It was the middle of the night when I drove myself to the emergency room. My lungs were burning and I had coughed up a bit of blood. I tried to keep myself calm, to avoid panicking prematurely. If it was what I thought it was, there was a very good chance that I could die.
I don’t want to leave this all behind, I prayed, but if tonight is the end, please bring me home.
The word discernment is like the word vocation. We hear it and immediately think of the priesthood or religious life - something specific and set apart. We do this even though we know that God is calling us, too. Yes, we are all called to a life of holiness, and some of us live that out by taking specific vows. But discernment is not only about hearing God’s call in the “big picture” decisions of lives. It is a much broader practice of becoming attuned to God’s call as it manifests in our everyday lives.
Yesterday was the feast day of St. Catherine of Siena. She was a medieval mystic, and one of the first female Doctors of the Church. Her influential writing on prayer and politics transformed the Church of her time and continues to inspire us today. She even wrote letters chastising the pope and changed his mind. Basically, St. Catherine was a badass.
She also had issues.
I found myself crying in the dressing room. All I wanted was to find one thing I felt beautiful in, one thing that I could slip into and become that confident woman who used to lure her husband with a pair of stilettos and a bat of her lashes. Now, the mascara from those lashes was running down my face.
Mere moments on Twitter are enough to alert us that our culture is plagued with demons. We live in a culture that responds to polarized politics and social values with contempt and hateful accusations that serve only to drive us further from one another, rather than seeking common ground. Even voices claiming to speak for our good God are raised in accusation and derision. Among so many voices and so much anger, through all the noise, how do we hear a God who whispers? Why doesn’t God speak more loudly, to be heard above the hate, or better still – to silence it forever?
Today is the feast of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, a religious sister who died in a concentration camp in Holland on August 9, 1942. She began life as Edith Stein, a Jewish atheist, philosopher, and professor. After her conversion in 1922, Stein spent 11 years writing, teaching and living as a witness to her Catholic faith before entering a Discalced Carmelite monastery in 1933.
My life is a little slice of paradise. Sitting in my chair for morning prayer, I look out the big picture window at our backyard. The primary colors of a big plastic slide bright are bright against the green of the grass. Hummingbirds, squirrels, and rabbits visit. Birdsong fills the air. My vegetables are finally starting to produce, and the butterfly garden is flowering. My prayer is one of peace and gratitude, but also of disquiet.
Is what I do enough? I ask myself.
I’m always perplexed when I see people at concerts trying to film the experience. What we can capture on our phones won’t look or sound all that great – certainly not as great as the recorded version or professional photos we could look up later. Really, the purpose of being at a concert is just that: being there. Feeling the music vibrate through you, being among the crowd of fans, enjoying proximity to someone whose talent you admire. None of what is great about a concert can be captured by our devices. In fact, trying to do so actually places distance between us and the experience we seek to capture.
“This is my body, given up for you.”
Morning sickness. Heartburn. Backache. Sciatica. Weight gain. Labor. Stretch marks. Nursing. Everything I am, given for you. Sleepless nights, given for you. Anxiety, worry, arms holding you all night in illness. Every waking moment, given for you.
My thoughts are not my own any more. My time is not my own. And my body is beyond the recognition of my childless self. Then again, so am I.
Pay attention. Soon, these days will be no more.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of surveying all that is left undone, and think: failure. Dirty dishes, laundry wrinkling in the dryer, emails to be answered. It’s easy to fall prey to the lure of the checklist: each checkmark, validation. The more checkmarks, the better – the better job I’m doing, the better mother I am. The better I am.
I am not a person who waits. I take my time to think, to research, to plan and to pray. But once I reach a decision, I do not like to delay execution. When I made the decision to enter the Catholic Church, I did not want to wait. The image I have of my excitement is Harry’s line at the end of When Harry Met Sally: “Once you realize that you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” I wanted to receive Jesus in the Eucharist as soon as possible.
I am, and always have been, a good girl. I don’t break the rules. I arrive prepared. I don’t make trouble. I earn everyone’s affection, including the Lord’s (at least I like to think I do).
When I imagine myself in the story of the prodigal son, I am the older brother – the brother who is glad when his good-for-nothing sibling leaves home because it makes him look so much better by comparison.
“I can’t clean up.”
I explain to my daughter that we must clean up before we move on to the next activity.
“It’s too hard,” she whines, looking at the array of evidence we’ve left scattered in our wake. This could be anything: colorful spills from watercolor painting, a mighty block tower crashed, pieces littering the floor, or a village of little people waiting to be returned to their proper home. Really, the stuff that makes up the mess isn’t important; if the mess is big enough, my daughter’s response is the same: “It’s too hard.”
Dear Priest,
When we met, I wasn’t Catholic. I wasn’t part of the people you are called to care for. But I came to you, and you spoke with me, I suppose because “even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the Master’s table.” You did not give me the sacrament of confession. I was not prepared to receive it. Instead, you gave me the gift of your presence.
“I’m sorry, Mommy!” My toddler said these words over and over again after having shattered a teacup she’d been playing with. She was so distraught. I wanted to comfort her and tell her it was alright, that we could fix it, and more importantly, that I wasn’t upset with her. I knew the teacup might break if she played with it, and I gave it to her anyway.
If you’re anything like me, the journey into parenthood was rough. Beautiful, humbling, overwhelming, and rough. In the midst of sleep deprivation and struggling to assemble various baby contraptions, it can be difficult to remember the “why” behind parenting. It took me a while, but I remember realizing one day that I’d gotten so caught up in the minute details of daily caretaking that I had forgotten to attend to what I believe is most important: leading my kids to Jesus. I let the many tasks involved in parenting “my” kids overshadow the fact that, although God has given these beautiful little ones to me, they are not truly mine. I have the grand privilege of being invited into his work, to participate alongside him as he shapes them into what they will one day be.
