My Ride - PART 2

For the first time this blog introduces a work of fiction. This short story, my attempt at a modern day parable, grew out of an assignment from my spiritual director. Due to its length, this will run over the next few weeks. Explanations of the symbolism involved will be given at the end of the series.


Part 1 published on May 3, 2009

From My Ride - Part 1

It’s too late. By the time I see the BRIDGE OUT sign ahead of me I’m suspended in mid-air just long enough to brace for the pain of impact and to hear the cackle from the backseat.Damn! From what corner of darkest Hell did that thing crawl? Oh shit! It can’t be…

MY RIDE - PART 2


I never felt the impact. I’m lying in very tall marshy grass next to a stream about six feet below the road. Everything hurts and blackness is crowding in on me from all sides. Yet somehow I’m alive. How long I’ve been here I can’t tell. It was before noon when I started driving but I lose track of time when I drive. The sun is still out but it’s early spring and the sun will only be out until seven. Fading in and out. Breathing hurts but I don’t think anything’s broken. My car. No way my car survived a wreck at that speed. Forcing my eyes open again I see the thick blacksnake about three feet in front of my nose. Ugh, I hate snakes and instinctive recoil forces me to my knees as he slithers off in the other direction, equally spooked by the intrusion of a human into his domain. I almost faint again from the pain but at least I know I can move. I smell the gasoline and antifreeze. Not good.

I push myself to stand and look around. My beautiful car is nearly unrecognizable. I must’ve caught a few of the small trees as I came off the road at the bend. The car looks like it’s been used for a game of kick-the-can by a bunch of giant street urchins. The windshield is gone and for the first time I’m seeing the cuts on my arms and hands. I can feel the liquid warmth on my face. As for my car, she landed right side up just missing the stream but she’s pretty banged up. The radiator is shot judging by the steam still rising from the mangled hood. The chassis is pretty twisted and I can see that the gas tank is ruptured too. Not that I could get it back up on the road without a winch anyway. I had been thrown clear and landed about 15 feet away in the grass. Anyone passing by wouldn’t be likely to notice me or my car in this little ditch. Hell, with the bridge out, most locals would have enough sense to take another route. The nearest crossroad is probably 10 miles away at least and probably farther.

Time to find a way out of this mess. My cell had been on the front seat. It could be anywhere now. What’s a bigger waste of time – trying to find it in chest high grass or walking down the road and trying to figure out where I am? I always loved that bumper sticker “Not All Who Wander Are Lost” but it’s sinking in now that if you wander long enough, you get lost. Turning around a slow circle, surveying my surroundings, I see him.

About 50 yards further downstream from my wreck, seated on a fallen tree is a rugged looking young man dressed in white robes. No, he’s not in the gleaming angelic robes with dazzling sunlight and all that jazz, but definitely biblical-looking clothes. Roughly woven off-white linen and sandals – this guy is something else. I’ve either crashed into some cult’s backyard or I’m going to have some ‘splainin’ to do very shortly. So far it doesn’t look like he’s even noticed me. Now how do you have a car go careening off the road right past you, take out a bunch of small trees and you don’t even notice? He’s just sitting there, idly playing with a bunch of grass in his hand like he’s been there thinking all day and nothing is out of the ordinary here.

“Oh come on now, you aren’t stupid enough to think he’ll help you, are you?” came the familiar hissing voice from behind me.

Spinning around I see the gremlin sitting on the hood of my car, smoking one of my cigarettes, blowing the smoke through its long razor-like teeth.

“You’re not real,” I whisper even as my chest tightens as I come face-to-face with the nightmare that has lived in my head for years. I’ve lived with the gremlin for a very long time. It’s that nasty little voice that tells me what a total fuck-up I am and questions everything I do or say. Sort of like that whole angel/devil on the shoulder thing but this little shit doesn’t poof away when I make the good choice. No, the gremlin hangs around telling me all the ways I’ll screw it up anyway. I made up this imaginary creature as a way of personifying my own self-doubts and self-recriminations. It seemed like a very clever idea at the time. Somehow it was easier for me to deal with, having a creature behind the voice. Easier until now, when it’s suddenly in front of me – all seven feet of him complete with black scales, big leathery bat ears, yellow eyes, long teeth and longer claws. “I made you up! You can’t be real.”

“Wanna bet?” It laughs at the obvious tremor in my voice. It’s low cackle ripples with derision, delight, and the promise of desecration. Sliding off the hood, it takes several steps towards me in strong sure strides. It stops and turns, tossing the still burning butt towards the car.



“Noooooo!” Too late. The blast from the explosion knocks me flat as blackened metal and burning upholstery rain down around me.

My Ride - PART 1

For the first time this blog introduces a work of fiction. This short story, my attempt at a modern day parable, grew out of an assignment from my spiritual director. As mentioned in several previous posts, I struggled at first to write this and then was shocked by the direction that it took. Due to its length, this will run over the next few weeks. Explanations of the symbolism involved will be given at the end of the series.

My Ride

Oh hell - any gear head will tell you, it ain’t just the car, it’s the road baby. Highways are for pansies. There’s so much more to see on the back roads. When was the last time you saw a herd of deer grazing or a flock of vultures circling from the interstate? Where are the steep hills and sharp hairpin turns? Where else can you see the early morning fog lifting off the trees? Not on the main drag that’s for sure. You want to go for a ride with me today? Well then we’re going out into the country roads where life gets interesting. There’s no better way to kill a day than to just drive right through it.

My car? That’s my dream. A vintage 1964 Chevy Nova, lovingly repainted in a Mustang Mystichrome paint that would make bring on heart palpitations in any purist. What self-respecting Chevy owner uses a Ford color on such a classic? Some things just aren’t done! But this is MY baby, not theirs. This shade changes from light green to dark green to almost blue to gold depending on the angle on your vantage point. I picked it to match my eyes, which will color-shift depending on my mood. As a sign of my warped writer’s sense of humor, there’s an inscription in black script above the doors that reads, “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate.” The Italian translates to "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” The interior has been restored to its original pristine white. I toyed with the idea of a blown 502 big block engine but couldn’t bring myself to destroy the sleek look of the car. Besides, I can get myself into enough trouble with the power this car packs already. She’s got plenty of power in that big V8. She’s way short on safety features, but I love her anyway. There’s a rush in feeling un-tethered by the modern intrusion of shoulder belts so I skip the seatbelt.

I keep it under 80 on the highways but as soon as I can I get out on the curvy backcountry roads and push the speedometer up past 100 through the turns and over the hills. I crank the windows down and the music up. My other great car sin, a wicked iPod-ready sound system cranks out Metallica, Guns ‘N’ Roses, AC DC, Flogging Molly, Etta James, or Norah Jones depending on my day and mood, or perhaps the color of my eyes. Hardly factory original, but like I said, this is my baby and I go nowhere without a soundtrack for my life. My car gives me the freedom that I can’t seem to find anywhere else.

My black t-shirt, dark jeans, black boots, black bandanna to hold the hair out of my eyes, and the obligatory shades are all required driving attire. I know I look every inch the tough, especially with a four-inch tattoo on my forearm. I like it that way. When I do stop to take in the sights and maybe enjoy a cigarette, nobody bothers to talk to me. That suits me just fine. I like riding alone.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had my share of passengers. Some were flesh and blood but too many were shadows and ghosts come back from my past to taunt me and haunt me from the back seat. Passengers are distracting. I can’t afford to be distracted traveling at these speeds and I don’t want to slow down.

Slowing down allows the real world to catch up to me. There’s pain in the real world. More pain than I want to face. Pain, anger, rage, disgust, disappointments, all lurking by the roadside waiting for me. But I fly past them all, just a blur of greenish gold, untouchable and unstoppable. There’s a string of heartbreaks and grief spread out down the road behind me like so much roadkill. There’s the guilt that comes from wondering how much of it was my fault. How much grief do I leave in my wake? My urge to run, to flee is instinctive, primal even. Get out before I get hurt. The faster I go, the safer I feel. The safer I feel, the more chances I take. Accelerating into blind turns, crossing the middle line, risking a head-on collision at every bend, flying over the crest of the steepest hill, even going airborne at times without knowing what’s beyond the crest of the hill, risking an unexpected turn, a slow-moving hay truck, or worst of all an innocent cyclist.

The music gets louder and it takes every ounce of energy I have just to stay in control. It’s exhilarating and exhausting. I get crazy and stupid, enjoying the rush and the thrill of it all. I know tonight I’ll go home exhausted enough to sleep without the dreams coming back again to haunt me. I fly around the next bend, topping out just past 107...

It’s too late. By the time I see the BRIDGE OUT sign ahead of me I’m suspended in mid-air just long enough to brace for the pain of impact and to hear the cackle from the backseat.

Damn! From what corner of darkest Hell did that thing crawl? Oh shit! It can’t be…

Part 2 will appear on Friday, May 8, 2009.

Homework Continued

I’m still working on my spiritual homework assignment from Deacon Ron. Yes, the one he gave me several months ago. This is the one where I’m supposed to figure out my journey on the road (a recurring theme in my writings). The barrage of questions went something like this:

What kind of car are you driving?
How fast are you going?
Are you on the highway or city streets?
Are you alone or do you have passengers, and if so who?
Where are you going?
Why are you going?
Do you know where you’re going or are you lost?
Did you plan out the trip or just get in the car and start driving?

It went on from there but you get the idea. I started writing a fictional short story in which the main character goes out for a drive and ends up in an encounter with The Gremlin and a Figure In White who may or may not be Jesus. I’m not really working and re-working this story the way I normally would. I’m editing for errors but not for content. I don’t want to over think the whole thing because there are so many important little details coming out in the raw version and I don’t want to risk losing them in re-writes. Writing usually comes easy to me but this one story has come in paragraphs or disconnected snatches of dialogue. I keep working on it because I have the sense that it may well be the most important piece I’ll ever write, at least for my own personal journey.

Two things strike me as I read my own crazy story. For one, I read way too many Stephen Kings novels as a teenager and for another, that this character is representative of me. That is more than a little disturbing to me because as she meets these two figures, she immediately recognizes The Gremlin. She knows him. She knows his voice and his movements. She knows he’s evil and that he’s very powerful. The Figure In White, she’s not so sure about him. This could be Jesus. This should be Jesus in the illogical logic of this story but she doubts that possibility. She hesitates to approach him or to seek his help. She also considers that he may be just some wacko. How can she tell if he’s Jesus or not? She’s trying to deal with The Gremlin on her own terms rather than crying out for help despite the fact that she’s faced with such a powerful evil creature.

I realize I do that in my real life all the time. I always know when The Gremlin in my head is working overtime. But Jesus is working overtime in my life too. I just fail to see it so often. I question what I know to be true. I discount what I should hold precious. Like Mary Magdalene at the tomb, I don’t recognize Jesus even when He is right in front of me, even when He talks to me. It’s not until He speaks my name that the veil of doubt is lifted from my heart. So many times I see His work in my life after the fact. Hindsight is always 20/20 I guess.

I don’t know how my vision quest-like story will end yet, but I do know I’ll be paying close attention to these characters. I know I still have much to learn from them.

The Salvation Cupcake

"I did this for you, Christine. Didn't you know?"

My Holy Week journey this year began with reflecting on Palm Sunday as a starting point and recognizing that Easter was the destination. This is slightly flawed idea but for me it’s easier to take my journey to God a few steps at a time. I can’t drive from Connecticut to California without making a few stops along the way so why should my spiritual journey be any different?

Tuesday of Holy Week

I went to Reconciliation. I had been stalling, finding valid-sounding excuses to put it off since the beginning of Lent. I don’t why I do that to myself, but I do. As I talked with fellow sinners waiting to confess we all found common ground in our delaying tactics. God knows why we do that I guess. Part of my penance was to walk the Stations of the Cross. As I think back, I don’t recall ever having taken the time to walk the Stations alone. I’ve gone to communal Stations of the Cross for years but this was very different. I walked the Stations slowly but I was still processing everything that the priest has said to me in the confessional and I wasn’t really focusing. I knew I would be back to walk them again.

Holy Thursday

For the first time I gave in to the call of the Holy Spirit to have my feet washed. At St James it is an open invitation to the entire community to come forward to any of the 28 washing stations set up. The past three years I have resisted that pull for reasons I don’t really understand. Those nights I went home sad that I couldn’t step out of my little box for something so simple and yet so meaningful. This year I just let go of all my resistance and didn’t let myself think. It was a friend and sister in Christ who washed my feet, dried them, and kissed them. In my heart, it was Christ Himself who demonstrated such love for me. I had let my guard down, physically and spiritually. I allowed myself to be vulnerable.

When the service had ended, the church remained open for adoration. After taking my mother and younger son home, I returned with my older son to a quiet, dimly lit church that still smelled of incense. My son went off to pray by himself and after taking my shoes off, I went to spend some time with my favorite statue of Christ condemned. He is in the crown of thorns and purple robe, bleeding from the scourging but His eyes are full of peace and love. I skipped the kneeler, opting instead to kneel on the marble floor. It was my way of acknowledging His sacrifice. Bowing my head to the marble floor, I asked Jesus to let me hear His voice again. He’s been silent for so very long and it is getting so hard to ignore the gremlin in my head. I asked Him to get that miserable voice in my head to shut up so that I could hear His voice, even if it was just for one night. “Just let me know that You’re still there. I know You are, but I really need to hear Your voice.”

After just being quiet for a time, I got up and began to walk the Stations of the Cross. I walked barefoot on the cool marble trying to imagine the hot dusty roads of Jerusalem. At the very first one, where Jesus is condemned to death, I stopped and allowed myself to try to see what Jesus was really doing. He was allowing Himself to be condemned, knowing what was going to happen. As I stood there, there was a quiet whisper somewhere deep inside that said “I did this for you, Christine. Didn’t you know?” My soul was flooded with gratitude and relief that He was there with me. It took another few minutes before it sank in what He was saying. I’ve heard other people say they’ve heard that whisper from time to time but most are like me and are slow to comprehend.

I realized that I had never really accepted the idea of a one-on-one relationship with Jesus before. I always looked at Jesus as the Savior of the whole world, so that included me. That’s not the same thing as being my personal Savior. It’s sort of like being in grade school and bringing cupcakes in to share with the class on your birthday. You bring in enough for everyone, including your best friends, that weird kid you don’t hang around with, and the kids you don’t like but have to put up with because you all got stuck in the same class together. Unconsciously, I had the image that Jesus died for me because He got stuck with me since I was lucky enough to be born into a family of believers. My salvation was just a birthday cupcake that He had to give me because He was giving it to everyone else too. If I was lucky I wouldn’t get the one that got dropped upside down in the box and lost half of its frosting. Whether He wanted to do this for me as His Beloved Christine or not had never even entered the equation for me.

Walking the Stations of the Cross with that understanding of “I did this for you, Christine” at every step of that painful journey was a completely new experience for me. This was an unimaginable act of love. Who am I that my Lord would die for me? And yet there was no sense of Jesus saying, “Well duh! It’s about time you got it dummy!”

On some level, I’ve known He died for me and I’ve known it my whole life but over time it got lost. Like most people I’ve found that life layers loss upon loss and difficulty on top of challenges on top of stress. This one moment gave me a chance to look at the cross-section of my life. I could see the strata of good times, joyful moments, hard times and even the mundane times. I could see that life isn’t about what’s going on right now, it’s about adding another layer and all those layers coming together to create something new. My soul is not a simple thing like a brownie or a cupcake. It’s more like a seven-layer bar where some layers are sweet, some are soft, some are hard, and some are salty. It needs all those layers to come together to form something amazingly good.

The journey of Holy Week starts as a triumphant entrance into Jerusalem. There is preparation time, then quiet time with comrades. This is followed by solemn time of prayer and spiritual anguish. There is betrayal, cruelty, agony beyond understanding, and death. But from all of this comes new life and redemption. And it all happened for me. Wow!! That really changed the way I entered into my Good Friday and Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday.

It has taken me over a week to even find the words to capture my week and even now I am struggling to do so. Have I fully taken in the understanding that Jesus did all this because He wanted to do it out of love for me? Nope. But that’s okay. Jesus knows that it’s beyond my ability to understand this entirely. He knows how many times I’ll forget and how many times I’ll begin to doubt it. He knows exactly how many times my faith will be challenged and even badly shaken. And He knows the exact moment when the knowledge of how much He loves me will finally sink in completely.

For right now, we’re celebrating that I am finally starting to see that this life isn’t a journey to God. This life is a journey with God. A road trip kind of journey where a friendship develops, deepens, and solidifies.

Journey With Me

If a total stranger walked up to me and asked “So what’s the big deal about Palm Sunday anyway?” - what would my answer be?

In the readings for Palm Sunday, Jesus rides into Jerusalem triumphantly. The people hailed Him as the Messiah but by the end of the week He hadn’t lived up to what they wanted, expected, even demanded of their Messiah. Then they turned Him out, handed Him over to the enemy and had Him murdered.

But Palm Sunday isn’t about re-creating history. It’s not intended to be a simple re-enactment to teach a lesson that needs to be re-taught year after year. It’s meant to be a new experience every year. It’s real, new, and happening now in the present, not the past.

So many times in my life, I have welcomed Jesus as Lord and Savior. The great Messiah has come to set me free and save me in my distress. Yes, it’s the “knight-in-shining-armor” Jesus for me. But before too long I realize that Jesus doesn’t come on a white horse to rescue me and He isn’t wielding some magic wand to poof away my troubles. He has granted miracles in my life but they are not every day occurrences, nor are they meant to be. And when He doesn’t instantly provide relief from my struggles, I often grow disenchanted, even sulky. Jesus isn’t living up to my expectations. I had accepted the relationship that He so freely offered but now I want to renegotiate that relationship on my terms. For me this is what it means to be a “spiritual spoiled brat”.

How quickly I will turn my back, deny, and even betray His love for me. Once again I hand Him over to be nailed to the cross of my sins. But once again, He is willing to accept me and forgive me in my ignorance and brokenness. Having been fully human, He understands my failings and forgives me, even when I would condemn myself.

Year after year, Palm Sunday reminds me of my rejection of His love. But the important thing for me to remember is that the story doesn’t end on Palm Sunday. This is just the beginning of Holy Week. This is a time set aside to reflect on Jesus’ great act of love and forgiveness that culminates on the glorious Easter morning in His triumph over sin and even death itself. Palm Sunday is not a call to condemnation, but an invitation to examine my deepest relationship with Jesus. It’s a chance to take time out of my crazy life to look at all the glorious moments of true connectedness during the past year but also to look at all the saddest, darkest moments of doubt and betrayal. It’s an invitation to journey through all of Holy Week and to be reminded again of Jesus’ amazing, unfailing love for me.

The rituals of Holy Week are a guide for me to walk through those darker moments, not to remain stuck in the darkness, but to break through into the light of His love, again. Some times those will be big, dramatic soul-flooding breakthroughs. But most years, it will be in small quiet revelations that could easily be missed if I didn’t take the time out from life's insanity to look for them.

So what’s the big deal about Palm Sunday? Nothing – unless it’s part of the journey of Holy Week.




May God bless you this week, however you choose to journey with Him.

Peace & Blessings,
Christine

The Almighty Silent Treatment

Picture, if you will, Alex Trebek as God…

This is Jeopardy...

“I’ll take ‘Spiritual Struggles for $1000’ please, Alex.”

“Answer ‘You get silence’”

“Oh – you didn’t ask the right thing!”

“I’m sorry you didn’t phrase the answer in the form of a question.”

Okay, I watch too much Jeopardy. I just never thought my closet game show addiction would ever help me in my relationship with God but, hey, He works with what He’s got in front of Him right?

As I mentioned in my “Spiritual Homework” blog post, when I met with Deacon Ron in February he asked me to read through my writings and look for some common themes. Incessantly searching for answers that I can’t seem to find has become one of my constants. It’s probably the most disturbing thing in my relationship with God. I already deal with trust issues and fear issues in all my relationships. The Almighty Silent Treatment doesn’t help matters any.

As Deacon Ron and I met last week we delved into this Silent Treatment a bit further. He suggested that perhaps instead of seeking answers that I start searching for the questions. Now, I have to say, my initial response to Ron’s statement was a bewildered, “Huh?”

He went on to explain that maybe the reason I’m not finding the answers I’m seeking is because those aren’t the answers that I need. Maybe God is trying to get me to ask an entirely different set of questions.

“Okay, so how do I know what questions to ask?”

Ron’s assignment for me this month is designed to help me figure that out. He told me to sit quietly for a time, be still, then write a list of questions that I feel like I want or need to ask God. Is there enough paper on the planet to cover that? After that I’m supposed to put the list away and “hand it over” to God for a few days. Once I’ve been able to do that, I’m to come back to the list, turn it over and write “Dear Christine,…” and allow God to answer the things He knows I need answered as opposed to the ones I want answered.

Ron also pointed out that there may be questions I’m not ready to ask yet. I know for a fact that if I’m being really honest with myself, there are a few such questions lurking in the darkest hidden corners of my heart.

“And what if I’m not ready? Then what?”

“Then you probably already have the answers my dear.”

Ouch, that stung a bit.

I’m preparing for Palm Sunday and Holy Week and this assignment is tugging fiercely at my soul. As much as I’d like to be “busy” with all the beautiful rituals of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Vigil, and, finally, the joyous Easter Sunday, I know my soul is being called to enter deeply into quiet time alone with God. If the very Son of God could struggle through His own Agony in the Garden, who am I to try to deny my painful struggle?

So Then What Happened?

The Prodigal Son - Luke 15: 11-32

“So then what happened?” I was always a total bookworm as a kid and this was always my favorite question. I loved to read but hated coming to the end of a book because I was always left wondering what happened after the happy ending. Okay, I admit this is still my favorite question. Probably even more so now that I have enough life experience to know that “happily ever after” doesn’t necessarily mean “happy all the time ever after”. That leads to another question – “Why don’t I ask that question of the scriptures?”

Returning yet again to one of my favorite parables, The Prodigal Son, I have never questioned what happened after the big welcome home party. In earlier posts, I have explored his lengthy journey home, his brother’s judgmental attitudes, and his father’s unfailing love. But what about the son’s life after that? Did he settle down and take his place on his father’s estate? Did he make peace with big brother? Did he swear off his wild ways forever and completely? What do these questions mean for me on my journey?

I always pictured the prodigal son returning home, putting his disgrace behind him and becoming a model son. Reality tells me that this is highly unlikely. I know I struggle with the same things in my spiritual life over and over. I come back to the one line in the Act of Contrition that I can always remember and I beat myself up for not being able to “go forth and sin no more”. How unfair! How unrealistic! The Sacrament of Reconciliation was never meant to be a one-shot deal. There’s a reason it’s offered every week. As a flawed human being I will always have things that I struggle with and God knows that, which is why His mercy and forgiveness are always there for us.

So the prodigal son most likely had his moments, too. He probably got enough of his older brother’s condescension or his father’s too-high expectations. He probably took his weekly wages into town on more than one occasion and partied like a rock star, only to come crawling home again broke and disgusted with himself. Only now instead of staying away from the estate starving and slopping hogs, he knew he could come home and brush off the dirt. He knew he was still worthy to sit at his father’s table. No matter whether big brother ever accepted him or not, his father loved him. He knew he would always be welcomed home with open arms. It’s a lesson I’ve always struggled to accept.

But I’m slowly learning it’s time to lighten up on myself a bit. I will always be welcomed at God’s table, even when I’m struggling and don’t have it all together. Being a perfectionist can be exhausting emotionally and spiritually. Somehow I’m starting to think that seeking perfection will always be my greatest flaw. But only God is truly perfect. He must laugh at my silly journey from imperfection to imperfection, knowing I’ll need Him to forgive each inevitable flaw that marks my earthly path. I’m glad God has a sense of humor.

The Ides Of March

Pink Lady's Slipper

For much of my life, March has been a difficult time of year. Dad passed away March 28, 1987, on my 14th birthday. His funeral was March 31st, my sister Kitty’s 32nd birthday. Kitty passed away very suddenly 11 years later. The reminder of those losses is tough to get away from and, yet, at the same time March has always been my favorite time of year. This past week, I’ve watched the crocuses start to appear as the last of the snow melted away. I’ve seen birds return to brighten the still dormant trees with colors and their songs.

Dad loved nature. He saw beauty everywhere and in everything around him. He was famous for his long hikes into the woods to photograph and catalog wildflowers. One spring he dragged all six of my older siblings with him to hike up a long hill to the same spot week after week, just to capture the budding and blooming of a single Lady’s Slipper. Dad saw much of the world that way. He could capture a single fleeting moment in time with his camera lens and he could also do it with his mind. He would remember the tiniest details most people would never have noticed. He taught me to be an observer of life and the world around me. I’ve never forgotten that and I never will.

Maybe due in part to that observer’s perspective, I’ve often felt like an outsider. I’m the youngest of seven children, five girls and two boys, but there’s 10 years between me and the next youngest. I might as well be an only child. I moved twice in grade school from New Jersey to Kansas to Connecticut, each time I had to learn to deal with being “the new kid”. Then I married and had my children at a younger age than many of my friends. As I’ve become more involved in their school and in our parish, I am often the youngest one by at least a decade.

As a writer, I’ve learned to embrace that “outsider” feeling as a designated observer status, a sort of press pass for life. I tend to look at life differently than most people. I notice little but important details that can change my whole perspective. I’ve learned to capture those unique fleeting moments in time with the tip of my pen. God has blessed me by surrounding me with all the world’s tiny details and giving me the eyes to see them and the words to record them for others.

I’ve often written about my struggles with my faith, my shortcomings, and the battle with the gremlin that lives in my head. These last few weeks in March remind me of my Dad and all the wonderful things I learned from him. Losing Dad at such a young age from a terrible and agonizing disease was devastating. Yet I’ve cherished all that he taught me so much more because it’s all I have left of him.

As my children have grown old enough to pay attention, I take the time to point out to them the beauty in the world around them. I show them the flowers, the birds, and the constellations. I teach them all the names of the natural world that Dad taught me. I beat myself up too often for being impatient with them for just acting like typical little boys. As if to remind me to lighten up on myself, six-year-old Eugene looked up at the stars coming home the other night, stopped on the driveway with his head tipped all the way back and picked out Orion in the night sky. “That’s what I’m named after!” he cried out. He’s right. Eugene was Dad’s middle name and Orion is the first constellation that Dad taught me to find. It was one of those precious “good Mommy” moments when I knew for certain that I’d given him something special to cherish.

Deacon Ron’s favorite question for me is always “Where’s God in all this?” Dad gave me the answer when I was still a little girl. He’s everywhere and in everything all around me. This time of year, as the frozen winter fades away and spring’s gentle warmth returns, I see God’s face in every new flower and hear His voice in every bird’s song. I love having designated observer status.

Spiritual Homework

When I saw Deacon Ron last month, he gave me his customary spiritual homework, asking me to go back through my writings, public and private, to pick out the recurring themes. “That’s easy,” I told him, “The road. There’s always a road, a destination, a search for direction, traveling too fast, a million speed bumps, my own recklessness, then ending up wrecked and hurt.” Now after almost two years, I should know better than to say something so simplistic. Deacon Ron isn’t about to let that type of response slide by unanswered. So he added to my homework. Besides searching out any other possible themes, I was told to focus my time on the road.

How was I traveling? What model car was I driving? Was I alone or was there someone with me? Who? How fast was I going? When I crashed, did I get blindsided or did I see it coming and couldn’t stop? Then what? Did I get back into the same old beat up car and race off with the bumpers dragging or did I start fresh in a shiny new car?

Deacon Ron certainly knows how to appeal to my creative imagination. Which leads to a major theme I’ve noticed in my writings. God has always, without fail, surrounded me with people I needed to get me through the various stages of my life.

My mother, who opened her home to me, my two young boys and our dog, complains every month that I’m insane to have chosen a spiritual director who is over an hour away on the opposite side of the state. I wasn’t looking for a spiritual director. Like most of my spiritual life, I sort of stumbled into spiritual direction. I attended a week of guided prayer and was randomly assigned to Deacon Ron. We just clicked and by the end of the week I knew I would be calling him again to talk. A few months later I was driving to his office and have been every month since. At the time, my futile attempts at marriage counseling were winding down and my guilt over the increasing possibility of divorce was at an all-time high. Deacon Ron not only helped work me through the guilt but also strongly encouraged me to seek out a therapist for myself to help me through the process. He specifically told me to ask Fr Tom for a name. So I did. Fr Tom sent me to Michael, and I would never have made it through without Michael’s help. Yet another of God’s “random” people in my life.

God had sent Fr Tom into my life only months after Dad died. Fr Tom has been like a father to me. All through school, he knew about my teachers, my grades, and my boyfriends. Later he performed my wedding, baptized my children, counseled us in our crumbling marriage and has helped me to start the annulment process. Throughout he’s been a constant reality check for me. He’ll call me out when he knows I’ve screwed up and yet he’s the best confessor I’ve ever had because he knows me so well. There’s no ducking responsibility with Fr Tom. He forces me to keep my relationship with God very, very real.

This list of people God sent me could go on and on but there were some other important themes I found as well. Fear, trust or lack of it, acting like a spoiled brat with God, seeking direction and answers to questions I’m afraid to ask, moving too fast to see or hear God my life, having difficulty accepting myself as is, and seeking honesty in my relationship with God. I have focused a great deal of time and ink to all of the above and yet they all come down to one thing – a struggle. I have viewed much of my life as a struggle. I’ve struggled to get past grief, past the hard times -- even past the past. While writing this, I’m asking myself “When did I live? When was I not struggling just to survive life?” Those are hard questions for me to face. I have faced hard times, this is true, but my life is easy compared to what many people face in their lives.

It’s not just with God that I need to be honest but it’s also with me. I don’t allow myself to just let go emotionally. This day it may be because I’m recovering from a horrible 24-hour stomach bug that drained off seven pounds and I’m still delirious, but I’m allowing the emotions to surface tonight. I’m grateful for that. God has given me so much more than I would have ever thought to ask for or even guessed that I would need. The friendships alone in my life are all God-given gifts.

As for the other recurring themes, on the rare occasions when I’ve let God guide me and accepted that He knew what He was doing even if I thought He’d lost His mind, I was always blessed in ways I could never have imagined. He doesn’t want me to struggle so much. He wants me to let go and trust that He’ll be there to guide me, to comfort me, to support me, and most of all to love me.

And yes I know I haven’t addressed any of Deacon Ron’s road test questions. I’m still struggling with that added assignment. Maybe it’s time to ask my Divine Co-pilot for some road rules.

Stained Reflections

Lent has arrived with its quiet dusting of ashes and with the hushed call to repent. I’ve learned to love the season of Lent for its somber silences. Deacon Ron has asked me to expand beyond my prescribed 30 minutes a day silently spent in the church. Some days I can sit quietly but many days I wander the Stations of the Cross or meander through the little shrines. On one of my restless days, I took this photo. Outside was a clear, sunny day and the sunlight was streaming through the windows painting the dim church with brilliant colors. But it was this reflection on the floor that caught and held my attention. The bright colors of the window appear on the marble floor but there they are muted and flecked by the patterns of the stone. God handed me a beautiful metaphor. I love it when He does that. It’s one of the ways I’ve learned to recognize that He shows His love for me in ways I could never imagine.

Like the reflection on the floor, Lent is a time for me to reflect on my spiritual flecks, my imperfections, each having their regrettable and hard-to-forget patterns. That’s a lot of reflecting to do. What I’ve found over time is that there are some areas of my heart that I don’t like to think about. I push these thoughts aside and go on improving what doesn’t need improving. God just waits patiently, knowing sooner or later, something will trip up my denial and I’ll be face-to-face with those pieces of myself that I’ve worked so hard to cover up, much the way I used to try to hide adolescent blemishes with every make-up trick known to women. And just like the make-up, my spiritual cover-ups don’t hide much either. What do I do now? Cry usually. Then rant, rave, write madly in my journals, go back to God and tell Him its all His fault because, damn it, He made me this way.

When I’m finally ready to be honest with myself and with God, I admit that I’ve struggled for years with my Irish temper and my lack of patience. I’m honest with myself about my judgmental tendencies both toward others and toward me (see the Prodigal Daughter and the Gremlin posts). What I’m not so quick to admit is that I am a spiritual spoiled brat. It goes way beyond spiritual naiveté. I’m still looking for a Daddy-like God who will make it all better, make all the bad stuff go away, and make it all nice for me. Now I’m grown up enough to know better and I’ll accept that God doesn’t work that way, but I’m still going to whine about it first.

I’ve worked very hard to at least become mindful of my temper and impatience. I have returned to the Sacrament of Reconciliation because I know I need that reassurance of the Lord’s forgiveness and mercy. I know that He can heal my wounded heart, which often exacerbates my unloving actions. I also know that He can heal those that I have hurt by my actions or inactions, and that relieves me of my guilt.

But no matter how polished my stony heart becomes, there will always be imperfections because like everyone else in Creation, I’m a flawed human being. But that’s just it. God created me to be a human being, not a human doing. He doesn’t hand me a quarterly performance review with an improvement plan attached to it. He asks only that I have an open, honest, loving relationship with Him. When I do, I reflect His love outward towards others. That reflection is muted and flecked by my imperfections but the beauty of His love shines on me anyway and the stains become less noticeable. No cover up required.