To The Heart That Loves

I’m going to get real vulnerable for a minute here.

I struggle a lot with loneliness. It’s been a common theme throughout my life. I blame a lot of this on some of the TV shows I watched as a kid. Shows like Lizzie McGuire or That’s So Raven – shows where the main character has two best friends, the trio is so solid, and never does anything without the others. I wanted that so badly.

I’ve been taught by society to place my identity in how many friends I have, in how many people like me and want to spend time with me.

This reached a peak for the first time in 6th grade. I didn’t have any friends and I was aching to belong somewhere. I remembered my grandma telling me a story about praying for the intercession of St. Therese, who would send you a rose when she heard your prayers and brought them to Jesus.

I prayed the first real prayer in my life for her intercession one night as I lay in bed, wishing for friends, and the very next day at an event for the girls’ group I was involved with, a woman named Andrea handed me an orange rose.

I was ecstatic. Prayer was real! Hope filled my heart. But more importantly, that day I realized I have a friend in HEAVEN.

I ended up choosing St. Therese to be my confirmation saint a few years after this event, but as the years have gone by, I realized more than anything that she had chosen me.

Therese died at the age of 24, the age I am now. It’s strange to think this woman had such a mature, yet constantly childlike, faith, amidst a life marked by both suffering and simplicity. If I developed tuberculosis today (the disease she died of), I would probably complain constantly and place my worth in how many people came and visited my sickbed. (This must be why I’m still alive – I get some more time to work on this!)

I have learned and will continue to learn so much from St. Therese, and I think one of the greatest gifts she has given me has been connections to others. It’s always a moment of bonding when I find out someone else chose her for their confirmation saint or has a special devotion to her.

St. Therese is a powerful intercessor, so if there is anything you need prayers for, ask her to bring your intentions to Jesus!

Everything is a grace, everything is the direct effect of our Father’s love – difficulties, contradictions, humiliations, all the soul’s miseries, her burdens, her needs – everything… Everything is a grace because everything is God’s gift. Whatever be the character of life or its unexpected events – to the heart that loves, all is well.

St. Therese of Lisieux, a heart that loves, please pray for us!

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I realize that it’s been literally a full year since I’ve written anything for this blog, but it’s something that I hope to get back in the habit of doing!

Please let me know if there’s anything you’d like to read about, and you can always send me any questions or prayer intentions as well! May God bless you!

Forgotten

Since I’ve now had multiple family members ask if I still have a blog/if I’m alive, I figured it was time to admit that this blog has fallen by the wayside with the start of a crazy year at Wayne State College.

The house is now thankfully bat-free (I know you were wondering) and autumn is finally upon us (it’s 65 degrees right now!), which are both very exciting. My day-to-day life here in Wayne is finally falling into something that resembles a routine. It’s wonderful.

But the simple word “forgotten” has been weighing on my heart in so many ways recently. I seem to have forgotten the importance of updating my blog (sorry mom!) and I came to the realization last week that there have been a few times that I had felt forgotten by God.

It hit me that I’ve been in a state of desolation (a time period where I can’t hear or feel God’s presence, even though His love is certainly still there) and I hadn’t even realized it. (I pay really good attention to my own mental state, clearly.)

So on Thursday evening, I walked into the church, planning to do my daily holy hour at a different time than normal, thinking I might get some alone time with Jesus and that being alone might help me concentrate better.

I was wrong.

On Thursdays in Wayne, there’s a Spanish-speaking prayer group held by the Latino community in the surrounding area. I took a seat quietly in the back, attempting to not disturb their group.

Even though I speak a fair amount of Spanish, I wasn’t listening too intently when one woman came up to request prayers for healing of some sort. After a few minutes of explanation, she knelt in front of the altar, and the rest of the members of the community began to pray for her, most of them praying aloud. One woman led the prayer and spoke into the microphone so everyone could pray along with her.

Immediately, I was struck with gratitude for the universality of the Catholic Church. Here I am in Wayne, Nebraska, getting to practice my Spanish listening skills as well as unite my prayers to theirs, all of us in front of the same Jesus Christ who can be found in all the tabernacles throughout the world.

As the prayer continued, though, it got more and more intense. I could hear and feel the Holy Spirit moving through the words of these people, even though I couldn’t understand all of what they were saying.

It wasn’t until the woman leading the prayer almost yelled repeatedly “MIRA, JESUS!” (“Look, Jesus!”) that I understood what was happening in my own soul. The words were welling up inside of my own heart and being shouted, in sincere and humble honesty, by someone speaking a different language.

“Jesus, pay attention to me! Do not forget me! Remember me! Here I am! Come and be with me! JESUS, LOOK!”

A few nights later, during the eclipse on Sunday, some of the students and my teammate Liz and I went stargazing. We sat on the rugby field in the dark, looking up at the myriad stars, perfectly visible in the absence of the moonlight. I explained to a few of the students this experience I had had in prayer, and as I looked up and out at the great expanse of the universe, feeling tiny, I felt so loved and so remembered by my Heavenly Father.

In our smallness, in our humility, in our crying out, and in our most honest moments of pain and forgotten-ness, God never leaves us.

I just read an article from the Daily Nebraskan (the newspaper written by UNL students) by a girl struggling to reconcile her atheism and how it fits with death. Her honesty is beautiful, and I wish so desperately that I could explain to her why death doesn’t scare me — because I am remembered at every moment, never once forgotten, by the very same God who created me. He made me (and YOU!) to be with Him eternally in Heaven, and He will continue to pursue our hearts until we’re ready to find Him. You can invite Him in — you can choose to believe — with your free will, and He will not forget or leave behind your heart. As much as I hate to admit it sometimes, it is not all about feelings.

“When you call me, and come and pray to me, I will listen to you. When you look for me, you will find me. Yes, when you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord…” Jeremiah 29:12-14

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A few pictures of what we’ve been up to this year :)

Nachos are a thing here in Wayne, mostly because the gas station that sells them is the only place open past 10:00 pm.

Team Wayne State College doing some outreach (AKA handing out candy and free stuff) during the first week of classes. I probably take too many selfies…

Snapchat screenshot of part of our stargazing group. And Wayne’s watertower has it’s own snapchat tag. #toocool

In My Tower

There are some things in life that you will never be prepared for. A bat flying around your house while you’re completely alone is one of them.

Here’s how it went down.

I’m in the process of painting my bedroom, so I came down to the kitchen to grab a chair to stand on because I’m short and can’t reach about half of my walls. As I was carrying the chair, something small and black came zooooooming out of nowhere straight at me.

I immediately sunk to the floor and tried to cover myself with the chair. (Chairs apparently don’t only work as shields when you’re facing a lion.) I was screaming and crying by this point and that didn’t cease for a few hours.

After another terrifying few minutes of it finding my room and flapping around lost in there while I sobbed on the bed, pleading with it to just leave my room (bats don’t speak English? I guess?), it flew out and I slammed the door.

Finally having a moment to calm down, I started thinking about what to do next.

Chase after it? Try to capture it? I called my mom who told me to find someone to help me. Easier said than done when you’re in a small town that you just moved to and almost everyone is home for Labor Day. (Good timing, bat…)

I called my teammate Jacob who was thankfully hanging out with Patrick, one of the students here. They were on their way over to help.

So here I am. It’s about midnight. I’m 100% trapped in my room by this stupid bat. Once I finally stopped crying for a few minutes, I realized how good of a metaphor this was for growing up. There are so many situations I don’t want to deal with, whether it be bats, spiders, paying bills, emotional issues, or cooking dinner for myself, but no matter how long I stay locked in the safety of my room, these kind of problems don’t just disappear.

Eventually, my friends showed up and I went (with a laundry basket over my head, naturally) to open my bedroom door to walk downstairs, but the bat was LITERALLY RIGHT OUTSIDE MY ROOM WAITING FOR ME, so instead I shut the door, ran to my window, and yelled down to the guys to come in.

In between the moments of absolute terror and panic, I felt like a princess. I was locked in my tower, waiting to be rescued by my incredibly wonderful male friends. They came with tennis rackets and a desire to take care of this problem for me. I am so grateful.

I don’t have long blonde hair or an evil mother and I’m not animated, but otherwise Rapunzel and I are basically the same person.

It’s all well and good to be independent – I am currently painting a room by myself for the first time ever, I made some awesome burritos earlier this week, and the other day I killed a rather large spider in our bathroom – but sometimes you have to ask for help to get out of your tower, and that’s totally fine too.

In light of this, I couldn’t help but laugh at the Mass readings today, when the first reading from Isaiah started with “BE BRAVE” and then Jesus, in the gospel, tells the deaf/mute man to “BE OPENED”. (Yeah, yeah, Jesus, I know I need to open the door and be brave and face my problems.)

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Overall, things are very very good here in Wayne and we’re just going to collectively overlook the fact that I haven’t posted since I moved been here ;)

I promise now that I’m settled in, I’ll be able to write more often!

Please know that I’m praying for you! Please pray for me that I don’t somehow get rabies :)

Martha? Mary? Lazarus.

Today is the feast day of my adopted patron saint, St. Martha, and I wanted to write something in honor of her.

I pray with the passages regarding Martha and Mary a lot, both Luke 10 and John 11. I try to figure out which one of their characters I take on at different points in my life. For a while, I was definitely in a Martha phase. Doing, doing, doing, and sometimes forgetting to just be, but often doing the necessary actions to bring about change.

LOOK HOW MUCH JESUS JUST WANTS TO SPEND TIME WITH HER! He desperately desires that she just sit and hang out with Him!

This summer, especially during FOCUS staff training, I finally related to Mary more for the first time in my life. I sat at the feet of Jesus, too exhausted to do anything else, and finally just spent some time listening to what He was trying to say.

But today was something different entirely.

Here I am, sitting and wondering if today was a Mary day or a Martha day, and nothing was coming up. Let’s just say I did not have a productive day today, so I very quickly ruled out Martha. But my prayer today wasn’t great either. I’ve kind of just been dumping all of my issues at the feet of Jesus and running away scared before He has a chance to respond.

Who does that leave?

Well. Lazarus.

I’m dead in a cave.

AND PRAISE GOD.

I’ve been dead for four days, so you know I’m super dead. Not just sleeping. Not just sick. I am hella dead.

And because of this incredible death that has taken over my entire being, there is literally nothing I can do. I cannot just “wake up”, I can’t just demand that there aren’t any issues to deal with here, thankyouverymuch, I can’t push aside the things that are bothering me. I can’t do ANYTHING.

…And Jesus wept.

He hates to see me like this, completely stagnant and paralyzed by what’s going on around me.

I know that He’s outside my cave calling me forth, just as He did for Lazarus, and I’m praying that He takes a few steps closer to this giant rock that has been rolled in front of my rotting body so that I can hear Him more clearly.

Only He can change anything about my current state, and I am so glad that I have a God who doesn’t leave that burden upon me, because obviously that doesn’t really work out for me.

I pray that anyone experiencing a similar (or completely different) sort of “death” can open their hearts to the call of Jesus to come forth and live. 

I had to include a picture with Martha in it because it IS her action that allows Jesus to work this miracle. #gettingstuffdone

Praise God that He’s the one who enacts change in our hearts and that we’re not left to do this for ourselves.

Blankety, Blankety, Blank!

I hope you’re not against a good Spongebob reference to kick off this blog post.

What I’ve learned at FOCUS NST is……………………………….

• God is incredibly good and incredibly present, even when things are crazy
• Things ARE crazy
• It’s okay to feel overwhelmed and sleepy and emotional
• It’s also okay to feel super duper excited
• Basically feel whatever you want to feel
• Sometimes you need to skip your usual Tuesday blog post
• The world will not end when that happens
• When the local Publix has m&ms on sale, buy two bags of them and eat them within three days
• Only share said m&ms if you absolutely have to
• Some days, you will cry through the entire rosary and scare the men around you
• Everyone is feeling a little bit freaked out, alone, and scared
• People are only able to help you if you let them in
• Finding people who enjoy the same things as you is such a blessing
• Especially when those things are things like She’s the Man, Hot Rod, and Gilmore Girls
• Having wonderful roommates and teammates makes a huge difference in your overall state of being
• Especially when you have a roommate like Stephanie who will drive less than a mile to Publix with you (because it’s raining, #AveLife) and buy ice cream and sit in the car and eat it and freak out about everything going on with you
• And when you have teammates who don’t judge you too harshly for having a 20-minute-long fit of laughter
• Don’t even try to do laundry on a Sunday evening
• The grasshoppers look really scary, but they’re actually pretty chill
• The mosquitoes don’t look really scary, but they’re the actual worst
• Sometimes you step right over a snake and don’t even know it until someone else (your boss) points it out to you
• Run away for a bit on Sunday afternoons – alone time is so necessary
• You will get tired of literally every article of clothing you brought with you
• There are probably thousands of ways that you need to grow as a person
• Start with one or two of those and you’ll be on the right track
• Silly Putty is 65% polymers (whatever that means) and 100% distracting
• FOCUS is all about the acronyms – MPD, TNT, SRS, ELT, NST, etc. – so please let me know if I start using them in your presence and you’re as confused as I was 3 weeks ago
• Ave Maria, Florida is straight up gorgeous
• Once again, because it’s worth repeating, God is so good
• Living in the company of 500 missionaries is so inspiring and I can’t believe I’m so blessed that I get to be here and do this job

Seriously. This place actually exists. These sunsets rival Nebraska’s.

I hope you are all enjoying your summer as well! Please know that you are in my prayers as I finish up my time here in Florida and head back to The Good Life pretty soon!