From my earlier posts it is pretty easy to see that I look up to people like St. Josemaria Escriva and Mother Teresa who were both big advocates of obtaining holiness in the ordinary ways of life. St. Therese states, "Holiness is not necessarily a matter of great actions, but of letting the Lord work in us and through us in the ordinary experiences of life." I suppose I am drawn to this track of spirituality because I'm just an ordinary guy myself. I've never stood out in anything I've done;never been the smartest guy, never been the best athlete, far from being the holiest guy, don't pray as much as I should, ect. Despite all of this however, I have had one thing going for me...heart. I don't give up. You can knock me down in sports, in life, in my walk with Christ, but I'm going to get up and keep striving. It gives me great hope then to know that ordinary people like me obtained sainthood, and more importantly holiness through ordinary means. This has really opened up my eyes to the simple things in life that we all too often take for granted.
I hear people say that they look out into the world and see all the greed and crime and evil and find it hard to see God. But I ask how you can look out into the world and not see God. Just the other night I was blessed to spend some time with some of my best friends sitting on in the bed of a truck on a dirt road watching the sunset. It is artist Gina de Gorna who states that, "To watch a sunset is to connect with the Divine." I couldn't agree more. There's just something so peaceful about watching the streaks of pink, orange, yellow, and purple progress across the sky until they slowly fade to black as the stars begin to show up. It is there if we but slow down long enough to see it, to recognize that everything is grace. It serves as a reminder to me that no matter what, God has and will always love me.
To answer the people who ask how God can let good people suffer let me propose the following analogy. One of the blessings I have living in a small town this summer is free time. After 3 years as an engineering major, I didn't know the word existed, but I have discovered that indeed it does. I have decided to use much of this free time lifting weights and working out again. The irony of weight lifting is that as you lift the weights, your muscle fibers are torn apart, weakened. It is only after your muscles fibers have been made weak that they can be built up stronger than they were before. So it is in life and our faith journey. Only after enduring trials and being driven to our knees are we able to once again stand, stronger than before. Once we are able to accept the trials, we can begin to offer them up and obtain the graces from redepmtive suffering. It is at this moment that we can imitate Christ by turning our instrument of tortue and suffering into a tool of love and life and grace. I once read the following on suffering, "He who would excercise his power of redeeming to the utmost limit, as Christ did, must not shink from that which awaits all saviors, the cross. Souls are won by words, they are won by example, but above all they are won by sacrifice."
Lastly, I would like to briefly touch upon the topic of happiness, as I feel it is something that we all strive for, but is a concept that our society has twisted that we no longer know how to obtain it. Many people equate success with happiness. Therefore a good definition for happiness could be found in John Wooden's definition of success. ""Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming." This would explain why you see happiness in owners of large companies, or parents of large families, or those who have accomplished great feats. Yet there are many people with the same accomplishments that are not happy. And the reason for that is they are lacking God. Therefore I would propose a slight change to that definition to read, "Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do your best to become the person God has intended you to be." I was talking to a very good friend about life and the paths we had traveled to reach the point where we are today. The subject came up that at various points along the way things had gone completely unaccording to plan. All the plans we had made were dashed as God led us down a completely different path. Being the sports nerd that I am, I made the analogy that living life was like batting in baseball, and sometimes God just through curveballs our way. My friend proceeded to tell me that if I ever learned how to hit curveballs, to let her know. Well, I don't that I've entirely figured that out yet, but driving home to Minneapolis, Kansas a theory began to form in my head. And it should come as no surprise to many of you that the inspiration came from a country song, "Roll With It" by Easton Corbin.
Roll with it. The line continued to play through my head long after the song had finished. I was instantly reminded of my conservation with my good friend and my analogy. Roll with it I thought; There's something to that. I started thinking back about my curveball statement and began to think first of all about baseball. Why do batters miss curveballs? Well that's easy I thought, they are expecting something else. I repeated that again in mind. They are expecting something else. Expectations. That's it! Now I'm just as guilty as anyone about this, but we all have a tendency to make plans for our lives. For example the summer before my junior year I made all of these plans in my head. I was going to work really hard getting in shape and lead our soccer team to a winning season and get post season honors along the way. I was gonna work hard in school and in my clubs and qualify for nationals and get lots of scholarships. The plans was there, and I was prepared to put all the work and effort into it that was necessary. But God had different plans. Better plans. Sure I still achieved some of the things I had planned, but God helped me to achieve so much more. I developed a much stronger relationship with Christ and grew in leaps and bounds in my life. I was brought into contact with some of the people I know call my best friends...friends I probably would never have met if I hadn't gotten involved in things like TEC and Steubenville. These friends in turn helped and are still helping to shape me into a better man. We make all these plans and do all the work to make it happen and we EXPECT things to turn out just like we planned. We get tunnel vision and so set on this track we have constructed for ourselves that we are completely oblivious to the path that God has already constructed for us. We are like horses with blinders on, so set on only that which is before us. Now I'm not saying we can't have dreams and work hard to reach those dreams. But there is a big difference between dreams and expectations; of preparing for the future and planning the future. If we are preparing ourselves for the future, we will be ready to react to that curveball when it is thrown our way. We will be able to set aside our dreams and the path we were following and set out on the new course God has laid before us. But if we are planning the future, we are going to strikeout on that curveball as we take a hack at the fastball we were expecting to come our way. So to conclude this train of thought I would just ask all of you to try and become more aware of those little graces God has placed throughout your life: sunsets, thunderstorms, wheat fields, that kind word from a friend to say I understand, whatever it is that God uses to speak to you. Most importantly, make a concious effort to PREPARE for the future and not plan for it. God Bless.
You're super super cool. Thanks for writing this awesomeness!!
ReplyDelete