Grieving
Our dog passed away last night. She was nearly 11 years old, and was a big part of our family for her entire life. Now that it has been a few hours, I feel some unusual emotions that I wanted to write about. I say unusual because they caught me off guard. I don’t feel the way that I expected to feel when this inevitable and sorrowful event occurred.
I was close to my dog. She was definitely man’s best friend. We went on hikes together, camped together, and since she was a retriever we played a lot of fetch together. Naturally, I was devastated to lose her. But sadness was only the first emotion to kick in. Unlike events like this in the past where I spent most of the day and perhaps even the following few days experiencing horrendous grief, this time I turned to God almost immediately.
I immediately gave thanks to God for the long and healthy life that our pet shared with us. I thanked him for taking her suddenly, in her sleep, without excessive suffering. I thanked God for all the wonderful times that we shared together, and for the opportunity to teach our kids the inevitable reality of death here on Earth. I asked him to bring our family healing.
What a difference my faith makes. During terrible times like this, and even worse — the death of my father two years ago, I have turned to God and he has quickly brought me comfort. I have grieved normally, but then I have been able to move on and see the greater good from each situation. When my father died, I was able to rejoice at the healing that we both felt from the reconciliation that had occurred just months before, and I have since been able to enjoy the family that his passing has helped to reunite. Now that our dear dog, Sadie, is gone — though I still feel sadness — I feel tremendous gratitude for all that she brought to our family. Many families never know this blessing. I can feel peace in knowing that we have been able to share the joy of pets with our children, and teach them good animal husbandry along the way.
Truly, my faith in God has brought me peace. Blessed be God forever.
Two Steps Forward
The last couple of weeks have been very good for me. When I stumble in life, I find that one of the major contributors is a failure to maintain regular prayer habits. Recently, I made a commitment to stick with a consistent, achievable prayer schedule — whether I feel like it or not.
I have been (at minimum) praying the Morning and Evening prayers from the Liturgy of the Hours. Most of the time I also include the Office of Readings and the Night Prayer. Sometimes it gets a little bit dry, or perhaps I’ll get distracted and lose focus, but I pray anyhow. I find that this regular schedule builds spiritual discipline, and forces me to maintain a regular focus on our most glorious God.
Even though I’ve been out of town for the past week, working long hours, and I’ve certainly had a lot of distractions that I wouldn’t normally have at home, I have managed to maintain this schedule. I feel like my relationship with God is continuing to grow each day. I’ve definitely taken two steps forward. Now I just need to be on the lookout for that temptation that might cause me to take one step back. With a routine and meaningful prayer life, I should be able to get in a few more forward steps before that happens.
Companions of the Lamb
Anyone who doesn’t like rock music should stop reading now. For the rest of you, check out The Thirsting. They are a young Catholic rock band based in Washington State. Their new album, Companions of the Lamb, is full of upbeat tunes that are faithful to the teachings of the Catholic Church. Many of the tracks are sure to have you jumping around your living room.
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(4/5 Crosses)
Too PC for Me
Recently, President Obama spoke at Georgetown University, the nation’s oldest “Catholic” university. The folks in charge of meeting his communications needs decided that having the IHS in the backdrop would be too distracting. (IHS is a monogram for the name of Jesus.) Shame on you, Georgetown, for rolling over to this demand. You can read more about this situation here.
Tea Parties
Today, April 15, 2009 — tax day — “tea parties” were held all over the country. While some media outlets came out in support, others came out against, and just a couple reported on the facts without opinion — I stayed home. The demonstrations were done to protest the rapid growth in government that has occurred over the past six months or so, beginning with the Bush administration and continued with vigor by the Obama administration. The protestors believe that the federal government has grown beyond control and is acting beyond the authority granted to it by our Constitution.
I very much sympathize with these folks. I just couldn’t muster the motivation to go to our local tea party. I think part of my aprehension stems from the fact that I was pretty sure that it would end up being a Republican vs. Democrat thing. In my mind, the two parties are both to blame. They are both taking us to the same destination, in the opposite direction from what our founding fathers intended. One party is just taking us there a little faster than the other.
For me, the discontent is not just about money. Frankly, I have enough. I’m certainly not rich, but I’m doing alright. I have everything that I need and most everything that I want. I’m very charitable, and I believe that we have a moral obligation to help those who are unable to help themselves. But that’s where I think the problem is. For too many years, we have been helping those who are perfectly able to help themselves.
This topic is much too complex to cover with one post on a Catholic conversion blog. I will finish by saying that I believe the heart of this problem is that we have too many career politicians who have lost touch with reality. Far too much energy is spent on wooing us for the sake of reelection. We need congressional term limits. Unfortunately, it will never happen during my lifetime.
I regret not going to my local tea party tonight. When my future grandchildren ask me where I was when the people took our country back, I want to be able to say that I was on the front lines, speaking my mind.
Prayer Equals Happiness
I am finally starting to make the connection between prayer and happiness. This is probably very obvious to most, but I seem to be a very slow learner when it comes to life lessons such as this. Recently, I have forced myself to meet a consistent prayer schedule – whether I feel like it, or not.
I have written before on my belief that love is an action, not a feeling. If I truly love God – which is the greatest commandment – then I need to show it. Obviously this means living a life of virtue, but it also means that I need to regularly seek God in prayer.
Sometimes I feel a tremendous connection with the Lord and I am eager to pray. I want to share with Him, praise Him, and show Him gratitude. More often though, I am busy doing the things that bring me worldly pleasure. I have trouble settling my mind down enough to even consider prayer. I develop a “what’s in it for me” attitude. At times like these, I tend to abandon prayer. When this happens, my life always takes a turn for the worse. I abandon God and my life gets worse. Imagine that.
To try and combat this nonsensical and destructive pattern, I have been forcing myself to wake each morning allowing plenty of time for prayer. When I get home from work each day, I make prayer my first priority. And before I go to bed each night, I make sure to speak with God. Since I’m often tired or distracted, my mind tends to wander. To compensate for this tendency, I have been praying the Divine Office, sometimes known as the Liturgy of the Hours.
So far, this has been working well for me. I have heard it said that it takes 21 days to form a new habit. I’ll let you know if I stick with this one. It’s certainly a worthy cause!
Sherwood Pictures
Over the past couple of years, I have worked to learn how to practice what I preach. Actually, I don’t preach all that much, other than to my own family. What I began to realize, was that I couldn’t have two sets of standards. As my children grow (taller than me), it no longer makes sense for me watch everything that popular culture has to offer, while restricting them to “family” movies. I had two options: allow them to watch the rubbish that I was watching, or change my ways.
I chose to change my own ways. I can’t remember the last time that I watched a movie rated worse than PG. The only bad consequence is that I can no longer talk with most of my friends about movies. I’ve even begun to watch really “preachy” movies — films that would make most people in our secular world feel a little bit squeamish. I don’t really care though. I want to surround myself with positive messages. I think it really helps to reinforce my faith.
One of the gems in the preachy-movie genre, is Sherwood Pictures. To date, they have produced three films: Flywheel, Facing the Giants, and Fireproof. I’m really not much of a movie critic, but I liked all three of these. Each one is better than the previous.
Flywheel is an extremely low budget film that was never intended for mass release. Still, it’s a fun movie with a solid message. If special effects and great cinematography are important to you, then avoid this. I don’t care about those things. I care about God. This movie is all about God.
Facing the Giants is another solid movie. It’s essentially a preachy football movie. It’s better reviewed by others, so follow the link.
Fireproof is the newest and best of these movies. It’s movie about a young, married couple that is completely falling apart. They both engage in some pretty damaging sinful behavior, until they find God, who pulls them back together — as He does for all of us who truly seek Him. It’s a very serious film, but there are some funny moments as well.
Many folks will be turned off by some or all of these movies. There’s not much action. There’s no sex. They pray a lot. I however, wish that we had more films like this. I was able to get them all from Netflix. I definitely recommend them.
Lent 2009 - A Review
Well, it’s Holy Saturday — the last day of Lent. I thought that I would try to summarize this year’s Lenten experience.
I have a tendency to expect too much from Lent. It always comes during such a difficult season for me. Where I live, we have normally endured five or six months of gray skies and rain by this time of year. It’s very easy to become a little depressed and self absorbed. I always look forward to Lent though because it brings me out of that winter funk and manges to lift my spirits. Unfortunately, I often set goals that I’m not spiritually disciplined enough to keep. While Lent always helps me grow closer to God to some degree, it usually feels like I’m returning to God rather than moving up to another level on the spiritual ladder — which is my ultimate goal.
For me to grow closer to God, I need to better embrace prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. This Lent, I made a committment to get back on track spiritually by sacrificing computer time in favor of prayer. I resolved to limit my home computer time to ten minutes per day, while including the Rosary each day with the time that I saved. In addition, I committed to reducing my espresso stand trips to once per week, while donating the saved money to a charity.
Well, I pretty much failed miserably. The first week or two went fairly well, but then I started to focus my thoughts on some job-related stress. I had recently applied for a new position with my existing employer, and I just spent far too much time worrying about what would happen if I didn’t get that position. For some reason, I don’t have the ability to focus on myself and on God simultaneously. This is probably the case for most of us. Gradually — okay, rapidly — I abandoned my Lenten objectives. There isn’t one of them that I faithfully kept. As a result, I began to slip into some old sinful behavior.
Fortunately, I had a good confession a couple of weeks ago. I was able to rally and have a very strong Holy Week. I didn’t return to my original resolutions, but I did manage to include about 45 minutes of prayer each day. As a result, I feel renewed — ready to greet our Risen Savior.
This past 40 days, I certainly didn’t meet my expectations — not by a long shot. It looks like I have a lot of work to do in order to gain the spiritual discipline that I truly desire. Not all is lost, however. While I did fall short of my goals, I did manage to return to Christ — thanks be to God! I feel renewed and ready to take on the world. Oh, and on another positive note, I start my new position in about a week. God is so good.
Discipline
I’m not much of a linguist, but when I typed the word discipline above, I immediately noticed that it looks a lot like the word disciple. Since I want to be a follower of Christ, a disciple, then I guess it follows that I could use some discipline.
I have selective discipline. I will follow a strict regimen and a very structured life — if it brings me some sort of desired result — within a time frame that I find suitable. Think about how ridiculous that sounds. I am disciplined when it suits me? Why, that’s not discipline at all!
Regularly, I will adopt some sort of prayer schedule. Sometimes I’ll get up early in the morning and begin with the Divine Office. After a few days I will decide to sleep in, and I’ll just pray the Rosary on the way to work. The following week, I’ll totally abandon prayer. It’s a viscious cycle. I keep repeating it.
Prayer and a disciplined spiritual life are critical for me to stay close to God. When I stay close to God, I make good, selfless decisions. When I turn my back on Him, I end up doing things that will eventually have me crawling back into the confessional.
For some reason, the simple things are always the most difficult for me. The answer to my spiritual troubles is very simple — I need to pray, fast, and serve God before all others. If only it was that easy.
Does anyone have any guidance that they wish to share?
I Want It My Way
I have no doubts about God’s existence or His goodness, mercy, and power. I have learned to truly believe that He loves me and wants the best for me. And I should have no doubts that His plans for me are vastly (and divinely) superior to my own. But…for some reason…I still want to do things my way.
During nearly every phase of my life, I have struggled to wrangle control from God. I have tried to ignore His call and do things my way because, after all, I know what’s best for me. Honestly, it’s not always that much of a struggle. I actually find it very easy to turn my back on God. Each time, I realize my mistake, feel a sense of true contrition, and return to Him through the Sacraments. In His infinite love and mercy, He always lifts me back up — making my faith stronger than ever before.
I really wish that it didn’t have to be this way. My cycle of loving God, ignoring God, and loving God, is really quite exhausting. Surely I should know by now that doing it God’s way is the right way. Abandoning my own selfish motives and desires and offering myself to Him in complete submission always works.
Still, I find myself sitting here, with so many gifts for which I should be grateful, and yet I worry. I worry about decisions that are out of my control, and focus on the very slight chance that things won’t work out exactly as orchestrated in my mind. All of this worrying just sucks the energy right out of me, and distracts me from giving to the people that I care about most.
Dear Lord, please deliver me from this fear, which is nothing more than a lack of faith in your goodness. Help me to be grateful for all that I have, and please help me to accept my life exactly as it comes to me each day…in accordance with your perfect plan. Amen.
Birthdays, Family, and Food
My grandmother, who is now in a nursing home, turns ninety this weekend. It has been just over a year since we nearly lost her. That was quite a story. You can read about it here.
Our efforts to encourage some distant family to come and celebrate this weekend were moderately successful. I have four distant family members in my home now, two of whom I have never met until this event. I have been doing what every normal person does when they have company over that they don’t really know very well — cooking and cleaning.
I wonder why it is that whenever I’m a little uncomfortable and don’t know what to say, I feel the need to feed people. I guess it gives me something to focus on, a justifiable busyness that will hopefully be a good excuse to avoid thinking of things to say.
Birthdays and family celebrations always seem to revolve around food for us. I am praying for the strength to avoid gluttony. I pray that God will fill me with the comfort that I sometimes seek through food and artificial busyness. And may the good Lord bless my Grandmother, who has worked so hard throughout her days, and is most deserving of his unending love.
Focus
I am having a very difficult time maintaining focus these days. Every time that I sit down to blog, I get distracted by something. Rather than writing, I have been working on tweaking the layout of this site. For some reason, I seem more eager to work on the fluff rather than the content.
