The Spirit is Moving, and apparently so am I

When I took this job almost a year ago, a huge delight was that I secured the MOST incredible studio loft apartment in the downtown area. I LOVED this place. Of course, as the months went by, I came to realize that I loved it mostly because I imagined entertaining large crowds of people in it, and visitors were much more rare than I had originally hoped.

I actually came to struggle with not liking the apartment, of finding it a rather lonely little space. It was then I got the idea from Elisabeth Elliot's book The Path of Loneliness that I needed to make the apartment a place I shared with Christ. So I converted my closet into a prayer room, which I fell in love with all over again even more than the apartment itself.

Now, it looks like I might be getting a new place to share with my parents. The thought of moving a 5th time in less than 4 years is a little teensy bit grating on the nerves, but I also have peace about this because: a) family helping each other is never a bad idea, b) it will be nice to have human beings to come home to (they don't shed feathers and poop all over the place like my stupid parakeets do), c) my parents will keep enough of an eye on me that I'll have some accountability for taking better care of myself. In other words, if I don't sleep and eat and care for my health regularly, someone will notice and give me a hard time, which I need so much!

I was on the phone briefly today with my eighteen year old cousin who, when I broke the news to her, reacted in such a way that I might as well have told her I was going to live in a tree with a family of rabid squirrels. "Oh Guiney, I would NOT want to move back in with my parents, why are you doing that?" I had to bite my lip, because my first impulse was to get defensive: "Well at least I DID get out on my own", but I took a deep breath, reminding myself that freshman in college know more about life than me (wink, wink). and didn't bother trying to explain it. Being out on your own is nice, but so is having money in savings. Independence is fine and dandy, but I also happen to believe that God "depends" on us to take care of each other, and I want to. (I'd be lying if I didn't also admit that having a dishwasher MASSIVELY appeals to me).

Parting thought: The words of Christ I find most precious are when after healing a man who attempts to then follow him, Jesus turns to him and says, "Go home to your family and tell them what God in his mercy has done for you."

I Believe You're My Healer

While at the youth ministry conference in Boston, I was privileged to finally see and hear Matt Maher in person. I’ve never been a huge fan of the recordings he makes - I really prefer acoustic sounds over the electrics rifs and “produced sound” you often get on CDs. Nonetheless, I’ve always been incredibly touched by his very soulful and (in my opinion) catechetical lyrics, and his vocal quality lifts my heart to prayer so much and reduced me to tears more than once this past week.
The other side of how wonderful it was to have him at the conference was because I’ve been involved in some level of music ministry for several years now, and when I’m not doing the music I often find myself distracted by the critique that happens in my head (it happens as I’m playing music, too). I’m so busy critiquing musicians in my mind that it’s difficult to enter into prayer. When I found out Matt was going to be at the conference, and that he was helping to lead music for our liturgies, I almost laughed! ‘Thanks, God. You knew I wouldn’t pray unless someone like Matt Maher was leading the music, so you sent him‘.
Anyway, Matt spoke to a group of teens at a Eucharistic time of Praise and Worship they call LIFT out in Boston. I just wanted to relay a part of what he said because it affected me so much. He was talking about a controversy not-too-long ago in the contemporary Christian music world. Hillsong, one of the biggest churches in the world and a major outlet of praise and worship music, released a song called “Healer” in Australia during World Youth Day in Sydney, where Matt heard it for the first time and was deeply touched. He learned that the story behind it was the songwriter had contracted cancer and penned the song as a result. It moved people really deeply to think that a person with such a devastating sickness could pray a song like:
“You hold my every moment, you calm my raging seas,
you walk with me through fire and heal all my disease
I trust in You, I trust in You
And I believe you’re my Healer, I believe you are all I need
And I believe you’re my portion, I believe you’re more than enough for me
Jesus, You’re all I need
For nothing is Impossible for You, You Hold my world in your hands”
About the same time that the song was released in the United States, the man who wrote this song called a press conference and announced something shocking: He didn’t have cancer! No, I don’t mean was healed miraculously, I mean he never had cancer in the first place. People were scandalized, shocked, and disheartened about this, and a lot of churches pulled the song.
But here’s what wrecks me: what the man REALLY wrote the song about was a crippling addiction to pornography he struggled with. He was so ill with himself over it that he actually demonstrated the physical symptoms of cancer - losing his hair, the whole nine yards. And what Matt shared, which strikes me as a bold proclamation of the Gospel, was this: the song takes on even MORE meaning because of what it’s really about. That the deepest disease we have is our sin, and it is here that we need healing more than physical ailment. Some people struggle with physical illnesses and the Lord doesn’t heal them - but He always heals the worst disease, our sin. So, go back and read those lyrics again… don’t they take on a whole new meaning?
This parallels my Confession this past week, which was arguably one of the (if not THE) most amazing Confession I’ve ever experienced. It was the first time in a long while I’ve been so moved to contrition that I wept openly as I told the priest my sins… and when I finished, he said something that penetrated to the depths of me so that I realized I had been thirsting for Christ to speak these words to me. He said: “Guinevere, I understand that your penitence is real and that the things you’re confessing are still sins, but I honestly sense that underneath all these symptoms is a wound in your heart that is NOT your fault.” The priest continued with words of tremendous comfort, reassuring me that I do indeed love Jesus in spite of what a screw-up I have felt like, and that Jesus wanted to HEAL the root of what ailed me. After giving me absolution, he said an extra prayer asking for healing in my heart. What a breakthrough.
My Savior can move mountains. What joy is mine, that I am able to say I am SO in love with Him!

Something New

This past week I've spent in Boston at a youth ministry training conference. I had the chance to take a step back from my day-to-day grind, from the demands of leadership, and relax while networking, pooling resources, and gaining some new insights for the youth ministry at my parish. More than any of those things, the past few days have been a radical experience for me on a personal level, and I want to share some of that.

I had what you might call my 'conversion' at a Steubenville Youth Conference in 2000 the summer before starting high school. Something really radical happened in my heart that night. Not only did I have a crazy-intense experience of Jesus for what seemed like the first time in my life (at least the first time I was aware of it), but I truly believe that I received an infusion of the theological virtue of faith. From that night forward, my heart resonated with everything about the Catholic Faith. Reading the Catechism, learning about what our Church teaches, was like having my soul struck like a tuning fork, resounding. There has never been a single iota of doctrine that my heart has struggled at all to believe is true. I can attest to this from my years at Franciscan University studying theology and catechetics - when I passed the Catechism Exam without studying, another friend in the program rolled his eyes and said, "Of course you did, you ARE the Catechism!". Ha ha.

So the last nine years of my life have been diving about into that, learning as much as I can about how to articulate the Catholic faith and explore its infinite caverns. I came to know the love of Christ and believe it, following Him even to Franciscan University and (now) into the field of youth ministry. But I have a confession to make: it has not been enough. In spite of that gift, I have been really struggling the past few years with expecting too little from God. In the depths of my heart, at a level that I'm not sure I've ever been able to translate into words, I had accepted the idea that although Jesus forgave me and loved me, that the things I struggled with, my past hurts, were just my burden to bear and suffer with forever. I was living like God wasn't going to do anything new for me, that although this vision of life's meaning was the most beautiful truth I'd ever encountered, that it's promises just weren't going to be true for me.

Maybe some of your can relate to this: having gone to so many conferences, retreats, classes, on top of a lifetime of Mass attendance, it can start to feel like you've heard it all, like there's nothing new? What I've experienced in the past few days I really believe is an entirely new phase of my life beginning, a deeper conversion to the Lord than I've ever known before (I cannot even begin to convey how much joy it brings to my heart to be able to say that!) Even when the content is great, so often I have gotten to the end of a homily, a talk, a healing service, and been disapointed because it seemed like none of it had been for me. In the past couple of days though, there's been a crazy outpouring of messages and moments where I've just been wrecked with the knowledge that it was a gift just for me, words meant for me! Jesus broke dramatically into me saying, "Behold, I am doing something new!" and really transforming, changing, HEALING me. The closest way I can come to capturing it is that I now have a radical infusion of the theological virtue of hope, to such a degree that I think it may even take another decade to unpack all of it.

Praise the One who makes all things new!

Matters of the Sacred Heart: My long-delayed Man-batical

Here I go, taking it public:

You know 'those' Christians who kissed dating goodbye? Confession: they drive me crazy. I can't tell you how many times I rolled my mind's eye of "fasting from dating". Even though I can respect that people are different, I am diametrically (yes, diametrically I say!) opposed to reserving all physical affection until after marriage under the guise that this is "chastity".

Chastity, according to the trusty CCC (Catechism of the Catholic Church) is the "successful integration of sexuality with the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being" (#2337). It falls underneath the cardinal virtue of temperance. If temperance adopts the axiom "Everything in moderation", this applies to physical affection as well. Never expressing that with a person who you're in a relationship with is not chastity, grrr!

In the words of my Christian marriage professor, "chaste expressions of affection should be an accurate reflection of the intimacy that exists between two persons". I agree with this - couples in exclusive relationships SHOULD have a marked difference in the way they interact physically than they do with other people. I think if an engaged couple isn't kissing, there's something puritanical or legalistic lurking under the surface. I think our culture needs radical examples of relationships where people are depicting the freedom of the love of Christ and can show how it's done without it being automatically associated with fiesta de temptation!

But, I digress. For all my strong opinions on this subject, I actually regret that I never 'fasted from dating' in college - there, I admitted it. My freshman year, when my prayer life was the most consistent it's ever been, I remember distinctly sensing in prayer the Lord let me know I wasn't going to find my vocation while a student at Franciscan University. I promptly ignored this, and you know what? I DIDN'T DATE ANYONE THE WHOLE TIME I WAS IN COLLEGE. I spent an awful lot of wasted energy on different guys, but none of that ever resulted in an official relationship. Now I'm realizing that if I had put all that energy into pursuing the Lord as much as I was wishing a guy would pursue me, I'd be in a far different place spiritually now. And so, I have resolved that I'm going to do what I should have done a long time ago - take an official sabbatical from waiting for the next guy to roll around.

So, from now until the Feast of the Sacred Heart next June, my heart belongs to One Man. I'm going to take some serious time to examine the things that still need healing in me, and to really try to listen to the Lord speak about my vocation. Even though it's what I WANT, I'm not really sure if He's calling me to marriage. What I want to want more than anything, is to want His will for me. In the words of Saint Gianna, "Whatever God wants".

Now that it's published, I can't back out - so if Mr. Perfect-Catholic-Spouse-Candidate surfaces in my life, someone remind me that I wrote this entry! :)

'The absence of absence'

Short entry for today. I wrote a song my senior year of college that contained the following lyric:

"Soon we'll be parted and who knows for how long,

but I take consolation in this

In the Mystical Body He'll be keepin us strong,

and I'll see you in the Eucharist".

In these post-college years, my nearest and dearest friends are (as I'm sure I've mentioned once or twice) for the most part, scattered around the country. There are only a handful of good friends left in Michigan, and less than half that handful take up residence in this little town where I'm living. I miss that "posse" of friends that waited like a family in the caf every night for dinner in college. I miss sharing a drafty old house with two of the most fun women I've ever known. I miss silly nights when my oldest friend and I had nothing better to do than waste time trying on 80s prom dresses and jumping on the trampoline together. Hours of entertainment, really.

Somehow- even though I rarely get to see the people I love, I manage to do alright. I don't feel that I'm ever REALLY terribly apart from them. I could credit this 'absence of absence' with the fact that we live in such a technological age - with cell phones, texting, and facebook at our very fingertips. The real reason, however, is because they are present to me whenever I receive Holy Communion. In receiving Christ; body, blood, soul, and divinity - I also receive His Mystical Body, the Church. So whenever I go to Mass and receive the Eucharist, I am as close to my friends as I could hope to be in this life. In the moments when I DO feel the lack of someone's physical presence, this thought gives me comforting strength.

Kate, Heidi, Jess, Spin, Andrea, Darby - I miss you guys. Thank God for the telephone, but thank Him even more for the Church and the dimension of your presence it brings.

potpourri of 5 thoughts...

Thought #1: Snuggies are Satan's secret weapon. This week one of the teens brought one into the youth room, and I was anxious to try it out even though I think they're hideous. The thing was SO warm and snuggly and cozy I never wanted to get out of the chair again. At one point in the afternoon, a teen actually ADDRESSED me as Snuggie, and I ANSWERED! She shrieked and said, "No, it's taking over you!" Well, by the end of the afternoon, that teen told me I could keep the Snuggie. But the thing is an occasion of sin, I swear - it makes you want to stay in your little blue cocoon on the couch and never come out.... hear me, readers: Snuggies are an agent of sloth.

Thought #2: I've been reading some great books lately, so I thought I'd drop a few titles: The Five Love Languages Singles Edition by Gary Chapman, Boundaries by Cloud & Townsend, and The Poisonwood Bible by... what the heck is her name. Reading is so nourishing to me. I think I should look into audiobooks more, at the suggestion of a dear friend. I think there should be a Catholic Audio Bible read by Scott Hahn, or John Bergsma. I would pay for that.

Thought #3: I want to go back to Ireland. I'm thinking of trying to motivate myself to lose a certain amount of weight, and if I do it, I get to go to Ireland.

Thought #4: There is usually more than one way of looking at things. I have told my teens so many times about the importance of communicating when they're having issues with each other, and had to take that advice myself this past week by having a conversation I was dreading with a friend. Why is it, do you suppose, that we hesisate and even cringe at the idea of dealing directly with conflict? My theory? Our culture has maimed the idea of Christian charity into this crappy idea of "being nice". How often do you hear, "That's not nice", "Can't we be nice" or the like? I think American culture holds up "being nice" as the ultimate virtue, but you know what? Going through your whole life with the lofty goal of never saying anything to upset anyone else is an impoverishment of the dignity we should be bestowing on each other. It falls so short of the gentle kindness we should exude if we're living in the Spirit. I think trying to be nice can lead people to avoid conflict, because being upset with someone else isn't nice... but that's not really loving or kind. We should DEAL with problems directly. I say this because I actually did deal with one of my own last night, and we had a peaceful conversation that settled the issue AND made me feel much better, especially being able to be honest with him.

Thought #5: This past weekend a cousin came to visit. Without going too much into detail cuz I don't want to mess with my fam's privacy, this poor kiddo has had to deal with a lot and it breaks my heart. My mom called to let me know he'd be spending the weekend with us, explaining what was going on. As I listened to her, it occured to me that an outside person might look at the story and say, "How can God let this happen?" It's the age-old question: If God exists, why does he let us suffer? (I never understood this: We all know that good parents sometimes allow their children to go through painful things for their own good).

A man I worked with this summer responds this way: "It's not how can God let this happen - it's how can YOU let this happen? God is relying on YOU." We live in a fallen world with weak people. We are weak, too. Yet, God give us the responsibility to love and care for each other, to be His presence. The next time we witness the kind of suffering that drives us to our knees or would lead us to ask where God's love could be in the midst of it, we must BE that love.

Little Flower and the little things

Today is the feast of Saint Therese of Liseux - a little French Carmelite sister who died at 24 unknown by the world, now not only a saint, but a towering doctor of the Church. It is said that she resdiscovered the secret heart of Christianity: that it does not matter how great the things we do are in this life, but how great our love is. This "Little Way" is something that has hit home repeatedly for me the past few weeks.

Sometimes it feels like I'm in a whirlpool with all the "adult responsibilities" I find myself faced with - work, bills, relationships defined by complexity, bills, work, chores, bills. My fluxuating schedule, jammed calendar, friends scattered nation-wide that I try to keep tabs on, etc... Juggling all of these and trying to make consistent time for prayer (DUH) and family is more challenging than I realized. Sometimes it's all I can do just to keep my head above water in the midst of the chaos. That doesn't include the gradual realization I've found: I'm now my own primary caregiver - if I don't do my laundry, wash my dishes, set the vitamins on the table, make calls to the doctor or dentist, exercise, buy healthy groceries and make nutrituious meals for myself, guess what? Those things just don't happen. On my more frustrating days, I mutter with quivering chin and tear-brimmed eyes, "There's no one taking care of ME".

As full of incredibly loving relationships as my life truly is, I still struggle (more than I'd care to admit) with loneliness. I started rereading The Path of Loneliness by Elisabeth Elliot, and a passage that never struck me before leaped off the pages this time. It spoke about a young woman who moved to a town where she didn't know many people and lived in an apartment by herself. It dawned on her that unless she made it a place she shared with Christ, the apartment would continue to be a place of loneliness for her. I took this advice to heart - the walk-in closet of my studio loft apartment has since been converted into a prayer room/chapel, and you know what? It really makes a difference! I have a place, a little closet like Our Lord spoke of where I can close the door and pray to my Father. I have tried, with growing success, to spend the first and last 10 minutes of each day in my closet, enveloping myself in silence so I can be in His presence without the usual strain. It is amazing to me the difference this "little" thing makes in my mood, peace, productivity.

Jacques Phillipe says the principal struggle in the spiritual life is simply to ask ourselves what we can do to give the Lord the most freedom to move in us. While reflecting on how this applies in my own life, I jotted down a list of things I CAN do in spite of the torrent of daily life that seems often beyond my control (the choleric in me even categorized the list with colors). I've resolved that each week, I'm going to choose ONE to give extra effort towards, not with the mindset that I have it in me to pull myself up by the bootstraps and self-improve (I happen to think most of that approach is a crock), but exercising my will to remove the crap so there's room for grace to transform me. In other words, the effort I'm putting forth is merely getting the flip out of the way so God can do it. Switching my mindset in this way has been kind of revolutionary.

It hasn't been an overnight dramatic change. After many failed Lenten schemes that could be summed up "The Epic and Elaborate Blueprint for Getting Rid of All my Faults in Weaknesses in 40 Days", I know better than to take on unrealistic plans for fixing everything that's wrong with me. Even so, there has been a shift in my heart these past few weeks. When the 20 feet from my bed to the chapel suddenly becomes an insurmountable distance, when the decade-plus addiction to caffeine makes the perfectly perspiring glass of Pepsi my brother is sipping look like heaven itself, when a teen comes to see me and I'm distracted, or when I get a text message from an ex whose presence in my life (if I'm brutally honest) is like quicksand, I'm increasingly repeating my new mantra: "The little things count, and they matter every time". Each time I say this in my head and am able to drag myself into the chapel, order water instead, take a deep breath and give that teen my undivided presence, or refuse to self-medicate loneliness with unhealthy relationships, I create more space for God to move freely in me.

The little things count, and they matter every time. You got it right, Therese. Pray for us.

The Father's Love

I could make a big hoot over this inaugural blog entry, but I'll keep the intro short: in spite of cringe-worthy memories of my self-absorbed days on teenopendiary (I'm glad I deleted all that!), I am finding that journaling is actually a pretty healthy outlet. If only I could open each entry as cleverly as Doogie Howser...

Basically I just want to share the things that strike me as I'm on this journey - which presently finds me a youth minister at a Catholic parish in a small Midwestern town. If someone else benefits from what I share, great!

So, to the good stuff: Last night I met up with Erin and Jan not far from where I live- there's a crowd of young adults that meet up for Tuesday night Mass and then hang afterwards for burgers and a beer. It's a solid group and even though it's a small hike for me to get there, I really enjoy being around chill and faithful people my age!

What struck me as particularly share-worthy about last night was a conversation I had with the father of an old friend. Years ago, I participated in Franciscan University's "Young Apostle" program (which has now been changed to Franciscan LEAD). That summer, that group of teens was incredible! I met some amazing people - Nic and Carolyn were two of them. Even back then I could sense a chemistry between them, but for the last 6 years they have been incredible close friends, and both have dated other people. This summer, however, the romance finally exploded!!! To my delight, Carolyn and Nic are now officially making a go of the relationship thing, and Carolyn recently moved to Texas to be near him so they can better discern where God is leading them.

So, last night, I struck up a conversation with Carolyn's dad, who is a Spirit-filled man SO much fun to be around I can hardly capture it in words. I asked how he was doing with the move, since Carolyn left so suddenly. His eyes brimmed with tears, and he spoke with raw sincerity to me about how much he misses his daughter but would "rather she be happy in Timbuktu than miserable in my backyard". He told me how it comforts him to know that Nic is a man after God's heart. THEN - he told me that in spite of being happy for Carolyn, he misses her badly enough that on a whim, he and his wife got in the car on a Thursday night and drove all the way to Texas just to see her face. The way he described it to me was like this:

"You know, if Jesus had a cellphone or we could Skype, it wouldn't be all that satisfying. That's why he gives us his True Presence in the Eucharist. It's the same with Carolyn -I can talk to her on the phone and it's okay, but nothing compares to being in her presence."

I just beamed listening to him, thinking to myself, "This man is so crazy with love for his daughter that he goes to ridiculous lengths to show it. That is the way God the Father loves us."

It may be cliche, but I find that I need constand reminders of how outrageous the Father's Love is for us. Hopefully this serves as a reminder to you, too.