Hands On

To start off, I would like to thank all of my Dear Readers who clicked on this post after a year-long hiatus in posts. Sharing my writing has been one of my favorite ministries since my freshman year of college, and I have missed sharing with each one of y'all. There are so many reflections on my heart that I have wanted to share, but I allowed my current struggle to impede my writing process.

So thank you for bearing with me and for taking a moment to read this post today.


If someone were to tell me during my time at Belmont that Justin Bieber and Kanye West would be the reason why I returned to public writing about the Christian Life, I would have told them that they were crazy. But it's true. I will write more about their impact in future posts, but there is one thing I would like to point out before I get to the point of this post:

Both of these artists give credit to their marriages for their deeper conversion.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

Told people God was my mission

What have you been hearin' from the Christians?

They'll be the first one to judge me

Make it feel like nobody love me

Make you feel alone in the dark and you'll never see the light

Man, you're never seein' home and you never see the domes

~Hands On, Kanye West

This quote from Hands On, which this post got its name from, is the reality of what so many people experience in our faith community. Regardless of denomination, I have heard countless stories of souls that either were never accepted or lost their sense of belonging over time. Some were more understandable situations, but others were just this slow progression of not belonging.


I don't want to make excuses.

I don't want to make this some adolescent vent session about how lonely I felt in the Church, nor do I want to sound like I am accusing anyone. (Please Note: I am not condoning sinful activities that distance oneself from God though. I want you to know that the Sacrament of Confession is there to bring you Home. You are always welcome in the Father's House.)


I am writing this to tell each and every lost soul I can reach that you are truly loved and that you belong, no matter what this cruel world may be trying to tell you.

I am writing this to tell y'all that True Love is real, and you were made to love and be loved.

Just because you do not fit in now does not mean that you will walk in to Heaven lonely.


This for everyone who has felt unwelcome in their parish, for everyone who felt excluded from their Alpha small groups for not knowing as much or for knowing too much, for everyone who was judged for a particular devotion, for everyone who was judged for using one form of NFP over another, for everyone who is out there, sitting in the pews of their church or standing in their congregation or bowing before the Blessed Sacrament, crying out to Jesus for an answer as to why they no longer feel like they belong in His Mystical Body.

True Love is real, and He is in your midst in every moment, loving you exactly where you are.


Allow me to share an example from what may be one of the happiest memories of my adult life:


It was 2:30am, and I was trying not to scream from the pain of my stomach acid burning in my esophagus and my intestines. Because Shawn giving me a hug was the only thing that deterred the pain, he suggested that we moved to the living room so as to not end up falling asleep in a bed together.

"Shawn we can't do that!" I blubbered from my guest bed in Tampa, "They'll judge you. You'll lose your friends. I can't do that to you."

"No they won't, Felicity," Shawn said sternly, "They love you."

"They won't after this!" I cried. After the amount of rejection I faced from people before for "not just sucking it up," I couldn't help but fear the worst. I didn't want Shawn's friends to start rejecting him because of me and my weirdness as I've heard said about me before.

However, exhaustion and a desire to live a chaste life won me out, and we ended up in the living room.


I awoke to the sound of pots and pans moving about in the kitchen behind me. Shawn looked so peaceful, and I wanted to be as peaceful as my beloved. Sadly, my anxiety took over at the thought of our friend in the kitchen. He could see us. He probably heard me the night before. I was going to get that disapproving look I knew too well, and soon enough we would no longer be welcome with this family that reminded me so much of my own. 

I knew that I couldn't continue to pretend sleeping, so I swallowed the acid in my throat and turned to look at our friend.

There have been many grace-filled moments in my life, but what happened next might be one of the happiest moments of my entire life.

He smiled at me.


I don't know why he smiled. I don't know if he was just happy to see Shawn finally resting with his future wife, if he was just being polite, or if he was just happy to see me. Regardless of the exact reason, someone smiled at me as I did my best to bear the cross my Jesus entrusted to me. Someone recognized Christ's Sacrificial Love in my Shawn's suggestion to rest on the couch after a night of suffering and didn't judge me for not bearing everything in silence on my own.

Every time I was rejected by my peers, by my mentors, by my attempted Spiritual Directors, by Confessors, by anyone really...

I remembered that smile.

And I knew that I must belong to the Church as a whole.


Not because I was perfect, but because I was striving to live a life of holiness in spite of my suffering. Not because I knew the answers, but because I was willing to listen and learn from Christ and His Servants. Not because I was the perfect girlfriend/promised/fiancée/wife, but because I was willing to let my Shawn lead me as best he could and received as best I could.

I know it sounds like I got a lot from that smile, probably more than what was intended, but that's because the smile was a reflection of something greater.

It was a reflection of Christ's Merciful Love, the love He holds in His Most Sacred Heart for every single person He created.


The Church is filled with sinners. We're all sinners. We all suck at loving each other well. God knows that, but He doesn't want us to allow our past hurts to stop us from loving one another. In fact, He calls us to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek, to go the extra mile...even for the people persecuting us.

Not because we're supposed to be passive punching bags.

But because we need to show the world that True Love, unconditional love, is real.

And that love comes from Him.


Know that you are not alone, Dear Reader. Heaven is filled with Saints that felt out of place in their faith community. Heaven is filled with Saints that were even ignored by the Church or rejected for their particular devotions. The Doctors of the Church: Sts. Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross were outright rejected and hated for their desire to reform the Carmelite order. St. Faustina was rejected by so many, even after her death. Heaven is filled with Saints that didn't belong, that never really belonged, but they knew one thing:

"I made known to them your name and I will make it known, that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them." ~John 17:26

They knew that all love, any love, was a reflection of Jesus Christ in the world.

True Love is real, and He is alive in each and every human being, no matter how ignorant or cruel they may be. 

And when it is exceptionally hard to see...

There is something better: The Holy Eucharist.


Shawn and I took our seats near the back of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart so as to not disturb the d'Nicola Conference attendees with our severe lack of church attire for Daily Mass. Shawn has a terrible shoulder injury from a car accident years ago, and it was acting up because of the cold. During the Offeratory Hymn, I used my thumb to make the Sign of the Cross over his injury and I asked him who we were offering up his pain for.

We were barely audible, but we were close together.

Seconds later, we hear someone from several pews back clamoring out of their pew. Swift heeled footsteps rush up towards us and stop right next to our pew.

"Hey!" a girl no more than 21 snapped at us. She glared straight past Shawn and into my eyes, "You are being totally inappropriate right now! Stop it!"


She grunted and walked away. Within a couple of seconds, I heard her continue spewing hateful things about me, including how it was inappropriate for me to be in leggings and how my hair was a disrespect to women everywhere. She couldn't have known that I had a gluten reaction that afternoon and basically limped to Mass, but I could hardly take it. Not because she was being a jerk...but because her friend next to her was joining in on the hate.


It was just like everyone who judged me for not drinking wine at events, for wanting to talk about Jesus more at faith events, for wanting to reflect more on The Paschal Mystery, for loving Vatican II, for believing in True Love.

So I started to cry.

Which only gave them more fuel to mock me on...the worst statement being: "She shouldn't even be in the Church. Gosh what a loser."



I wept throughout the Mass. Over and over the words "she shouldn't even be in the Church" rang in my head, echoing loudly over the Eucharistic Prayers and all of the hymns. No matter how many times Shawn tried to overcome the hate, there was nothing to console me.

Until I made my walk up to Communion.

I could hear the hateful girls behind us continuing their hate. They were saying that I didn't deserve to receive the Eucharist because of my behavior. I ignored them, because I knew that Jesus never rejected a sinner. He never rejected me before, and he would not reject me then.

I looked up with tears flowing down my cheeks at the Communion Minister.

He held up Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament to me and said, "The Body of Christ."

In the milisecond before I responded, I saw my Jesus before me. I saw my Savior, my Redeemer, and my Crucified Spouse. And in that milisecond, a memory rushed to the forefront of my mind:

The smile I got this summer.


It was not Shawn's friend that I saw this summer. It was my Jesus, reflected in one of His Children. It was the love of God the Father reflected by a soon to be earthly father that I received that morning. That sense of belonging, that sense of being seen and loved, was real, and it was far more than just a nice moment on a summer morning.

True Love is more than just something in ourselves. It is the emulation of Jesus Christ, who sees us from upon His Throne on The Cross and smiles down upon us.

Because He sees you.

And He loves you.



We will all face opposition in this life. Some of us will only experience external pressures against the Faith, some of us will face prejudice and disdain from within the Church. Regardless, we must always rest in the hope that there is at least one more person who loves Jesus like we do.

And when we see them, we ought to smile at them.

Because, as a later Carmelite nun and Doctor of the Church who never fit in either once said, "A word or a smile is often enough to put fresh life in a despondent soul"

I can feel it when I write, point of livin' in the right

If they only see the wrongs, never listen to the songs

Just to listen is a fight, but you booked me for the fight

~Hands On, Kanye West

I'm going to keep writing. Maybe it will bear much fruit, and maybe it will only serve a few individuals. Only God knows what my writing in His Holy Name is worth. For now, I will keep on fighting for the truth, that True Love exists and everyone is worth loving.

God Bless,
Felicity

Darkness Part 2

Last week, I described how from the darkness of the microscopy room the great light of love was made present between my Cell Biology Research students, all because one student recognized his need. We see our weaknesses, and that allows the love of God to be made present in our hearts.

This does not always require for us to be at our weakest, at the bottom of the pit.

Sometimes we are at great heights, despite our faults, and in those spaces, the true love we all desire, the love which makes all things new and good, is more fully realized.

“‘The gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.’ When we hear that, we often think that the Church is under siege, and she is. But not because she was attacked. No, the Church is active. The Church is sent out to confront the darkness. We are called to do as Christ did and go in to the darkness and bring light and healing.” ~Fr. Matt Hovde CSC

We all have the ability to love

We all have the ability to fight the darkness, both inside ourselves and in the world.

We all are enough. We, this rag tag group of seemingly foolish people, were sent out in to the world, called in to the darkness, out to unknown lands, to defeat the darkness. We were given this special task, not because we are strong, not because we are qualified by any means, but because God trusts us.

You mean enough to God that He trusts you to save the world.

My students were able to sense their teammate’s need for love, for support, for encouragement, and that transformed him in to a more confident cell biologist. They sat in the darkness, literally, and they confronted it without fear. Even though the image was not the best out there, they trusted that it would be enough to share that data in their defense.

Small though it was, that little gift was even enough for the TA’s grading the students.

Not because the images were great, but because they were chosen out of love.

However, sometimes the darkness does not seem as simple as it may be. Sometimes we are called in to the darkness, and we feel completely consumed by it. And in those moments, we feel completely alone. Although I could go in to a description that we are never truly alone, I will simply leave a link to the story of the Little Lamb, wherein I describe the loneliness of those of us who know Christ.

Because of the many hardships of this world, many souls who have been walking with Christ for years are faced with the hard reality of walking in the darkness alone.

And yet we never reach out because we do not want to make someone else’s suffering any greater.

We never think that maybe, just maybe, we are in need of prayers too.

I know that I tend to forget that too.

Perhaps I have forgotten this because my cross is one of loneliness. I know that I am different, and I know that my lifestyle is not like most people. Despite the fact that I know in my heart that my family loves me and that Christ walks with me every day, on my right side, I still feel the crippling loneliness that comes with a life lived for the Lord.

The number of times I have been intentionally left out are more than people would know.

And yet I always respond to their calls when they finally remember me.

They ignore me, and I love them anyways. That’s what my family taught me. That is what my Jesus taught me. I do not know why my love is forgotten, but then again, the love our Jesus has for us is forgotten. He is so ignored that He sits alone in churches all over the world. Empty pews in empty churches.

Jesus has healed me of the fear of calling out for help and being left alone.

But before I even think of explaining how God healed myself of this weakness, I want to emphasize again that we need to be praying for our priests. They are doing the most important work in the world, but because of the sins of a few, because of the hardness of our own hearts, we forget them. I may feel lonely, but these men of God are far more lonely because of their vocation.

This became a painful reality to me a couple weeks ago.

One of the sweetest priests in the world, a priest with a heart like Saint Therese of Lisieux and great love for family, looked at the congregation and stifled tears as he said this phrase:

“Jesus sent out His disciples in pairs, but nowadays we are sent out alone because no one will walk with us.”

Even now, weeks later, this moment brings bitter tears to my eyes. Not just because of the lonely words of this wonderful little priest, but because of the response of the congregation.

There wasn’t a response.

This poor priest was calling for help, desperately asking for prayers in his own homily, showing the greatest humility that I have ever seen from a priest in my entire life, and no one made the Sign of the Cross, no one bowed their head, no one cried, no one smiled at him. This priest shared what so few could, the loneliness of his vocation, and no one cared.

Well…one person cared, but she’s not enough help on her own for such a holy man of God.

So I ask my Dear Readers, please start to pray for priests. Maybe one of y’all who is holier than me, whose prayers are more efficacious than my own, will be able to console at least one of our Spiritual Fathers.

I know that these prayers will be efficacious because of my own experience, the most powerful experience I had during the Young Adult Retreat nearly a month ago.

There was a Healing Night as a part of the retreat. Before the Blessed Sacrament, souls lined up to be prayed over by priests and lay people who were acquainted with healing prayers. From the pew, I prayed over their hearts as they came forward. The retreat team received word that there was great healing, but there were plenty of souls who did not receive anything.

During the healing prayer, I felt a little breeze over my stomach. It did not feel like something of healing, but I recognized it. Knowing that nothing happened, I returned to my pew to pray. There I was reminded of my lonely feeling in the darkness.

I did not receive healing in that prayer like I wanted, but rather in the greatest darkness. 

At two o’clock in the morning, I started to feel terrified. Now, I have been a mental health patient for well over a decade, and I can say with great confidence that this sort of fear was not of my mind, nor was it a justifiable fear. It was not a safe fear for my soul, but a great danger. Within seconds of the fear, the place where I felt the breeze on my stomach suddenly tensed up to the point that I could hardly move.

For an hour, I laid in the darkness in horrible fear and pain.

In an attempt to fight the darkness around me, I turned on a Christian playlist. If I could not pray, then maybe there was a song that could help.

Then these lyrics came on:

“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

After hearing those words, I knew what I had to do. Pulling myself out of bed, I limped across the room, out the door, and in to the cold stairwell and called my boyfriend. I didn’t really know what to do, but I knew that he would at the very least answer. After all, we prayed for each other enough. Maybe he would wake up.

And he did.

For nearly two hours, my beloved Shawn prayed over me with the Rosary and with spontaneous prayer as I stifled screams in to my pillow and sobbed without much reproof. Eventually the pain subsided.

But I was still filled with terror.

Shawn did not stop praying for me. Even though it seemed like his prayers and my desire to receive those graces were not enough, he did not stop. He did not leave the darkness. Instead, he lead me to pray the only words that would heal me, the only words that would defeat the darkness which surrounded me.

“Repeat after me,” he said, “Jesus, I trust in You.”

“Jesus, I trust in You.”

“Again,” he said, even more sweetly, “Jesus, I trust in You.”

“Jesus I trust in You,” I started to yawn.

“Jesus I trust in You,” Shawn whispered.

“Jesus, I trust in You.”

Healed by the name of Jesus, I finally fell asleep.

Dear Readers, we may not feel like we are enough. However, we are enough. We are enough because we are never alone. We each carry Christ in our hearts, and we bring Him with us in to the darkness. It is a great grace to call upon others to help us fight the darkness of this world, because it allows our Jesus to do the work He loves to do.

You are enough, Jesus.

My Dear Readers, whether we are great preachers, great writers, great evangelists, great spouses, great teachers, great workers, great ministers, great healers, or not, there is only one thing that we have to do to defeat the darkness:

Bring people to Jesus.

Remind them that He is enough for us, that He is enough to save us, that He is enough for our weak hearts to be made whole.

My Shawn brought me to Jesus in the darkness, and I was healed of not only whatever the devil wanted to attack me with, but also of my inability to bring others in to my own darkness. My pride was shot down that day, and I thank my Jesus for allowing me to endure that suffering for the sake of my Salvation.

You may suffer my Dear Reader

But you are enough for God, and He is enough for you.

Let us run in to the darkness without fear and bring all of Christ’s Little Ones Home by our love.

Darkness pt 1

A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure to not only attend, but to also serve as the MC for my diocese’s Young Adult Retreat. Even though I knew our intentions and knew our goals and knew the themes and the speakers, there was something about experiencing our community go through the weekend that touched my heart in a particular way. I would like to reflect on that theme today.

“You are enough.”

When the team decided on this theme, we considered two meanings for this phrase, which I will explore over the next two weeks. 

The first is the one that most folks would recognize. “You are enough,” would mean that we are enough for this world, enough for ourselves, enough for love, enough for God. This is something that many of us, myself included, struggle with regularly. We are constantly trying to do things to make ourselves worthy of the life we desire, both here on Earth and eventually in Heaven.

We do not need to do anything to be enough.

We just need to be ourselves, our true selves, and that is enough.

Of course, knowing oneself is difficult. Believing in oneself is difficult, and it is even more difficult as we live in a community of wonderful people. We see everyone else as competition, as something greater, as something more worthy than ourselves. I don’t believe that this is malicious, but rather it is a sign of our own weakness, of our need for help, of our need for love. After all, we all are in need of love.

My friend in small group pointed out that he recognized that he was further along in the spiritual life than others, but he always just wanted to help them move along with him.

Why, then, would we ever expect anything less out of everyone else around us?

I had the absolute pleasure to witness this truth a couple of weeks ago with my Cell Biology Research students.

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to find them,” my newest sophomore whispered as he sat down in front of the microscope. Of my five new sophomores, this student struggled the most with being part of the Notre Dame community. He clung to my instruction, writing down more notes than any student I had before, and he asked me so many questions that even I was unsure about the nuances we never spoke about.

He was so scared that he would not be good enough for our lab.

But then, after he slid around nervously on the coverslip for a moment, he asked his teammate to pull up the image on the computer.

Before I could even speak, the entire team started to praise the boy behind the microscope. My eyes welled up with tears as I listened to them pointing out each and every one of the lysosome membrane tubules, the size of the cell, and the shape of the nucleus. They were not only excited that they had data, but they were praising their teammate for being able to find the cell on his own.

These kids sort of knew one another before they started working together. However, they would not have known by common knowledge just how much their teammate needed their support. They could not possibly have known just how insecure and scared he was just off of the few meetings they had before starting this project.

All they knew was that they needed to love him.

Now this student is excited to go to the microscope. He is excited to watch the cells move, and he is excited to interpret the data. All he needed to reveal his hidden talents was the love and support of his fellow students.

We all have the ability to bring out the talents in others. We all have the ability to love.

This ability to love is God in our hearts. Whether we recognize our goodness or not, we all have God in our heart, and He is all good. It is Him in us that allows us to truly love those around us, even when they are unable to give anything to us.

We do not have to be special to be good enough for God to work.

He does not need us, but instead He wants us.

But there is something more special about this moment than just these kids loving their teammate.

My student acknowledged that he was in need of love, and he accepted it in full.

Being enough is not so much about doing more, having more, wanting more. Rather, it is recognizing our faults, our needs, our imperfections, our weaknesses, and accepting that maybe, just maybe, we aren’t meant to do this all on our own. However, this is not a fatalistic mindset; it is recognizing that there is something else, someone else.

“You are enough” is not just about being enough to live this life.

“You are enough” is a prayer, saying that God is enough.

By His very presence, our whole lives have meaning. Our weaknesses have meaning. Our desires have meaning. Our everything is everything, and our nothing is still something. When we accept that we are in need of love, just as my student did, then we are made open to all of Christ’s love.

And His love, His grace, is sufficient for all things.

But we often cannot see Him, and when we are at the bottom, it is difficult to recognize how He could be enough for us when we do not feel enough for anything other than maybe breathing and going through the motions.

Next week, I will share a particularly special moment from my retreat time to explain how we see Him in the darkness, but for now, I will leave you, Dear Reader, with this:

God loves you

And so do I

He is enough for you

and you are enough for Him.

Stop and Be Brave

“They made it seem like you had to do all of these things to get to Heaven. They made it so that life was incompatible with faith,” my advisor looked out at the cold Chicago road as he spoke. I had just asked him if he grew up going to church, and I was honestly shocked by his vulnerability with me. He went on to tell me about how the religious folks he knew outside of science made it sound like spending time in the lab and spending time in the church were incompatible, like they were both a waste to the other.

My heart hurt as I listened to his words. I knew how he felt, but I had no words to share. All I had was my Saint Therese doll in my hand and my rosary at my hip.

As I grasped my rosary, my heart and my mind went back to my life over the past several years.

I remembered the exhaustion, pain, and fear that I felt every day for several years. I remembered the looks I saw each and every person around me filled with the same sorrow and dread that I felt inside. For some reason, it seemed like we were all running like characters in a survival movie. Even though we have never been in their position, there is something in our hearts that deeply empathizes with these characters who are just trying to survive.

It’s because we are living like we just need to survive.

“I’m tired. I’m worn.

My heart is heavy from the work it takes to keep on breathing.

I’ve made mistakes. I’ve let my hope fail.

My soul feels crushed by the weight of this world.”

~Worn, Tenth Avenue North

We’re scared, and so we run.

We run towards extra work hours. We run towards excessive online dating apps. We run towards social events we would rather not attend. We run towards workout regiments and diets that deprive us of nutrition and beat us down.

We’re scared.

We’re worn.

I spent most of my life running. My mind cannot stay in one place, and my body cannot rest either. Year after year, I brought myself to the point of exhaustion physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, all because I thought that if I just kept moving, if I just kept participating, if I just kept giving without care, that I would be successful and happy.

As my thumb slid across the smooth habit on my Saint Therese doll, I thought about how miserable I made myself during my survival days. My heart broke for all of the souls that ran as fast, if not faster, than I did in those days…for all of the souls who are still running.

When we live a life of surviving, we never feel satisfied.

Because when our lives are in constant motion, we lose one essential aspect of life that makes it all worth living.

Love

When we are constantly trying to take control of our lives, we miss out on the ability to love others. It is not that you cannot be loved or love when you are busy, but rather, it is how you choose to love in the business. If you spend every moment focused on how you are moving forward, then you miss the opportunity to give and receive the love made present to you in the moment.

You miss the people who are present with you when all you focus on is moving forward.

And yet we all do it.

I used to believe that if I made many acquaintances everywhere I went that I would feel fulfilled. I figured that the love I desired could be found everywhere, and if I just accepted the little that I saw that I would be ok.

A life spent surviving is a very lonely life.

No wonder so many of us are afraid of dying alone.

Those many years of excessive activity and work took everything out of me. I ignored invitations, and I did not spend as much time in prayer as I used to. All I could think of was making sure I did everything in my power to move each of my 12 undergraduates moving forward, to improve my own work, to be important enough.

And yet I spent nearly every Friday night alone.

“Will You not send someone?” I yelled angrily at God.

How can we conquer this fear? How can we stop ourselves from literally running ourselves in to the very thing that fills our hearts with dread?

Sometimes to be brave is to stop.

When we stop and allow love to come as it is meant to, then we find the love our hearts are so desperate to receive. We no longer fear death because we are no longer alone. We no longer fear the silence because the silence has meaning.

“For your love is better than life.” ~Psalm 63:4

As I felt the Crucifix pressing in to my palm on that drive up to the airport, I remembered when it all changed. I had just started teaching Confirmation with the Short Course Sacramental Preparation Team. Each of the members had such a great love for the Lord, and they all seemed to have a certain inner peace that I could not understand.

One of the members actually seemed to be unreal. He ran nearly everything on campus, was an engineering major, and yet he still managed to give his all to this group.

“When you give time to God, then He makes time work for you,” he said one day.

There was something about seeing an individual so on fire for life itself, so on fire for the meaning of true love, so on fire for each and every activity he was blessed to be a part of that drew me in. If this young man could do so much and make time for the Faith, then maybe I could too.

I started to go to Daily Mass and a weekly Holy Hour. I started to journal in the lab, and I made each and every experiment an offering.

I decided to be brave, to stop moving, and to rest in the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

“Rest so I can love you too,” my Jesus said to me in Adoration.

When we stop moving and stop trying to just survive, we are given the opportunity to receive the love our hearts have been thirsting for all our lives. The work we do is not painful, but rather it gives us hope and life. My research skyrocketed, and everything started to make sense. The relationships we engage in do not feel forced, but rather they call us to be better. My friendships were holier and happier than ever before.

I spent more time within the Church than I did anywhere else, and yet I found time to work, to succeed, to make friends, and to move forward.

When we love Christ and let Him love us in return, then we stop surviving. We thrive in His Heart.

We hit a bump on the road, and I was jolted back to the real world. I could still hear the faint quiver in my advisor’s voice as he continued talking. He was now talking about how lonely the priests are and how they must feel completely burnt out. I clutched my Saint Therese doll tighter as I tried to explain how I loved my priests by trying to help out in whatever way a lay person could. 

However, I knew that he was not just speaking about the priests. So many devoted souls are still running from love because they are trying to get their vocation to work as they want it to.

Then I felt a buzz in my pocket, and I remembered the last part of my long long run.

Most of my Dear Readers know that I spent many of my days running around, trying to figure out my vocation. I knew that I was not called to religious life, but how could I honestly believe that my Jesus would even send a holy man when every single man I encountered was either against my faith or did not fully understand my need to be at The Cross as often as possible?

I was running by praying too many novenas, begging too many times, crying for far too long.

So my Jesus made my Fridays lonely on Earth.

But my Jesus did not leave me alone on Fridays. It always seemed like I was on my own on Fridays, but as I rested in His Most Sacred Heart more and more, I started to fill my silent Friday evenings with conversations with my beloved Saints. I would trudge through rain or snow up to The Cross in the Woods and press my hand in to the nails on my Jesus’ feet. Then I would move away and talk to Him and to the Saints.

I would talk to them about everything anything. I would tell them just how lonely I felt. I would tell them how angry I was that even the greatest guys I knew could not help me rest in Christ. I was so tired from running that I couldn’t see how miserable I made myself.

But then one day my heart broke, and I collapsed before The Cross.

“Jesus,” my voice croaked, “You let me try my way. Please teach me how to follow Your Way.”

I was numb, and my mind was silent for two weeks. My work remained valuable. My friendships were still solid. My life was still a wonderful and joyful gift from God. As I rested in His Sacred Heart, not expecting nor desiring to change anything, I felt myself finally gaining the ability to hope and love again. Not entirely, but I did not feel so tired anymore. In fact, that following Friday did not feel so incredibly lonely.

And then my Jesus surprised me on a Friday two weeks later.

And then at 6:30pm on a Friday evening, I heard a voice that took my dull ache away.

Now I have a sweet soul to pray with on Friday nights. Not only a sweet soul, but a good friend and good companion who constantly reminds me to stop running, to stop worrying, to stop trying to make things work and to simply trust in the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. I remind him of The Cross, and he reminds me of the Precious Blood which flowed there.

My time spent with Christ in the loneliness was not taken away by receiving this gift, but rather, I finally found a soul that desired to ease the burden of my cross on Fridays.

I cannot say that my Jesus answered the question of my vocation yet, but I can say that I am incredibly grateful to Him for surprising me not only two weeks after I stopped running. I can finally rest at the foot of The Cross.

We pulled up at the Chicago Midway Airport, and I smiled at my advisor. Maybe someday I would be brave enough to let him know where my research came from. Until then, I knew that I would be ok so long as I rested in Christ.

May we all learn to rest in His Most Sacred Heart.

Because time spent in His Love is time well spent.

Bundled Together

One day, a father handed sticks to his five children. He asked them to see whose stick was the strongest. If their stick didn’t break, then they would be deemed the winner.

No surprise, every stick broke.

Then the father took the sticks, bound them together, and handed it to each kid. Again, he asked them to try breaking the weakened sticks again.

The sticks could not break in a bundle.

I heard this story as a part of a homily at least a decade ago. My parents still mention it from time to time. In fact, my mother just sent it to the family group chat two weeks ago! The story speaks to a key point that many of us tend to forget:

We cannot do this life alone.

No one can.

The sad truth is that many of us try to live out this life on our own. We tell ourselves that it would be better if we did everything without any help, without any support, without any other source of strength. 

This is no secret to my Dear Readers. We have all tried to do too much or be too much or try too much, and we have all failed. We have all broken. We have all felt alone far too often, and most of us are unwilling to admit our loneliness to one another. We would rather fake a smile, hide our failures, and just move forward.

And I think it’s because many of us have forgotten what it is like to be part of a bundle.

We take the love of a true community for granted.

When we do so, we act like we are not bound to anything. We live life like we’re just a pile of sticks. A pile of sticks can still break, and it probably won’t stay together for very long. However, a bundle, something that is bound together by something other than the sticks themselves, that will not break.

A bundle is bound by something more.

Once bound and held firm, even a broken stick is stronger than a lone stick.

Over Christmas break, I was reminded of just how powerful a bundle is, especially when someone is in need.

It was our second day in Disneyland, and the majority of Team Newton was out at the park having a good time. My mother stayed behind because she wasn’t feeling well. However, it got to the point that my dad decided that she needed to see a doctor. That meant that the kids were going to have to take care of one another and keep the younger children calm until they got back.

Without batting an eye, my siblings and I wished our father well and made a game plan to take care of the littles.

I would be lying if I said that the afternoon went by as just a simple day spent in Fantasy Land. Each of the kids had their own struggles, from sensory processing, to nausea, to anxiety for our mother, to just being tired. However, that afternoon was an absolute pleasure with my siblings.

Because we were in a bundle.

A bundle is not just a group of sticks. A bundle is bound by something external.

Team Newton is not just a family by biology. Team Newton is a family bound by God’s love in our hearts.

When my mother got checked in, I texted the older siblings to take a moment to pray a Hail Mary. I watched as each one of them took a moment in silence to pray individually and I would smile back at them. My brothers walked the girls through the park and were a silent source of support, just like Saint Joseph. My soon-to-be-sister took the youngest on rides and comforted her when no one could console her. All she had to do was smile, stoop to her level, and let her in, just like the Blessed Mother.

Not only did we manage to get the littles through the tough part of the day, we also managed to find a way to bring joy to each member of the group.

We saw what would make people smile, and we made that happen. From getting a kid a turkey leg to making sure I made my phone date with my boyfriend, the kids found a way to bring joy and peace to one another.

By prayer in word and service, we made that afternoon one of the best I’ve had in a long time.

And when my mom got home from the doctor…the first thing she did was make a sandwich for the youngest child. (Seriously, I pray to be half the woman she is some day.)

Now I know that not everyone has a family like my own. I wish there were more bundles out there. There are no bonds quite those like a family. However, we all are able to recognize God’s love…even if we have rejected Him long ago or have forgotten His love for us. It is present in each and every human heart.

God’s love is what binds us together in a bundle. 

God’s love is what makes a family a holy family.

The world needs a lot of love right now. Therefore, it is imperative that family values and God’s love is recognized in the world again. The only way that love will truly win is with the family.

This takes on two levels.

The obvious one is our families at home. We have to start to recognize that each member of a family matters, and we have to recognize that every human life has inherent value. A bundle may be made of many broken sticks, but that does not mean that God’s love is not present. And unlike a bundle of sticks, a family can be transformed and made whole, just by recognizing and following the voice of God.

But there is another level.

We all belong to the Heavenly Family. We are God’s adopted sons and daughters, princes and princesses of the Kingdom.

We do not act like it.

We walk in to church and sit at the end of the pew so that we do not have to sit by strangers. We say things like, “TLM mass is the only true mass” or “Latin is worthless.” We make up excuses for how we treat our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ because of their past mistakes. Now, there are some offenses like the sexual abuse in the Church that cannot be ignored or forgotten, but for the general public…we need to be more forgiving and more loving.

The Church is in need of unity. We need to learn from one another and love one another.

Because we’re a family in Christ.

And that’s a bundle that can never be broken. Not even death could win that battle.