Explaining The Gremlin

In many of my earlier posts I have made reference multiple times to the Gremlin in my head. Well, meet the Gremlin. I didn’t draw this but it’s pretty close to the way I picture him. I wish I could capture his voice for you. It’s eerily familiar. It’s soft and low, yet has a screechy quality to it. When it laughs, it has a maniacal cackle that just ripples with derision, delight, and desecration.

I guess most people would picture that whole angel/devil on the shoulder bit. Same idea roughly but this little dude doesn't poof away when I make a good choice. He keeps whispering that I'll just mess that up too. I've had the Gremlin my whole life and from what I've seen, everyone has one to some extent or another. I've just chosen to personify mine more than most people. To be perfectly blunt, it makes it easier to deal with the little bastard.

No, I am not on any meds and I am not schizophrenic. To simplify, I use the image of the Gremlin to come to grips with my own self-doubts and self-punishments. The Gremlin is that nasty, little voice that says things like "You're fat" and "You're a screw-up" and basically questions every move I make. I take a new job. The Gremlin says, "You can't handle it." I'm doing well at the new job. The Gremlin says, "You're screwing it all up and they will fire you sooner or later." I meet somebody and the Gremlin says, "You aren't good enough for him" or "He's soooooo out of your league, loser!"

This same Gremlin talks about other people too. My ex is a favorite topic lately. "He's trying to screw you over stupid," whispers the Gremlin and I will fly off the handle over something minor. I will get my Irish up & get stubborn only to figure out later it was over something that was no big deal and now I look like a psycho bitch from hell. The Gremlin finds that hilarious.

The Gremlin used to have free reign in my head and he weaseled his way into every thought I had. I reacted to every situation instead of responding to it with a clear mind and heart. Through learning to recognize his voice and his motives, I've managed to lock him into a little cage that he doesn't like very much. It isn't soundproof so he's still chattering but it's easier to ignore him now.

If it weren’t for the grace of God, I’d still be listening to his cruel commentaries. I once asked my therapist, “How do I deal with this crazy little voice telling me I’m such a screw-up?” His answer was so simple, “You need to find another voice.” I started asking God to let me hear His voice and to shout down the Gremlin for me. God doesn’t work that way. He won’t shout down the Gremlin, but He whispers lovingly to my heart, while the Gremlin stays locked up in the cage in my mind screaming in rage. More and more I’m learning that anything nasty I think about myself or someone else is probably coming from the Gremlin. I’m learning to ask myself why I’m thinking this way. Am I reacting to something other than what is really there in front of me? And when I need help with the answer, I try to remember to go to God first. Keyword – TRY.

I mean, honestly, would you want to trust the Gremlin for advice? Scary how often I did listen to him. The best advice I’ve gotten so far came at a Healing Mass with Fr. Roy. He said, “You know that voice, not God’s voice, but that other little guy? Yeah, you tell that little guy to go straight to Hell.”

Will You Please Come To Me?

Joel 1
Chapter 2:12-13

Even now, says the LORD, return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning; Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the LORD, your God. For gracious and merciful is He, slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment.

As I write this, Ash Wednesday is a mere 30 days away. I used to dread Lent. It was time to remember all the wrongs I had done and feel miserable, guilty, unworthy, and shamed. Now I look forward to that time. The mercy of God is as boundless as His great love.

Since my return to the sacrament of Reconciliation two years ago, I have often found myself in conversation with people who tell me that they couldn’t possibly come back to God. Not to a confessional. Not to a church. To God. It breaks my heart every time I hear it because I remember so well what that pain is like. It is a loneliness, an emptiness, and a longing that cannot be assuaged.

I’ve had people tell me that I have an “in” with God because I go to church or because I pray. Somehow to them that means that God likes me better. Kind of like the perfect older sibling that Mom and Dad always told you to emulate. It took me a long time to figure out that God doesn’t work that way. I didn’t have to measure up. I didn’t have to fix my whole life all at once. I couldn’t fix it. I needed God’s help. I was so far gone, I needed God’s help to see where I needed His help.

I look at this way, when would I be most grateful to see a trained paramedic: when I’m perfectly healthy or when I’ve been hit by a bus? In life, we all get hit by the bus sooner or later. God is the only one who can find the wounds and begin the healing. He can show us what needs healing and then how to mend it. He is the paramedic, the surgeon, the dedicated nurse and the physical therapist we need to get back to health.

As your sister in Christ, I urge you to take the next 30 days and just think about where you are with God. Maybe Reconciliation seems like a leap off a cliff and returning to church seems like trying to swim across an ocean. But maybe, just maybe, spending a little time talking to the Eternal Therapist would ease those fears a bit. If nothing else, it opens the dialogue. It can’t be any worse than lying on the side of road bleeding to death.

I’ve been there. I was lonely and scared and in desperate need of God’s understanding. I finally found it in the Confessional. The silence wasn’t enough to make His forgiveness real for me. I needed to see a friendly face and hear a reassuring voice. There was no judgment, no shock, only understanding and guidance.

In the Diocese of Bridgeport, every parish will offer the Sacrament of Reconciliation on Tuesdays from 7-9 PM. In other areas, call your local parishes for more information.

Think about it. Pray on it. What else do you have to lose?

Soup Kitchen Salvation

I had a wonderful conversation with a friend of mine recently that really made me stop and think about how I see my faith life. He pointed out that most people are “consumers of God” and like most consumers, there are different price brackets.

For the Wal-mart consumers, their version of a relationship with God comes at a very low cost. They lead nice lives and do nice things trusting blindly that someday God will sit down with them, pat them on the head and open the gates of heaven for them.

Then there is the opposite extreme, the Tiffany consumers. For the Tiffany consumers, that same relationship with God comes at a very dear price. They evaluate and re-evaluate their choices in life. They examine every setback and every trial trying to determine its worth in God’s eyes. Their version of heaven is a lofty goal that must be reached through living lives of near perfection. Every mistake is a glaring black mark on the most permanent of permanent records. There are some who secretly fear that this pricey relationship is out of their reach.

So where do I fit in? After giving myself a little time to consider both options I realized that I don’t fit into either category. I fall into a third category - the soup kitchen. I know I have nothing worthy to offer my God and yet I know I am welcome anyway. And I come to be fed at His table. I come because I am hungry for His love and starving for His mercy. There is no demand to fix what very little I have to offer because Jesus has already paid the price for me. I will eat my fill and whatever mistakes I make are already forgiven because He loves me so much.

God is not a commodity that can be bartered, bought, or sold. God is my life’s breath and the only thing God wants is to love me. His love is the only love that can truly satisfy me and thus allows me be more loving with others, even my enemies. Will I get that loving my enemies thing right all the time? Not even close. And that’s okay too.

Think about your own kids and how much you love them. Remember those times when they screwed up or made choices you knew weren't good ones? Did you love them any less? Of course not.

Being in a relationship with God isn't about getting it right or shaping up. And most important, it isn't about later on after death. It's about right now. The Holy Spirit resides in every one of us - that is God. He isn't out there in space somewhere sipping a peppermint latte and waiting for us with a report card of our lives. He's right here, right now, loving us and desiring only to have a cup of coffee and talk about life. And not in some formal, flowery prose written by some saint 500 years ago but just a chat between very dear friends. It isn't about Him being in a position of power over us, rather it is about being in a relationship of communion, co-union with Him. As for the afterlife, that is the ultimate conversation with God, when we will see Him face to face and our own human faults will fall away. Jesus paid the way for all of us and threw open the doors of heaven to all. All God desires is a real, honest relationship with all of His children.

So when it comes to God – are you still shopping around or are you ready to accept the free gift of His love?

Thanks to R. for the inspiring conversation!

Beloved - Be Loved

I have decided to give up praying. It just doesn’t work for me. I have tried every way I can think of and every prayer people recommend to me but to no avail. I have searched the Internet for prayers that may provide what I need. I read books on prayer and of prayers in search of answers I can’t seem to find. I have a number of books on prayer and spirituality on my bookshelves. I have books about healing, emotional wholeness, grieving, finding my purpose, finding my God-given strengths, and being a prayerful wife, and even a book of love letters from my King. I also have books by St Therese, St Catherine of Siena, and St John of The Cross. I have a Bible, several actually, along with books that explore the meanings of the gospels and Catholic history. I have the Catechism of the Catholic Church and a book of common Catholic prayers.

What I don’t have in this little collection of mine is the one prayer book that, to my knowledge, hasn’t been published. The prayer book that has the prayers such as “Now What The Hell Am I Supposed To Do?” and “Hello? Are You Listening To Me?” along with my personal favorite, “Have You Lost Your Eternal Mind?” Maybe I should publish that prayer book.

I have wasted so many years trying to figure out how to communicate with God. How do I do it right? What prayers and what combination of prayers will unlock the magic door to God’s presence? I approached my spiritual direction sessions as marriage counseling. God and I are supposed to be in this relationship together but I’m not communicating clearly and He’s not listening to me. Maybe if I could just figure out what I’m doing wrong it would be better. Maybe I need to learn more about spirituality or about myself or about the teachings of Christ.

I was so busy focusing on figuring out the right way to talk to God that I wasn’t really talking to Him. I had grown up watching my mother praying her rosary when she was struggling with something but no amount of “Our Father”s and “Hail Mary”s would help me. Why? Because the things I needed to say could not have been written by anyone other than me. Only I could say, “Why did you leave me that day in December of 1991 when I cried out to you?” Only I could say, “I hate You for being silent.” No one else could say that for me. I did finally reach a point that I could get past my inhibitions and say those things. More importantly, I could recognize that the painful things that I needed to express were prayers.

Prayers, like God, are not nouns. Prayers, like God, are verbs in that they are an occurrence and mode of being. God is love and prayer is a mode of being in love. So I quit. There are just no more prayers for me. I’m going to stick with being in love with God. I’m going to tell Him exactly what is on my mind and on my heart. He can handle it. After all, God calls me His Beloved daughter. Perhaps a better way to write that would be “God’s daughter, be loved.”

You Want Me To Say THAT To God?!

"Just who do you think you're talking to?"

"Don't you DARE take that tone with me young lady!"

"You WILL NOT raise your voice to me in my house!"

Any of those sound familiar? Most of those were usually preceded by my full name and "get in here". My parents were no different than most of my friends' parents growing up and my experiences of talking to my parents are pretty typical. I still say, "Yes ma'am" when talking to my mother. I try not to swear in her presence. When Dad was still alive, I never would have even considered sassing him. Some things just aren't done. Mom says we all had "some sense of survival". All of that respect for authority makes for a very polite child. That's a good thing right? I certainly want my boys to respect me and being polite is one way to show that respect.

Now take that polite, respectful child and put her in a relationship with God the Father, the Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth. Wow - better be really, really polite and respectful right? The problem is I was so concerned with being proper and respectful that I rarely admitted the things that weighed most heavily on my heart. I could tell God when others had hurt me; when I was tired; when I was sad or lonely. What I couldn't do was tell God when I was angry with Him. How hurt I was by His seeming apathy towards me. I buried those things deep in my heart and pretended not to notice the pain. Some things you just don't say to God. I carried one huge ugly thorn in my heart for years.

I was only 18 when it happened. I was trying to break up with my increasingly abusive boyfriend and he did not take it well. He flew into a rage that led to a particularly vicious attack. He stormed out of my house leaving me sobbing in a heap. I was so very alone and so desperately wanted Dad to be alive again to protect me from this guy. I was screaming from the depths of my soul and my screams of pain were swallowed up by a dark, cold, and unfeeling nothingness. God ditched me and I was never the same after that. I never really trusted God to be there for me again, not completely.

As I told my spiritual director, Ron, this story he asked me where I thought God was at that point. "How the hell should I know? A round of golf and a 3-martini lunch or He took a coffee break or a nap. But all I know is He wasn't with me," I spat back and I was surprised at the hurt and anger in my own voice.

Then he asked me the craziest question I'd ever heard: "Have you ever told God how much you hate Him for what He did?"

"I can't do that! That's just not right," I answered, quietly shaking my head. "Its not right."

And I was stuck. I had been trying to open up the lines of communication with God for months and it wasn't going very well. Now it was becoming clear why it wasn't going well. I was still relating to God as I would to Dad. I was trying to make Him happy and proud. I was even a little afraid of God so I was respectful and polite but that was preventing me from saying things that would offend. Those words left unsaid were poisoning me. So now what?

Since it was the week before Christmas, Ron told me to take some time and figure out what I was going to give God for Christmas this year. Okay, that's a tall order but wait there's more. Then he told me to figure out what I was going to ask from God this Christmas for myself. I really, really, really don't like asking God for anything for myself. It makes me very uncomfortable and Ron knows that.

My spiritual homework made for a very long week. The day before Christmas, I finally decided give God what little trust I did have and He could do with it what He wanted. I asked God to grant me the courage to say all those awful things I needed to get out of my system and was too afraid to say. I really didn't expect much of an answer despite the fact that I was both giving and asking wholeheartedly.

My answer came Christmas Eve at Mass. Fr Tom picked up the statue of Baby Jesus from the crèche and asked us why God chose to come into human form as a baby. He went on to ask those of us who are parents to remember the first time we held our newborns. I could remember looking at each of my sons and knowing I would never be the same again. I was part of them and they were part of me. Which was exactly what Fr Tom was saying. He went on to remind us that no matter how much our kids screw up, we still have that bond. That is how God relates to each of us. We are His beloved sons and daughters. And I looked at my boys and realized that no matter how many times they had screamed at me, it didn't change how much I love them. I have heard "I hate you!" and "You're mean!" and a host of other things on a regular basis and it doesn't mean they don't love me. They just need to let me know that they are angry. And as that realization sunk it, I wasn't stuck anymore.

A few days later, I finally had "the conversation" with God. I cried and screamed again from that place deep inside as I called up all that old pain. "How could you leave me?" I demanded and this time I could feel Him all around me. I begged Him to let me know that He cared. I suddenly found myself unable to move or cry. I felt the heaviness descend and it took a moment to realize that I was resting in the spirit. I had never experienced this outside of a Healing Mass but the sensation was the same. I was aware but unable to move. I felt as though I had been draped with a warm heavy blanket and that feeling slowly seeped into me. A deep quiet peace took over the place left vacant by the anger.

I can picture God looking at me the way I looked at my babies. I can feel that love in His gaze. I now find myself in a totally new place with God. The lines of communication are wide open and nothing is off the table anymore. I can say anything I need to say and hey cool - no lightning strikes!

Meeting God - Again - For The First Time

I am not one for New Year's resolutions. I have a hard enough time accepting myself "as is" without a yearly reminder to fix something about myself. That being said, I stumbled into a resolution this year that just might be what I need. I have resolved to stop trying so damn hard to deepen my relationship with God. Okay now you're probably thinking I've given up or that I've hit one of those spiritual roadblocks that we all hit along the line. And actually it's neither. I am simply going to relate to God from where I am right now. He gets it and more importantly, He gets me, just as I am right now at this moment.

I have been struggling with so many old wounds and so much of that pain came from trying to understand where God had been in the darkest hours of my life. I have been working so hard to "fix" my relationship with God that I was missing out on the one I already have! I can see all the good that God has worked in my life. He's been working overtime for me and yet I still couldn't completely trust Him because there were those times when it felt like He had abandoned me to the darker side of the world and my own bad choices. While my head could see the love, my heart refused to risk being broken again. That inner struggle is exhausting and spiritually debilitating. I have asked for God's help repeatedly to resolve this and He worked around my childish attempts to blockade myself from His love.

The weekend after Thanksgiving, I took my mother to visit her best friend Nancy, who lives about an hour away in northern New Jersey. We all love to read and Nancy gave us a book that her spiritual director had given her to read. That was how I was introduced to The Shack and I have not been the same since. God's hand was undoubtedly at work as I have read it three times now in a month and have given away copies to my dearest friends, my priest, and even my therapist. I have recommended it to dozens of people, even total strangers in the book store. I will not spoil the plot for those who haven't experienced it yet. And that is what this book is - not just a story but an experience. Those that I have spoken with who have read it all relate to it differently depending on their own life experiences but no one was left unchanged by it.

This is a fictional story of an everyday man who experiences a great tragedy. Then a few years later, he receives a note from God asking to spend some time with him. He spends the weekend with God and what transpires changes him forever. Without being didactic, preachy, or cerebral this story cut right to the heart of my pain and helped my begin to heal the relationship I have with God right now. This is NOT a self-help book. There are no discussion questions or journaling suggestions. It's just a simple story and somehow that made it so real for me. Somehow it was more approachable as a story, not a "how to" book.

If I hit the lottery tomorrow, I would give copies of this book to everyone I could. If you have not made a resolution yet for 2009 - make it to read this story. If the imagery doesn't touch you deeply, at least you will enjoy a well written story.

For more information see the website: http://www.theshackbook.com

Ripples of Generosity

This Christmas season it was my son, Andrew, who reminded me that one of the truly beautiful gifts of Christmas is the gift of generosity. But to truly understand the depth of his simple gift, you must come to understand that it started with the gift of a perfect stranger, a gift that was given nearly seventy years ago, at the height of the Great Depression.

In the summer of 1985, my parents and I went to visit their respective families near East Chicago, Indiana. During that time, Daddy and I, along with his brother Hallie, drove out to the area around Cedar Lake, where they had lived for a time in the late 1930s. “I want you to promise me that you will never forget where you come from,” Daddy told me as we started our walking tour of their old neighborhood.

They showed me the rundown, two-room house that was home to their mother and her thirteen children. They told me how their father had left her alone in the middle of the Depression after moving the whole family to Indiana from Kentucky in search of work. Left alone with a large family to support, my grandmother and her oldest daughter went to work, leaving the older children to mind the younger ones. Daddy and Hallie missed a year of grammar school because they were offered work hauling coal for one of local men which allowed them to earn extra money to buy food. Their family subsisted on navy bean soup and if they were lucky enough to have a little extra money, they could usually buy a hambone with some scraps of meat still on it to add a little flavor to it.

As they reminisced, Daddy told me the story of the year his family could not afford anything at all for Christmas. There was just no money to spare, even for a little meat for dinner. On Christmas Day, there came a knock on the door and there on the stoop was a man from the Salvation Army, with a ham, some vegetables, and a huge bag of gumdrops for the children to share. They feasted like kings that Christmas, because of the kindness of strangers. Daddy never forgot that kindness. He grew up, married his childhood sweetheart, had a large family of his own and retold that story again and again. He gave every year to help those who found themselves in the same dire straights that he himself remembered so vividly.


I was only twelve that summer in 1985, but seeing that tiny house and knowing how frigid Chicago area winters can be, Daddy’s family history lesson left a deep and lasting impression. As soon as I started working at fifteen, I often sought out the Salvation Army kettles for myself. I never forgot the kindness of those strangers from my father’s childhood and so their generosity rippled on into a second generation. I grew up, married and have my own children now. I have often told them the story of my father’s family, so that they will also understand their own family history. Even though Andrew is only nine and Eugene, who is named after Daddy, is only five, they too can now tell the story of that Christmas feast, which to them seems like so very long ago.

This past weekend, I had to take my boys to buy new boots for the winter. In the midst of a divorce and only working part-time which allows me to be home for them when they come home from school, I was being very careful about what I was spending in the shoe store. Andrew, well aware of the fact that I was pinching pennies, opened his own wallet and offered me the money he still had from his birthday back in June. I gave him a hug and told him that no, that money was his to spend on himself however he wanted, and that I would take of things such as boots. I found myself with new appreciation for my grandmother, as we are a long way from the harsh times that she faced.

As we left the store, I stopped to pull out some money to put in the Salvation Army kettle outside and only having one dollar, I gave it to Eugene to put in and told Andrew he could do it next time. He smiled and pulled out his wallet, saying, “No, Mom it’s okay, I’ve got my own money.” He rifled though his wallet and pulled out a twenty. I gently pointed out that he had pulled out a twenty and not just a dollar and he said, “Yeah, I know Mom, but if I’ve had this twenty dollars this long and forgot about it, I don’t really need it that much. They can use it to help somebody who really needs it.” I was speechless and I finally managed to say, “Okay, that’s up to you. It’s your money so you get to do what you want to do with it.”

As we walked outside, they ran up to the kettle and I saw that Andrew had carefully folded the bill so that the denomination did not show. He waited while Eugene put in the dollar I had given him and then flashed me a huge smile and with his eyes dancing with joy much the way Daddy’s used to, he put that twenty dollar bill in the kettle, wished the bell-ringer a Merry Christmas and came running back to me. “Maybe some kid will get something nice for Christmas, like Grandpa did,” he told me as he skipped back to the car.


And so the kindness of strangers ripples on into a third generation and most likely beyond. Andrew and Eugene will grow up telling and retelling the story of a grandfather they know only through old pictures, my childhood memories, and some old cassette tapes of poems that Daddy made for me when I was Andrew’s age. The kindness of strangers ripples on through my siblings, their children, and their grandchildren and through my father’s siblings, only ten of who lived to adulthood, their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

Some seventy years ago, someone gave just a little bit, at a time when the entire nation was in the grip of financial strife and worried about war. That little bit has rippled outward exponentially ever since. I have often wondered, how many other families did that man from the Salvation Army visit that Christmas so long ago? How many of those other families tell and retell their stories of kindness and generosity in the same ways that my father did, carrying that generosity down through the generations?

These past few months, as I have struggled to come to terms with moving back into my parents’ home, bringing with me my sons and our dog, I find myself surrounded by memories of my father. Daddy passed away twenty years ago this past March and yet at times it is as though these walls are whispering to me, calling up all the old stories he used to tell. Even now as I write this, I am sitting at his old roll-top desk with his photograph looking back at me, smiling broadly, with a playful gleam that I had seen so many times in his hazel colored eyes, especially at this time of year.

This Christmas, as I carefully weigh the things my children want against the things I know they need, it was my child who reminded me that the greatest gifts in life are the not the ones that you receive, but the ones that you give away. You see, even if they seem so very small at the time, the ripples of generosity continue outward, well beyond the reaches of time, changing the lives of those not yet born and making this world a better place, if not in our time than, perhaps, in our grandchildren’s time.

For more information on the Salvation Army see their website: http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/usn/www_usn_2.nsf

On Coming Home

Photo taken at an A.A. meeting at the childhood home of Bill W – founder of A.A.
John and I are bottom left and center.

This is my favorite time of year. I feel most at home and most grounded during the crush of the holidays. Now, you’re probably thinking that I need to double up on my therapy appointments because I have completely lost touch with reality. You’re probably saying to yourself, “Who feels grounded when there’s all that running around to do and stuff to get done?”

For starters, there’s Shopping Day, that Monday or Tuesday before Thanksgiving when I get to go fighting through the overcrowded food store. As I make my way through the throngs, I wonder why in the hell all these people can’t shop in some other damn store. I search for the right Butterball turkey - frozen not fresh, the right stuffing bread, the walnuts, the Jell-O, and the right pie fillings. Of course, by the time I get to Aisle 10, they are out of the pie crust mix that I like, so I can either try another one and pray that it browns nicely or resort to the frozen crust with the funny aftertaste. After the sticker shock at the register, it’s home to fit all this food into the refrigerator.

Next comes my favorite, Baking Day, that Wednesday before Thanksgiving when it’s time to make all the pies, the cookies, and the Jell-O molds. Mom and I spend about a half an hour digging out the faded, flour encrusted recipe cards and the bits and pieces of crumbling newsprint that contains the apple pie recipe. It’s okay that a chunk is missing because Mom remembers what that part said, I hope. There’s a flurry of chopping nuts, slicing apples, rolling out the piecrusts, and then mixing the pumpkin pie filling while the apple pie bakes. The smells of chocolate chip cookies, apples, cinnamon, pumpkin, cloves, and nutmeg fill the house as dishes fill the sink. All the while the songs of the Rolling Stones fill the air singing that Time Is On My Side, although I seriously doubt that Mick Jagger and friends ever had to pull off three pies, four batches of cookies, and two Jell-O molds in one day, if ever.

But somehow, in the midst of all that frenzied cooking, I find a deep peace. I breathe in all those smells of home and history as I watch Mom teach my sons how to roll out the scraps of pie dough with sugar, cinnamon, and butter. I remember the thrill when I was first old enough to use the rolling pin and the sharp silver paring knife to cut the dough into little cinnamon rolls. I’d take those homemade cinnamon rolls over Cinnabon any day. Through all of the craziness, I have the sense of doing it all out of love and remember that for over fifty years Mom has also done this all out of love and she did it for more people than I’ve ever fed.

After all the work of Baking Day comes the rigidly choreographed Thanksgiving Ballet. That carefully orchestrated dance of stuffing, turkey, vegetables, biscuits, and the sweet potatoes with the little marshmallows on top that we only make once a year. We count on our fingers, “One to two, two to three, three to – no wait, one to two…” marking the time to see what goes in the oven or on the stove when. By some miracle, it all gets done at the same time and makes it on the table hot. The three days of preparation were worth all the aggravation. We sit down to a fabulous feast and within an hour we’re all swearing that we’ll never eat again, at least until its time for pie.

For two days the house is full of warm smells and warmer memories and yet before we’ve even polished off the last of the leftovers, it’s time to start Christmas shopping. The malls have been transformed into wintry wonderlands of brightly decked, non-religious, politically correct corridors of retail hell. It’s time again to battle the parking lots and crowded stores. Time to navigate the hoards of stressed out, soul starved, penny-pinching zombies all with the same mantra of, “Gotta find it. Gotta get it. Gotta wrap it. Gotta get it all done.” The fabled Christmas spirit is nowhere to be found, unless it’s the Ghost Of Sale Ended Yesterday, or worse yet, the Ghost Of Limit One when you just have to have two. It’s no wonder that we put brandy in the eggnog or in some cases, eggnog in the brandy.

But what the retailers have forgotten is the season of Advent. This is the time set aside to quietly prepare for the birth of our Savior. This was a season my parents never overlooked. After the Thanksgiving china was safely in pantry and the linens were washed and put away, Mom would pull out a little round table. She would iron the red tablecloth to put on it and her favorite statue of Mary would come down off the fireplace mantle to take her place in the center of our Advent wreath with it’s purple and pink candles. Over the years, poor Mary has been knocked over, dropped, and broken a few times. She has been lovingly glued back together but she is a little scarred, a little cracked and a little chipped, kind of like me.

On the first night of Advent, we would gather in the dining room, lined up oldest to youngest. Dad would bless the wreath with holy water and light the first candle. He would read from his worn green bible, then lead us through the Angelus, the Our Father, and the Doxology. The readings from the prophet Isaiah and the Gospel of Luke became the golden threads of our Christmas tapestries. The smell of candle wax and paper matches still brings me back to those quiet gatherings of a big and busy family. Every night for four weeks, we gathered and stood shoulder to shoulder in prayer. We set aside everything we were doing for just a short time. After all these years, I can still hear Dad’s big booming voice, “The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary…” and Mom’s softer echo leading us in response, “And she conceived of the Holy Spirit. Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee…” And the Lord was there with all of us.

No family is perfect and if the picture I’m painting sounds too good to be real, it’s only because this was our family at it’s best. We argued and fought like every other family. There were personality clashes and temper tantrums and drama too. We didn’t all grow up to be saints either. What I did grow up with was a solid grasp of my parents’ faith, not the just the religious practices, but the underlying faith. When I was in my twenties, I walked away from coming to church and yet every year I returned to my religious roots, at least for Christmas Eve. Little by little, I rediscovered the vital role that my faith plays in my life. Religion gave me the words when I found that I no longer knew what to say to God. It provided me with the road map for the long, long road back home to His table.

These past few years have been a roller coaster ride of doubt, fear, illness – first my son’s and then my own, and even my divorce. What brought me through it all wasn’t a Thanksgiving feast or even the love that went into preparing it. It wasn’t a pretty sweater or even the kind thoughts that went into buying it. What brought me through it all was the gift of Advent. It was remembering what it meant to set aside everything else and spend time in quiet, stillness, and prayer. It was remembering what it meant to come home.

During all the upheaval, I had a constant longing to be home, which led me back into the church. At the time, I couldn’t really have explained why I came back but there was a deep need to be there. I came back to Sunday Mass and eventually started coming almost every day. Daily Mass was so quiet and so peaceful. I was there with my two little boys, who were neither quiet nor peaceful. There were many days when I was saying, “Okay Lord, You know I must be completely out of my mind. Why am I even here? To torture myself or to torture them? I didn’t hear a word of the Mass!”

Without fail, every time I had one of those days, someone would come up to me, often a total stranger, and say to me, “We’re so glad you’re here. Keep coming and keep bringing the boys. We love seeing a mom bring her kids. It’s not easy but you’re doing the right thing.”

My family has always loved me and supported me. Now I had added a second family, a spiritual one. One that told me over and over that is was okay if I was struggling just to be there. They reminded me over and over that they were there for me and I gradually learned to rely on them for prayers and support.

My dearest friend John and I have had many conversations over the years about our faith struggles and our individual arguments with God. Most recently, as he has worked through the Twelve Steps of A.A., we have been talking about accepting help from the people God places around us. We have also spent hours discussing God’s will versus our own will and what it means to surrender oneself to God’s will. That kind of surrender requires a great deal of faith and trust. Faith I’m working on but I’m not so good with trust.

“I just wish I knew what He wanted from me. What am I supposed to do now? God isn’t speaking to me. There’s no text messages, no email, no nothing. I want a three-foot flashing neon sign. I want my burning bush,” I complain while John listens patiently and then explains to me yet again that I just have to trust in God’s care for me. Again with this trust thing!

John came to visit me a few months ago and we attended an A.A. meeting together, my first. We walked into a crowded church basement that very quickly was standing room only. The keynote speaker described her experiences of first coming to a meeting.

“I didn’t know why I kept coming back. I just did,” she said in an emotion-choked voice. “I needed to come and the people around me kept telling me to keep coming. ‘Just keep coming back. It’s okay, you’ll get it eventually.’ And I learned to let those people love me until I could learn to love myself.”

I was sitting there in that packed church basement crying and nodding with every word she said. Afterwards, over dinner, I told John how deeply she had touched me and I told him about all those people at daily Mass telling me to keep coming back and that I was doing the right thing by bringing the boys.

“Now Sweetie,” he said in that ‘I-love-you-Honey-but…’ tone of voice, “I thought you said God wasn’t speaking to you. Maybe you just aren’t listening. You know, like when one of your kids puts his hands over his ears and singsongs ‘I CAN’T HEAR YOU!’ and you know damn good and well that he heard you but he just doesn’t like what you said…”
While my initial response to that wonderful insight was something like, “Oh shut up!” I have to admit that my experiences that evening led me to look at my entire faith journey with different eyes. Everything has taken on a new significance for me: from those long-ago nights around the Advent wreath to the newly formed bonds of faith, friendship, and community. Learning to love myself “as is” is proving to be an extremely difficult lesson in acceptance and surrender. But I’m learning to trust that God has surrounded me with the people who will love me until I learn to love myself. There have been times over the past year when I have seen the face of God in someone I barely know and then I know, without a doubt, that I have finally found my way home.

So this holiday season, I don’t just wish you a Merry Christmas. I wish you a quiet and blessed Advent full of the peace, hope, joy, and love of a depth that only God can give. I pray that you never forget the way home. I hope you remember me this Christmas when the church is packed full of those people who don’t show up the rest of the year. When they get the closer parking spaces while you’re parked two blocks away in sub-zero wind chills and they have seats while you’re standing in the back, have patience. Remember that we are all His family and every journey home happens one baby step at a time.


Luke 15:20 – The Prodigal Son – Welcome Home!

“So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him.”

“God created you to create me.”

One day on the way to pre-school with my son Eugene, who was four at the time, he started asking me if God created the houses. I explained that God created people and that people created the houses. He asked if God created trees, then asked about roads, birds, and finally, of all things, poodles. I explained with amusement which things were God’s creations and which were men’s creations. I was thoroughly enjoying his intensity and intelligence this particular morning. Eugene is an exceptionally bright child who has been through his own hell already. He then asked me if God had made him. I explained that God made him up in heaven and then he was in my tummy until it was time to be born. Without missing a beat, he said to me “So then God created you to create me.” I had no better answer than, “Yeah, Buddy, I guess you’re right. He did.”

After all that my Eugene and I have been through, it is always his insightful little soul that catches me so off guard. That one matter-of-fact statement about God’s creation from a child of four who had just had his feeding tube removed had somehow summed up years of soul-searching, intellectualizing, rationalizing, and agonizing over why God had put me on this earth. I always told myself that to have created me as one crazy, screwed up, self-deluded, self-hating individual, He must have also created bourbon and had a few on the day He made me. Then I had kids.

Kids are God’s way of telling you to lighten up. Kids teach you that rain is good, mud is better, and puddles are the best. Watching them, you learn that dogs make great therapists since they listen, look interested, and yet you still have to figure out your own solutions. Kids also get you to look at your faith. Really, really look at your faith and no, not that religion that you have practiced for years without giving it much thought. They ask hard questions about what you actually believe about God, life, death, creation, prayer, and heaven. I think I missed a couple chapters in the parenting books I read when I was pregnant, because I was totally unprepared for those questions. And yet, I think maybe kids are also God’s way of telling you to quit fooling around with just doing religion and get on with exploring and expanding your faith.

Just Let Go

Matthew 14:22-32

Over time I have found that of all the people in the Bible, with the exception of Jesus of course, Peter is my favorite. He screws up way more often than he gets it right but Jesus loved him and more importantly believed in him anyway. I look at it this way: If I was going to trust my church on earth to anybody, would I really pick the guy who betrayed me three times, cut off a guy's ear, and babbled at all the important teaching moments throughout our entire friendship? That Peter guy? Not my first choice.

Obviously, Jesus knew all of Peter's failings. So what did He see in Peter? Pure faith and pure love. Peter would do anything for Jesus. When the disciples saw Jesus walking toward them on the water, they were afraid. Peter was the one who had the faith to say "If it's you Lord, tell me to come to you." He had the faith to get out of a boat, in a storm nonetheless, and walk across the water. There is no way I would be getting out of that boat! I'd be cowering with the rest of them and thinking Peter's finally flipped his lid. After a few steps, Peter faltered. The wind was so strong and the waves so large that the "real world" around him distracted him from his focus on Jesus. As soon as he started to doubt the wisdom of walking out of a boat at sea in a storm, he started to sink. But still Peter believed in Him, even when he doubted and started to sink. He still believed, calling on the Lord to save him. Peter was a fisherman so I'm willing to bet he knew how to swim. He didn't try to swim back to the boat on his own. He trusted Jesus to pull him up out of the waves. That is faith: trusting that Jesus isn't going to lead him into a stormy sea and then let him drown.

Can I doubt and believe at the same time? Sure, I do it all the time. It's called faith. If I believe in something I can see there is no room for doubt or faith, only fact. To believe in the power of Jesus Christ takes faith in something I cannot see, or even truly comprehend, which leaves room for doubt. Doubt is merely the fire that refines faith.

I describe myself as a cradle Catholic but more precisely I am a clumsy Catholic. I grew up in the religion. That does not guarantee faith however. I have staggered and stumbled along my whole life and every time I think I might almost have a clue, I find out I don't. I go to Mass several times a week and on the holy days. I receive the sacraments and, being a Vatican II baby, I read scripture. None of it is a sure ticket to true faith, only to religion.

But I know what that kind of faith looks like. I saw it in my father's eyes right before he died. He was dying of lung cancer at the age of fifty-four. I was only fourteen then and the last time I saw him, he couldn't say more than a few words at time. He was suffocating slowly and I knew it. It was unthinkable to me that this big, loud, boisterous Irishman, who was always singing or telling some tall tale was about to be silenced forever. I was staring out the window with my mind racing. This was not the way life was supposed to work. He was supposed to see me grow up. He was supposed to walk me down the aisle at my wedding. He was supposed to hold my children and read them the same poems he'd read to me. But in God's plan, he was supposed to leave me at fourteen with an unforgettable image of trust and faith. I had received the sacrament of Confirmation ten days earlier but this moment was truly the confirmation of my faith.

Daddy called me away from the window to sit on his bed. He struggled to sit up straighter so he could look me in the eyes. He was so gray, so haggard looking, and yet there was a light and a peace in his eyes unlike anything I had ever seen before. It was a struggle for him to breathe, much less talk. He had to keep stopping every few words to catch his breath.

Taking both my hands, he said to me, “Well Nudnik, I think you and I both know that I’m not going to be here much longer. You know how much I love you and how proud I am of you. You've been so strong and so brave through all this, but now I want you to stay home. I don’t want you to come up anymore. I don’t want you to remember me like this. We had a lot of really good times and that’s what I want you to remember. And a day is going to come when you are going to get angry, really, really angry and when that day comes, you don’t get to be angry with God. You get angry with me because God never bought me the cigarettes and God never passed me a lighter. I did this to myself. God gave me a gift and I abused it. I just didn’t know back then and even when I found out how dangerous smoking was and I quit, it was just too late. The damage was already done. I’m so sorry that I have to leave you like this but I promise you I will see you again someday. Do you believe me?”

I had tears streaming down my face and I couldn't do any more than nod. But that wasn't enough for Daddy. He took off the oxygen mask and leaned into my face saying, "Tell me what you believe." How I managed to say anything at all when it felt like my throat closing I will never know. But I did tell him that I believed him. I told him I would see him again and he would be whole again. In that moment, we let go of each other, trusting that God would sustain us both, I in this life and he in the next. In that last moment we had together, I could see Jesus in Daddy's eyes and He called me out of the boat into the storm and for just a moment I walked on the waves. In that moment, I understood what faith really was about. It isn't about what you hang on to, it's about what you let go of and trust that God will be there to pull you up when you start to falter, when it's all just too much to take.

My father was right of course. I did get angry but even at the worst of my anger with God, I could hear not my dad's words echoing, but my own. I believe that God will bring us together again, that He will heal my wounds no matter how deep and how awful they seem to me. I believe that I will still have times when I doubt that power but those are the times when He will stretch out His hand to me before I sink beneath the waves. He will never let me drown. And every time I doubt, every time I start to sink, every time He pulls me back up, my faith gets stronger and purer. If I learn nothing else from this life, I will learn to trust Him, eventually anyway.

Thanks Daddy.