"We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop." ~ Blessed Mother Teresa
When things go right, when things go wrong, knowing I am loved by you changes the way I live. It puts a smile on my face, and peace in my soul. It keeps my heart beating.
Knowing I am loved by you, I can close my eyes in your presence and be sure you are still there. You dry my tears but let them fall when they need to. You make me want to love better.
I can speak to you for hours as I sit with you or as I fall asleep. Sometimes we talk because I’m mad, other times because I want to sit and hear your voice. You’ve heard it all and love me still.
Whether I look at the stars, or into someone’s eyes, I am constantly reminded of your glory. No matter where I am, you are with me. Every step of the way.
In everything you do and are, you remind me of my worth because of who I am, not because of what I do. Nothing I do can change your unconditional love. And no words can properly communicate the contentedness your love gives.
Whatever life throws at me, I am confident that I can not only survive, but also thrive, because you are here. Always and everywhere by my side. Success doesn’t depend on my strength alone, which is a wonderful thing. I would fail on my own. You are always there. I just have to acknowledge that in the way I live. And I can’t help but smile and be grateful for your love, because I do not deserve it.
When human words fail, all I have to do is look to your face as you hang on the cross to know that I am loved.
There are so many more on my shelf, it’s kind of ridiculous. But so exciting too! I just love learning more about my faith. Right now for my Great Catholic Thinkers class, we’re working on Three to Get Married which is blowing my mind. Seriously. You don’t have to be married or engaged to read it. It talks about the nature of love and oh my gosh. I can’t stop fangirling over it. Go order it! We finished Peace of Soul a bit ago in that class which had some incredible points as well – a good read for Lent.
Reading gets so much more exciting after Christmas!
Otherwise, I don’t visit blogs or websites regularly for spiritual reading. I do read articles as they come up, and then will pin the best of what I read to my faith board. Lots of good quotes go on there too 🙂
No, this plan has actually not crashed and burned.
It’s actually been okay.
Life is a work in progress, and I am confident that I’m heading in the right direction – even if I haven’t mastered ALL the things yet.
Daily readings get looked at most days, and I have read some incredible books for my Fulton Sheen class. Homework has been getting done MUCH more ahead of time, and I’ve actually written a bit for Live Action. I broke my 5k record by over 2 minutes too!
This Lent I didn’t want to do the standard give up chocolate and Facebook. I’ve done it before, and it just never does anything. I have the willpower to do something, but then fall right back into bad habits after Easter.
Why?
Because I didn’t change my habits. A Matthew Kelly quote keeps going through my head:
Because of that, this Lent I’ll be working on developing good habits (and getting rid of bad ones). Without further ado, here is my Lenten 2015 Plan for Bossness:
Lunch: Check emails & up 30 minutes of articles/posts
Evening: Check emails and Facebook
Read 4 books: Come Be My Light, Spirituality of Fasting, TOB for Beginners, Joy of Full Surrender (30 min/day)
Share blog post on each one
Journal for a short time (maybe 10ish minutes) each day
Go 1 day/week without social media (only allowed to check school email 2x)
Almsgiving/Thankfullness/Giving of Myself
Helping local families (this is not technically part of Lent, but I’m starting to help out families right now which kind of coincides)
Write 1 faith-related post/week: share the beauty of truth!
Go outside abortion clinic every Saturday I can
Add over 40 things that I’m thankful for to my notebook
Make myself available for spending more time with people
I have mixed thoughts looking at this. On one hand, it sounds kind of crazy. But on another hand, I don’t think it’s hard enough. Jesus DIED for each of us. Individually. What more can I do to observe this season? Nothing really is enough. So I’m not really sure. But I’m going to give this a shot and challenge myself 🙂
If you have suggestions, I’d love to hear them! And now, tell me: what is YOUR Lenten plan for becoming a boss?
Once upon a time I was Black Friday shopping and left this note on a 50 Shades of Grey display:
Yes, this could have been much more positive. I will write something much more epic next time!
Yesterday I was at Target and left a lovely Mother Teresa meditation inside another copy 😉
50 Shades of Grey is coming out in theaters soon. In an ideal world, I would be outside theaters handing theater-goers some sort of material telling them about love – what true love really is. But I’m not Catholic enough to bi-locate (or tri-locate – is that a thing?). Dagnabit.
Actually, in an ideal world this “phenomenon” wouldn’t exist.
When the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge took off, we looked at it in a class trying to figure out why it became so popular. Right now I’m trying to wrap my head about the 50 Shades “phenomenon”.
Why is this so popular?
Quite simply, this is wildly popular because our country is obsessed with sex. But who didn’t know that already? Just take a look at magazines, Carl’s Jr. trying to sell women (err, hamburgers?), and the stress put on people to bare it all Kim Kardashian style. But I digress. Kim is a whole other post.
People defend 50 Shades by saying the so-called “mommy porn” is just a love story: a naive young woman is introduced to the broken world of a hurt man. He pulls her into his BDSM lifestyle and yay! She learns stuff and he finds release from his past. It’s all consensual, they say. Nobody gets hurt because they have “safe words”, right?
Not so fast.
Did you know [SPOILER] that Christian forces Anastasia to get an abortion? Did you know that this book is so poorly written it barely has a story-line besides the graphic scenes? Did you know it started as Twilight fan fiction?
So what is going on with this book?
You can argue with me whether you think 50 Shades is harmful. But I have a thesis, a hypothesis of sorts. I’m fairly certain this “phenomenon” is a symptom of our country’s obsession with sex. But why is it like that in the first place? Why is this all people talk about in the media?
*Enter my go-to homeboy Bishop Fulton Sheen*
Our society is obsessed because:
1. “[L]oss of belief in God. Once people lose God, they lose the purpose of life; and when the purpose of living is forgotten, the universe becomes meaningless.”
2. A “desire to escape from the responsibility of living and from the unbearable voice of an uneasy conscience”
3. The “modern denial of immorality”
4. The “equating of humans with animals”
We’ve probably all heard the idea that humans were made to love and be loved. And I’m fairly certain that’s part of everybody wanting to be happy.
But when we try to satisfy this inner desire with material things, we’re sure to be disappointed because there “is no surer formula for discontent than to try to satisfy our cravings for the ocean of Infinite Love from the teacup of finite satisfactions.”
The popularity of 50 Shades shows me something good: that people still recognize the desire to be loved. What’s sad to see is how (MILLIONS of) people try to go about fulfilling that desire.
We live as if everyone’s version of truth is a-okay – that this train wreck of a 50 Shades phenomenon is too hard to stop. But the fact is that we were made for things far greater than 50 Shades. And we need to be able to admit that. 50 Shades of Grey is incapable of showing us what love is all about because “[t]he infinite cravings of a soul cannot be satisfied by the flesh alone.”
We are made up of body and soul. Because of that, we cannot be satisfied with BDSM so-called romance novels. It is impossible. Our culture’s ravenous attitude toward 50 Shades shows us how utterly insatiable this desire for love is when we try to fill an ocean with a teacup.
So what the heck are we supposed to do about this obsession? In light of the four problems above, I propose that we as a culture need to:
1. Realize we are incapable of fully experiencing love without Love himself as part of the picture. When we seek love, we are searching for Him. Making anything else our goal in life will leave us disappointed.
2. Own up to our faults and realize the mind-blowing awesomeness of seeking a life with a higher purpose going beyond things of the flesh.
3. Realize it’s okay to say that some things are inherently wrong.
4. Challenge the idea that we are slaves to our passions.
And bonus! Be satisfied. There’s a guy out there who would sacrifice his own life for you. And he’s more than a Christian. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, I’m telling you he already died for you. His name is Jesus.
And I’d say that’s more than 50 Shades of Awesome.
P.P.S. If you or someone you know struggles with this issue, please go to Fight the New Drug or purchase the book Delivered for resources, hope, and healing.
In thinking about Advent, I find it beautiful how Jesus as our King chose to come into the world as a child – one of the most vulnerable stages of life possible.
Our culture (which values independence and empowerment like crazy) kind of scoffs at the idea of a baby being so utterly powerful. After all, we’re supposed to be fiercely empowered people who know how to be the boss. You know how important those pantsuits are! But the greatest gift of all, the most powerful creature of all, chose to come to us in terms we could see and understand in no other form than a baby.
A baby is helpless. And as many people remind us, babies are completely dependent on their parents. So why would Jesus chose to come into the world so vulnerable? He’s the ultimate boss of life. Why would he submit himself in the guise of a child?
At least for me, I see so much hope in the eyes of a baby. Maybe you like kids. Maybe you don’t. I really do love kids, and one of my favorite things ever is to just be with babies. You just hold them, and they trust you. They haven’t grown to know the hurt of the world yet. And for that moment? Everything is beautiful. You hold this precious itty-bitty life that has so much potential. The possibilities are endless.
On my closet door I have one of those sticky vinyl lettering decorations that reads “Every child is a story yet to be told” with tons of pictures around it from different aspects and times of my life with people I know and love. It reminds me to think about other people, and to remember that we all have a story.
And right now, we only know part of our stories.
When we’re babies, we know even less of the story. The possibilities and hope are there, though. You never know what that person was created to be and do. It’s pretty awe-inspiring when I think about it.
Jesus came into the world not only as probably one of the cutest babies ever, but also to eventually save us. And if you ask me, there probably isn’t a situation that is filled with more hope than that. Let Fulton Sheen illustrate this by saying:
“It was not enough that the Son of God should come down from the heavens and appear as the Son of Man, for then He would have been only a great teacher and a great example, but not a Redeemer. It was more important for Him to fulfill the purpose of the coming, to redeem man from sin while in the likeness of human flesh. Teachers change men by their lives; Our Blessed Lord would change men by His death. The poison of hate, sensuality, and envy which is in the hearts of men could not be healed simply by wise exhortations and social reforms. The wages of sin is death, and therefore it was to be by death that sin would be atoned for.”
It’s not to be somber necessarily, but to remember the reason why Jesus came in the first place. He came to save us, and accomplished that by first being born of our Blessed Mother.
We’re told that to enter the kingdom of heaven, we must become like children. And that might seem weird because children don’t know much, right? Sure, in a worldly sense maybe they don’t. But kids have an incredible intuition. And much of the time they can figure out who to trust. There’s a beauty in that vulnerability and weakness that our world despises, because it forces us to abandon our selfishness.
And that’s why Jesus coming as a child is so powerful: there is beauty in weakness. Through it, others are changed by helping those who need help. And those who need help are changed by allowing others to do things for them.
Let’s remember this Advent season that it’s okay to lean on other people, and to allow ourselves to become like children in a way.
Jesus did, and I’d be willing to bet he’s a pretty good role model.
A Drop in the Ocean 