Welcome to my blog. I live to be inspired, so that I can inspire others. The lessons I’ve learned through walking through the valley of the shadow of death have taught me 3 things:
Love redeems.
Joy comes.
Resurrection exists.
These are the themes I write about.
That house was a perfect house, whether you like food or sleep or story-telling or singing or just sitting and thinking best, or a perfect mixture of them all. Merely to be there was a cure for weariness, fear, and sadness.
~JRR Tolkien
If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.
~St. Theresa of Calcutta
Today, I received an award that is deeply personal to me: the Spirit of Ruth award from Sigma Alpha. As I reflected on her life and my story, I realized that there were some fundamental virtues Ruth must have cultivated in her “first act” to allow her to be the woman of worth, she is recognized for in her second act. Identifying these core virtues as faith, hope and love, I share their importance for a young person’s first act.
As we prepare for returning to campus, I want to share thoughts from my own journey of grief and returning.
The Gospel this week gives me a picture of returning from a long day at the office only to be greeted with more work to do. …and this work is either going to drain you or replenish you - and it all hangs on these questions: Who are you working for? In whose strength do you serve? From what reservoir are you giving / pouring out?
Today marks 5 years of when I “really became a Catholic” - the day I allowed Mary to lead me to Jesus. I am realizing now that until we allow his mother to lead us to her son - we are missing him. There’s an aspect to surrendering, a vulnerability and humility of heart that Mary innately possesses. We take on that same posture when we pray the Rosary, and we experience Jesus differently. As the one who carried him introduces us to him, we experience a greater fullness of Jesus’ reality.
“Ah, you’ll live”…it’s like our family’s mantra to get up and keep going — to keep pushing…to never give up hope. They can have that attitude because they’ve lived it. We’ve lived it.
Of all the schools I’ve worked with, the SpartANS spirit has shaped me the most. The idea of duty, sacrifice and honor of the warriors of Sparta resonated strongly with me in Fall 2016. Those themes of responsibility and connectedness kept me showing up for you in that first year. Witnessing your joy, enthusiasm for learning, commitment to growing - trust of my wisdom - brought me back to life. During the following years, I rediscovered me, tapping deeper into my calling and abilities. Thank you for showing up every day. Thank you for trusting my guidance. Thank you for doing the little things I asked of you; I hope you will recognize them as big things, someday.
I get that there are people in the world who think it is better to just accept God … or to believe that closeness to God is a yes/no, in or out, static not dynamic state of existence.
I just don’t think that’s how God operates. God wants to relate to us – with us – for us – through us.
All these thousands of years later, one of the proofs WE use to support believing in these stories of Jesus of Nazareth as Son of God is that ALL his early supporters WENT and also DIED for the message.
Their willingness to die for the Resurrection is one of the proofs we use for it being a reliable fact.
So, I will not fault Thomas for wanting to be certain.
I love that our Savior is someone who sees our broken heart and COMES TO US. He doesn’t watch us weeping and walk away – to follow up with his buddies. No, he comes to Mary. He heals her. She encounters the Living God, the Resurrection – and her heart is healed. She is transformed powerfully through the encounter with the God who loves us – again. This time, she is sent out. Her first transformation led her to follow Jesus and never leave his side. Now, He sends her out – fully transformed, fully equipped with a message.
That’s what I felt in my heart as it sank…realizing this week is prep for the Passion.
I didn’t want to go through all that again, Lord. Please. Not now. I’m barely keeping it all together —I have so much to do — not this, too. …not this, too.
Even at the moment of triumphal entry, I think Jesus looks out at the crowds and prays for us, saying, “Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing.”
For me, I sensed that God wants me to think about this related to how I work and how I interact with my students. They don’t need me to recede into myself. They don’t need me to disappear. They don’t need me to come up with a thousand new ways of doing things. They also don’t need me to KNOW ALL THE THINGS - which sometimes I think they do, and that is my greatest source of insecurity as an advisor or teacher when I feel like I’m letting them down because I’m not ‘all the things’ for them…. However, they do need ME.
The point of Lenten fasts is to move us beyond ourselves. While “none of us expected to give up this much for Lent,” if we only focus on what we’ve given up - we have missed the point. If I only focus on doing better for me, then I have missed God in this lesson.
