck me was when he talked about what Jesus means when he responds to the temptation by citing the Old Testament verse: "Man does not live by bread alone, but...by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord." Pope Benedict writes:

[Jesus] himself has become bread for us, and this multiplication of the loaves endures to the end of time, without ever being depleted...The German Jesuit Alfred Delp, who was executed by the Nazis, once wrote: "Bread is important, freedom is more important, but most important of all is unbroken fidelity and faithful adoration."

When this ordering of goods is no longer respected, but turned on its head, the result is...ruin and destruction even of material goods themselves. When God is regarded as a secondary matter that can be set aside temporarily or permanently on account of more important things, it is precisely these supposedly more important things that come to nothing. [emphasis mine]

Point taken. I began to really think about all my "important" tasks, and ask myself if they truly allowed so little room for prayer -- after all, Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity have helped the world tremendously on a practical level, yet they spend lots of time in prayer. I began to seriously look into the Liturgy of the Hours, researching what it would involve. It seemed counterintuitive that someone in my state of life with three small children would be led to this, but I felt pretty strongly that for some crazy reason I was being called to it.

Meanwhile, I'd been thinking a lot about how to bring some desperately needed structure to my days. It would bring so much peace to my life to have a clear rhythm, a stable routine, but how do I (to borrow Hallie's term) anchor my routines when I have a long history of ignoring self-made schedules? How do I find a natural rhythm to my days, to (as a commenter recently put it) live on God's time when modern technology makes to soooo easy to live on the world's time? How do I create hard stops?

When these two lines of thought finally collided in my mental meandering, "Why should I pray the Liturgy of the Hours?" and "How can I bring structure to my day with hard stops?"...a lightbulb finally went off in my head.

Could this be it?

Could making my daily tasks revolve around these prayers -- instead of vice versa -- as Christians and Jews have done for thousands of years, could this be the key to bringing peace to my daily life? Could putting regular prayer before everything short of emergencies provide the structure I've always yearned for? Could the pre-set times and prayers of the Liturgy of the Hours be the guide I need to not blow it all off and just tell myself I'll do it "later" (as I did with countless other plans for prayer)? Could Lauds and Matins and Vespers provide strong anchors for my days?

I really don't know. But I'm going to try it.


I've said so many times that I "don't have time" for any kind of serious prayer...yet I have never actually tried it. I based my assessment on looking at my schedule in Excel and seeing how full it was, not on actually having tried prayer and found that it didn't work.

So next week, I'm going to knock all my