Keep Walking

I haven’t hiked the Camino. Someday I hope to make the 500-mile trek across the mountains, valleys, and rivers of Spain, maybe with a few friends or on my honeymoon with mystery man. (I hope he likes walking.) The thought of a challenging physical journey across natural barriers fills me with enthusiasm—almost fervor.

Would I have what it takes to complete the journey? Could I keep moving forward despite blisters, aches, or illness? Would I be able to shoulder my load each morning or would I need to lighten my pack? Would I be humble enough to leave something behind and face the consequences?

As my mind scrolls through these questions, I realize—I walk this journey every day of my life. I am not speaking now of a physical journey, but of a mental and spiritual one.  Despite the numerous obstacles, disappointments, and failures of everyday life, do I continue to put one foot in front of the other and move forward towards my goal?

Responding to the duty of the present moment as I serve the moms and babies I live with requires flexibility and sacrifice, and some tasks are just not going to be finished because they are less important. Not knowing how someone will react to a question or reminder presents an obstacle in communicating a message to her. Falling asleep in morning prayer and coming down with a cold on my birthday seem like failures.

But these struggles are part of the journey. They are a splinter of the cross that I pick up and carry behind my Master. They are the load that I must shoulder each morning. And when the burden becomes to heavy and I need to lighten my pack, He is there to give me rest, to show me what can be left behind, and to give what I need to carry the remaining load.

Ponderings after Skipping Stones

This morning I skipped a rock that hopped five times across the water before plunking to the bottom of the creek bed—a personal record. I stopped then and rested from my run/hike across the countryside behind my house, thinking deep thoughts about the impact of one life upon another life.

People skim over the surface of my life, like the rock making ripples in the water, and only a few sink deep. What a gift these ones are, who have nestled even in the muddiest part of my heart. Despite that part, really.

Yet, those that have rippled by have changed me too. Perhaps it seems that the change is only at the surface level, but those ripples continue to impact me long after they have died away and after the people who have caused them have gone out of my life. Those words you spoke, the ideas you shared, the deeds you did, continue with me.

She loved me for who I was, even though we shared a room for only a week at summer camp.

He shared my love of books and discussed them for hours on end with me.

Her name completed the puzzle of my own, which led us to walk around with arms linked for half a day (at least) proclaiming that together we were “Anastasia.”

She encouraged the gift of writing that she saw glimmering beneath my overactive adolescent imagination. 

Their influence was short, but decisive. The ripples continue to extend. 

And those who have sunk deeper? It is almost too great for words to express how they have supported, and comforted, and known me. 

At any moment, these too might be chosen and flung far away to influence another, or chosen and carried away to rest in the nooks and halls of another, better home. 

Will I know the time or the hour? No. 

Will the hollow remain when that one, that stone, is taken away? Probably. 

Why can they not stay forever? I do not know.

His ways are not my ways.

His Voice Says Come

His voice says, “Come.” He is always telling us to move forward, to take that step, to devote ourselves to service.

“Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You upon the water.”

My heart quakes within me. Perhaps it isn’t Him. Then I will not have to go, to step out, to change. I won’t have to take the next biggest leap of my life.

“Come,” He says.

It is Him, then. It is not the voice of my imagination, the sirens in my mind, or the lure of external evils. No, it is really Him, and His voice is the breath of peace.

“Come.” The first step is always the most difficult—a truth I learned while ziplining in the mountains. (Who knew high adventure sports could teach so much about the spiritual life?) The first step is always the hardest, and many steps follow it. This makes me shrink back.

“Come.” His hand is outstretched and, reaching out for it, I hurl myself into the roaring sea.

Seeds of Sound In Silence Grow

“I love this song.” It’s a phrase that is much more likely to come out of some of my best friends’ mouths than out of my own. You can ask them. I’ve never really been one to fall in love with a song, to hanker after music, to desire it. And I don’t usually go out of my way to listen to music, because, in general, I prefer silence.

But music, I’m beginning to slowly discover, can make the times of silence in my life more fruitful. Or at least music makes the silence more reflective than routine. It’s like the difference between digging a hole in the ground for the sheer entertainment of seeing how deep you can get and digging a hole for the purpose of planting a seed in it.

Music in the in-between-times can help the silence to have a purpose. Music plants seeds.

So silence and sound work together, and sometimes it is good to soak myself in sounds in order that my silence will benefit from it.

I know this because the lyrics of Josh Garrels’ song “At The Table”—which I have been listening to and learning to play on guitar—have been stirring around in my brain for the past week.

I went the ways of wayward winds

In a world of trouble and sin

A story of prodigality, reconciliation, and conversion, the lyrics cry out to me as a sinner. There is always a place for me at the table of my Mother, the Church.

For each of us, there is a place. We are welcomed in the arms of our loving mother; our Father comes running to meet us. The prodigal son is welcomed to the banquet of the Eucharist.

Quotation from "At The Table," by Josh Garrels

Oh, the Possibilities...and I'm Switching to Pods

Perhaps those of you that I don't talk to face to face on a regular basis are wondering how my life is going. (Or perhaps not.) The current mountain that looms before me is what to do after graduation. Yes, the dearly anticipated and slightly dreaded date is getting progressively closer and I have no plans for the downhill slide of summer. 

But I know two things. 

My first fiasco with the bubbles.

The first thing is that there is an endless list of possibilities for my life in the coming years. I could become a nannie, a personal assistant, or a professional cheesecake taster, not to mention a crayon namer, wedding dress tailor, or writer. Although it was overwhelming at first, the current realm of possibilities is a beautiful freedom for me right now. There is no need to put myself into a box. Rather, there is need to dream without limits.

The second thing that I know is that I am switching to pods. Tide pods. After oversudding the washing machine this past week for the second time in the semester--although the experience was less traumatic and messy than the first time--I am giving up on measuring my own soap into the laundry. There is simply not enough time (or money) to run my comforter through the wash four times in order to get rid of the excess bubbles. (I guess that's what I get for washing my comforter during the middle of the semester.)

These are the things I know right now, along with the undying truth that I shall not want. God provides. He always does. And in that lies all my hope.

Guest Post

This week I am privileged to have a post published on the Truth from the Heart blog, which is run by the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project. Check out my post here:

Love Is More Than This

When My Feet Hit the Pavement

I went for a run this morning.

That sentence still sounds strange each time I write or speak it. Before this summer, I never went for a run “just because.” (If you don’t believe me, ask my mom.) I saw exercise as a miserable activity, an activity that didn’t do anything but put my body in pain for a portion of the day. In middle school, surrounded by my friends and excited by the progress of learning new strokes and conquering different events, I probably enjoyed swim team. But at the end of the day, exercise was not something I loved or sought. Exercise was something I endured.

Over the last few years, particularly through playing floor hockey and Ultimate Frisbee with my friends, my attitude towards exercise has taken a 180. Not only have I delighted in the games I was playing, I have also experienced the community of a sports team and the reward of pushing my body to greater endurance. Besides, the endorphins were also a plus.

This summer, when I was restless and tired of being cooped up in a house or office for hours on end, I began to go out to the local cemetery to go running, usually a couple times a week. It wasn’t that I was particularly fond of running, but I noticed that I was a happier person after I would go for a run. My patience with others was greater; the quality of my sleep was better; focusing on my work was easier.

I began to understand that exercise is something that I need, whether I enjoy it at the moment or not. In striving to become the best version of myself, how can I exercise my mind and my soul and fail to exercise my body?

Living a healthy life involves all aspects of my spiritual and corporeal person.

Living a healthy life glorifies God, Who dwells within me.

St. Paul teaches this when he writes:

“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” 

– 1 Cor 6:19-20

I'm a happier person when I go running. And I desire to glorify God not simply in my words, but also through my actions. That's why I went running this morning.