The People of Love

As January ends, many souls turn to Valentine’s Day, dreaming of love in their hearts.

Yet even though there are many hearts united to another soul, there is a certain sense of emptiness in the world.

We often think of the suffering around the globe. There are families who starve and die from malaria. There are murderers roaming busy streets, stalking defenseless prey. Divorce rates continue to soar, even though we changed the definition of marriage to be “more inclusive.” What’s worse, the #metoo movement is arguably one of the largest social media campaigns of all time, and it does not look like it is slowing down.

And we’re supposed to believe that love exists?

From the sheer number of rom-com’s and cute love songs, we still seem to believe in the romantic side of love. Some of us are able comprehend that romantic love will become more difficult over time, but even then we are aware of its finite nature. Whether it ends in the tragedy of divorce or the tragedy of death, we all end up alone in some way or another.

How sad.

How incredibly sad.

We are all searching for something more. Somewhere in our hearts resides a hope in a forever love, the kind that prevails over the worst of circumstances. Yet the suffering of this world, whether it be near or far, shadows this little light in our hearts. We look around us and see the absence of love: evil.

No way could love last forever.

No one on Earth could possibly make that work.

But what if love did not come from us? What if love itself was beyond our scope of understanding, and it was given to us in order to heal the broken parts of our world? What if love was more than just a feeling, just a single relationship, just a small thing in our hearts that keeps us going?

The little bit of hope we hold on to is a belief in a love that is transcendent.

Regardless of how we define it, each soul believes in the God of Love.

Unfortunately, there is more to believing in the God of Love than a simplistic faith. Love, being a transcendent gift, is something that needs to be given in order to be received. It is like putting on a shirt. We can look at it online or on an mannequin, but we really do not know what the shirt looks like on us until we see it in the mirror.

Love looks different on every soul, but we have to learn how to give it to others in order to be able to understand that love.

How can we come to understand how to give love if it was not our’s in the first place? If love is in fact from the God of Love, then we need to find it in this God Himself. We have to learn from Him, and we have to do our best to love as He does. After all, we cannot decide to buy a shirt if we have never seen it before. We cannot love if we have never really seen it before.

The People of God believe in a God of Love.

As a result, they should be the People of Love.

But we are not.

If the People of Love were to follow the One who came before them, then they would see that love calls for something far beyond our human comprehension.

Jesus Christ looked at the most hated members of society, and He loved them. Jesus Christ looked at the marginalized, and He welcomed them in. Jesus Christ did not remain quiet when the synagogue turned in to a market place, and He made it possible for any person to enter that space.

And they hated Him for it.

Jesus went against the norm, not fearing being made unclean, because He loved everyone He met.

And He died because of it.

How many of us would really allow ourselves to die for the sake of the most marginalized, most hateful, and most sickly souls? How many of us would be willing to die for the sake of justice? How many of us would allow the love in our hearts to go beyond our fears and bring joy to the hearts of all around us?

I know that I have failed to love in this way.

I fail every day.

The reason why so many souls cannot access love in its fullest is because the People of God do not act like they believe in the God of Love. We as a people make great claims to be kind, generous, and charitable, but instead we cling to rules, to distinctions, to misunderstanding. We choose to separate ourselves from the lost and lonely because we do not wish to make ourselves “unclean.”

I have known so many beautiful souls who were rejected from faith communities because of their past faults, because of their ideologies, because of who they believe they became.

But that’s not what Jesus does.

He does not reject any of us.

It is scary to believe that the God of Love would ever love us. Much like a man bending at the knee to ask his beloved to marry him, so too do we lower ourselves to ask for God’s love. If anything, we must fall to our lowest selves, to our greatest humility, and then we have the opportunity to ask Our Lord for His Heart.

He could not love us. If He is God, then we as humans are unworthy of that love.

Yes, it is true that we are unworthy of His love, but that is why the God of Love is greater than our Earthly loves. God’s love is unconditional, and it goes beyond comprehension. It accepts our very lowest selves, and it raises us up to be the people we are meant to be.

However, we must be willing to lower ourselves and encounter this One.

Then He may love us.

That is where many of the People of God stop. We “encounter” Christ, but then we say that there is no need for Earthly things anymore. We go away from the clubs, the degenerates, the injustices done on our brothers and sisters, and we ignore them. We ignore the little souls we encounter, solely because we do not want to be any smaller than we already are. We want to be “important” to God.

But if we do not give the love we received upon encountering Christ, then we will never know how beautiful it is on our hearts.

All we know is what we hear in stories, what we experience in the Sacraments, and in the hymns we sing.

To be loved is to love the loveless.

“What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it?

And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy

And, upon his arrival home, he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them,

“Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.”

I tell you, in just the same way there will be more joy in Heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.”

~Matthew 15:4-7

We are all in need of love. However, those of us who are surrounded by love and acceptance often take for granted just how great this love can really be.

Think of this little sheep: it was probably scared. It was probably hungry. It was probably thirsty. Surely, the shepherd rejoiced, and we cannot focus on that, but let’s take a moment to think of how the little sheep must have responded to returning to its flock. That sheep must have eaten and drank more than ever before. That sheep must have rushed to its siblings and played more than ever before.

The sheep would have noticed the change in the flock.

And that would have made a huge difference in their lives, even if but for a moment.

There are so many souls that believe they are loveless. They believe that there is such a thing as love, but they do not know where to find it. They do not know that they can receive this love. All they know is that they are alone, that they are sad, and that they have been searching for something that seems unreal.

The shepherd sees this lost sheep, and He calls its name.

But the shepherd is far away, unseen by the world.

So He sends His people, the People of Love, to aid these little souls. His call is abnormal, and many of us are unwilling to accept this call.

Then He said to all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross” ~Luke 9:23

To love the loveless means that we have to be reminded of our own cross. We see the suffering, and we are reminded of how our own sins, our own struggles, our own heartbreaks hurt our hearts. We see the pain and ache and the sorrow. It is too much for us to bear, and so we run away from the little souls that God calls us to love.

However, if we draw near to these little souls, we can prop up their cross with our own.

And we can walk home with them.

Loving the loveless requires us to humble ourselves and recognize that no matter how much love we have in our lives that we are not perfect. We must empty ourselves of our pride and admit to our faults. Then, as we draw near to these souls through our littleness, we can look to the love of God.

We share our hearts with the broken-hearted, and they can see the God of Love within our hearts.

It will look different for every soul, but God will do great things through our little acts of love.

Remember the little sheep who returned to the flock? Remember how much of an impact that one soul had in the flock, even for a moment? Well, that is exactly how the souls we love back in to the fold respond.

When we give ourselves in love, it returns in a greater form.

I’ll give an example. There was a soul who believed in the God of Love, but they did not say ‘God.’ Instead, they said that they believed that love could be real, but perhaps the God who made that love would not give it to them. I watched as they wandered, desperately trying to give their love to someone, anyone, who would be willing to love them back.

They were alone, and they were tired from walking.

But they were not the kind of person I would ever associate myself with. If I were to love this soul, then I would be considered “unclean.” People in my faith community might judge me for spending time with this loveless soul.

Yet with every passing day, with every downcast gaze, my heart broke.

So I loved them. I loved them in my own little Felicity way. It was a mixture of prayers and intercessions from saints and smiles. It was a joke and a hug. It was a series of small acts that many would say were unnecessary. After all, these souls could never love a little girl like me. I was too innocent, too small, too “holy” to ever make an impact on their lives.

But with each passing day, each upward glance, each smile, I saw their hearts change.

Then there came a day where my heart was broken. I was lonely because I had gone against God’s call for me. Reading scripture made me weep. Mass was nearly unbearable. How could I possibly believe that what little love I had in my heart could really matter if I was so weak?

I walked past the soul with tears streaming down my face.

And they smiled at me.

Not just once, but every day following that day. It was a small act, yes, but it was the greatest act that they could perform for me. Love came in to their life, and although they had a long walk Home, they believed in the God of Love that was once merely a fantasy. They smiled at me, reminding me that we were walking together.

The love God gave me was given to this soul in humility, and it was returned to me in excess.

No longer do I fear losing my title, my esteem, my faith, my beauty for the sake of loving another soul.

So my Dear Readers, do not be afraid to lower yourselves for the sake of the souls around you. There are so many souls who believe that they are loveless. They are not loveless, but rather they are lovely. All they need is for us to empty ourselves for their sake.

Do not fear their response.

Do not fear rejection, because Christ was rejected. Do not fear division, because Christ stood in the midst of divisions. Do not fear death, because Christ was crucified.

Do not fear love, because Christ was resurrected.

Love Saves Lives

The world is messed up. 

No one is ignoring the fact there are many injustices in the world. Some of us focus on very particular issues, but no one can say that the world is perfect. Many hypotheses have come up over the millenia as to why there is such heartache and chaos in the world.

Regardless of the root cause, we all know that our strife is caused by evil.

Evil is real. It is the absence of love, and the world is aching for love to enter our darkness and make all things right again.

Love is real my Dear Readers. It is so real, and I have spoken at great length about this love that each person can participate in. Love is not distant, and it is not something that we have to wait for. If anything, we are choosing to focus on the evils of this life and look away from true love.

How do we find this love?

We have to start truly encountering others and loving them if we are going to change the world for the better.

I learned this lesson at the March for Life in Washington DC this past weekend.

Growing up in a Catholic household, I have learned quite a bit about what it means to be truly pro-life. To be prolife does not mean you just care about abortion, although that is a main focus. Being pro-life means that you recognize that each life has an immeasurable worth, and that we cannot just decide who deserves to live or not.

To be pro-life means to be pro-peace.

To be pro-life means to be pro-diversity.

To be pro-life means to be pro-equality.

To be pro-life means to be pro-love from conception to natural death.

However, I did not realize how much of an impact that worldview would really have on me. The pro-life movement seemed like some sort of fantasy where we all love one another, regardless of our backgrounds. We say that we value every life, but I know that there are people I would rather not spend extended time with. Should one’s recognition of the dignity of each human person, from conception to death, really change the way we encounter one another?

This thought struck me the hardest when Notre Dame reached the March For Life Rally.

It was right after we took this picture.

Seriously....this group is incredible in both heart and size.

I ran in to a few folks that I knew, but I could not even talk to them. (Sorry to those of y’all who had to endure my inability to speak following the picture). Why? Well, we were on top of a hill, and we could see all of the people coming in to the March. Unlike any other protest I had seen, these people were completely normal looking. Outside of the bright white Notre Dame hats, the multi-colored scarves from other schools, and the flags, it looked like a completely normal mass of people.

But they were happy.

From all corners of the hill, I could hear people laughing. I could hear joyful chatter, cheers for the babies they saw walking with their parents, prayers raising all around me, and not a single tear on the faces of those around me.

So many happy faces.

How could such joy be real? How could this joy make an impact on policy? How could we possibly save the lives we wanted to protect if we were so happy? Were we not fighting the most difficult battle?

I felt so small.

Even though I am a very loud person, I tend to feel like I am on the outside. Perhaps it is because of my developmental differences, perhaps it is because I am a very passionate Cell Biologist, perhaps it is because I am a devout Catholic in science, or perhaps it is because I love my family more than anyone else on Earth. Regardless, I have always felt particularly small on this Earth.

So when I saw all of the faces that shared the same joy as me, I felt even smaller. Could my one life make a difference for the millions of souls lost to a choice that they could not make for themselves?

The commissioner for our Notre Dame group said that we needed to encounter everyone around us at the March. After all, we were all in support of all life. Not just before birth, but for the entirety of our lives until we meet again in Heaven.

I honestly thought he was just trying to build community in the 1000 strong ND students.

Then, as we were walking up to get in the front of the March, I saw my friend through the crowd. He ran up to me with arms wide open for a hug. Sure, he was as amped as a person could be, but that did not discredit the genuine nature of this embrace.

I only know this individual from teaching religion. I hardly have any impact on his life, and yet he went out of his way to greet me.

I no longer felt alone in the crowd. 

I was a beautiful little soul who had worth. I was worthy of someone going out of their way for half of a second to give me the hug that I so desperately needed. Joy returned to my face, and I turned to my friends with a huge smile. I wanted every single person around me to feel like they had been heard, like they could be seen, like they were a human being with immeasurable value.

Inspired by the little bit of love I received from my friend, the small band of graduate students started to encounter every person around them.

We did push-ups like it was a football game. We encouraged the sophomores struggling through Organic Chemistry. We laughed about the weather, the slow pace of the march, and the giant jackets tied around our waists. We introduced each other to our friends, and we swapped stories of everything under the sun.

And then the March began.

As I marched, I noticed that not only my group, but every person in the crowd was inspired to share the value of each soul around them. Because we believed that each person was worth love, we treated one another as though they were worthy of the best life they could live.

We danced. We ran. We skipped. We laughed. We held hands.

We celebrated the lives of everyone around us.

What’s interesting about these sorts of things is how having a large group can change the way you see the cause. Because Notre Dame had over 1000 people in white hats, we were easily broken up amongst the several other hundred thousand people. Regardless, we were still way in the front, and we made our best effort to continue leading the pack towards the Capitol Building.

Intriguingly, we kept running in to the people we intentionally encountered at the beginning of he March.

Obviously these were unplanned encounters throughout the course of the March, but each encounter held a different set of meanings for each member of my party. Depending on how well we got the know the soul beside us, we had a completely different experience.

But each encounter mattered.

And each encounter ended with a smile.

This is what life is supposed to be like. We are all walking along this path called life, and there are billions of people around us. People may be beside us for the entire journey, but the majority of the people we love will slide out of our lives for a time. Sometimes they will come back, as many of the souls we met at the beginning of our march did, but sometimes we will not see them until after the March is over.

But we will never get to share in the joy of another life if we are unwilling to acknowledge them.

There were a few individuals that my group were slightly hesitant to greet at first, but we knew that if we did not acknowledge them that we would miss out on an opportunity to share in their joy. For me, as a small soul, it meant the world to me to tap someone on the shoulder, smile up at them, and acknowledge that I loved them in the midst of hundreds of thousands of other souls.

So from the closest of friends to the little boys who gave me high fives, thank you for letting me love you on this March.

My Dear Readers, we can all love one another in this way.

It is not difficult to love souls near us. All it takes is a smile and acknowledging their presence. My friend’s hug at the beginning of the march changed my entire perspective on my position in the pro-life movement; why should our little acts of kindness do any less?

No one is going to hate you for being kind to them. Even if you broke their heart. Even if you have a different political view. Even if you are from different religious backgrounds. Even if you are not from the same countries.

To be pro-love means to be willing to encounter others with kindness and courage.

And to be pro-love is to be pro-life.

I saw this when we were three-quarters of the way through the March. We came across a multi-cultural band playing Salve Regina.

People from all religious backgrounds, of all races, of all tongues, joined together in a song. We joined together to praise a woman who was pregnant out of wedlock in a society that would rather stone her than see the child. We praised a woman who chose to give birth in the worst of conditions. 

We praised a woman for choosing life because of love.

That is a story that all races, all genders, all sexual orientations, all backgrounds can honor.

Tears flowed from my face. Yes, it was love that brought us all together in this place. We were not speaking out against abortion. We were not speaking against doctor-assisted suicide. We were not speaking out against war. Instead, we were speaking for those who want to love and want to be loved. We are speaking for the women who feel trapped by a society that does not understand her desire to love a child conceived through rape or another tragedy. We are speaking for families that are filled with love. 

We are speaking for love.

It was this love for every soul, regardless of their circumstances, regardless of their smallness that brought us together.

That is why the pro-life movement is so happy. It is not because they are tripping on some weird cult juice. It is not because they are deluded Christians. It is not fake, and it is not someting that the media makes up. The joy of the pro-life movement is in the purpose of the pro-life movement.

To be pro-life is to acknowledge each soul for what it truly is.

To be pro-life is to see someone and say, “I love you.”

When you are seen for who you were meant to be, you realize that you belong on this earth, and you realize that you are worth just as much as any other person around you. When you are loved by another person, from a stranger to a soul who has known you for years, you are reminded of your infinite worth.

This world is deprived of so much love, and without love, the evil in our world seems to flourish.

But evil will not win.

Why?

Because Love Saves Lives.

Testimony of Love

It’s no secret that I am a hopeful romantic.

Many would think that this is a predisposition and that the only reason why I believe in love is just a biproduct of societal pressure to find love. Sure, there is an aspect of that in my heart. However, my desire to love and be loved goes far deeper than romance.

It’s the core to my original testimony story.

This week I am going to share my original testimony story again with the lens of love.

I will say that much has happened since my Junior Year of High School and that I have a lesser known renewed testimony. It is a great tale, but until my Dear Readers are aware of God’s desire for me to love and be loved in the purest sense, I do not think I will be able to share it freely.

So here’s my story.

I grew up with the most loving family in the world. From a very young age I was told to “see Christ in everyone,” and each child was inspired to live their best lives while serving everyone they met. I learned how to forgive easily, and I learned how to love the loveless souls.

It was never a question if we would love someone or not. The only question was “how do I love this person best?”

My parents set the example of true love and support. We always knew that our parents love us and that they loved one another. No matter the issue, Team Newton could work it out together. Every evening we would gather together and say a simple set of prayers, and we learned to offer up our own intentions with a smile and a laugh.

It was there where I learned how to love, and it was there where I learned what true love looked like.

More importantly, I leraned from there what it meant to love as a woman. 

My mother gave her entire life for her family. She never complained, even when my siblings made things difficult or if she was not feeling well. Every time we fell down, my mother took care of us. She gave of herself, sacrificing so much, just so that each child could smile. My mom taught me that a woman’s ability to sense the needs of others and give of themselves wholeheartedly is the truest love one could ever experience.

The world does not like pure love. Because of the brokenness of our world, people reject the possibility that we could love unconditionally. We see a person acting in genuine kindness, and we immediately question its authenticity.

Far worse…many will see the innocent love from a woman and will take advantage of her.

That is what happened to me.

My first boyfriend was part of my core group of friends. As per usual, my friends lived particularly difficult lives. I have already written about my best friend, an intelligent young man whose entire live was in the shadow of abuse and addicition, but there were many other heartaches in my group of friends. I acted as their therapist, but I did not think of it as such. I simply wanted everyone to experience love.

My boyfriend saw this, and he took advantage of it.

I wanted to give my whole heart to my new boyfriend. He immediately recognized it, and so he decided to take everything away from me for his own benefit. One by one, my boyfriend convinced me to stop talking to all of my friends. Then he told me how to dress, how to talk, and how to approach my education.

I should have recognized this, but I did not believe that a person could be so manipulative.

However, when I realized how much my best friend was hurting, I returned to his side, thus ending my first ever relationship.

This made our group fall apart at the seams. Even though we knew that it was not good for me to be with my ex, everyone decided that it was better before we started dating. Time and time again, I heard my ex telling the entire school that it was my fault that there was so much drama. If I would just let him in again, then maybe everything would be ok again.

So I allowed my ex back in to my life. Most people saw that we would talk in band again, but no one knew how deep it went.

Every night I would receive dozens of text messages about how I was the worst person in the world.

Text after text came through the darkness of my bedroom, and with each light in the darkness, the light in my heart started to fade. My ex, now secret boyfriend, told me over and over and oer again that it was my fault that people were losing a sense of love in their lives. The girl who wanted nothing more than to love other souls was now being convinced that it was her very decisions that caused all of the pain in my friends’ hearts.

My ex told me that my best friend stopped believing in God because of me.

It was a blatant lie, but my broken spirit believed it.

Suddenly, I started to blame myself for all of the pain in the world. I was a terrible sinner, and I was so terrible that I made others think that God’s love could not possibly be real. A person like me did not deserve true love. A person like me did not deserve protection. A person like me could not possibly bring light to the world.

I believed that God could never love me again.

My disbelief in love took me away from the truest love I knew. In the chaos caused by losing God in my mind, I lost any semblance of love in my heart. No longer did I share my life with my parents, and I continued to keep my relationship with my ex a secret. No longer did I spend time with my siblings, and I would hide in my room, pretending to be doing my math homework. No longer did I attend my LifeTeen events.

I did not want to love anymore. I did not want to hurt anyone anymore.

I had forgotten what it looked like to be truly loved.

But God would not let me go.

In came a new boy. Let’s call him Chad. Chad was a really attractive guy, just the kind of guy I would like. He was thin and had gorgeous eyes. He smiled at me, and he seemed to listen when I talked. Because I did not want anyone to find out about my secret relationship, I agreed to go out with Chad.

But then Chad called me, and he told me that in order to keep our relationship going that I would need to sleep with him.

Something awoke in my heart when I heard Chad’s conditions for our relationship. For my entire life, I believed that God made someone for me who I could give my whole self to in love. I believed that love was forever, and I knew that my husband would be a man who lived in truth. Even when I was with my ex, I never considered giving myself physically.

My faith in my beloved was the one last light in my heart. It was the one thing that my ex could not touch, and it was not for a lack of trying.

So then I did what I had not done in months: I talked to my parents.

It was this little act of virtue, spurred on by the Holy Spirit, which brought me back to the love which served as the foundation for my entire life. My parents both helped me get out of my relationship with Chad. In that moment, I was reminded of what it meant to be loved and to love.

However, I was so afraid of my past that I continued to date my ex in secret.

Eventually my mother told me that she knew about my secret relationship.

All of my pain came rushing to my heart. All of my mother’s pain, felt in what childish empathy remained in my sinful state, came rushing to my very soul. I apologized profusely, and I promised to never do that again.

My mother told me that she would help me, and she forgave me. Had that been me, I do not know if I would have forgiven with such grace. That is why I was not a mother at that moment, and that my mother was the one to love me. In that moment, I started to understand how much sacrifice was needed for true love. 

It was not sacrifice just of self, but sacrifice of one’s aches for the benefit of another soul. True love did not mean that I had to make someone happy, but rather it meant that I had to love the best version of themselves and give what little I had for their sake. Forgiving others saves our souls, for as we forgive others, Our Father forgives us. 

My mother knew this in her heart, and she saved me that day. 

All of Team Newton saved me.

I’ll never forget the delight in my siblings’ eyes as I left my phone aside and came downstairs to play with them. They did not ask questions; they just loved me. Even when my mother and I would spend extra time in her room talking about what my ex had done to my heart, they did not question my tear-stained face. They were just happy to have their sister back.

As I spent more time in front of my parents, I started to see what it meant to be loved by a man.

My father supports my mother’s love in more ways than I can even understand. He would see her needs, and he would help out without a word. When my siblings and I were disrespectful or lazy, he would tell us that he wanted us to be better for my mother’s sake. Every action he took while at home was for the benefit of my mother.

When it was difficult for me to hear the heartache caused by my secret, and when my mother told me what I needed to give up, my father supported her words. He would help me understand when I couldn’t understand.

To be loved truly by a man means being free to love with our whole heart and knowing that it is safe to love fully.

I believed Team Newton loved me, and it was that trust which allowed for my heart to be opened again. If it were not for that little act of virtue which gave me the ability to trust in my parents, then I would never have been freed from my relationship which took my light away.

It was my family’s love which allowed for the moment where my heart learned to believe that God could love me again.

I was driving my little brother home from his freshman orientation. He had just gotten back from Stubenville the previous weekend. I convientiently missed the confrerence for dance. It was much easier to tell my parents that I could not go for my dance team than to say that I did not believe that I was worthy of God’s love.

“Do you know what’s cool about God?” Mark asked.

“What?” I nearly stopped my truck in the middle of the road. Mark never openly talked about faith like that, and I was not expecting him to ask me about God. I was not worthy of it.

“Well you know how you feel when you work really hard on a school project? Like when you work so hard on it that you believe that it is the best thing you have ever done? You don’t care what the teacher says or what grade you get because you believe it is perfect?” He paused, “Well that’s how God feels about every person He has ever made. So it doesn’t matter what people think of you or what you have done. He loves you no matter what.”

Then Mark fell asleep. He does not remember this conversation ever happening, but it was the most important moment of my entire spiritual journey up until this past year in graduate school.

That night I prayed for the first time in six months. From that night on, I have been able to look at the Crucifix with joy. No longer did I feel like God could never love me, but rather I felt called to give love to all of the souls who feel like I used to feel. I believed that I was loved, and I did not need to be afraid of love.

Every one of us has a little spark provided to us by Our Lord so that we may always believe in love, so that we may always believe in Him.

God taught me how to love fully and how to sacrifice myself for others through the example of my loving family. God gave me a heart that gave its all, even if it was unaware of the dangerous around it. God promised me that I did not need to be afraid of love because there was a soul who would defend my heart.

In the darkest hours, I believed in the one whom God gave me.

Right now my example to emulate is my mother and my defender is my father.

My Dear Readers, love is very much real, but people will not believe in love if we do not love as we are supposed to love.

Women are given the innate ability to sense the needs of others, and they are able to love with far more of their hearts than they can believe. However, because we are so cruel to one another, we often hide ourselves. We do not want to be made fun of for joining the wrong social group, and we do not want to be hurt. We do not want to sacrifice ourselves because we believe that this weakness will cause us more heartache.

So many of us women say that we do not need a man.

We say that we need to make our own choices with our bodies, and we use biolgical agents to destroy our very ability to create life. We hold back on the opportunity to love someone purely and fully for the sake of our own careers and our own desires.

But what if loving that child would be what allows us to believe in love?

This is not just for the women. I wish I could say that I have seen men who see the hearts of the women around them as a strength. However, I hear time and time again how much men hate the emotions and thoughts of the women around them. They believe that their hearts are a weakness.

Commitment is considered a weakness because it forces the woman to be in a vulnerable state and trust their hearts with a man.

And the men ask over and over for the ones they are involved with to be more “chill” and to control their own birth control.

Maybe the reason why there are so many heartaches in this life is because we are no longer living like love is real anymore. Women cannot love with their whole hearts like we are biologically wired. Men are not defending women like they are innately built to do. And for what reason? Equality? Freedom?

It doesn’t matter.

We are taking away the ability to love and be loved, and it is this very broken system which makes it so difficult for God’s love to shine through.

I believe in true love because I grew up with it. I believe that there will be a man someday who will not be afraid to defend my heart. This is not because of some romanticized dream, but it is because of the promise God gave me so that I may never give up on Him.

With each crush, of which there have been many, I have drawn closer to God.

I love with my whole heart, just as I have watched my mother love me, and I hope that the man will defend my heart as my father defends my family. Each soul I love, even if they never return the romance, experiences love in its truest form, and I learn more about God’s love for each soul as I go through my life.

My heart breaks more than I would like, but I am strengthened with every soul I love.

My God stoops down to me and reminds me that I am loved and that by choosing to love with all my heart that I am doing His work here on Earth. So I am never at a loss when I love with all my heart.

And when I am blessed with the opportunity to meet the one whom God promised to me all those years ago, I will be ever grateful to the One who loved me first for that gift. I will love my children as my mother loved me, and I will remind them every day that love is real and that love is important and that no one can take the love of God away from us.

I believe in love because that is how God loves me.

He loves me through the souls I give my heart to, and when they must leave, He holds me in His arms. They are not the literal divine arms of Our Lord, but rather they are the loving arms of my family members and dearest friends.

I believe in love, and I have hope in true love changing the world for the better.

So let’s love and be loved.

“I still want you

Yes, I need you

To have and to hold you

After all of these years

I will listen to your problems

Won't try to fix them

Just wipe away your tears

And if you need me in 

The middle of the night, my dear

I'll stay awake till morning light 

And chase away your fears”

~My Only Love, Matt Maher

Waiting For The Future

“There is more to life than your science.”

That’s a phrase I have heard time and time again ever since I started graduate school. “Science” can be replaced with anything. There is more to life than your job, your dog, your workout regiment, your relationships, your…anything.

We live in a world where if we are not growing in every aspect of our lives at every moment that we are considered “behind.”

And no one wants to be left behind.

For myself, as a graduate student in Cell Biology, I am often reminded that I need to be out of the lab more. People say that I need to be out on the town, looking for a boyfriend and cutting loose. People say that I need to be investing in stocks with money that I do not have. People say that I need to be spending less time walking aimlessly around campus, speaking to an “invisible Dad” so that I can notice all of my faults.

After facing burn-out so many times, I found myself avoiding the lab.

And I did the one thing that we all seem to try every new year: I tried to move everything forward.

In an attempt to make myself “better,” I went out with my friends more often. Even though folks loved having a reliable DD, I could not help but feel an emptiness in my heart as I saw the degeneration of livers and wholesome relationships. I prayed more fervently for God to send my St. Joseph, but my heart started to throb from not understanding what that would mean. I started several hobbies, and I did so many things to try to be the best version of what the world said I should become.

What happened you may ask?

I was significantly more tired from trying to “improve myself” than I was by being a happy Cell Biologist studying cholesterol.

Maybe some of my Dear Readers are in the same place. Perhaps you looked at your life at the turn of the year and saw someone unworthy of the many great things you have been promised. Perhaps you looked at yourself in the mirror and said you were not beautiful or handsome or healthy. Perhaps you saw all of the engagements and birth announcements on Facebook and felt a pain in your heart for companionship. Perhaps you saw people you graduated with spend several hundreds of dollars on Christmas presents for their family and wanted to be as successful as them.

Maybe you feel like you are stuck in the same place.

Maybe you have tried to change too much at once and feel burnt out.

Dear Reader, I will share what I heard in my heart after asking God what to do in these moments 

At first there was silence. It was the kind of silence that makes a faithful person angry. It’s the sort that makes you think that maybe God just isn’t listening anymore. If anything, it was the silence I faced nearly every time I asked God what to do. However, because I learned in my first year of graduate school that fighting God is not really worth the time, I decided to be silent. 

Then I heard, “Rest.”

Over and over again, I heard “Rest.” 

This confused me. The whole world, even my priest friends, told me that I needed to be doing so many things. Over and over again, I was told to stop being in lab at all hours and to stop being so obsessive about cholesterol sensing. People said that I would miss my life if I chose to be in lab instead of searching for what I wanted most in this life. Why did God want to hold me back?

I was incredibly wrong.

I was not being held back.

And neither are you Dear Reader.

I’ll use a Gospel story to explain my point. There is a parable from Matthew where a landowner went out to hire workers. He went out to hire these workers early in the morning, at mid-morning, at noon, in the afternoon, and finally he went out at an hour before the work-day was over.

All of the workers were paid the same wage, regardless of how long they were working.

Now in those days, workers went to same place every day to be hired. It was not like these workers were just begging for a specific job. They were just waiting- waiting all day for a job. They were not denied work. They just had to wait a little while longer.

But what were they doing while they waited? Clearly they weren’t on their iPhones.

I would like to think that they were getting to know one another. The longer they stood in the square, the longer they got to talk. They found out more about themselves as they interacted with those they were given for companionship. All of them were worthy of work, but their job was not open yet. They had to wait together.

And they found themselves in the waiting.

My Dear Reader, when we must remain somewhere, we are not behind anyone. We are all on this journey of life together, and we must not give up on hope. You may be in one stage of your life for a long time, but the souls you encounter in those days will help you find yourself. You will love and be loved. It is not a loss to rest.

After several moments of prayer, I said to God.

“Why must You make me wait?” I asked, “What did I do to deserve this?”

“Rest so that I can love you too,” I heard in my heart.

“The Lord does not delay His promise, as some regard ‘delay,’ but He is patient with you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” ~ 2 Peter 3:9

Sometimes we really just need to be in a space for a little while longer. Sometimes we really do just need to learn another lesson, meet another friend, or do another project before we can move on to the next thing. It sucks, but there is something beautiful about doing the task you have in any given moment, regardless of the reward.

Because you will be loved wherever you go by the One who loved you first.

After that moment in prayer, I decided to stop trying to be someone that I am not and do what I do best: study cholesterol. I spent countless hours in the lab, reading papers from the 70’s and prepping my experiments. I took time to learn more about what I believed God made me to understand. In some ways, I spent more fruitful time in lab than ever before.

All because I stopped looking for everything else I wanted and accepted what I already had.

At the same time, I was given more opportunities to experience God’s love.

Because I stopped trying to fufill all of my own wishes, I was given wonderful experiences. God gave me the opportunity to work alongside folks who shared similar views on the Faith as me, and for once I felt like I was contributing to faithful people again. I also went to a small meeting called Alpha, and my dear friends helped make the Sacraments available to souls who never understood The Eucharist before. A new book club based on faith formed.

What’s more, I was finally able to talk about the Faith in lab without fear. I even ending up talking about Communion with my advisor, and I did not even think it was strange until I left my meeting.

I did not think it was possible to be a happier Felicity, but I was wrong.

I am loved, and no one can take that from me.

Let’s go back to the people waiting for the landowner to give them work. Yes, they received wonderful gifts by being with one another, but you gotta wonder what passerbys said to them throughout the day. They would say that it is a waste of time to wait in the square, and they would laugh at the poor people who weren’t “good enough” to get a job at the beginning of the day.

People see hope as childish, as something reserved for the fools of society.

This is probably the most painful part of sitting in one spot for a while.

Although these past few months have been some of the most blessed in my life, I would not say that they were entirely perfect. If anything, I was reminded more and more that there was something far greater in store for me than my seemingly mundane schedule of watching my cells and weighing my mice. Each time I grew in faith, I also grew in an awareness that God did not give me a boring life.

My hope seemed too big for a little girl like me. Everyone told me so.

I wanted more, but I did not know what to do.

After a particularly hard night in September, I asked God to stop all of the pain and just let me rest for a little longer. I was sick of having my heart broken by all of the empty promises and the lustful nature of society. I was sick of working myself to the bone without a single person acknowledging it. I was lonely, and my hope felt more and more foolish by the day.

God answered my prayer.

He let me see my life as it will be some day. He gave me an incredible grace to understand what I had been praying for for nearly six years. My heart soared, and I could not stop smiling. For a few months I did not feel like I had to be in lab.

It’s not that I feel trapped in lab. I just knew that my purpose outside of lab was finally starting to reveal itself.

But it did not last.

I was so angry at God.

Whether or not you believe in God my Dear Reader, I want you to know that it is ok to be frustrated when life changes. 

We experience these things because they allow us to understand what really is on the outside of our current lives. These moments, short in nature, are the greatest gifts we can receive. Yes, they are frustrating, but they remind us that our hope is not misplaced.

Do not give up hope.

Think of the workers waiting for a job. They saw the landowner come back over and over, even at times that were abnormal, and their hope was renewed. Certainly it must have hurt for them to watch their companions move forward, just as it hurts us, but they must have known that someday they too would go where they belonged.

Dear Reader, your hope is not misplaced.

And your wait here in this space is just an opportunity for you to feel loved.

I am no longer angry at God for “taking my gifts away.” In a way, I feel more loved than I ever felt before. Even though I prayed the same prayer for nearly six years now, I never really understood how different my life would become in that life. As joyful as it was, I know that I must wait here in the basement until God sends souls to lead me out of this space.

But for now, I belong here with my proteins, my undergraduates, my friends, and my faith communities.

Right now, I belong in the square with the souls who want nothing more than to have their future revealed to them.

And that’s ok.

God’s already started preparing a place for me on His field. I just have to hold on to the hope that has held me together all along. And when I forget what it looks like, I will look back on the gifts that God gave me, and I will smile. They were memories of the future, and I won’t forget them for a very long time.

Do not despair Dear Readers.

Your future is on its way.