Tired of Being Tired

Tired of being tired...

Those were the words that jumped out at me at the Oremus prayer study we did at our Young Adult meeting tonight.  Lack of prayer takes sense of direction and purpose out of life. We just go through the motions and basically wonder... what is it all for?

I am so tired of being tired. It's not about getting enough hours of sleep, although I'd appreciate a couple extra. It's not about exercising or eating right, as I've been working on that mostly successfully...

It's about prayer!

I didn't realize that was the answer until tonight.

I've been so stressed, with so much to do, so much on my plate, so many battles I'm fighting with various stressful life situations, and trying to do it all just right, that I've let my prayer life slide once again.

The kids and I went to a Holy Hour this afternoon and it took me the full hour to get through one Rosary because my prayer looked like this...

"Hail Mary... STOP THAT, DAMIEN.... full of grace... DON'T TOUCH THAT DEAD BUG.... the Lord is with you... I TOLD YOU TO GO POTTY BEFORE WE CAME! Where was I? Sigh. Hail Mary...."

Yep. Literally.

In fact, the woman who showed up after me said, "You were counting down the minutes weren't you?"

Yes. Yes, I was.

Prayer has been chaotic, but it was so good to be reminded tonight that God wants me. He wants me. He desires me. No one desires or wants me like the Lord. No selfish reasons, no agenda, nothing He needs from me. He just wants me.

That set my anxious heart at peace.

That reminder helped me to see even where I have unrealistic expectations on others to want me like He wants me. To want me just because I am me and not because I'm needed... I'm tired of being tired. I'm tired of the constant whining in this house and the needs of my family day to day and the repetitive chores and work that have to be done and bills that have to be paid. I know that as I'm saying this it sounds selfish. I don't shirk my vocation as wife and mother, but..... Sometimes I just want to pack up the family and start a little tribe somewhere in the woods!

I'm really excited to be working on my prayer life. I definitely have a lot of work to do in that area. My prayer life is chaos. My life is chaos. I need the peace that stems from that intimate relationship with God.

I'm ready to accept His invitation... I just forgot about it in my stack of bills and junk mail...

My Profession of Faith

One day I asked David, my husband,  "Why do we have to say the Creed during the Rosary?"

"Because Mary told us to, duh," he responded.

"I know, but it's not really a prayer. It seems kind of pointless to have to say it."

"Well... then... you're a heretic."


Hahaha ... these are the conversations that go on in our house.


I really was puzzled by this, but in reading about the martyrdom that is going on all over the world especially as ISIS has brought this persecution to light, I wondered....

If I was kneeling before a camera with a masked man holding a knife to my neck and demanding that I convert to Islam, would I be able to holdfast to my Catholic faith?

I remember Sts. Perpetua and Felicity. who both had children they would be leaving behind. When pressured by her father to reconsider her Christian faith, Perpetua said, "See that pot over there? Can it be called by any other name than what it is? Neither can I call myself by any other name than what I am -- a Christian."

I think of my own children. What if they had to watch me die? Could I still profess my faith?

It hit me.. this is why we pray the creed. We practice verbalizing our beliefs so hopefully they become ingrained in us that we should be able to state our belief when put to the test.

The Creed, in the Mass, is called the "Profession of Faith." We literally profess what we believe....

My profession of faith as I recite the creed should be so ingrained in my heart, in my mind, and in my life, that there is no separating the two - even unto death. I would pray that I would have the courage and trust in the Lord that He is bigger than masked men with knives. He is more powerful than any sort of persecution, and He is infinitely more merciful than any would-be captor.

I grieve over all of our brothers and sisters who have been martyred, but I know that they are caught up in the love of the Lord now, and they are praying for us. (See a great homily on Christian persecution in my previous blogpost. )

Next time I won't be so flippant about reciting the Creed.

I will pray it boldly and in unison with our fellow Catholics around the world.

We practice the profession of faith. We pray it. Because if we were ever put to the test and asked what we believe... we could, in confidence and courage say, "I believe in one God, the Father Almighty..."

Why, God?

Whoever invented taxes was a jerk.

"Hmm... I really think we should be providing this service and paying for my salary... how should I do this.. OH I'll force people to pay me."

Ok, I get it, there are lots of benefits to taxes... roads, schools, libraries, civil/public services, firemen, police, and other important stuff.

But dang.

Alas was my sticker shock when I went to renew my license plate tags.

"That will be $523.27, " she said.

First of all, if I was asking for that money for a dang sticker on someone's car, I'd be handing them a glass of wine simultaneously.

"What? Five dollars and twenty-three cents?" I said.

"No, $523.27."

"What? FIVE HUNDRED? FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS?!" I said as I pulled my chin off the floor.

"Yes, FIVE TWO THREE POINT TWO SEVEN."

I just about burst into tears.

All I kept thinking was something about death and taxes and I'm so ready to live in a tent somewhere on an island with my family. An island with bountiful fruit trees.

Oy.

Why, God? Why can't we ever seem to get ahead?
-------

I went to our family Holy Hour by myself today and as I was praying the Joyful Mystery of the Rosary (When the angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she is to be the Mother of God). I noticed that she asks, "How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?"

She asks, "How can this be?" How can this happen?

I reflected on other times that the people in the Bible ask the Lord, "How can this be?"

One is 2 Kings 4:43 But his servant said, “How can I set this before a hundred people?” So he repeated, “Give it to the people and let them eat, for thus says the Lord, ‘They shall eat and have some left.’”

One is in John 6, I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world.'

52 Then the Jews started arguing among themselves, 'How can this man give us his flesh to eat?'

53 Jesus replied to them: In all truth I tell you, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son ofman and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

Jesus says He is the Bread of Life and His followers ask, "How can this be?" How can this happen?

Then of course there is doubting Thomas. Poor Thomas. He just wanted proof of the Lord's resurrection. 

In each of these instances of someone asking the Lord, "How can this be?" He gives them explanations. He never says, "Shut up and just do what I say." Even though, really, the fact that He instructed us to do something should be enough for us to, well, do it. But He doesn't operate like that. 

He answers their questions. I never noticed that before. I always dwelt on Mary's humble submission and Thomas' lack of faith. The Lord says, "Blessed are they who have not seen and yet believe." I thought that meant that to question God is somehow sinful. 

But, the Lord asks us to have faith like a child. When my children ask "Why?" it is because they seek truth and they seek understanding. It's not that they don't trust me, it's that they genuinely want to know the answers. That's the kind of faith we are called to have. 

Faith, sometimes, seems like it's blind. We get caught up in advocating trust and surrender in this sort of passive, blind way. The Lord shows us in these passages that it is okay to cry out, "Why God?" or to ask Him "How can this be?" He isn't a magician who refuses to part with his secrets. He is an all-knowing God who sees the bigger picture beyond what we are capable of, allowing us to ask why and bringing us the answers we need and the signs of hope in Him.

So if you're wondering what the heck is going on in your life, ask Him. 

There is a distinctive attitude difference between Mary and Thomas, though, that is key to our questioning... 

Mary was open, but Thomas had already decided he would not believe -- " But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

We have to be open. When we ask, "Why, God?" We have to be ready for the Truth. We have to seek the Truth. We have to be open to the Truth. Not our truth - His Truth. 

Many times this cry occurs during a tragic time and can easily lead us to despair. We can probably all look back on points in our lives and see how what was once so terrible, has made and shaped us in some way, hopefully for the better. What once seemed insurmountable, we have overcome.  If we seek out answers, not just guided by our feelings at the moment, but really an openness to what God is calling us to, we will have peace, and He will give us the assurance we need. 

I hope and pray that walking as people of faith, we realize it isn't a blind-folded trust walk. It is an active following the Lord where He leads, eyes open and fixed on Him. It is a choice that calls us to put one foot in front of the other. It is a trust that bears fruit in understanding, joy, and peace. 

Praying for all of you who still have to renew your taxes in Ford County, Kansas. I'm already starting to save up for next year...

Why, God? 

:) 

"No Religion Can Transform Evil into Good" (Guest Post by Fr. Terrance Klein)

This Homily was given by the Associate Pastor of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Dodge City, Kansas this weekend, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. I was very moved by the message and asked Fr. Terrance Klein to send it to me so that I could share with you all. I bolded the parts that hit home for me. It is important to remember you and I are being persecuted - we don't feel ill effects at the moment, but the mere fact that our brothers and sisters around the world are suffering and dying because they share our faith is a persecution we should feel keenly in our hearts. Please, take action. Pray and support Catholic Relief Services. See my previous blog for how you can help. 

Peace - Noelle

THE EXALTATION OF THE HOLY CROSS

Fr. Terrance Klein

Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe

09.14.2014

Numbers 21: 4b-9   Philippians 2: 6-11   John 3: 13-17

About one third of the world’s population is Christian.  Each year, more than twenty-five million people are baptized into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  And each year, about one hundred thousand Christians are martyred, coming to share fully in the death of Christ.

There has never been a century since Christ in which Christians did not give their lives for the faith.  From the beginning they were acknowledged as martyrs, those whose witness to Christ was writ in blood.  But, whether one considers numbers or percentages, put bluntly, as John Allen does in his 2013 The Global War on Christians, we are “today indisputably are the most persecuted religious body on the planet” 

Allen’s book easily marshals examples.  “The evangelical group Open Doors, devoted to monitoring anti-Christian persecution, estimates that one hundred million Christians worldwide presently face interrogation, arrest, torture, or even death because of their religious convictions.”  

For example, in 2008, in northeastern India “a series of riots ended with as many as five hundred Christians killed, many hacked to death by machete-wielding Hindu radicals, thousands more were injured; and at least fifty thousand were left homeless.”  

In Nigeria the militant Islamic group Boko Haram “is held responsible for almost three thousand deaths.”  Like its counterpart in Egypt, Christians and their churches are targeted.  

In North Korea “roughly a quarter of the country’s two hundred thousand to four hundred thousand Christians are believed to be living in forced labor camps because of their refusal to join the national cult around founder Kim Il Sung…Some three hundred thousand Christians in North Korea have simply disappeared and are presumed to be dead.”

Before the first Gulf War, more than a million and a half Iraqis were Christians, whose origins dated to the age of the apostles.  A year ago, after relentless bombings and unrestrained persecution, the number of them in Iraq was close to one hundred thousand.  That was before the rise of ISIS and its declaration that there is nothing to give Christians “but the sword.”  This summer, in Mosul, Christians, including children, have been beheaded, even crucified. 

When unprecedented numbers of Christians are being murdered, what does it mean to celebrate—this year during our Sunday liturgies—the Exaltation of the Cross?  The Church Father Tertullian said that “the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church,” but this seed should never be blithely scattered. Even as the Church celebrates her most faithful witnesses, she must also mourn their deaths.  

The Church exists to midwife the Kingdom of God, which is one of peace and justice.  She cannot ignore the injustice, the violence, perpetrated against her own people.  The meaning of this feast cannot be that it is good for men and women to die violently for the faith because, in doing so, they imitate Christ.  To exult the cross is not to celebrate violence, neither that inflicted upon Jesus nor upon his followers.

One cannot suggest that what happened on Calvary, two millennia ago, cancels the contemporary evil perpetrated against Christians, or anyone else.  The meaning of the cross is not that violence has been transformed into something that we proclaim—paradoxically, with an eye toward the world to come—as good.  That would make the cross of Christ an enemy of men and women, because what is evil—and his crucifixion surely was—cannot be baptized by blather into something good.

If the cross were simply a human horror, made inspirational by centuries of whitewashing piety, then to exult Calvary would be to perpetrate the very evil cited by many critics of religion.  It would be akin to that perversion of authentic Islam, which tells the fanatically violent that Paradise awaits them.  

The cross cancels our calculations. From the earth, looking up at its beams, at his bloodied, outstretched arms, it defies sense.  Those who stood beneath the cross saw it as the death of all their hopes, the terrible judgment of God upon the wickedness of earth.  

Only God can comprehend the cross, which is to say that no human dares to assign its meaning.  To call the cross the great mystery of God is to rebuke every human effort to domesticate the divine.  The death of Jesus upon the cross is not a past event that makes the present palatable for the persecuted.  

No, we must see the cross as the eternal, the standing-outside-of-time, the ever ancient and ever new decision of God, which is to enter into the abasement of sin and its consequent suffering.  Christians don’t go to their violent deaths because Christ went to Calvary.  Christ embraces the wood of the cross because the innocent died before him, died after him, continue to die.  

The cross draws all of human history—past, present, and future—into those outstretched arms.  The will of God—Father, Son, and Spirit—is revealed there.  The meaning of history is curiously carved into its wood.  

He emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
coming in human likeness;
and found human in appearance,
he humbled himself,
becoming obedient to death,
even death on a cross (Phil 2: 7-8).

No religion can transform evil into good.  Evil is absolute inanity, the complete absence of the good.  You cannot directly choose to do evil to accomplish the good.  Those who try only diminish the good, in themselves and the world.  

You can suffer evil, like the martyrs, or resist it, like those who fight to restrain it.  Martyrs are not passive, and soldiers are not evil.  They are righteous in resisting.  But there is a reason that the cross of Christ belongs on ambulances and not at the head of armies.  Christ chooses to suffer the cross.  Note the present tense of the verb.  Christ chooses.  It will never enter the past tense until the world, its sin and suffering, is gathered to him.

╬╬╬

Weightloss Blog Update

No weight change, again.

BUT, 2 inches down in the waist, 2 inches down in the chest, 1 down each arm and thigh.

BEFORE:

TODAY: 

I'm sooooo thankful to be back to feeling more energetic and stronger. While NO weight change is frustrating given I feel that weight should be going down... my energy and muscle are going up so hopefully that will help!

I've been rotating between ChaLEAN Extreme and P90X. I'm super happy to report that I can do one full tricep pushup. HA. Those are insane. 

I'm sad to report that I am very behind in drinking enough water per day, so I'm retaining so much fluid that I can't even get my ring off. That probably adds to the weight and I'm sure I'm confusing hunger pains and thirst pains. Our issue is that even with a filter, our tap water makes me gag. I can't stand our water, so if I don't have bottled water on hand, I don't drink it. Any suggestions on better water? Bleh. 

I love having muscle. I'm starting to lose my teacher arm. Woohoo! :P

It's a challenge to not emotionally eat. I'm really still going to probably struggle with that my whole life - eating from stress or boredom. I'm finding that planning meals is making it easier to resist ordering pizza or eating out or eating junk. I love the Jambalaya from 100 Days of Real Food. I substitute chicken for fish, so it is a chicken and sausage dish, but so good! We all love it and it's not too spicy. I have also made flatbread dough and we've made some good stuff out of that. Veggie fajitas and Thai Basil Salad with Rice have also make the cut. The good thing is one meal usually lasts a couple days (due to leftovers!). 

I ordered some great stuff from Azure Standard (Check the site and see if you have a drop in your area!) Organic produce, some deals are cheaper in stores. 

This week, I am going to count calories and see if I can't figure out this whole, lose a few pounds while exercising bit. 

Until next week....

It Doesn't Hurt until it Does

They threw whatever belongings they could carry in a sack.

And they fled.

They wept as they left their homes, grateful for family.

Then they hid. They were hunted.

They were starved. They were found. They were slaughtered.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


This is the reality of terror around the world. Our persecuted Christian brothers and sisters are dealing with an incalculable evil. Kids holding up severed heads as the pride and joy of their fathers. Youtube and other media are being flooded with people searching for videos of the massacres out of sheer shock that this is actually still happening in 2014 or morbid curiosity to the viciously, brutal forms that evil can take.

What we are witnessing here is modern day Roman Coliseum. Instead of sitting in the stands cheering and watching Christians be martyred, we sit in the comfort of our own homes, allowing the same images from hundreds of years ago into our homes. Again, humanity takes a spectator's seat to the snuffing out of life after life in some of the most brutal manners possible.

When terror reached our shores thirteen years ago, we mourned. We walked in a daze, trying to make sense of this world. We looked to God, to politics, to world leaders, and begged for justice.

We are fortunate at this point, that the closest many of us get to the brutality of the Middle East is the news media, or perhaps some of our inner cities.

Consider the fear of those fleeing the twin towers. Consider the fear of those awaiting the inevitable crash of the plane they boarded that morning in belief that they would arrive home to their families soon. That gripping, paralyzing fear is something so many people live with day after day after day... and if not fear for themselves, fear for their loved ones.

So many bravely refuse to save their own lives by giving up their religious beliefs and are martyred because of it.

I reflected and prayed on what I could do? What can I do? I'm not in the military. I can't join a religious order to go and be a missionary or aid worker. What. Can. I. Do.

You see, it is something on the news that doesn't affect us, until it does. We should never be so naive to think we are immune to persecution. We never foresaw 9/11...

It's something that doesn't hurt us, until it does. Until it hits close to home or until we know someone hurt. It doesn't matter, really, if we know someone suffering personally- as a Christian, we are called to see EVERYONE as part of the Body of Christ. When one part suffers, the whole body suffers.

Or it should, at least. Beyond the shaking heads in shame and changing the tv station...

So what to do?

I was inspired recently by the "ALS Bucket Challenge" to do something similar for CRS - Catholic Relief Services.  Sarah Bauer Sansone, Catholic Recording Artist, called me up one day and said, "Hey! I have an idea!" And thus the "CRS Pass the Candle Challenge" was formed.

The idea is this: Light a candle with your family as a sign of solidarity with our persecuted Christian brothers and sisters to raise awareness for their plight. Then donate however much or little you can to Catholic Relief Services for their aid efforts to refugee Christians, and then "pass the candle" or "nominate" someone else to do the same.

You can see our simple video below. If the link doesn't work (I'm having trouble getting it from my phone to the blog), please see my Facebook page and I'll update the video here ASAP! 

Please help get the word out. This grassroots challenge can make a difference if enough people take a few moments to help! Again, any donation amount helps. The ALS Bucket Challenge raised millions of dollars for ALS Research. Now, let's help another suffering group.

Evil will never win. Goodness and love scatter the darkness. Demons flee at the sound of His Name.

God bless you all.

Weightloss Blog Update

Hi All!

This week: 162. No Change.
BUT I am down almost a whole inch in my waist. SWEET!

I am finally back to feeling stronger and more energetic and praise the Lord because I believe the events of this week, stress-wise, would have caused me to gain about ten pounds if I wouldn't have been totally ashamed to come to you and admit my poor example of health and coping with stress.

I have been trying to stay away from processed foods, simply because of all the added sugars and salt. I was about 60% successful which while that would seem to be a failing score, when most of what you ate WAS processed foods, that's pretty good!!

I also did ChaLEAN Extreme or P90X almost every day and my muscles are getting stronger! Love that feeling and my body was glad to welcome it back! My body was literally saying, "Whaaaaaattttt are you doing to me?!"  I was so sluggish and drained and weak. Now I'm back on the up turn of feeling and being healthy. I have to remember this feeling and hold onto it to keep me from my own self-destruction binge stress eating.

I found out that a bowl of kix is only like 150 calories for a cup and a half, so that's pretty cool. Popcorn is good for mindless eating if you want to eat a lot for not so many calories-- easy on the butter/oil and salt of course.

My goal is to lose 2 pounds by next week. I need to drink more water too. So upping my water intake daily as well.

Feeling good about my progress and will post a pic next week just for progress' sake. :)