Losing Yourself

Well it's been busy last couple of weeks but today I had the opportunity to go spend a little more time with the Blessed Sacrament than I thought I could. I am always very excited to go but today as many days 30 minutes is not nearly enough. It's the epiphany that I've found time to go that makes me happy, the realization that it worked out for me today....it actually puts me in a calm state on the way over.

All I did was say the rosary, I tried to use a different meditation source booklet I bought and it was good. Guess one shouldn't say 'all I did' but sometimes the methodical can be just as insightful.

Myself, I feel as though I've given up alot. Realizing that I've been praying this Litany of Humility off and on since 2003!!!

I began this journey single, independent, good career, professional circle, my identity (as it were) to begin married and working. This began the quest for where are my real friends, with so many of my friendships changing due to my marital status, that was wierd but good. I found more girlfriends, which has been extremely thirst quenching. Then I moved to married, working, mother...........ahh!! After 18 months of that! something had to change. I stayed home to begin our remodeling and possibly to delve more into my own internal remodeling God has been working on all along. I've grown to appreciate the role of mother and wife loving it, while not 100% embracing all of my chores, it's at least to 95% level. The remodeling was financed mostly by saved money I had before. So now I have no income, no job performance, people quesitoning what I am doing (as well as myself), husband I love but still getting comfortable with after just 3 years.

I realized just the other day I made this comment to my husband that I basically have no money. It dawned on me, that God is helping me strip away all that I 'have' in order to gain what He would want me to have. I still don't know what that is for sure, who does?? But is hasn't fallen into place as of yet.

Then today, I rec'd an approving feeling while I was praying and as I got to the Crowing of Thorns (3rd Sorrowful Mystery) it dawned on me, Jesus gave it all away and it was upon the cross (Christ the King Sunday) where he rec'd his glory. Oh crud, so I don't really want a bad thing to happen or suffering....but I didn't sense that. I felt as though I have been doing what He would want me to do but that the humility is only gained when all the other stuff is gone. I don't really know how to let go completely, hanging on with my fingernails to what I was and had been.

I guess that is what I've been most afraid of just being nothing and yet knowing that the nothing is necessary for others (my family) to grow and excell. Right?? Man that is so darn hard especially when you know you could go out and do the same thing but no one would really be happy, least of all me. I dread going back to work. Jesus says He's with me and I guess it's just coming together in my own mind how this feeling is working inside me. I am afraid to be nothing. This is the first time in my life I haven't worked for income, pretty scary!!! So I have a whole host of control issues going on.

And yet, when the Holy Spirit asks me or prods me, I obey because I WANT to. I still have so much work to do. I just think my time in front of the Blessed Sacrament has helped me to listen better to the Holy Spirit.

Giving up the way we live or are used to living is difficult. Ushering in what is beautiful in the eye of eternity is hard too. Breaking attachments with things in this world is so hard. I think of me and how I feel about things now and just am unsure how this fits with who I am, but it must be who I was meant to be and didn't realize it because it is finally how great I feel. I am not a leaf in the wind reacting to today's distressing situation, coming in like Underdog to save the day. I am NOT indispensible to my 'work' world as I thought.

Is God setting me aside for a time?? Quite possibly so, and I want to do that gracefully. I heard today something abt a St. Bernadette considered herself like a broom. An item very useful, but that is put back in the corner after its use........made me take a pause.

Blessing to any who read this!!

Oh my goodness- I still love that icon.........I often forget to do that and have to do it later, I love that!!!!

Lost during the day

Wow, I got through here yesterday feeling very connected- spiritually. I was upbeat and I sat for a moment and thought where was that feeling all day??? I had bits of it throughout the day, but most of the day I didn't feel that way or did I? I think I cried twice because of such uncertain feelings regarding my career work and the direction in which I should go next. I think I even said I am lost! I am driving in a fog!!! No idea what I am doing.

For the first time in my life that I can recall I am doing nothing. Before I had a path I was taking that I felt certain of, and now that I am on this path, I am unsure of what I am doing. It seems more passive than usual for me and that is hard for me, I am a do-er.

It is. It is like driving with absolutely no map in a foreign city, that is the way I could classify it yesterday to Holy Spirit. What am I doing?? I have immersed myself in things, learning more abt what I want to read or know regarding spiritual matters to increase my knowledge of him (I have a huge desire for that still), but how can I determine or discern what I should do next. I feel very lost, not alone, just lost. Wandering aimlessly would almost qualify as to what I am doing right now. MOREOVER, it is not bothering me except on some anomalous day when it strikes me as out of order!!!

I have no one to share my inner thoughts with except the Lord and my spiritual director. My husband is not too interested in these matters of mine, because well he's not. He would listen probably but in the bigger sense I don't think he'd see it as important, just petty problems. His big problems admittedly are manly problems of the world, work, finances, etc. We don't get to the level of talking about what counts...well our definitions are different. Besides he isn't the solution to my troubles as much as I love him, I think only God has the answer for me.

I am really not sure what I am going on about, guess this wasn't too good a day. So I look forward to tomorrow. I have no clear feeling about where to go next except to return in some manner what I know how to do well, and then see what happens from there.

I know in my weakness God is my strength. I feel very weak right now, like I don't rm'r how I was before and that isn't bad, just don't know how I did all of what I used to do........... but I wasn't happy then at all.

Okay, goodnight and blessing to anyone who reads this!!

p.s.- Funny I just added the icon at the top, and I can't look at it without smiling and feeling love. I just love that icon!!

Reason for this blog

There are so many small things attributable to my time spent in front of the Blessed Sacrament. I am not even a power adorer like others. I get a prompt or invitation as I refer to it from the Holy Spirit, I go more often than not.

It has really pushed me to listen or hear the voice of the Holy Spirit. Wish I could listen more often and change myself immediately into the person I want to be. I've been seeking the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I hear and keep trying to respond in kind whatever the situation might seem to require.

In fact I had a dream that the pope (JPII) had arrived as my guest on this cruiseship to a social gathering. He brought Jesus with him in the Blessed Sacrament, and he carried this large glass box. I was the hostess of this event apparently but new few of the guests, my assistant had evidently taken care of the details. John Paul the Great sat the glass box on this display stand I showed him to, and the guests gathered around and he taught them about the Blessed Sacrament and they all knew and got it and the whole place emitted a soft warm feeling of understanding and peace. The next thing I know, the pope is gone and we are being asked to gather our things and leave immediately. My assistant asks,"So what do we do with that?" as she points to the Blessed Sacrament. I tell her she needs to find the pope so he can take Him back. A guest says he left hours ago. I tell her to call the Vatican, yeah right. No one is going to take your call!!! So I say, not with reluctance but with confidence, "I will take Jesus with me." So I did and that was pretty much the end.

But what to do with that?? I tossed it around, asked the Holy Spirit to advise me properly. So here I am, not a webpage designer, not a blogger (not a good one anyway) attempting to do what John Paul the Great so often encouraged us to do. Use technology to assist in spreading or advancing the cause of Christ. So it is meager I admit, but I enjoy it.

My little girl asked me "What doin day mommy?" Meaning what am I going to do of course. So I told her that once I dropped her off and finished a couple of errands I was going to stop and see Jesus........she eeeekkked, "I go!" So I said well maybe tomorrow you can bring a few colors and the rosary coloring book you just got and we can go see Him. She loved that idea.

So throughout all of this if drawing me closer is to bring her closer- then Amen!!!

I keep praying for another baby and Jesus assures me He will answer me but not now, so that is good and I can live with that. The last two times I was there to see Him, His presence left with me and once outside said to me again, "I am with you Wendy." I mean by name that is a good feeling. I'd like to talk to someone else about what they think or hear or feel during that time, and yet it is such a personal time it seems almost offensive to ask. I really just realized that, how intimate it is for each of us. I imagine most people feel like me, it seems unbelievable or too boastful to claim Jesus talks to me, but He does!!! That's what we are there for!!! So I hope we are all getting something out of it. I wouldn't even know how to broach that subject with someone.

So maybe in my own ignorance I am letting anyone who'd read this, a glimmer of what is in store for a person. Most likely much more can be gained, however, this is where I am right now. Today I went for just 30 minutes and I said one decade of the Divine Mercy chaplet, the prayer for today for the Holy Souls in Purgatory, and then read a chapter in this book, The Little Book of the Holy Spirit. In the chapter entitled, We must yield completely to God, something captured my heart almost as if I'd gasped.

...but in any case, there is something far more special in the guidance of the Holy Spirit sought for by the soul in its endeavor to 'live godly in Christ Jesus'. It has to yield itself to the promptings of God, be eager to catch His every whisper and quick in its obedience to His every call.

For this to be achieved, the first work is an emptying of the soul. Every obstacle has to be gotten rid of..........

Wow!! Quite a challenge I'd say...since I have hangups mounted upon hangups.

But strangley enough the Holy Spirit encouraged me to begin this St. Louis de Montfort's 33 DayTotal ConsecrationTo Jesus Through Our Lady found at

http://www.iipg.org/consecration1.htm

Boy this first week is about understanding that you must die to self, really abhor the flesh...and its desires, and it has been hard to fulfill it. It is as the title suggests a preparationg for the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. This is not a devotion to which I'm drawn to, but do not run from either. In fact, she keeps popping up in my life more often.

I have rec'd finally a lovely re-print of a new icon, Mother of God!!! I love seeing her when I walk into my entryway. She is lovely. Let's see if I can put her here.....oops, okay now she's up at the TOP!!! woo hoo, isn't that just beautiful!!! Man, I just love that, it has touched my heart and I don't even have a clue why.

Isn't that the great part of our journey with God, the unknown, we think we would all want to know God's will, and the why's of each and every little facet of our lives. But isn't it grand to look back and say oh yeah He's with me and the more you begin to recognize how tightly that is woven into your life, I think the closer you come to being able to live what God's will would be for your life. I know many people cry "Why would a God of love do this or that?" So many things to be savored in the current. The more I sit as an intercessor the more pain I see humankind is in. I heard today, how we each have our own Calcutta to bring Christ to. How true that is, we don't have to be Mother Teresa but she gave us a good model of how to bring light into the depths of darkness. Pretty deep knowing that I'll probably be the only one who reads this, but for posterity it has been noted!!

Amen, amen!! It has been a good day!