Grace and His Grace

...where fear is lost to love and You are more than enough.

Everything rides on hope now...

Everything rides on hope now
Everything rides on faith somehow
When the world has broken me down
Your love sets me free

I surrender...

Getting hung up on words, I'll just stick with the music that has been a comfort.  A few notes can carry my soul a long way and bring me back to earth when I need it. 

Prayer for Freedom of Heart, by St. Ignatius Loyola

Grant, O Lord, that my heart may neither desire nor seek anything but what is necessary for the fulfillment of Thy holy Will. May health or sickness, riches or poverty, honors or contempt, humiliations, leave my soul in that state of perfect detachment,to which I desire to attain--for Thy greater honor and Thy greater glory. Amen.

Everybody's got a dark side...

I always feel like a sulking teenager when I hear a song on the radio and the lyrics speak to me in some way and I find myself humming along, thinking, yes...she/he totally gets me.  Since I'm not nearly as cool as I once was - after hearing a song just like I've described, I usually have to Google it to find out what the song was and who the singer is.  This time it was Kelly Clarkson - the original American Idol - and my personal favorite.  The girl can sing and I typically like anything that she puts out there.

Her latest release "Dark Side" started me thinking about my own dark side.  That dark side of me that I constantly have to manage, control, tramp down, ignore, tell off, etc., etc., and so on.  The dark side of me that instead of trying to find ways to mourn for Grace as "the date" approaches, I start the self punishment cycle.  Instead of prayer, I torture myself with videos and choice websites.  There are parts of the song that really cut to the quick when she talks about revealing her dark side to the one she loves, will they run away, will they stay, even if she pushed them out, will they remind her of who she really is.  She pleads for them to remind her who she really is.

Oh - have I done what she sings about.  Pushing people as far as I can is a fine tuned hobby of mine.  There are less than a handful of people in this world who I know love me unconditionally and on whose love I cling to for life itself.  Heading up this intimate crowd is He who loves me with a love that (I'm paraphrasing) surpasses all understanding.  But, I push Him too.

Sometimes I push because I just really want to be left alone, but only for a little bit of time, just for some breathing room.  Other times I push because I want to see if I can really get them to leave.  Most of the time I push because I just want to hear the words, "I'm never going to leave you."  Maybe simply asking for reassurance would be easier?  Asking for it, however, makes me feel weak.  It's like asking someone to tell you they love you.  You aren't supposed to ask for it.  You're supposed to wait to hear it.  I've spent half a lifetime searching for love in all the wrong ways.  Now I've found it and have it in the most truest and purest ways possible for some time now, but yet I doubt, I test, I wonder.  I know that my husband and children love me.  My husband shows me in a million different ways just how much he loves me.  Actions are supposed to mean so much more than words, but sometimes, the words are all I need if they are the right ones.  How do you tell the people closest to you what you desperately need to hear?  

I read somewhere that a trauma in someone's life kind of leaves them stuck at the age they were when the trauma occurred.  For me, that would be 17.  Sometimes I still feel 17, as if the rest of my life, even the good parts, never really happened, and I'm still alone, in my room, listening to the radio.

I see you with the angels...

Sometimes I run out of words to speak, tears to cry, or prayers to pray.  I think surrender may be the m.o. for the next couple of weeks. When I run out of words to say, I go looking for words from someone else, somewhere else.  I guess I should take stock in the fact that at least I'm looking outside of myself for help instead of shutting down completely and I've become rather particular about where I search for help and who I reach out to.  Lord, help me to not go looking for the quick fix, help me be accepting of your fix.

 

On The Grace Of Healing
by Father Walter J. Ciszek, S.J.

 "Though being licked is a normal, daily experience with me, my deep desire to win the battle urges me on to struggle and to keep on struggling no matter what the cost. This is healing as I realize it, i.e., knowing how to live with your illness, and how to handle it sufficiently in every new situation that arises.

It's in the struggle that one receives every new enlightenments, insights, added courage and purpose to continue the struggle of life with firm faith in the final victory. In such struggle, we realize our own nothingness, never separated, however, from God's allness, and because of our conscious realization of God's love always present in us, the human spirit never relents in its efforts to fight to the end and to win the battle.

Every failure and licking we experience is not a defeat but an assurance of the truthfulness of our purpose, trusting and confiding in God's power, leading us to our end, in spite of how we feel or fail to how weak and unstable we prove ourselves to be.

Our weakness and instability sway us in all directions to experience the good and the bad we encounter. This fluctuation can bring us to the point of despair, even to anger at our own helplessness, yet not to the point of sin, though close to it, because in all this interior and mental turmoil and instability and fluctuation, there is something stable and unchanging in us bringing us always to the balance point and center after the swaying and fluctuation cease temporarily. That something stable and balanced in us is the peace of God's presence permeating our very being through and through, and constantly purifying us from all that stains our body and soul, to infuse in place of corruption a new life and love that changes us and lifts us above all that is sinful.

Such is the power of the love of God in us, integrating us into divine life and making us holy. Such is healing in its deepest meaning."