Calming and Quieting Myself

“My plan for you is not the one you have created and entertained in your mind. My plan for you is the one that is unfolding day after day in all the humiliations and apparent failure to achieve great things that make up this phase of your life.” (From In Sinu Jesu pg 116)

This ties in both with my posts earlier this week, plus something He showed me several years ago. Then, people were arguing whether “works” or “acts of obedience” could save us. My response was YES! They can! God gave Noah a very specific work to do – build a boat. I don’t know how much sense this work made to Noah and certainly it was crazy-talk to other people.

What if Noah had said instead, “LORD, I’m going to build a home for orphans and widows. You talk about them a lot in scripture, clearly this is a good work, I have dreamed of it for years and that’s the work I’m going to do and I will dedicate it to you.”

Would Noah and his family have been saved when the flood waters came? I think not – God saw what no one else did. He planned the work, gave it to Noah, and used Noah’s work and obedience to bless him and his family.

Likewise, I had a big dream that was a “good” dream. But clearly it’s one that I “created and entertained” in my own mind.

It’s ok to be sad about this failure, this loss of my dream. And while I’m not yet making sense of His plan that is “unfolding day after day in all the humiliations and apparent failure to achieve great things,” I do trust Him. He sees clearly what I do not.

As I pray the Liturgy of the Hours I have noted this psalm each time I read it; I think it’s time to memorize it and take it to heart:

Psalm 131

¹My heart is not proud, Lord,
    my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
    or things too wonderful for me.
² But I have calmed and quieted myself,
    I am like a weaned child with its mother;
    like a weaned child I am content.
³ Israel, put your hope in the Lord
   both now and forevermore.

 

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Comfort in unknowing

It’s always so cool when the Holy Spirit reveals something new as I read scripture. In a few cases He has built on something He showed me long ago; the revealing is in stages and that really “wows” me!

I was reminded of one of those lessons this week when we read Matthew’s account of the genealogy of Jesus at mass … but it started long before that.

During a study of Ruth, I was touched by how kind Boaz was to Ruth from the first time he met her. She noticed it too and asked him how she had come to find favor with him and he simply said he had heard of the good things she had done for Naomi.

My original lesson from this was how our words can affect other peoples’ opinions. We are repeatedly cautioned in the Bible to guard our words and that they can be destructive – they can hurt or they can heal. Even one of the commandments is about bearing false witness.

So the Holy Spirit helped me appreciate the unknown person who had given Boaz such a positive report and good first impression of Ruth. Think about it – Naomi left the community with her husband and sons only to return years later with a foreign woman and a story about how the men had all died. Wouldn’t THAT be the topic of hot gossip and uncharitable speculation in any community!

I took that lesson to heart and thought of it once in a while when the Holy Spirit stirred it up within me again – usually when I caught myself about to gossip or say something unkind!

Years later I was starting a study of Matthew and it begins with that genealogy. I was paying attention to it more than usual, trying to associate any of the familiar names with their stories in the Old Testament.

And that’s when I noticed: “Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab.”

Holy cow! That partly explained Boaz’s reaction to Ruth! Rahab was a foreigner who joined the tribe of Israel, too! Boaz would have been a mixed-race child, half Israelite from his father and half Canaanite from his mother. He would have been painfully familiar with the trials a “foreigner” faced within a community. I imagine he suffered certain attitudes toward his mother and toward himself growing up; perhaps he wondered why they had to be “different.”

We can see how God prepared him for the moment he met Ruth, how he shaped Boaz to treat her with kindness and to receive her as his wife. Perhaps as a mixed-race man, he had not been found “acceptable” as a husband to any of the Israelite women.

God brought Boaz and Ruth together in a surprising way and they were blessed to be the parents of Obed, the grandparents of Jesse, and the great-grandparents of King David.

Wow! All ancestors of Joseph, the husband of Mary.

I have never heard a sermon tying all of this together; I have never read a commentary that notes it. I guess it’s just one of those little lessons given to me in a personal way, and I think about it when I find myself suffering a trial and wondering what it means.

Sometimes we eventually see a lesson we were supposed to learn in it or can look back and see how it shaped us in a certain way.

But other times I think we may never know in this life the work that God is doing within us and the ways He uses it for others, maybe even far into the future.

When I am struggling, I find that very comforting.

 

 

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Reflections on my mom

Another procedure on her heart; one that was supposed to take 5-6 hrs. but took 9.

Another day spent reflecting on what a good mom she has been; what an amazing, adventurous woman she is. Hours spent thanking God for her presence in my life; thanking Him for blessing her in her later years with a man who shares her interests, who has blessed her greatly even as she has blessed him.

I look at him standing next to her bed in recovery, eyes teary because the surgery wasn’t completely successful and he’s afraid she will be disappointed; afraid she’ll sink back into a dark hole of depression that he doesn’t understand.

And he’s afraid of the shadows on his lung, on the base of his tongue. He’s already braced himself for the worst, and is afraid. He will wait another week or more to discover the correct diagnosis and what he is facing.

She is 77; he is 80.

I hold her hand and look at her face … the face of my mommy. The next morning I walk into her room to find her wide awake, sitting in a chair eating breakfast. She jokes with the priest who stops by to offer her anointing of the sick, and later in the day I drive her to her home. She is in good spirits, and we are grateful for the gift of “time” that we have.

I pray for them both, LORD, with a heart filled with love for them, and for You. I accept your will – whatever trials remain for them, I trust you and I know that through them, you are making them holy. I only pray that you smooth their paths as much as possible, stay close to them, and draw them to yourself. I hope that the end of their lives, are the best years of their lives.

And I thank you again, LORD. You are a Creator of the beautiful and I am humbled by your love for each of us.

 

 

 

 

 

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Anointing the Sick

At mass tonight, Father offered anointing of the sick. Everyone who desires it stand and wait as the priests move through the church, laying hands on their head and anointing the palms of their hands with oil.

Some people are in obvious need … a couple stooped in their very old age steadying each other; the elderly with walkers; a child in a wheelchair.

Others’ needs are not so obvious … a young mother; the grandmother carrying an infant and both are anointed; the man who joins me in the chapel every week for our hour of prayer and adoration. One couple ahead of me are not much older than me and she appears to be suffering from Alzheimer’s as she becomes confused and her husband oh-so-gently takes her hand.

It makes me weep. Both in compassion for their suffering, and also for the beauty of what is happening in this place.

The world can be so hard; we are hard on each other. So many of our trials are a clear result of man’s actions and choices, sometimes our own.

But illness and physical suffering often just “are.” Not all will see healing in this life, but what a gift it is to be remembered, to be touched, to have others pray for you.

Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him, and said to him, “I am willing; be cleansed.”  (Mark 1:41)

Dear God you know the suffering in each of us – physical, mental, spiritual. Please extend your healing touch; give us courage to live in your will; cleanse us! In Jesus’ name I pray.

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What it’s all about

There is something I have finally come to understand and to really believe.

It isn’t about our circumstances, what is going on “in the world” or even in our immediate personal lives; all of that can be changed in an instant for better or for worse, and neither is a reflection of His love for us, really. His most beloved suffer greatly at times.

Blessings and trials both, always come back to the fact that in the end, it is really only about God and knowing that God is all.

 

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