Five Minute Friday: Ten

Note: This post is my weekly contribution to the Five Minute Friday community that is hosted by Kate Motaung on her blog Heading Home. Click here for more information about Five Minute Friday and how you can get involved! To link up with all the other entries for today's prompt word, click here

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1. Over 2000 years of history, tradition, and Apostolic Authority -- The Catholic Church is the oldest Christian church in the world and is the one founded by Christ Himself on the rock of St. Peter who was the first leader, or pope, of the Church (Matthew 16:13-20)

2. The gift of Holy Scripture -- the Bible was compiled by the Catholic Church and its canon closed by Pope Damasus I at the Council of Rome in 382. This canon includes all 73 books as well as longer versions of the books of Esther and Daniel. This is still the canon used by the Catholic Church today.

3. The Holy Eucharist -- this is the gift of Jesus to the world. It is His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity and we get to take Him into our own bodies as nourishment for our souls! See #10 for more about this :)

4. The Communion of Saints -- which includes both those who are officially canonized, those are not, and those who are still living and striving to live lives of holiness and obedience to God on earth. I love that we have these heavenly friends to turn to in addition to our earthly friends!

5. Mary -- Yes, I know that every Christian church recognizes her in some way, but we as Catholics call her our Mother because she is the mother of Jesus and because He gave her to us as our mother from the cross when He gave her into the care of the beloved disciple John. I love that my girls have not just me, but Mary too! I also love having Mary as my mother too.

6. The priesthood -- a tradition that really dates back to the Jewish priesthood in that these are men who are set apart for God's service. I am SO grateful for the service of our priests. I know they're not perfect, but then again, neither am I!

7. The consecrated religious life -- I love that our faith tradition has a particular way for those who are called to God's service (men and women) to consecrate themselves and devote themselves totally to God. I also love that there's a religious order for just about every personality -- Franciscan, Domenican, Jesuit, Carmelite, Benedictine, Claretians, etc. and within those orders, there are various groups devoted to different callings -- teaching, preaching, nursing, missionary work, and contemplative prayer. Some are cloistered and some are in the community. Some live on farms, some live in urban areas. All are called to follow God and serve Him with the whole of their lives.

8. The Rosary -- some people think it is just a prayer to Mary, but it is really a meditation on the life of Christ. It is one of my favourite devotions and I could write a whole blog post about it. Maybe I will one day!

9. Easter Vigil -- The most gorgeous Mass of the entire year when there are baptisms, confirmations, and First Holy Communions all in one night -- lots of candles, incense, TONS of Scripture reading, and of course, the Holy Eucharist! It's my favourite Mass of the year!

10. The Mass -- I really have no adequate words to express how much I love the Mass. On those rare occasions when we must miss a Sunday because of sickness, I start feeling a bit spiritually weak from not having received the Eucharist. There is a hunger in me to be present at Mass each week that resides deep within me in a place even I do not fully know. I know it must be so because my flesh is weak and there have been many times on a Sunday when I was angry with God and angry with the world and depressed and just didn't want to go. But because of this soul-deep need in me, I went. It was, in part, out of obedience, but I know there must be some love with it too.

There are lots more reasons, but these are just a few that I came up with in five minutes!

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Join in the Five Minute Friday fun and link up at Kate Motaung's blog!

A little break with the prompts

Just a quick update friends! Today's prompt is going to have to wait until tomorrow. I have something in mind, but I'm fighting against sickness. I've been coughing the last several days and woke up today feeling exhausted and coughing a lot more. I've been losing my voice all day and struggling to put a coherent thought together.

Time for more liquids and some cough syrup before bedtime!

Pax Christi,
TM

Where I Live

Today is Day 2 in my week-long series using the prompts from the blogger community Blessed Is She!

Where I live the weather is hot from the end of May until the end of September, but even once the calendar flips forward to October, the temperatures still feel far too warm for autumn. This Indian summer paints the days well into the middle of the month and then slowly cools by All Saints' Day to something that begs us to wear a longer sleeve and trade shorts for jeans.

It was in this less hot, but still too warm weather that my friend Liam and I sat outside, talking one Saturday night. He asked my plans for Sunday and for the first time in my life, I hesitated. Church had always been where I lived outside of school and home, with Sunday being the day I looked forward to most. So why did I hesitate? I was tired of chasing God in the same place. The place where I was living looked pale and watery and as another Sunday came closer, I found a dullness within me where desire had always lived.

Liam sensed my hesitation and said, "Why don't you come to church with me?" I asked where he was going and he mentioned another large Southern Baptist church across town from my childhood home. I wasn't very excited about the prospect, but my sense of duty to God kicked in and I acquiesced and rode along with Liam the next morning. The people at this church were nice and very welcoming, but I felt out of place and swallowed up in their numbers. The preaching and music were good, but the message was no different than anything I'd heard before. As we walked to the car, my heart sank and I was much more quiet on the way back to campus, lost in my thoughts.

The weeks passed and although Liam and I tried quite a few churches, none of them seemed to fit me all that well. I resisted going back to my childhood church, partially because I didn't want to answer the "we've been missing you! where have you been?" questions, but partially because I just didn't want to go back. Eventually though, the choices of Southern Baptist churches were getting slim and Liam wanted to look at other denominations. I was terror struck at the idea of moving house altogether. It was one thing to "move my letter" from one Southern Baptist church to another, but quite a different thing to think of changing denominations. So Liam looked elsewhere and the next Sunday, I grudgingly found myself back at my home church.

It didn't last long, maybe three months or so. I never could get plugged into the college group and even though I could now sing with the adult choir, that felt not quite right either. I had been struggling most of the school year with a severe depressive episode and as the spring semester ended, I found that where I lived spiritually was in the Psalms of lament. Liam's roommate, Wood, knew my struggles were hard and one particularly difficult night gave me a long list of scriptures to encourage me and speak to me in this dark night. As I read through those verses, I stumbled onto a Psalm with a footnote saying it was one of the Psalms of lament and I latched onto it and its fellows for dear life.

My dog-eared Bible ceased to be a book, but instead became a life preserver and my temporary place to call home until a new friend helped me find an isle of respite in the storm.

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Join me tomorrow for the next prompt in this series, "Friend" for the next part of my journey!

Beginning

Today I am beginning a week-long series using the #projectblessed prompts from the blogger community Blessed Is She!

In my beginning has always been The Word -- both in terms of Holy Scripture and in terms of the One who is The Word spoken about in John 1:1. I grew up in a Christian home and the tradition of our family was such that I encountered Jesus at some point before I can really remember. Our family were active churchgoers and every time there was some kind of activity for my age group, my parents gladly ferried me to church to participate. Of course, it goes without saying that we were there every Sunday that rolled unless sickness or being out of town prevented it. We prayed over meals and at bedtime and I was encouraged from a young age to read the Bible, memorize verses of Scripture, worship God through song, and love God above everything else. At age 6, I made the decision to follow Him with my life and got baptized in our big Southern Baptist church.

Little did I know, that was just the beginning...

In college, I set out on my own, looking for a new faith beginning. It wasn't so much that I found fault with the faith of my childhood, but rather that I earnestly wanted more than I felt I was receiving at my childhood church home. As I put it at the time, I felt as though I was no longer being spiritually nourished. To be honest, even at that time -- even as I said those words to those who asked why I left my home church -- I had no real idea what I needed to be nourished.

The beginnings of my feeling spiritually undernourished were in high school. At some point in my 11th grade year, I began to realize that God was calling me to be a missionary and as I accepted that call and professed it in front of my congregation, my hunger for God was increased. I was thirsty for the living water that Jesus promised in John 7. I felt parched and dry and insatiable. I devoured Scripture, devotional books, Christian music, and anything I could get my hands on. Throughout this, I listened attentively to our pastor's sermons, making notes and reading over the verses and passages of Scripture he referenced. I listened with rapt attention to my Sunday School teachers and youth minister when they would talk about God. I went to youth meetings and rallies and retreats.

And despite all of this, I still felt a hunger for something more, something deeper than all of this combined. I began to realize too that these lessons I was hearing at church were the same lessons I'd heard my whole life. I felt like I was being fed the same milk of my beginnings in the faith (1 Corinthians 3:1-2) and that I was ready to graduate to the meat, but there was no meat to be found where I was.

I wouldn't have put two and two together if not for a conversation I had with our youth choir director (who was also the minister of music) in my 12th grade year. Each year before our youth choir went on choir tour, one of the prerequisites was that we had to sign up for an appointment to chat with our director. These appointments were designed to get to know the 9th graders, who were just beginning their tenure in the choir, and to catch up with the older students about what was going on in their lives. This was my fourth and last such appointment and as usual, I was looking forward to it. I admired our director and always enjoyed talking to him. When we met for our appointment, he observed that I had been not quite myself over the past year. We talked about things at home, graduation excitement, and my starting college in the fall, but eventually, he said that he knew something was going on that I wasn't saying. There was no pressure to talk, just a gentle invitation. I opened up and told him that part of it was depression (which was very true) and part of it was feeling like I wasn't being spiritually fed at our church. I further told him that really, choir was about the only thing keeping me at our church.

That last bit was SO hard for me to say, but he didn't get upset or tell me I was wrong. He listened and then said something I've never forgotten, "Perhaps, if that is all that's keeping you here, you need to look for another church where you can be spiritually fed." He went on to give me some encouragement and advice and when he was finished, I had tears in my eyes. I nodded and said thank you. He handed me a tissue and said, "Why don't we pray, okay?" and then led me in a beautiful prayer where he thanked God for my life, for my talents, for our friendship, and asked God to guide me in knowing what He would have me do and where He would have me go. I think I was crying even more at the end of it.

In the weeks and months to come, I reflected many times on that prayer and my choir director's comments and advice. I didn't know it then, but that meeting was the beginning of a journey that would take the next 11 years to complete....

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Read the next part of the story tomorrow with the prompt...."Where I Live"

The Week in Rear View - July 13-19, 2015

It's Sunday night, so it's time for The Week in Rear View -- a rapid fire look back at my world this week!

1. This was the week of getting things ready for Fr. B to come bless our house on Friday night. Thankfully, Fr. B doesn't care that the house is a bit messy, because there's just no way I could've gotten it totally like I really want it to look in the time that I had between setting the date for this and the date itself. I did my best to tidy things up, but by Thursday was still wishing it looked a lot better. I planned the menu, bought the groceries, emailed Father our address, and started prepping. Burned a LOT of spoons (actually more than I really had to burn) to do all of this. Then I got an email from Father on Thursday evening saying that he'd fallen ill with severe vertigo again and been to his doctor who told him he wasn't allowed to drive anymore, so he couldn't come bless the house (it's about 45 minutes between the parish and our house in one direction). I totally understood, but I'll admit I was a little disappointed after having worked so hard in anticipation of his visit and that led to...

2. ....a crash on Friday morning. I've been battling insomnia kinda hardcore this week (3-4 hours sleep each night) on top of all the activity. When I woke up after about 4.5 hours of sleep on Friday morning, I didn't feel at all rested. I felt like I'd been hit by a mack truck -- physically and emotionally. Gray wound up working from home and I went back to bed for most of the day.

3. Made a pretty passable BBQ pork for sandwiches in our crock pot overnight on Saturday night. Woke up Sunday to the smell of braised pork, ready for shredding, BBQ sauce, and bread and butter pickle chips! The only thing that would have made it better would have been the addition of some liquid smoke. I used a premixed barbecue spice rub and some low sodium chicken broth (to keep it from drying out while cooking) and that's it. Super easy and delicious!

4. Realized on Thursday that I am finally at a place where I'm ready to start writing about my trip to Boston for the walk and the event itself. It's taken a good three weeks to really process things and figure out all my feelings and what I want to say, but I think I'm finally there. Hopefully, when this week is done, I'll have something written up about it.

5. Blogged for the first time this week about a subject that I've only mentioned in passing previously: self-injury. It was my Five Minute Friday post for this week (go check it out here!), so it was really only a short sort of introduction, but it's something that's been on my heart a lot lately as I've heard from quite a few friends online and in my offline circles that they have kids struggling with this and just don't know what to do or where to turn. It's something that as a society, we need to be talking about more and I'm going to be writing more in depth on it in the near future.

6. Mass this evening (Sunday the 19th) at Fr. B's parish and then took him out to dinner at the Cracker Barrel near his parish. He had suggested when he emailed me to cancel the house blessing that we all go eat together tonight since he knew how excited our three girls were about him coming to visit and bless the house. It was a lovely evening, just laughing and talking and eating together. It reminded me so much of all the things that we love about him and how truly special he is to our family. We are so grateful to God for the gift of His servant and our beloved family friend, Fr. B!

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Well, that's it for the week! Looking forward to this week, keep an eye out for my post about Boston as well as what I anticipate will be a short introduction to the subject of self-injury. If I have time and energy, I might edit a couple of other posts I've been working on for a while and post them too.

A la prossima settimana!

Five Minute Friday: Free

 Note: This post is my weekly contribution to the Five Minute Friday community that is hosted by Kate Motaung on her blog Heading Home. Click here for more information about Five Minute Friday and how you can get involved! To link up with all the other entries for today's prompt word, click here.

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Maybe you're tired of me talking about it, but that's okay. I'm good with that. It's my experience and my passion and something I think more people need to talk about. Of course, I'm talking about mental illness and mental health. For this Five Minute Friday, I want to talk about something that is related and something that REALLY needs talking about. I'm going to try to do it in 5 minutes.

Self-injury.

Yeah, it's a kind of scary thing to say aloud. I'll be honest. It's not the easiest thing to talk about with regard to my own experience. So why talk about it today, with this prompt?

Because I'm free of it.


It's something that plagued me on and off from about late middle school through my early 30s. Then I went through an intensive outpatient mental health program and using the education I gleaned from that, the coping skills I learned, and the help of my therapist Pendragon (who helped me uncover the reasons why I did it), I broke free of the stranglehold this habit had on my life.

This August will make six years of freedom from self-injury. And I'm pretty stinking proud of that.

One thing freedom from self-injury isn't: easy. It takes incredible effort and it takes vigilance. Freedom also isn't being free from thoughts and temptations to self-injure. The freedom is in resisting those thoughts and temptations. Every time you resist, you get a little bit stronger. I've had some fierce temptations. I've come very close to losing the fight with those thoughts a few times, especially in the early days.

Eventually though, I got to a place where one year became two and then three and at some point, I realised that when I'm tempted, the part of me that has become stronger with resistance says, "It's not worth it to throw all this hard work away and have to start again at square one." And the part of me that's fighting yet another temptation says, "You know? You're right." And the temptation loses and I win another victory.

I am free from self-injury. If you are struggling with it, know that there is hope for you to find freedom too. If you need a friend to encourage you along the way, email me at the link in the sidebar. I promise I'll listen and be there. You can do it! You can be free too!

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Join in the Five Minute Friday fun and link up at Kate Motaung's blog!

The Week in Rear View -- July 6-12, 2015

It's Sunday night, so it's time for a rapid fire little post that I'm going to call "The Week in Rear View" where I take a look back at the week and hit the highlights (and possibly lowlights). Ready? Here we go!

1. It was the week of trying to get my head back together. I returned from Boston on June 29th and felt like the weekend and the walk were all a-jumble in my head. I was struggling to process things emotionally and mentally and felt like I couldn't figure out where to begin. My session with Pendragon helped a tiny bit, but that one little hour the day after I got back just barely scratched the surface. This week, I dove into therapy and self-care head first. I had 2 sessions with Pendragon -- a marathon appointment (about 2.5 hours) on Tuesday, followed by a short phone call on Wednesday, and a second appointment Thursday. Friday morning, I met with my spiritual director Fr. B and received 3 of the 4 sacraments I'm allowed to receive multiple times, and followed that meeting with a very intense hour with just me and Jesus over in the main church. After so much talking and prayer (and a fair bit of extra sleep), I feel like things have been set more to rights and that my brain is finally clicking again and processing things that needed it.

2. The big girls and I managed to get through two chapters of Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone. We're reading it as a bedtime story and usually do a single chapter at a time. They are really getting into the story and keep wanting me to read another chapter once I've finished the one we're currently on. I enjoy it almost as much as they do. It's an exercise for my acting muscles as I like to not only read the text with enthusiasm, but with a different voice for each character. I'm particularly pleased with my Hermione and Hagrid voices.

3. Quite a bit of laundry got done this week by my beloved Gray. He has been slowly trying to go through the clothes and pack up the wrong season stuff, sort out the stuff that needs keeping but is too small for the big girls but too big for GB, and toss out the stuff that is stained/ripped/worn out beyond repair. It's quite a job, but he's made a lot of headway in it and I think a lot of that is due to the fact that he's been home a good bit this week -- see #1.

4. Friday, July 10th was the 2nd anniversary of my admission into inpatient care for depression. It's still very very hard for me to say that out loud (I usually resort to various euphemisms) and hard to type it as well. That day changed my life irrevocably due to the trauma that I experienced because of it. The anniversary this year wasn't as hard as it was last year (or as hard as I was expecting), but it wasn't without its difficulties. I met with Fr. B and afterward, spent over an hour before Jesus in the tabernacle (at Fr. B's parish) praying and crying and praying and crying some more. I snuggled a lot with my girls and Gray too.

5. I went out on a mini-date with each of my two big girls, M2 and AB. Neither outing was more than 30 minutes, but it was fun to ride along with each of them in the car, singing songs and talking and just being together one on one. Need to make an effort to do that more often.

So that's the quick roundup of my week! Thought I'd try a different spin on something I started trying to do a good while back. Hopefully, this is something I can get into a habit of doing. Y'all hold me accountable, okay?