Work Crew

          There are lots of twists and turns in the travels of daily family life.  Just when I think things are going smooth, we hit a bump in the road.  The seemingly never-ending construction that we experience throughout the summer months on our city roads reminds me that our family is always under construction with barrels to maneuver around, detours, and set-backs to endure.

          How many times have you passed a construction site and not seen a work crew?   The projected date of completion is then set-back, for reasons we do not know.  There can be no progress without a work crew. 

          Building a strong foundation on which to travel through life to Heaven, requires a work crew. That's why God gave us the gift of family.  Daily work and maintenance is required of everyone, utilizing the special gift given to each person.  Just as construction crews have people with expertise in the different areas of construction, family members have differing skills we need to identify.  Valuing each member for the contribution they bring and giving them the freedom to help work on our crew, allows progress to be made toward building a foundation on virtues.

          Every crew needs instruction and the proper tools.  I wish I would have known to teach my children when they were young about virtues and the joy of serving God together, through serving our family.  The times I told them to clean, I don't remember teaching them to clean as if Jesus was using it, and then working with them to accomplish it. I just expected them to know how to clean a bathroom or bedroom and told them where the cleansers were.  Working together and each doing what they can do best, whether it takes longer or is done as good as you could do it alone, is what God does with us.  It is so humbling to be asked by God to work with Him, when I know He doesn't really need me.  That's love! He values the contribution I can make with the gifts He has given me.  But even when I don't contribute, and there are set-backs, He still values me and I still have the gifts He has given me.

          The crew leader of all jobs, especially in marriage and parenting, is the Holy Spirit.  Teaching Confirmation classes for well over a decade, I am reminded of the acronym used to teach the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  The two words are: work crew, spelled phonetically:  WURK CRW.  Each letter represents one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit:  Wisdom, Understanding, Right Judgement, Knowledge, Courage, Reverence, Wonder & Awe.

          Each day no matter where we are in the cycle of family life, a single adult, young family, empty-nesters, etc., we need to call in the 'wurk crw.'  We know the gifts that the Holy Spirit brings to the table and He wants to work with us.  We should let our spouse and children hear us call out to the Holy Spirit when the situation calls for more courage, or understanding, or right judgement, etc.  There will always be set-backs and bumpy roads, but we must remember that even with set-backs, we still have our gifts from God and He loves us.  That doesn't change.  For instance, when I have spent quite a bit of time organizing and cleaning but no one notices, it doesn't change the fact that everything is clean and organized.  No matter what happens in our life, it doesn't change the fact that God loves us and pours His gifts upon us each day.


          One of my biggest challenges is to push myself to continue "construction" when things go wrong, even though I prayed, called upon the gifts of the Holy Spirit, persevered in doing something I did not want to do, loved when I didn't feel like loving.   My first thought is usually to give up and quit trying.  But that road leads to nowhere.  We are members of God's family and a part of His work crew building the highway to Heaven.  It is a privilege, set-backs and all.  God can do it without us, but He loves and honors us each day by letting us help Him.  Progress is made when we are united as one family working together with Him. 

          Sometimes a bridge needs to be repaired between family members, or between God and us.  God's mercy is plentiful and waiting for us in the sacrament of Reconciliation, even though it is a road less traveled.  Until the repair is made, the road will always be bumpy. He gives us the tool of forgiveness in order to be able to forgive others freely, and pave our way with virtue.  God is always instructing us through His Word and gifting us with all the tools we need! 

"May your good spirit guide me on level ground."  (Psalm 1143:10)

"The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him; a spirit of wisdom and of understanding, a spirit of counsel and of strength, a spirit of knowledge and of fear of the Lord"  (Isaiah 11:2)

"In contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.  Against such there is no law.  Let us not be conceited, provoking one another, envious of one another."  (Galatians 5:22-23, 26) 

         
    

The Mountaintop Experience

         The transfiguration of Jesus is a mountaintop experience.  It was such a divine encounter that Peter wanted to pitch tents and remain there forever.  Whenever I experience the divine light of Jesus, I just want to remain in it and stop all else.  I long to remain in His light and love, and to cease any other existence.  But life goes on and the message to us is the same today as it was for Peter, James and John then. 

          Jesus comes down from the mountain to be with us! WOW!! Why? It didn't seem to do much good or to invoke a huge change in the culture of His time, as witnessed by the persecution and cruel death He endured. But He continued to love and to prepare His disciples for His crucifixion and the ultimate mountaintop experience of His resurrection.  He is always preparing us for what lies ahead, just as He was preparing Peter, James and John for what was forthcoming.

          Whenever I do not see results of my hard work, I can get frustrated, depressed and sometimes devastated to the point of giving up the work.  Why clean, as it won't stay clean for very long around here?  Why cook delicious home-cooked meals when it all ends up in the toilet anyway?  (Had to throw that in!)  Why exercise, I'm not losing weight and I won't be able to keep it up? Why love, people don't seem to change? Why strive for holiness in a world that doesn't value it?  Mother Teresa is credited for a poem entitled, Anyway, but it was originally written in 1968 by Kent Keith and slightly reworded by Mother Teresa for her children's home in Calcutta:

"People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered.  Love them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.  Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and true enemies.  Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.  Be good anyway.

Honesty and frankness will make you vulnerable.  Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.  Build anyway.

People need help but will attack you if you help them.  Help them anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God.  It was never between you and them anyway."

           Climbing the mountain to have a mountain-top experience is hard work.  Whenever I focus on the climb and getting to the top, I'm distracted from my being in the light and love of Jesus who came down from the mountain to be with me. He didn't ask us to climb a mountain to encounter Him.  He basically tells us that even though our work of loving doesn't seem to make a difference to others, it does make a difference to the Spirit within us, so do it anyway!  The Holy Spirit is preparing us every day to be transfigured into Jesus' radiant light and love by His Word and Sacrament.  It is when His light and love radiates through us to our family that we experience God and the beauty of a mountaintop.

           Why is it so much easier to shine His light on our friends and strangers than it is to our own family?

"And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain apart.  And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his garments became white as light.  And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.  And Peter said to Jesus, 'Lord, it is well that we are here; if you wish, I will make three booths here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.' He was still speaking, when behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, 'This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him'  When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces, and were filled with awe.  But Jesus came and touched them, saying, 'Rise, and have no fear.' And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only."  (Matthew 17:1-8)

          Mother Teresa recited this prayer every day of her life.  It is entitled, Radiating Christ, by Blessed John Henry Newman:

"Dear Jesus, help us to spread your fragrance everywhere we go.  Flood our souls with your spirit and life.  Penetrate and possess our whole being so utterly, that our lives may only be a radiance of yours.  Shine through us, and be so in us, that every soul we come in contact with may feel your presence in our soul.  Let them look up and see no longer us, but only Jesus!  Stay with us, and then we shall begin to shine as you shine; so to shine as to be a light to others; the light O Jesus, will be all from you, none of it will be ours; it will be you, shining on others through us.  Let us thus praise you in the way you love best, by shining on those around us.  Let us preach you without preaching, not by words but by our example, by the catching force, the sympathetic influence of what we do, the evident fullness of the love our hearts bear to you.  Amen." 

  

                     

Do Not Be Afraid of the Work

            Physical exercise is a part of my daily routine.  I dread it, but I do like the extra energy it produces and the calorie burning.  There are lots of other things I don't like to do either, such as grocery shopping.  But I do like to eat, very much, so it forces me to grocery shop. The joy of food is also the reason that I do not like to fast, but I do like the fruits of fasting.  Anything that requires effort and self-discipline, which basically is anything that resembles work, I look for an easier way.

          There is no such thing as an easy marriage or any easy vocation.   There is no easy way on this pilgrimage.  Sometimes it just seems too hard and I don't want to put forth the effort.  One day as I was complaining to God that I was over-worked and I just couldn't do it all, the thought came to me (I'm sure via the Holy Spirit) that I would do it more willingly if it were for money.  That thought quickly gave me insight into my heart, and I didn't like what I saw. 

          I didn't value family life because there is no monetary gain in it.  Our culture measures success by the amount of money we have.  My husband never made enough money for me and I spoke of our lack of it often.  It was our wish that our children obtain a college degree so that they could seek careers that enabled them to make a lot of money.  And yet, raises in pay brought us happiness initially and then it wasn't enough. The truth is that there is no job more rewarding, more valuable, and more difficult than, to love, especially in family life. 

          A priest at a funeral I attended once stated that you can tell the success of an individual by the amount of people who attend their funeral.  Success lies in the amount of loving we do and not the amount of money we have.  A person who loves a lot is like a magnet that attracts a lot more people, because we are all looking for happiness and lasting happiness is found in being loved.  If it were easy and came in a bottle, we would all love and be loved.  It is hard, hard work that requires an abundance of God, for God is Love!

          So if we find ourselves lacking in love, go to the source of love.  Whenever I am confronted with a proposition and it requires what appears to be a lot of work, my initial reaction is always negative.  But I pray on it, and I hear God say, "Take heart, it is I; have no fear." (Matthew 14:27)  The outcome of my efforts and in disciplining myself to say "yes" to more work, is always positive.  I realize that God picked me for that job to do with Him, and I feel loved and valued. 

          God picked me to love this spouse and this family that He gave me.  It is the most important work I will ever do, and when I choose to do it with God, I am certain to feel loved, valued, and rich!


          "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."  Matthew 6:21


     

Communication

          My husband and I facilitated family retreats.  We have one session where we sit down with the husband and wife on retreat and share our story.  Much to my husband's dismay, I start that session with these words,  "Hi, my name is Linda Tedrick and I am a recovering control freak.  This is my husband, Bob, and he is a recovering non-communicator.  Everyday is still a challenge, and that is why I'm doing all the talking and he is saying nothing."  Every couple would laugh and say that they could relate.

          We all know that communication is a very important element in every relationship.  If there's not much communication, there's not much of a relationship.  That is why the most important communication we can do, is to pray.  Prayer is nothing more than talking with God.  According to St. John Vianney, there are two duties of man --- to pray, and to love.  During my self-centered period, I would talk with God and tell Him everything I wanted from Him.  Likewise, I would talk to my husband and tell him everything I wanted from him.  Gee, I wonder why he didn't enjoy talking with me?!!

          When my conversation with God began to be more about what I could do for God, my life had meaning and I was filled with gratitude and joy.  Likewise, I saw that when I spoke with my husband about what I could do for him, he started to turn the t.v. off, or the radio, or put the paper down, or whatever it was that he was doing to avoid talking with me stopped.  Because I was more attentive to his needs and valued what he had to say, the miracle of a positive, loving dialogue was born in our marriage.  He followed my lead, and started to ask what he could do for me and he started to value what I had to say.  Talking together led to doing good works together united with God. We are very grateful and joyful.  I must add that it amazes me that once my ears were opened to accept whatever my husband had to say, I found his words to be very profound a lot of the time.

          There are still times that I feel the need to bring up something that is unpleasant or derogatory.  In those moments, I pray.  God's Word always encourages me to love dutifully by valuing all that is good in my husband.  He reminds me of his goodness for the mere fact that he came from God and God is incapable of creating anything but good.  God dwells in him, and he is beautiful.  When I see him in that light, he begins to shine.

          At a conference I attended once, a psychologist explained that a child who is told that he is bad, will act bad because that is who he is.  If he is bad, he must do bad things.  God showed me that if a spouse is told (or feels) that he/she is not worthily contributing, he/she will act accordingly.  There is good in everyone because God dwells in us.   Once I truly began to value my husband's contribution to our family, even though I wasn't in control, our conversations and actions were blessed.  Following my husband's lead by not needing to talk endlessly about everything has also blessed us!

          The lesson I have learned is that every conversation should be an encouragement to pray and to love.  The statement, "let's pray on it" or "let's value everyone because God dwells in them and  we are to be obedient to God's command to love everyone" should be stated often, and lived!  When we encounter a difficult situation with a person, let's communicate to ourself, "How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!" (Psalm 84:2)  Strong and fruitful relationships will grow and bloom.

Blaming Versus Understanding

          One of the best times of being a parent is when our children work or play together lovingly. Those times always overwhelm me and I want to live in that moment for as long as I can and bask in the light of that peace and joy.  Likewise, I enjoy books, movies, stories, that have people united in a love that is pure, innocent and genuine; the feel-good-kind of stories. 

          When my life story started to include more of my husband and I working and playing together lovingly, I experienced many more feel-good-kind of days.  It meant putting an end to my childish ways of blaming the other for not going by the rules, usually my rules, or not cooperating properly, trying very hard, etc.  Whenever we started to argue, I always thought in my head, "Well, you started it."  Starting it is always easy, but the challenge lies in stopping it before it escalates.

          I now picture our Father in Heaven watching our family live together, and I want to give Him a feel-good-kind of moment.  When I start the blaming game of, "he did this or he didn't do this," it takes an act of God, literally, to stop me in my tracks and turn things around.  I beg for the grace to be more understanding and to overcome my stubborness to say, "I shouldn't have said or did this or that, please forgive me."  The situation changes.

          The following excerpt from a Bantam Book entitled, Peace in Every Step by Thich Nhat Hahn was in a church bulletin recently, and it beautifully sums up what I learned about blaming versus understanding:

When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce.  You look for reasons it is not doing well.  It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun.  You never blame the lettuce.
Yet if we have problems with our friends or our family, we blame the other person.  But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce.  Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and arguments. That is my experience.  No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding.  If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.

          This Sunday we celebrate Father's Day.  Let's give Our Father in Heaven a feel-good-kind of day by living as children of God that work, play, and pray together lovingly.  It's the gift that keeps on giving because we give ourselves and our family a feel-good-kind of day too!

               

To be Fully Human

           We've been on vacation and are now back.  I'll be attempting to blog every Tuesday and Friday once again.  It's amazing how I thought that my sharing the lessons I have learned in this blog was to help others, only to see how God is using this blog to help me to grow closer to Him. So, I continue with His grace.

           The month of June is dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Jesus' heart is totally consumed with the fire of Love.  His heart burns with the love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for us.  All that Jesus does flows from the love in His sacred heart. The three persons in one God are always together and united as one, as Jesus said to His disciples, if they have seen Jesus, they have seen the Father. Trying to understand the mystery of the Holy Trinity made me more aware of what it means to be a Holy Human.

          Holy is the root word of whole.  To be wholly human, the mind, body, and spirit must work together and be united as one.  We are whole/holy when all that we do flows from a heart of love. Being well in mind, body, and spirit means having a heart on fire with love for God.  When our heart is totally consumed with love for God, we can love our family and everyone else like Jesus.  Our actions reflect what is in our heart. Is it consumed with the love of God, the love of ourself, or the love of the world or ...?

           There are many times when I say one thing, and do another. In addition, my spirit does not always reflect a spirit of love.  But there was a time that God gave me an experience of a burning in my heart and I learned what it means to be fully human as Jesus was fully human.

            While in parish ministry, a parishioner approached me about praying for their children as the mom and dad were getting a divorce.  After sharing many resources with her, I told her that I would be praying for them, especially on the Friday that the divorce was to be final.  That Friday morning, I remembered the family and spoke to God about their situation.  In my mind, I had been given a thought of why the marriage fell apart.  It seemed to me that it was a problem that could be easily reconciled and I vowed to call the mom the following Monday to discuss this further.  Due to the fact that on that Friday I had planned a shopping outing with friends, I did not want to take care of it right then.

          To make a long story short, I ended up cancelling my plans with friends in order to meet with the mom that day, because the Holy Spirit would not let me stop thinking about it.  I sacrificed my first day off in weeks to help someone I really did not know for the love of God.  My mind, body, and spirit united in doing a loving thing.  On my drive home after spending several hours with the mom, I felt a burning in my heart that brought tears to my eyes, and I experienced a feeling of pleasing God and of wholeness.  There was nothing that I could have done with my friends on that day that could come close to the feeling of God's love on fire in my heart.  Again, I thought I was helping someone else, and God was using that situation to help me know His love more deeply.  It is all God's grace. Our God is amazing!  Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and enkindle in us the fire of your love!

"Philip said to him, 'Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied.'  Jesus said to him, 'Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip?  He who has seen me has seen the Father; how can you say, 'Show us the Father'?"  John 14:8-9


"I do not understand my own actions.  For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate."  Romans 7:15


"I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled!"  Luke 12:49