Being a Christian isn’t simply following a list of to-dos (or don’ts), but a living, breathing, relationship. First of all a relationship with our triune God, then with all those that are in His fold. The world gives us hook ups and quickies and says that relationships are passé. God says that we are better than that, and that we will never be truly satisfied until we partake of His Divine will!
Loving
Another repeated message from the retreat was “a call to love is a call to serve.”
We all know that love can bring such wonderful warm, fuzzy feelings…but that’s just the packaging…not the content of the gift. It’s often easy to forget that, once the wrapping is out of the way. 😉 We are not called to love for the the feelings it produces in us…but for the sake of the other.
Spiritual Battle
God often whispered little tid bits into my heart throughout the day. One morning while in the chapel as I was observing the monks I had the thought… “They are doing battle in the front lines, will you join them?’
I got the sense that this call to action wasn’t merely about joining them in prayer that morning, but as a call on my life. That yes, they are on the front lines of the spiritual battle while in the cloister (I used to often think they they were behind the scenes) but it’s not the only way. That our own lives out in the world, lived out in His presence would serve the same purposes.
Forgiveness
Each day that we were there, we were scheduled to have a conference on a specific topic. We only ended up having two conferences because Fr. Peter, our retreat director became ill. The topic he chose for us was forgiveness. I’m going to jot down here, some of the notes I took.
*We all have some sort of ‘unfinished business’, loose ends that need to be tied.
*When we say “I don’t want to deal anymore” that is a sort of revenge and a sign that you haven’t reached forgiveness.
*Forgive but don’t ‘enable’…you need to either speak up…or ‘separate’ if necessary.
*Forgiving is NOT forgetting.
*Don’t just say ‘I forgive you’…don’t say it too easily…honesty is more important.
*When you can’t seem to forgive, then pray for the other person.
*Forgiveness from the heart stems from prayer…it is a grace.
*Choose to focus on the good instead of the bad of the other person.
*Sometimes the person that you need to forgive is yourself.
*If you don’t find love ‘here’, you won’t find it ‘there’. It starts within yourself. Fr. mentioned how in the Benedictine Rule, only if you live well in community are you then allowed to become a hermit.
Many Parts but One Body
1 Cor 12:12-14
“As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ.”
Prior to going in to the retreat one of my greatest struggles was measuring myself up against some great people…whether the saints already in heaven or my saintly friends here on earth.
One of the big lessons was that yes I AM very different from those around me and that can be extremely lonely at times…but my life was different from the beginning and that wasn’t an accident. I can’t measure myself against what everyone else seems to be able to accomplish…but only against what God is putting in my own heart. Step into it! It may look weird to everyone else…maybe not even all that ‘Christian’…but He has set me up. I have all that I need to do His will!
We are ALL needed and important!
Too Small a God?
“If your concerns seem too big, then you have made God too small…and in turn you have become too small.”
At each meal during the retreat they put a CD on for us, on a given topic. The message above was part of one of the talks. I bawled like a baby when I heard this. It really hit home. YES…I so often fail to see the grandeur of God, to KNOW without a doubt that He is HERE…in this moment, wherever that may be and whatever that entails. That HE is CAPABLE to handle any of my issues. All of them! I then shrink down to what I see as my limitations and failings, they envelope me and I allow them to set my course of action.
The best part of the week was being in constant connection with Him, through the good and the not so good. In the good I found reason to rejoice, in the other stuff I ran to Him and trusted Him to make good of it. Hmmm…I don’t think I need to be living in a monastery for THAT! 😉
I experienced without a doubt His love for me. My concerns never seemed too big, I eagerly gave them to Him in joyful anticipation of what He might do with them. He never failed. He doesn’t fail…ever!
reverent submission
Reverence: Honor or respect felt or shown.
Hebrews 7
“During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and was heard because of his reverent submission.”
This passage sort of ruled my week. I wanted to be obedient and eagerly submitted to whatever I felt His will for me was for the moment. With His grace, I was able to follow through even in the smallest of things…like food choices (I had been on a fairly strict gluten free diet plan prior to this, but chose to not make an issue of it and just eat whatever I was served), the clothes I wore (I went with skirts most of the time), and running to the Adoration chapel whenever I needed His direction. The daily schedule that they provided for us was the back bone of my day. I tried to keep as many of the prayer times as I could. I think I may have missed one vigil and a couple of the none hours. But whenever I did, the Lord would use someone to remind me to stay on track.
The most important lesson that I bring back from this is that if anything good happened, it was NOT by my own strength. My body suffered! It got very cold up there at night and the heat was not yet working. One of the women on retreat with us ended up leaving. The bed was hard and my body ached terribly after a while. Getting up for vigils at 3 AM, kind of throws you into a perpetual state of exhaustion for the rest of the day. Eating gluten and whatever else was served, gave me terrible tummy aches. The first day I was there, I even started spotting…after having been in menopause for over a year. I nearly freaked. Nearly. Instead of rushing to call my doctor as they suggest…I texted my friends instead and had them covering me in prayer then I headed to the Adoration Chapel which was two doors down from my room and offered it to HIM! (spotting stopped the next day).
I don’t mention these things to make me look saintly (or crazy depending on your life view)…far from it. It was just what God used to show me that these things don’t matter AT ALL! My spirit was connected with Him! I felt alive and refreshed.
I think that’s the point…that no matter what your state in life, or what the exterior conditions might be…we CAN stay connected. It may take more of an effort out here because there are more distractions vying for our attention…but I’m determined!
Called into the Great Silence!
I had the pleasure of being on retreat last week. I went in on Monday afternoon and left Friday morning after breakfast. I’m still trying to process all that I experienced and learned there. These blog posts are about that…my own processing…I hope that they make some sense to you who may be reading and possibly even afford some inspiration…but I’ll leave that to the Holy Spirit.
Let me start at the beginning. I was supposed to be going on a long weekend get away trip with some girl friends the second weekend of September. My husband scheduled a few days off from work, to watch the kids. I was looking forward to some time to myself to recharge my batteries and spend some time with some awesome people. It didn’t work out. One thing after another happened, and the weekend plans were eventually cancelled. To say I was disappointed was putting it mildly. But I had to trust in God’s plan.
However, part of the reason that I had so wanted to get away was my current struggles with severe depression. The week before my retreat, it had hit me again. For any of you who may struggle with this, you know that it comes in waves…you never really know when or how intensely it will hit you. So when it does, I retreat to my chair (or sometimes to my bed) and just let it pass. Shortly after crying to the Lord demanding to know why I had even been born, I got ‘the call’. A dear friend had been at St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer that morning and the Holy Spirit had put me in their heart…the feeling was strong that I had to be there. I was left with no doubt that I had to obey. So I placed a call to the Abbey right away. In their website they say that retreats need to be booked six months ahead of time. Ok…it’s in God’s hands…whatever He wants…shall be. I left a message and hoped for the best.
A bit later someone from the Abbey called me back. The following week would be the women’s retreat (it’s the third week of each month) and they still had rooms available…would that be ok with me? Ha! Yes…that sounds just about perfect…especially considering that the week in question began on the 15th with the feast day of Our Lady of Sorrows (right after the Exaltation of the Cross on Sunday which was my 29th wedding anniversary) and ended on the 19th…the day before my birthday. 😀
I think God had a plan, don’t you? Please stay tuned…
Stepping into it…Parenting!
This past week I’ve been eye ball deep into all things ‘parenting’. We homeschool and one of my kids has Autism…do I need to say anymore? So my big plan for the week had been getting our diet cleaned up so that my son would be more receptive to doing some school work and then for me to order curriculum for the school year. I think I did well on both ends.
The diet part was tricky at first. We started out at the beginning of the month doing a Whole30. For those of you who don’t know, it is an elimination diet of sorts. You remove all grains, dairy, sugars etc for 30 days. What you can eat is meats, veggies, fruits, most nuts. What my very picky son who pretty much hates all vegetables actually ended up eating was tons and tons of fruit though. Years ago, I had discovered that he didn’t react well to certain fruits. Bananas, watermelons, and apples were especially troubling. But since we were cutting off so many other foods, I let him have a go at them. Oh boy! His autism symptoms were exacerbated to an incredible degree. Echolalia, stimming, erratic emotions, he even became somewhat volatile at times. Scary! Since nothing else had changed, I feel pretty confident that it was the fruit. When I first became aware of the fruit issue, I learned about how some children on the spectrum react badly to high phenol foods. So I had gone with that theory. Then I read further in the GAPS book that a phenol reaction is most likely a detox reaction, so it’s actually producing something good and shouldn’t be too much an area of concern. However, this time around something else was made clear to me. Since I was doing the diet myself, and tend to have similar symptoms to my son, albeit in a much lesser form…I could listen to my own body with its many and varied symptoms and makes changes accordingly. So after much reading, I’ve come to the conclusion that what we are battling here is not a phenol sensitivity at all…but Candida or yeast overgrowth. My son had received intensive doses of antibiotics at the age of 3 following his intestinal surgery. It was only after that, that the autism became very apparent and worrisome to us. I believe that even though he probably always had the propensity for it…these conditions made it worse. The antibiotics stripped the gut not only of the bad bacteria that was causing his multiple infections but of all the good guys also. With the good guys out of the picture, yeast quickly takes over and spreads like wild fire. So…now we know…and my plan of action is a low sugar diet along with supplements.
Second on the agenda was homeschooling curriculum. I decided to go back to Catholic Herritage Curriculum. We had been with them for several years, before trying something else to change it up a bit. However,” if it’s not broke don’t fix it” is now my new motto. lol. Picking what grade to use is always fun around here, especially when teaching two that are so close in age…I really didn’t want to be having two different classes for everything. So I picked a grade that would be ok for the youngest for following the teaching guide…and then each child will have their own workbooks at their own level. win, win. Yay me!
Marriage
I am SO tempted at this point to just say ‘sorry, I’ve got nothing for ya’. Seriously…this has been where the deepest growth in my life is taking place right now…and if you are a Christian you are well aware that growth only takes place in the darkest of places. First of all, if you know us personally, I don’t want you to come out of this thinking ‘oh my gosh, they are going to split up’. This is all me folks…I’m lucky to be married to the most caring, understanding human being on the plant. It is my menopausal, hormonal, self evaluating, mid life crisis. If you don’t know what I’m talking about then this might not be the article for you. I realize that I’m writing to a very select few…and still I carry on…out of obedience to what the Lord is putting in my heart. No answers at this point…mostly questions…and lots of ‘thoughts’ strung together. So again I apologize if this one makes no sense.
First of all I will start with ‘submission’. As a devout Catholic Christian and a lover of ‘obedience’ to the word of God and His Church, this is something that I am big on. I know without a doubt that there is a line of authority and as we submit ourselves to it, then we really can’t go wrong in God’s eyes. Graces abound! However, let me tell you that we in our human frailty can get this very wrong. I’m pretty sure that I’m going to rub some people the wrong way. Sorry…that is not my intent.
The place I was at in my head was an ideal place where husband is head of the household and wife and children submit to his rule. How can you go wrong, right? Well…here’s what happens, if your spouse isn’t familiar with Christian leadership…and really isn’t hearing from God much at all…but you are. You die! No…not in the Christian ‘die to self’…but in the ‘commit spiritual suicide’ and just curl into a clump, because my interior life does not fit my exterior. You can get away with this for quite a few years, in the name of peace and family unity…and even Christian suffering…or however you want to justify it. But here’s the deal. This is not God’s will. You are important to God’s plan, you are valued, you are loved.
What SUBMISSION really means is to be UNDER (sub) someone’s ‘MISSION’. Supposedly you meet someone with the same mission in life as you…you join forces through marriage where the two become one (powerful stuff)…and since you can’t have two heads…and the way men and women were created…the husband leads. But remember you are under the same mission, so he won’t be taking you anywhere that you don’t want to go. You are in it together…head and body… working together!
That’s the ideal…that’s what a sacramental marriage should entail. If you don’t have that…don’t worry, at least not yet. I believe that God can reach us wherever we are and give us enough grace to do whatever He has asked of us. So maybe breaking it up into baby steps might be helpful. What is your joint mission? Obviously raising a family is the number one priority of any marriage. If you are Catholic and don’t see this as being true, I’d suggest you read more about it. Although not all marriages will bear fruit, but the openness to it is of utmost importance.
Raising a family when you and your spouse share very different world views can be extremely difficult, but not impossible. This is where my view and that of more conservative Christians part way. I’ve mentioned before about my adherence to the submissive role. Which was very easy for me being married to a very easy going guy, by the way. However, that ‘easy goingness’ can translate to a lack of leadership. So instead of a head and a body…you may find yourself with two bodies…you don’t really go anywhere that way either and can get yourself into a heap of trouble. I think that if the wife is a stronger Christian, in this case it is perfectly ok for her to take on the reigns for a bit. The husband may then pick up on some cues and eventually be prepared to lead…or not. What is important is that your household, your family be Spirit lead! You obviously can’t make your spouse follow your lead, this is what I was referring before about us being created differently. But keep doing what is best for you and your household to the best of your ability anyway and keep offering it up. Don’t be afraid of what might happen…God’s graces will cover it! So…keep stepping into it! 😉