Jesus, I trust in You for...

Along with handing the reins over to Jesus, I felt like He brought to mind the Divine Mercy prayer of St. Faustina, "Jesus, I trust in You." When the Holy Spirit helps me realize that my mind is going into a rut of anxiety about the future, hand the reins to Jesus for that person, situation, etc., and say to Him, "Jesus, I trust in You for ..."

Although this is still very new for me, I've found it to be very useful already. When concerns about my schedule try to intrude themselves into my thoughts at Mass: "Jesus, I trust in You for my schedule." When twinges happen and I wonder if its acid reflux or signs of heart trouble: "Jesus, I trust in You for my health." When I start thinking about looking for a new car in the midst of my Sunday when I can't do anything about it: "Jesus, I trust in You for my car."

A few months ago, I sensed the Lord saying to me, "You cannot trust Me too much." With the Lord's help, I hope that these strategies will enable me to apply that truth to specific areas of my life.

Lord, I know that You have a plan for every aspect of my life. Please keep helping me to trust in You for every area of my life. Amen.

Dropping the reins

A few months ago, I was considering whether the Lord Jesus wanted me to leave a particular situation that was challenging for me. As I was praying about it, I heard on Catholic Radio, WDEO, the testimony of a woman whose marriage had been spinning out of control because of her husband's alcoholism.

She had an image of herself driving a horse-drawn carriage whose horses had gotten spooked. They were bolting out of control and heading straight for a cliff. Her efforts to bring them into control were futile. She sensed the Lord whispering to her, "Drop the reins. Drop the reins." Just before hitting the edge of the cliff, she finally dropped the reins, and the horses suddenly stopped on their own.

Within the context of what I was praying about at the time, I felt the Lord was saying to me, "Don't leave, but let go." It hasn't been easy; it still isn't. Hyper-responsible first-born that I am, I'm always thinking that there's something I should be doing. But in the background, I sense the whisper, "Drop the reins. Drop the reins."

I'm realizing that this new call from the Lord to "Surrender the future into My Hands" is not new at all. It's just a new articulation of something He's been saying for a while. So it's no surprise that as I asked the Lord to help me to do that, one of the things He brought to mind was "Drop the reins." Or rather, imagine myself handing the reins to Jesus. Still not easy. But He already holds the future in His Hands. Why not acknowledge it and give Him the reins?

My dear Lord, You alone hold the future in Your Hands. Help me to cooperate with You by handing You the reins in every area of my life.

Trust and tongues of fire...

And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them.--Acts 2:3 (RSV)

Isn't it interesting that the tongues of fire are always depicted as landing on the disciples' heads? And yet the verse in Acts doesn't actually say that. It simply says that they "rested on each of them."

I wonder if the tongues of fire actually rested on the part of each disciple that most needed to be purified? For some it might have been their mouths. For others, their eyes. For others, their hands. The Blessed Mother, with no need to be purified, would have simply received the Holy Spirit unimpeded into her body, soul, and spirit, from which it would have flashed out from within her to all those around her.

For me, the fire would definitely have landed on my head! So many of my battles are mental battles, and the trustful surrender of the future to the Lord is no exception. The old ruts need to be reworked, but so often I don't even realize that my mind has fallen into an old rut until my emotions are engaged, which makes it that much more difficult to break free mentally.

Holy Spirit, please, in Your mercy, send Your purifying fire into my mind. Help me to recognize the times when my mind goes into a rut by sending Your fire to alert me. Give me the grace to surrender the future, whatever it may be, to the flames, and grow in trust of You. Amen.

Taking time and trust

When I spoke today after Mass with my friend Rose who's a regular blogger, I realized that it had been almost a year since I updated this blog! Not a real shock, given all the other things that have been filling my time, but since I'm just starting to move into my comparatively "down" season at work, I decided to try to take the time to post more often. As an experienced blogger, she said that the key was to write short posts, and if I have something more to say, break it up into smaller installments. We'll see how writing concisely works for me. :-)

For some time now, I've sensed that my prayer life isn't where it should be. It's not that I'm not being faithful to prayer, but there's been a sense that the Lord might have more for me. I've asked Him to show me if this is just a "dry" time, or if it's something He wants to change.

Yesterday as I was praying, I brought it before Him again. What is it, Lord, that's keeping me from entering more deeply into a truly intimate relationship with You? This time, I sensed a response: "Lack of trust in Me." When I asked how to overcome that, I felt like I got an even clearer reply: "Surrender the future into My Hands."

I immediately recognized the truth of that in my life. The older that I get, the more I see things deteriorating both in me physically and around me in many other ways, the more that my mental energy has been consumed with thoughts and low-level anxiety about the future.

But how do I change these mental ruts? Yes, it's the grace of God, but how do I cooperate with that grace? More in a future post. (See, Rose, I listened! :-) )

Cloister of Love

I know, it's been over 6 months since I've posted, and I don't have the time for anything lengthy now. But I just had to share a wonderful blog that I've learned that a fellow Secular Carmelite is writing: Cloister of Love. Its author is a lovely woman of God, who is a wonderful example of how to grow continually in "wisdom and grace," even to old age. I've often thought over the years, "When I grow up, I want to be like Anne." Her blog simply confirms that sentiment in me. Its address: cloisteroflove.wordpress.com. Go and be inspired.

Clinging to God

My soul clings fast to You; Your right hand upholds me.--Psalm 63:9 (NAB)

I had heard it said often of the saints that their attitude was, "Death rather than sin." Although I certainly admired that and wanted to get to that point, I had a hard time wrapping my mind and heart around it. Would I ever be able to say, "Death rather than sin"?

One day I felt like the Lord showed me a way to personalize it. Death is what separates my soul from my body. Sin is what separates my soul from God, venial sin in small ways, mortal sin in a complete way. So instead of the more impersonal saying, "Death rather than sin," think of it as, "I would rather have my soul be separated from my body than have my soul be separated from You, my God."

This is the love that God has for us, a love so great that He who is pure spirit took to Himself a body and soul. He then allowed His body and soul to be separated, to undergo an incredibly painful, shameful death, because He would rather have His soul be separated from His body than for His soul to be separated from us.

My dear Lord, apart from You, I can do nothing, but with You and in You, nothing is impossible. In Your great mercy and love, please send Your Holy Spirit to impart to me a strong burning love for You like Yours for me and a determination to cling to You no matter what. Then give me the courage and every other grace I need to live it out, so that nothing may matter to me more than to be with You, now and forever. Amen.

Losing all to find All

Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.--Mt. 16:25 (NAB)

January is my busiest month of the year at work, and it shows in the fact that it's been over a month since I last posted to this blog! Although I stuck to my resolution not to work on Sundays, I was working such long hours the rest of the week that other things that I hadn't gotten to often got pushed to Sunday. And then last Sunday, Feb. 1, with the last of the Jan. 31 deadlines met, I just crashed. After coming back from Adoration shortly after 1 p.m., I napped for 3 and a half hours--and had absolutely no trouble getting to sleep that night!

I've also fallen way behind on weeding. I did manage to get a few bags of books and trinkets off to the St. Vincent de Paul store today, but I've got a whole lot more weeding ahead of me. Please say a prayer that I can accomplish everything the Lord wants me to accomplish in His timeframe, by His power, and in His peace.

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When I was studying gerontology, one of the authors that I read said that the main "task" of the aging is to deal with loss--loss of career, loss of friends, loss of health, loss of home, and finally, loss of life itself. In this author's opinion, how successfully an elderly person dealt with aging was really a function of how successfully he/she was able to deal with loss.

I think that there's a lot to be said for that theory, but with one important difference. For a Christian, that's actually the major task of all of life in this world, not just the last stage. "Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it." (Mt. 16:25; see also Mk. 8:35 and Lk. 9:24)

How does a person, elderly or otherwise, successfully deal with this great task of losing all to find the One who is All? I don't pretend to be an expert by any stretch of the imagination--my own life has been a giant hot fudge sundae compared to many people I know--but I offer a thought or two for you to take to prayer.

I think one important factor is where our personal identities lie. To the extent that we take our identities in anything tied to this world--careers, possessions, friends, health, life itself--we will struggle when it's time to give those things up. We need to plead for the grace to take our identity only in our relationship with the One who is both with us in this world and will be with us in the next, the Lord of both the living and the dead, Jesus Christ. If we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, as the author of Hebrews exhorts us to do (Heb. 12:1-2), we will find ourselves able by His Spirit to do as He did: "For the sake of the joy that lay before Him He endured the cross, despising its shame..."

Many, many years ago when I was a drama major (over half a lifetime ago now!), we studied two plays by Eugene Ionesco, a major playwright in the "Theatre of the Absurd" movement, in which the characters approach the issue of death in different ways. In Exit the King, the once-powerful King is being confronted with the reality that his kingdom is crumbling around him and his death is imminent. While his second wife tries to sympathetically keep him in denial, his first wife tries to get him to face facts, telling him, "You should have been preparing for this moment all your life." As more and more of even the immediate surroundings start fading away, the King is left on his throne with just his first wife trying to help him get ready. Then she, too, disappears, and the King is left sitting mute on his throne until he finally fades into the gray mists.

Contrast this with an earlier play, Amédée, or How to Get Rid of It. In this play, Amédée and his wife are in their apartment discussing a corpse in the other room. It isn't clear how the corpse got there, but it is growing and causing mushrooms to sprout all over the walls of the apartment, so it can no longer be ignored. After a lengthy discussion, Amédée decides he will have to "take the bull by the horns," so to speak: he's going to drag the corpse from the apartment and dump it into the river. Once he gets it outside, though, he gets tangled up in the legs, at which point the corpse, like a giant parachute, floats away, taking Amédée with it. His wife shouts after him that all the mushrooms in the apartment have bloomed into flowers, and fireworks go off in the sky as he departs.

Ionesco is not writing from a Christian worldview, by any stretch of the imagination. (It is interesting, though, that the name of the character who stops denying death, confronts it, and leaves, in a sense, in triumph is Amédée, the French version of the name Amadeus, which means "lover of God" or "beloved of God.") Yet even a secular playwright can perceive on a natural level that there are different ways of dealing with the issue of death, one of which is more positive than the other.

How much more should this be true for Christians, who can proclaim with St. Paul, "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." (I Cor. 15:55-57)

Dear Lord, apart from You, we can do nothing, least of all deal with loss and death. But with You and in You, nothing is impossible. Please give us the grace to let go of all, even life itself, in order to embrace You who are Life Eternal. By Your grace, power and love, may we witness to the world the joy and freedom that comes from knowing, loving and serving You, the Lord of the living and the dead. We ask this of the Father by the power of the Spirit in Your most precious name, dear Jesus. Amen.