Friendship

My dad always tells me that if I can find one good and true friend in life, then I am luckier than most people. I do agree with this, but in the same way, I am definitely blessed in this life with really wonderful friends. They remind me daily of God's Love in my life by their sheer presence.   We all lead busy lives and school is hectic for us, but this week we were blessed with some incredible quality time, and it really gave me a delightful reality check.  I am learning more and more what it means to be a true friend to someone else.  Here are some things I have learned:
1. Hearing is not the same thing as listening. Voices don't want to just be heard, they want to be listened to.  When a few of my friends and I hang out, we always try to put everything else away and eliminate distraction so that we can be totally attentive to one another.  Those are the closest friends that I have because through our active listening, we have learned so much about one another and can be a better friend because of it.
2. Positivity is really essential to a healthy relationship.  I am not saying that we shouldn't be sad or vent around our friends, I am saying that just because you are close to someone does not give you the right to make fun of them, put them down, or discount their opinions.  Honesty is really important to friendship but so is tact.
3. Presence is powerful.  More than ever as I am growing up, I am coming across problems that have no immediate solution.  They are the type of things that are the part of God's plan He will reveal in due time, but in the moment of stress and heartache waiting for that moment, it is sometimes really wonderful just to have someone to sit with.  When in doubt, be a presence.  God does not always talk when we sit with Him; in fact, most times, our hearts are so loud, I'll bet He couldn't get a word in edge-wise. But just being, just sitting in His very Presence can calm the most troubled soul.  A better example of being present to the people you love just doesn't exist.
4. Finally, gratitude goes a long way.  It is so important to thank your friends for what they do in your life, but especially to thank God for who He has given you. My friend Von and I used to talk about how sometimes we think that everyone has been assigned a mission for this world and God knows what it is.  Our job is not to figure out the mission but just to live as we know we are called to and every person we meet will learn from us what they need to because God will orchestrate it so. Friends are some of the most influential people we have in our lives, and thank God for that!

John 15:13 There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends.

Beauty

Today I am having a really good hair day!  Does that mean that today I qualify as beautiful? Or just my hair? What about tomorrow when I want to sleep in and not put the extra effort into fixing it? Will I not be beautiful anymore? Is beauty something that you can attain and then lose?

There are so many facets to beauty: beauty in nature, beauty in poetry, the Beautiful People of Hollywood, real beauty, fake beauty, inner beauty, and outer beauty. But the one I am most drawn to is the beauty of other people. When I was in eighth grade, we went on a retreat for one Saturday all day, and a prayer we learned on that retreat was, "God, help me to see myself through Your eyes, so I can see how wonderful and beautiful I really am."  I prayed that prayer from eighth grade and it did great things for how I saw myself on the outside, so I tweaked it a little, to see if maybe it could help how I was on the inside. I started praying, "God, help me to see other people through Your eyes, too, so I can see their wonder and beauty."  I think that the most influential thing that this prayer showed me was that beauty and worth are so connected, which society has already shown us: the prettiest people get the most attention and stuff.  I think, though, it is completely backwards. What it should be is: the worth that God has created within you is manifested in the beauty of the heart He created for you.  And the most incredible part of this is that, unlike Hollywood "beauty", this worth does not have to be earned, coated on, or achieved: we are all born with it!  Being created in God's image and likeness has filled us with worth, simply pouring over the depths of our souls, and we are all so beautiful because of it.

God's Love and worth are true, but that does not always mean that our human minds can understand it, and because of the beauty before worth mentality, I find that a lot of people (myself included) see themselves as unworthy of things like God's Love or respect from others.  At the very least, we end up viewing beauty on a day-to-day, outfit-to-outfit, mood-to-mood, or sin-to-sin basis.  I have been hoping and praying for words to share with people to tell them, and to reassure myself, that this simply is not true. God's Love and our worth in His eyes and truth are not fleeting, and today my mom sent me a music video that I think sums it up absolutely perfectly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF5CjtrIl_c&feature=related

Care

Today's post is dedicated to my most avid readers, my Grandpa Joe and my Grandma Vicki, who incidentally also inspired today's word!  The word "care" is so common; caregivers, caretakers, "I don't care," carebears, and even a new nanny website called something like "care.com".  It is ironic to me that when things surround us in such a strong way, it is sometimes so easy to totally for get the meaning or weight of it. Care is something that is so powerful; it is saying to someone, "I will do what is best for you because your happiness will make things better for me, too."  I am blessed to be surrounded by people who care about one another in a big way.  My roommate and I have been talking for months about what incredible gifts from God our family and friends are because we know that they would do anything for us, and we would do likewise without hesitation.  This is care in its truest form, wanting the best for people you love just because you know they deserve it as God's own.

Lately, I have been trying to have an inner peace and be aware of all of the positive things going on in my life.  When my grandparents text messaged me today and told me that they missed my thoughts on this blog, it was like God showing me a huge beam of sunlight, revealing His awesome care through them.  I am inspired to let the people that I care about know that I care about them the way my grandparents did for me today.

(I love you both!)

Growth

After a long summer of busy plans and sunny days, I have returned.  As I enter my third year of college, I cannot believe how much I have grown and learned in just the past two years; really even the past twenty.  It's astounding to me how much knowledge we can acquire, and how real thought is even though it is totally intangible.  I find myself really often looking back on things that I have learned, and stretching my head forward to see what I will one day learn, and today I started to think about how much I am capable of growth right where I am.  In fact, I am wondering if maybe all of the change happening around me while I am seemingly standing still is actually making me grow more as a person, where it counts.  There is such a world of a difference to grow up in the world, and to grow up within yourself.  While I am learning how to calculate statistics, I am also learning certain things who I am and what it means to live up to that title.  I always have been told that every experience is opportunity to make a choice, and I think that these moments I am learning and living through are becoming some of the most defining moments.

Blessings

This week, I picked up my devotional book again. I hadn't been reading it for some time, mostly just because I had forgotten about it. The whole message I got all week was to open my eyes to God working in my life. At first, I sort of blew it off because I know that God is working in my life; I can already see it. But through the week, I realized that knowing and recognizing are two different things. My eyes were opened to so many blessings this week, so I decided this week to make an effort to do two things: 1. I would talk to God before anyone else about things I was happy about or that were upsetting me, and 2. I would try and find the blessing in every situation. It was tough at first, but by the end of the week, it was simple. God's blessings and His love are so abundant that it was no trouble at all to want to thank Him for all He has done; in fact, I was bursting with it!

The things that really changed my heart to being open was this: Earlier this week, our church youth group went on a float trip. I am an adult chaperone, so I drove three teenage girls down. Among many funny topics that they discussed in the back seat (why is your reflection upside down, how fun is it to repeat the word "viscosity" after you have just learned it, how many people do we all know who have our same name), one of the younger girls said with a bit of frustration, "You know, I remember when the toughest decision that I had to make was what color crayon I wanted to use." I thought to myself, you are younger than I am, and I don't even have that rough of a life, what could possibly be your toughest decision?  It was not very compassionate of me, but I was put in my place as she continued, saying, "It's just that, I want to be able to enjoy this part of my life, but I don't know how to all the time. But then I wake up every morning. And I remember, that I was born in a great country, into a wonderful community and a loving family. We are just so blessed. All of us are just so blessed."

We all have different blessings, but the way that she not only knew them as fact, but recognized them as gifts in her tone of adoration, was inspirational to me. My prayer for this week is to see the world through God's eyes.

Solitude

Hello again. Today is the first sunny day in a while; it has been quite the spring as far as storms go. So I am sitting here, back in college-town for a few days, at the window of our Newman Center. One of my traveling companions is at work, the other at a park with her boyfriend. We have been together for 4 days straight now, because as traveling companions (and close friends) we share things like the key to the apartment we are staying in, the food we are eating, and the car we travel in.  Now that they are both away, I am having the first time by myself since Monday.  I like being busy, and I like using every moment of the day from the moment I wake to the one that I fall asleep, so I hardly ever stop to enjoy these moments of solitude.

I remember when I was in high school, my mom suggested at the time that I take a few days for some "soul searching" to figure out what it was that I really wanted and the life choices I really wanted to be making.  At the time, 17 year old me was pretty apathetic to the idea, but did it regardless and I actually did learn things. Now I love spending this time alone because I hardly ever spend time with myself - how many of us actually do? I think there is a huge difference between being alone on the internet, watching TV, or reading and actually spending time with ourselves. I have been talking to a lot of my friends lately that tell me they don't know what they want. I'm not claiming to have the answer to this problem, just suggesting that when I take the time to know myself, it is easy for me personally to see what I really want or like or have a talent for.

Anyway, nothing too earth-shattering here, just meditating on the beauty of solitude!

Home

When I was 5 or 6, I had a computer game featuring the little girl Madeline (blue dress, yellow hat, walked in a line with 11 other girls) and Madeline sang songs according to whatever you clicked on. One of the songs she sang went something like, "Home is where the heart is, the heart is, the heart is....Home is where the heart is, if your heart is there, yes, home!"  It was pretty catchy because years later, I still remember it, and not only that, but it still pops into my head at the most relevant times. When I come back in town for breaks, I say I am going "home" and when I return back to school after a long time away from my friends there, I say I am happy to be "home". Coming back to my house after a long year away at school, I think a lot about home, and what it actually means.  I thought for a really long time that your heart very obviously was with your family in your house, because that is the only constant for a lot of us, but the older I get, the more I understand Madeline's song.

Today, I spent the day with my friend Shannon, whose family is living in an apartment because the tornado made their house uninhabitable.  Even though her physical house is broken, her home is pulling together to fix things. By home, I mean her community of people and love.  I am learning with every passing day that your heart can dwell in many places, most of which aren't even locations, but in the hands and hearts of other people, and that "home" is nearly undefinable. Maybe home is another word for "pillar" or "comfort".  Something stable in the midst of chaos; something that we can always come back to; something intangible that brings us peace.  I know that I have a home in Heaven, a home in the Eucharist, but I also find home in my parish family here and my Newman community away at school.  Of course, my house with my mom and my dad and my younger sister will always be my most stable home on this Earth.  I will leave you with this Bible verse about our hearts, and so, too, our homes, by today's logic, I suppose:

"For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." - Matthew 6:21