Courage

I love the word "courage".  It is so rarely used and I wonder if that is because it is a pretty rare virtue.  Right now, I am working on a paper for a class.  The guidelines are relatively lax, so I have decided to write my paper on the emotional benefits of living a chaste life before and after marriage, which includes abstaining from sex outside the bonds of marriage.  I am finding it easy to talk about the Catholic faith and the love that we as humans are called to live out, as well as the respect and dignity we each have just because God made it so.  But as I come closer to the end, my own passion frightens me. Tomorrow we will peer edit and I find myself wondering, "What if someone who doesn't practice chastity reads this paper?" or worse, what if someone thinks me to be judgmental and completely misses the point of the paper - that all life is to be respected, at every stage, in every way.  Then a small voice of courage says in my heart: what if someone needs to hear this? What if by writing about something that I believe in and putting it in God's hands, someone will read something they have never heard before and it will touch their heart in the tiniest way?  Perhaps what this means is that courage is not taking what God has given us and doing what we can with it, but giving back to God what we cannot do alone and standing up right next to Him when the moment comes, instead of cowering behind Him.  I have to think that God could definitely change the world on His own - He did create it, after all - but there must be some unknown reason that He chooses to work through us in the virtues. A reason he calls us to courage.

Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.- Philippians 4:6

Forgiveness

An art form that I have yet to perfect. I have been mulling over it the last few days, trying to figure it out.  Heaviest on my heart is the difference between forgiveness and consent.  In my head, I think that I mix up what it means to forgive someone and what it means to "teach them a lesson".  If I forgive someone a wrong they have done to me, they may not know that it hurt me and they may keep doing it, and for that reason, I am hesitant to release my grudge.  In the past few days, I have been hurt a few different times by a few different people that are close to me.  I have watched my roommate Lily wake up every morning and greet the day with a clean slate.  She holds no grudges and every day is a fresh start, which I really admire.  It is a difficult challenge to forgive through so much hurt, but maybe that it our call; maybe God was not being so figurative when He instructed to forgive 7x77 times in the Bible.  I think my goal for the week is to try and live each day as it is presented and only when it is presented. I pray that I may live directly in the light of this day and not in the shadows of yesterday behind me or the mystery of the darkness in tomorrow, yet to be revealed.

Guidance

Today was the last day of my week of a fantastic spiritual direction retreat.  I was blessed to spend a few hours this week talking and praying with my new friend Sr. Ellen, and she had a lot of wonderfully wise things to say as well as beautiful ears to listen.  We talked and shared about a lot of things and today we talked about being ministers to one another and how, although she was the director, we both got something from meeting one another this week.  I have never sought out spiritual guidance of any kind because I never figured I had any questions so profound or paths so unknown ahead of me, but what I learned this week and what I am meditating on is what "guidance" is.  Here's what I have come up with, roughly: Maybe guidance is not actually leading someone else anywhere.  Maybe guidance is hand-in-hand with companionship and likewise with our call to walk with one another.  I am thinking of those team-building activities when one person has to wear a blindfold and the other holds their hand and helps them around various obstacles and wondering if those games are exactly on the mark.  We are all just blindfolded at one time or another and God flawlessly pairs us with a person who can see to walk with us to where we need to get next, so that we can return the favor to whomever else we led to. Just some rough thoughts before turning in for the night.


My guidance for anyone who is listening:
"Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord." Hebrews 12:14

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.