The magical reality of prayer

Growing up, prayer was something I did and wanted to do.  I prayed, feverishly, from my little heart throughout the day, almost every day.  I loved prayer and loved scripture, but there was always a bit of downturn mixed in with it.  In my little plaid-and-knee socks Calvinistic world, the image I could not escape was that weekly offering envelope with the check boxes:

-Offering
-Church attendance
-Bible read daily

Now, I know this was completely well-meaning.  Keeping up with money and how many come to your church every week, and encouraging people to read the Holy Scriptures is in no way a bad thing.  But being a perfectionist and a rule-follower, I could not wait to check those boxes every week.  If I didn't actually read my Bible one day,  I'd jump through mental hoops to decide if hearing the scripture read at school actually counted for reading my Bible.  And if I checked the box in the affirmative, I'd feel guilty about it all week.  Wash, rinse, repeat.

So, prayer and scripture reading to me were good things; things I liked, but also a source of suffering.  There was an unattainable element to prayer.  It seemed like adults I heard speaking of their prayer lives, and later, teens in my youth group talking about their worship experiences were just out of reach to me.  I wanted to expirience Jesus the way they talked about.  I tried to.  I read the Bible and it left me with more questions and frustrations, anxiety over the way scripture was used to justify hand-raising in church or speaking in tongues.  I avoided certain books altogether (like Acts...I still haven't read that one!) because of the discord it caused in my heart.  And when I prayed, I would beg Jesus for peace and joy that never seemed to come.  I fear that I lived most of my religious life in a cloud of depression, until I was about 30.  What I wanted was always out of reach.  The phrase "beggar at the door of grace" really resonated with me.  Calvinism was my home because I never felt quite good enough for anything else, and people who were happy seemed suspect.  I was certain something was wrong with me, something not fixable, and that I just had to keep trying to get along the best I could.

When I became Catholic, I expected to think the same way but add in the sacraments and some Marian prayers and be able to take communion.  Boy, was I wrong!  The shift in thinking that I have experienced through the grace of conversion still surprises me more and more.  I have only been Catholic for almost 6 months, but I continue to change and grow and see things new ways.  I am being healed.  Thanks be to God!  New insights are abundant, but also I am more able to relax into my own skin.  I am more settled and calm.  I am more merciful, to others, it's true.  But where I needed mercy the most, God has provided.  I am able to rely on God's mercy to myself.

Prayer is one of the ways that my life is changing.  I don't pray any more than I used to.  I don't suddenly worship Mary or say 10 rosaries a day or skip praying to Jesus (if you are Protestant, know I'm not kidding about this!).  There is a simplicity of trust that now resides in my heart.  What enables me to relax and trust is this:  before I was trying to get somewhere in my prayer.  Now I am simply being.  I am being present with Jesus.  I am being present with the saints.  I am being present with myself.

Even if I get nowhere in my prayers and am nothing but a ball of anxiety, Jesus is not.  He's present with me through the grace of the Holy Spirit and my baptism.  And He is present, literally, in the Eucharist in which I take him into my body.  That is almost too intimate to write about, but it's real.  And in prayer, even if I feel nothing, I am assured of His love.  Even if I say nothing.  Even if I do nothing.  Even if I don't know what to say.  Even if all I have to offer are my tears.  There is nowhere to get to, nothing to attain, because He's already done it all.  All I have to do is come to Him.

Sometimes I offer my own words.
Sometimes I offer my tears.
Sometimes I offer His own words in praying the Psalms.
Sometimes I offer the words of the Church in the Liturgy of the Hours.
Sometimes I ask the saints to pray with me and offer their own prayers with mine.
Sometimes I just stare at Him like a lovesick fangirl.
Sometimes it's utilitarian.
Sometimes it's poetry.
Sometimes it's wishful when I can't forgive someone.
Sometimes it's painful when I face my own insecurities.
Sometimes it's boring.
Sometimes it's moving.
But always, it's with Him.  And it always works.
I have never seen prayer NOT do something.

If you are beginner, pray.  Pray: tell God you love Him and ask for what you want.  Then trust that He loves you and He will give you the very best things for you.  Thank Him for what He's given you.  Ask for the grace to manifest the fruits of the Spirit, and grow.  He will do it.  He loves you.

Sometimes I say that prayer isn't magic, but kinda is.  It is spiritual, emotional, and it gets things done...if you have the talent to see beyond right now or next week and into what you really love.  Love Jesus, and pray.  You can't go wrong.

It's a journey, friends.  I started off feeling sad and never good enough when I pray, and here I am...and who knows where I will be in 5 years?

But I know I'm sticking with Jesus.  And I know it will be good.
Just like He is :)

June promises

Just like a sweet June day,
coloured pink like the blushing brides June hides
Starting off sweet and well-sipped
with moonbeams and fireflies and porch swings

You hold my hand in this new world
Our new world
Where you and me, a smoky flavored lad
and me, whoever I am this month
Emerging slow and blinking in the sunlight, (Lazarus and myself)
3 months of zombie strips and musky death-like mourning
We've broken free

To you, my lad.  To you, and your arms
Trying in this silly world, blushing at the thought of
hope coming true
all things made new
a life of me and you
To you and your sparkling eyes
To see Jesus from a different angle
Try kneeling down once in awhile
And the cold light will fill your wearied head

With June days, sweet coloured hues
Songs in the twilight hours
whispers in the darkness
And enough starlight
To light the dusty road home.

All this piety, and sex, too.

Sex.

Yeah, it got your attention.  Great.

I have come to an understanding.  People of a certain age, or generation, who were raised in a general demographic, have a blindspot.  They can talk about anything under the sun, with passion and sometimes understanding.  They will be compassionate and reasonable, and polite and show Southern hospitality by offering you a lemonade while you chat.

Talk about pets, politics, education, morality, the government, kindness, cooking, decorating, cars, travel, the military...anything, really, and all is well.

But mention sex, and it gets shut down so fast that your head will spin.

When I say sex, I don't mean engaging in a salacious or inappropriate conversation.  Even talking about the virtue of chastity has this reaction from some people.  I do not understand it.  I do not understand why talking about how harmful pornography is, how masturbation is wrong, and how chastity is more than just what we do with our genitals could evoke such vitriol.

I have been told that "No one here cares about sex, I don't care about what you do, I am old, I don't think about sex anymore, TMI, no one wants to know, etc".  Granted, this was all online conversation.  But I don't think real life would be any better.

Is it that an entire generation of church people suffer from extreme shame?

Do we not see how this is harmful?  Not talking about sex (but surely having plenty of sex!) has ruined male-female relationships since the 60s.  It has decimated the vestiges of compassion and feeling and goodness between men and women.  It has made the back seat the only place sex is dealt with.  Are we really so ashamed that we can't discuss virtue and right vs. wrong?

I get it.  It sucks to suffer from guilt.
Maybe it would suck less to know that you passed on some goodness to younger people before they live in shame, too.

Talk to your kids about sex.
Talk to them about chastity.
Talk to them about pornography and masturbation.
I am guessing it totally sucks to do this, but isn't it better than losing them?

Before this turns into parenting advice from a non-parent, I would like to add that I'm working on this.  No one talked to me about sex much as a kid.  And I developed some really unhealthy ideas about it.  Thank God for the catechism of the Catholic church and the frankness and honesty with which it confronts sex as a good, wholesome, and healthy gift from God which has requirements.  It's so healing.

God knows our culture needs a lot of healing among the people of God over something so good, and something so drastically harmful when it gets out of control.  May it begin with me.

Eastward, ho

In the bright dawn of a May morning
he called me away from the darkness
The self-addicted yawning of inward looking
To the glory
of standing by his side
facing the rising sun
smelling the smoke of it all passing away
on his clothes, on his skin
his earthy, scratchy skin
and feeling the brush of his sleeve
as he takes my hand

just a little bit into the morning
a few winks into the day
we aren't golden
we aren't special
we aren't enlightened
but we are Alive
and that's halfway to glory,
my heart's Friend.

The flipside of unreality

As the shadows clear away from this terrible thing,

I realize how much damage has been done.

The obvious damage (the trauma of being lied to, believing the lies that I was going to be married this summer, planning my life around being a wife, setting up things to make that happen, things like that) is not the only thing, but only part.

The other part is the emotional trauma that comes from not only being lied to, but being abandoned in a very dramatic and inappropriate way.  Going from "we are still engaged" one minute to "I am leaving you and I'll never see or talk to you again" another minute is not a normal or appropriate way to leave someone.  In any way, shape, or form.  Since the person who did this is not worth my time or energy, I will try to not write about him, but about me and my hope for healing.

I am struggling with the physical effects of anxiety.

At first I couldn't sleep or eat.  I lost 10 lbs in a week.  I have since taken care of that (thanks be to God!).  I have been flooded with the love of good friends, more love than I ever knew that people loved me.  It's amazing.

But anxiety is still there.

It's not fair.  It makes me feel weak.  It makes me nervous.  And it's not fair.  I already said that.

I realize that I am a ******* survivor, and that no one can get at me anymore.

This is true.  It's real and true and it kicks me in the face when I start feeling despair.  I have proven to myself that I am 5 million times stronger than I thought I was.  All the lies he told me became things to overcome, and I've done it.

But that physical anxiety...there it is.

My shoulders feel like they are on fire most of the time.

My face burns.  My arms burn.  I am short of breath.

I have to step away from people and focus on calming my breathing.

It really sucks, because I like to be calm.  I like to be in control, and savvy, and witty and not ruled by any kind of emotion.

But there it is.  It's like PTSD, when some sound or an explosion on TV can trigger someone.  Normal things do this to me.  When a sweet, well meaning man tells me I'm the only girl, the alarm bells go off in my head.  How can I know if he's lying?  How can I trust him?  How can I trust anyone?  How can I trust myself?

I seriously hope that God in His heaven is not light on the consequences to a man who would cause such terrible pain in not just one, but at least 3 girls.  

I want justice borne out in my body for the nights I haven't slept.

I want justice borne out in my mind for the fact I can't ******* trust anyone anymore.

I want vindication in how my heart has been held hostage for far too long.  One second wasted on him was far too long.

I am dating someone.

He is a blank slate, as far as I'm concerned.

He doesn't deserve to live in someone's shadow.  May Jesus come swiftly to clear away the shadows with His own light.  May truth be illuminated in this whole thing, so that no one can hide.

And may I not push him away just because a sociopathic narcissist tried to ruin my life.  He couldn't ruin it.  He failed.  He is a failure, and I am not.

I am so much more.  I live in truth, reality, and hope.

And Jesus is there.

He may be able to earn my trust.  Time will tell.

My commitment is to hope, honesty, love, kindness, and reality.

Were You There?

Me singing "Were You There" by Raymond Haan on Palm Sunday this past Lent.
And choking up, a lot.  What a terrible time in my life.  I'm so glad it's looking up, now.

Carpe

You breathed me in.
Said it was magic,
and in the distance
Lightning struck.