"All the Single Ladies"

I found this particular bumper sticker on facebook. I found it kinda cute, not that sisters and nuns are actually single... they are very much taken. I thought I would put a shout-out here to all the nuns and sisters out there... but this is especially for my two girls that are very much on their way to become full fledged sisters!!! My prayers are always with ya'll! :)

Fun With the Family While Stuffing Easter Eggs

If you were to come and visit my family this evening you would have walked into a disaster area. As soon as you walk up the stairs you would see the living room floor covered with boxes, plastic easter eggs, little kid toys, stickers, bags, candy, and then all of us crowded in different parts of the room. It would look like we had our own little packing area with each of us having our own way of packing all these different things into easter eggs.

You see every year my dad decides he wants to be in charge of the church's children's easter egg hunt for Easter Sunday. My dad has done this now for the past ten years and so he is very particular about what toys and candy and such go with each child's age group. God forbid you accidentally add an extra sticker or put in two toys without a piece of candy... He does not do well when something goes a little off of his game plan. Flexibility is something he does not have much patience for. I have to say that I do enjoy messing with him by pretending that I messed something up earlier and just happened to realized it. That is great fun when his face turns all red and he cannot say a full sentence without stuttering because he is going through the eggs trying to find what I messed up. It is even more funny when he realizes I am joking with him. He makes it too easy that it is hard to resist teasing him a little bit.

Crista and I are now pretty much experts at dealing with my father when he is flustered while putting these easter eggs together. My mother, however, hadn't done it in a number of years and forgot how my dad can be. She was also frustrated more when not everything would fit and she had to tape a lot of them shut, and eventually just quit her spot all together. It was more fun to mess with them then actually packing up the eggs.

Of the 422 eggs we needed to fill up tonight, we only finished about half of them. We probably would have gotten them all done, except for the fact that my sister and I purposefully used the tape up like crazy so we would run out of it. My dad could not comprehend finishing the eggs that would not need tape tonight so instead he just called it quits.

Yes, I am still alive. :)

Well I have realized tonight that I haven't written up a blog post on here in quite a few days. I have just been so busy with a lot of different things that I haven't really had the time to sit down and write out a blog... I was busy with work, retreat reunions, movie night, playing ultimate frisbee, going to a friend's band concert, bowling, confirmation classes, and Bible study, add on family drama to that... Just a lot going on. Not much free time at all.

Tonight for Bible study we studied the book of Tobit. It is my very favorite book of the Bible. Me a hopeless romantic and all, this particular book, along with Song of Songs, totally works for me. It is a love story with lots of different drama going on in the story... It starts off with Tobias, Tobiah's father, a very righteous and holy man who becomes blind. He becomes distressed and prays to be able to die.

While this is going on there is a woman named Sarah who has issues of her own. She had married seven times, and each of those seven husbands ended up being killed by the demon of lust on their wedding night. She finally gets to the breaking point and starts to plan her own death. She changes her mind from committing suicide to asking God to take her life, and even at the end of her prayer she hands everything over to him and says that if He wants her to live, so be it, put to take pity on her.

At this point of the storyline, God finally sends out the archangel Raphael (Raphael actually means healer) to help answer both their prayers. Raphael goes with Tobiah to go in search of his wife, Sarah. Along the way they come upon a fish, and Raphael tells Tobiah that if he wants to get rid of Sarah's demon he must use the insides of this fish to cause him to flee, and then afterwords he and Sarah must pray to God in thanksgiving. He also said that in order to give Tobias his vision back he has to use the guts of the fish and wipe it on his eyes.

Finally Tobiah meets Sarah and they both do as Raphael told him on their wedding night, and the evil demon flees without hurting Tobiah, and then they kneel down and pray in thanksgiving for their vocation of marriage to each other.

Tobiah and Sarah finally head back to Ninevah where Tobiah helps bring his father's vision back. When Tobiah goes to give Raphael money for going on his journey with him Raphael finally reveals who he is to the two men... and then everyone lives happily ever after...

Here is the prayer that the Tobiah and Sarah prayed their wedding night...

Tobit 8:4-8

When the girl's parents left the bedroom and closed the door behind them, Tobiah arose from bed and said to his wife, "My love, get up. Let us pray and beg our Lord to have mercy on us and to grant us deliverance." She got up, and they started to pray and beg that deliverance might be theirs. He began with these words: "Blessed are you, O God of our fathers; praised be your name forever and ever. Let the heavens and all your creation praise you forever. You made Adam and you gave him his wife Eve to be his help and support; and from these two the human race descended. You said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone; let us make him a partner like himself.' Now, Lord, you know that I take this wife of mine not because of lust, but for a noble purpose. Call down your mercy on me and on her, and allow us to live together to a happy old age." They said together, "Amen, amen,"

R.I.P. ArchBishop Romero

Today happens to be the anniversary of Oscar Romero's death. For those of you who have never heard of him here is a little background info. As the Archbishop of San Salvador during El Salvador's brutal civil war, Romero became the "bishop of the poor" for his work defending the Salvadoran people. After calling for international intervention to protect those being killed by government forces, Romero was assassinated on March 24, 1980. He is now in the process of beatification right now...

Below I pasted in Oscar Romero's prayer... I put the lines that really made me think in bold. The one line that really made me think is the one which says, "We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.We lay foundations that will need further development." It made me think about how no matter how much we want to help out the next generation live a better life, there will always be more work to do... We will never be able to fully complete something in our lifetime. Instead we work on it as much as possible until we have to pass it on to someone else to take care of....

Maybe this prayer will make some of you reflect about things as well. It is a good prayer for that.

The Prayer of Oscar Romero

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.

The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expressed our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives include everything.

This is what we are about. We plant the seed that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own. Amen

The chimes rang to let me know it is ten o'clock

Tonight I am sitting here and my mind is bouncing in a hundred different places. Ok, well, that is not exactly true. That is really not true at all. In fact it is very focused on one thing, and that is what is so frustrating to me tonight. I want to break-away from it, but when I feel close something happens and I am right back where I started. Sometimes it is a line in a song or a quote from a book I am reading...It has been on my mind for most of the year and really it just should not be there anymore, or at least not as strong. Not nearly as strong. I have been so good bouncing back from things in the past that I am annoyed with myself for not being able to bounce back on this one... I need to let it go because it is only hurting me in the long run. I say that as if it is something so easy to do, but for whatever reason this is not so easy to do.

There are defining moments in life... people we meet, opportunities that somehow come our way at the exact time we need it, life experiences that have made us who we are... and at the time we don't realize how perfect the timing was for them. Those moments don't always phase us as they happen, and if they do we don't always really understand it all. Instead, we just go with the flow. After time passes and we think back to those moments we realize how important they were and are so grateful for them.

I know that what is on my mind tonight will most likely be one of those defining times in my life. I don't understand why things played out the way they did just yet, and really I think that is what bugs me the most. Once I understand I am sure when I think back on it I will be able to smile and be extremely grateful for what I learned from it. So until then... I guess I have no choice BUT to pray for even more clarity and understanding on why this part in my life played out like it did...There is no better person to give up this kind of thing than to God, so here it comes.

"In Your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me..."

Psalms 139:13-16
For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them.

This particular Bible quote always amazes me. It takes my breath away when I think about how from the beginning of time God has planned on creating me... the exact day, the exact moment... He knew the time frame. He knew the parents I would have, the place I would live, how society would be in the area I would grow up. He pictured what I would look like in His mind. He knew how long I would live, and even though I have free will, He knew me enough to know how I would choose to live my life... He gave me this life because He knew what I was able to handle, and every time I hear that verse I am always amazed that I am so important to Him... out of all the ALL the incredible people who have lived on this planet He still had time to think about me and my life and the purpose for it. It seems so crazy to me, but that is the truth.

The truth is He did not just do that for me, He did that for each and every person that has been placed on this earth. It is astounding....

The other night my family got into a discussion on evolution (if you knew my family this particular subject coming up would not surprise you in the least...). I know that evolution is real... caterpillars turn into butterflies; tadpoles into frogs... Even though I know that it is real, after reading quotes from the Bible like the above one, I have a real hard time believing I came from an ape. I just can't one hundred percent believe in that part of the evolution theory. My older sister and I agreed that if we were from apes, then how come there are not any more ape/people walking around today... why can't we still see this transformation going on? Her fiancee said "well, stages could take thousands or millions of years.." but that is not enough of an answer for me to really believe that... I guess that is one of those questions I will hopefully be able to ask God if I ever do get to meet Him...

Funny thing is I did not exactly mean to start talking about my thoughts on the evolution theory, but that is the way my mind wandered tonight. In my head I thought this blog would go in one direction, but it went on a little "detour" from the way I wanted this to go. That is part of the fun of letting my mind wander. I never know where it will take me...

In the Home Stretch

I can't believe that the end of Lent is coming so close. We are pretty much in the home stretch now... it is a good time of reflection.

Today during the homily, Deacon Kellums talked mostly about how our lenten promises are a lot like new year's resolutions. They are something we made at the beginning of the year to help better ourselves spiritually. It is not really a mortal sin if we have screwed up on them, but that does not mean we should give up hope that we can work on what we wanted to and try it again.

With that in mind I decided to go back and refresh myself on what I wanted to do for lent this year... I promised to give up snacking for lent, and let me tell you some days that has been really hard for me, while others it was not so bad. I have realized even more about that line between what I think I want and what I really can live without. This "denying" myself of snacks has helped me become more aware of the fact that I have more control of my life than sometimes I realized. I am more stronger to say no to something that I want (like sin, for example) even though it is not what I need. I am no where near bullet-proof though. I am only human... As I mentioned before, there are days when I feel strong and am doing great and then I will look and happen to see someone eating a bag of kettle-cooked potato chips, and my mouth starts watering. It takes a lot of energy to then not think about how delicious those chips are so that I am not tempted to break-down and snack away.... Or when my brother randomly brings me home a cookies 'n cream blizzard from DQ just to be nice, and it is Monday night... I mean I ended up breaking-down and eating it. If you knew my brother, you would understand how BIG of a thing that was for him to do... he never hardly ever thinks of someone other than himself, and I felt really surprised when he came in with that blizzard for me. He forgot I gave up snacking for lent, and so since it was so surprising from my brother, I did eat it. My parents said it was ok since it was a gift.

All-in-all I think I am doing pretty ok with this promise. I only have two weeks to go, and I have every intention of not breaking-down on my promise until Easter. Wish me luck. :)