The Way of Trust and Love

Those who know me well know that I'm easily reading at least five books at any one time, and right now it's closer to ten. Some of them I've been  slowly working my way through, on and off, for years, while others I read through at a much faster pace.

I started reading Jacques Philippe's book, The Way of Trust and Love: A Retreat Guided by St. Therese of Lisieux, back in September, intending to read it in the week leading up to the feast of St. Therese as a sort of mini-retreat. The six chapters are short enough that reading one every day should easily be possible. I really enjoyed this short book. It was filled with insights from St. Therese herself, and Philippe's interpretations and expansions of those insights were helpful and easy. For anyone who is looking for an introduction to the writings of St. Therese, I highly recommend this book. I would also recommend it for anyone who is struggling to trust God or who would like good, practical suggestions for how to trust God in daily life.

Philippe discusses the importance of daily prayer, particularly daily reading of Scripture. He treats St. Therese in a very human way, showing her weaknesses and how she persevered to overcome those weaknesses. Philippe does not shy away from the fact that life is often difficult, or the harsh realities of our own defects and struggles. What he does is offer practical solutions to overcoming those hardships, looking to St. Therese as our example to follow.

Happy Endings

The University of Mary Washington is about 70% women, which presents a lot of unique opportunities. On the one hand, it means I get to meet a lot of new people everyday since I primarily work with women. On the other hand, it means I have a lot of work to do.

With so many women, however, I end up talking a lot about vocations, particularly the vocation of marriage and, alongside it, the lack of men. It's hard to feel called to marriage, but to also know that you are only one half of that vocation. It's also hard to see two of my teammates married with children. Their wives are wonderful people, but sometimes jealousy creeps in, and it's difficult to not idealize the lives they have.

Mr. Bingley and Jane

I was watching the movie "Pride and Prejudice" with my sisters, and it got to the scene where Mr. Bingley is leaving Netherfield, his house near the Bennett family. With his leaving, he is also leaving behind Jane, who has fallen in love with him. As he was driving away, I said to my sister, "I wish life was like the movies. We know it's all going to work out. It's sad now, but in 45 minutes, they'll be back together and happy."

But life is like the movies! We don't have the pleasure of knowing exactly how things will work out, like we do for Jane and Mr. Bingley, but we do know that things will be happy in the end. Of course, this is all well and easy to say when life doesn't seem to be crumbling down around you, or when you aren't in tears because it doesn't seem fair that you have to wait, and the waiting is hard, and the waiting is longer than 45 minutes. In these moments, though, we get to look at the bigger picture: Jesus became man, lived here on earth with us and for us, died and rose again. He won. We will win. As long as there is faith and hope in Him, there will be happy endings.

2012 in Review

As the year draws to a close, I thought it might be a good time to take a moment to reflect on the past year. So, here it is: 2012 in review.

January
I began my last semester as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin! I also started to feel the pressure of having a thesis due in three short months. It was both a relief and slightly terrifying! Even though I wasn't a full-time student, I knew I had a tough semester ahead of me, with my part-time job, Bible study, discipleships, and finding time to enjoy Madison!

February
Lent began in February, and I decided to go big this year. I gave up meat for the whole forty days! It was a budget-friendly decision - meat, on average, costs much more than rice and beans, but also a spiritual one, as there was nothing that would prevent me from not eating meat. I originally thought it would be a really difficult sacrifice, like the way I would crave a cheeseburger every Friday during Lent in the past, but it ended up being much different than I imagined. I found I really didn't dream about eating meat as much as I expected. In fact, there are so many different non-meat options, that my diet hardly suffered at all.* The hardest part was eating out at restaurants, and not being able to order 90% of what was on the menu.
*Except when I really wanted shepards pie, but couldn't use hamburger. I tried using barley with extra sauce as a substitute, but it really didn't turn out at all. I had rubbery barley and mushy mashed potatoes with a sauce that really suffered from not having the hamburger flavor. I ate the whole thing as a sacrifice, and even tried not to complain!

March
I realized that turning 22 isn't quite as fun as turning 21. I don't even remember whether or not I had a birthday party to be honest! But a good friend, whose birthday is just a few days after mine, turned 21 and had a big celebration. I had so much fun baking a cake for her, and seeing her excitement, that whatever I did has totally slipped my mind! March was also unseasonably warm, and I remember being so happy to ditch the winter boots and bring out the sundresses and sandals!

April
With just over a month left of school, April was crunch-time. I realized that if my thesis was ever going to get written, I needed to start writing, and writing fast! I also saw looming deadlines in my other classes, and smaller deadlines for papers and projects that become more of a nuisance than anything. I also started to realize that I might have bitten off more than I could chew with work and Bible studies! I ended up having to cut back a little to finish my school work, but, in the end it all worked out and my thesis got done.

May
Graduation! After four years of hard work and dedication, I finally graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with degrees in History and Religious Studies. It was a bittersweet moment. I was incredibly proud to have made it through my time at the UW, but it was harder than I thought it would be to leave behind all my friends that I had grown so close to over four years. Of course, I'm still close to so many of my friends, but it takes a lot more effort now that we don't see each other on a daily or even weekly or monthly basis.

My sisters and I at graduation

June

I was at FOCUS New Staff Training, colloquially known as "Summer Training" or NST, for the whole month of June. It was a really difficult transition for me, to graduate from the UW and one week later be back in classes. I also found it hard to come from UW-Madison, where I encountered a wide variety of people with many different opinions, to NST, where everyone that I saw was a Catholic missionary. It was wonderful in some ways, to know that we were all striving for holiness together, without any of the first years really having a good sense of what we would be encountering in the next few months with fundraising and transitioning to campus, but I really struggled with feeling so homogeneous.

Me (second right) with FOCUS missionaries at NST

July
Fundraising, fundraising, and more fundraising! I spent the whole month meeting with people to tell them more about FOCUS and the mission work I would be doing for the next two years, and inviting them to join me! At times it got really tiring and prayer was the only thing that helped me through it all, but it also was really amazing to reconnect with old friends and meet some new faces! I particularly enjoyed meeting so many parishioners at St. Agnes Parish, where I grew up and have worshiped with for years, but never knew! Now, whenever I go to mass there, I always know at least one other person and often more. I love feeling so connected with a community back home.

August
At the beginning of the month, I packed up almost everything I owned, and traveled across the country to Virginia, my new home! Oh my goodness! I learned to trust God SO MUCH over the summer, with fundraising, and I got to trust Him just a little bit more in moving. It's funny to think that almost everyone that I see on a daily basis I met just a few months ago, and that the place I now call home was totally unknown to me before August 10!

September
It was so hard to transition from student to missionary! I had no clue what I was doing half the time, and I struggled to figure out how to relate to the students as a missionary, and not as a fellow student. While I am still their peer in many ways, I am also a representative of the Church and a living witness to Christ. Talk about pressure! I'll be the first to admit that it wasn't always easy. There were many sleepless nights of wondering whether or not I'd said or done the right thing. At times, I thought for sure all the students hated me and that I was the worst missionary in the history of the world! And then I would realize I was being dramatic, and just kept on working, knowing that "all things work for good for those who love God" (Romans 8:28 - a Bible verse that has gotten me through many rough times this semester).

October
By the end of the month, Halloween, I finally felt like Virginia was home. I knew more of the students on a deeper level, my teammates and I had gotten into a routine, and I more or less knew my way around Fredericksburg. It also helped that I was able to visit Wisconsin for about a week! Although it was nice to be back at the UW and at my parents' house, neither of those places were home. I know more people living in Fredericksburg than I do in Green Bay. St. Paul's, UW's campus Catholic church, held more unfamiliar faces than familiar ones. Returning to campus was difficult, but it was nice to return to my ordinary pattern of living.

Susie and I went as "hawaiian punch" for Halloween

November

I (finally!) visited Washington, DC with Susie and a fellow UW grad who lives in the city. It was so much fun to see our nation's capital. It was a beautiful day, so we walked around to all the monuments, and stopped briefly in the American History Museum to see the original American flag they have there. Stepping outside of campus life for the weekend was a lot of fun. Sometimes I feel like my life is on display, like my actions are always being judged and noticed by teammates and students. And for the most part, it's true. As a missionary, I do have a responsibility to represent myself well because it doesn't go unnoticed. But, at the same time, even if I wasn't a missionary, I would still have the responsibility as a Catholic to represent myself and the Church well.

Susie and I at the Virginia pillar of the World War II memorial in Washington, DC

December

I'm 25% of the way done with my FOCUS mission work! Now that I've started to make the transition from student to missionary, I'm starting to prepare for the next transition: missionary to student. Specifically, studying for the LSAT, the Law School Admission Test. But first, I'll just enjoy spending time with my family, being back in the midwest, and the snow! If I've learned anything from being a missionary, it's that life is best handled one day at a time!

Some Wisdom from Von Balthasar

"When you say Yes to God unconditionally, you have no idea how far this Yes is going to take you.  Certainly farther than you can guess and calculate beforehand… but just how far and in what form? At the same time, this Yes is the sole, non-negotiable prerequisite of all Christian understanding, of all theology and ecclesial wisdom."   ~ Hans Urs Von Balthasar

Hans Urs von Balthasar
1905-1988

Last year at this time, I was knee deep in dense, heavy theological works by and about Hans Urs von Balthasar. Although I definitely don't miss the long reading schedule, I do sometimes miss von Balthasar. Call me crazy, but spending a year and a half intensively reading the works of one man (and barely making a dent in his over 100 published works) made me a little attached to him. An embarrassing anecdote to illustrate this point: I had finally finished the last formal biography of von Balthasar, which ended on his funeral, and I started crying! In my defense, the author painted a very moving portrait of the event and listed all the ways in which von Balthasar would be missed, but I had gotten a little bit emotionally attached to this little Swiss priest who seemed to embody childlike humility and humor in his writings.

My favorite work to read of his was Unless You Become Like this Child. Written in 1988, it was one of his last published works, meant specifically for John Paul II, who was a close personal friend of von Balthasar's. It was such a beautiful reflection on spiritual childhood, that it almost seemed irreverent to have to breeze through it to maintain my reading schedule. I do hope to read it again in the near future, and take the time to reflect on the words of von Balthasar.

7 Quick Takes, vol. 2

--- 1 ---

Trusting in God is hard. Putting my faith in something, Someone, that I can't see is incredibly difficult. It's so easy to fall into the "what ifs"...What if God doesn't actually exist? What if I'm not supposed to be a missionary and God is trying to tell me that and I'm just not getting it? What if I'm not cut out for mission life? What if nobody likes me in Virginia? What if I can't raise enough to get to Virginia? What if... What if... What if... The list can go on and on in my head.

--- 2 ---

I sometimes feel like St. Thomas, aka Doubting Thomas. The missionaries around me have seen the Lord. They know Him- they've heard His voice, they've seen His face. He is not a mystery to them. But I don't believe them. I haven't heard Him or seen His face. How can they have such complete and total trust in this Great Mystery? Why do they seem to get it, and my mind keeps reaching a dead end. Why do I keep walking into a brick wall when it comes to putting complete and total faith in Him?

--- 3 ---

I recently found a prayer by St. Thomas Aquinas that seems to summarize my doubts perfectly. It's the Adoro Te Devote, and it speaks about believing in God, particularly in the Eucharist, where both His humanity and divinity is hidden. I love the whole prayer, but especially the line that claims that "hearing suffices firmly to believe." At Mass, during the Eucharistic prayer, all I have is the sound of the priest speaking the Words of Consecration, but those words are enough, they must be enough.

--- 4 ---

Other times, trust comes more easily, more naturally. For example, I still don't have an apartment in Virginia. But for some reason, this doesn't bother me at all. I am totally confident that by the time I need to move to Fredericksburg, I will have a place to live.

Preferably not a little shack by the side of the railroad tracks!

--- 5 ---

And I know that God is good, that Jesus is Lord. He takes care of me in the little ways- running into an old friend from high school whom I haven't seen in years, hearing about how a mission partner had an incredible encounter with the Holy Spirit, turning on the radio right as my favorite song starts playing. I know He loves me in the little things.

--- 6 ---

It's the big things that keep me up at night, tossing and turning. Although, surprisingly, my unconscious doesn't register "finding a place to live" as a big thing. It's the worries about money (will I ever raise enough to be able to go to campus?), about friends (will anyone in Virginia like me and how can I leave all my Wisconsin friends?), about meeting people (why would I ever have volunteered for a job that involves talking to strangers every day?). But mostly it's about money.

--- 7 ---

But as my team director has said, "We work for the richest Man in the world." And I do! We only have what God allows us to have, and He won't allow me to live in poverty, alone and friendless, meeting only unpleasant, rude people. I do trust that in the abstract. It's only in the daily grind, where I start thinking that I'm somehow missing something that others have,  that it's difficult.

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!