Category: poverty/weakness

The battle of your emotions

Sr. Dorcee2 Comments

More from Fr. Marc Foley:

What does it mean to leave childhood?  What does it mean to become an adult?  It means having the strength not to be ruled by one’s emotions or allowing one’s feelings to dictate one’s choices,and possessing the determination to stand upright in the face of an emotional storm. This was the grace given to Thérèse.

Thérèse was not healed of her hypersensitivity.  Rather, she was given the strength to deal with it.  . . .  God did not remove Thérèse from the battle of her emotions but gave her the fortitude to remain in the battle.

. . . . .

Reflect upon your own life . . . What do we suffer in doing God’s will?  Is it not some painful emotion that accompanies our choices?  Is it not fear that makes an act of faith harrowing?  Is it not the sadness of mourning that makes ‘letting go’ difficult?  Is not loneliness or emptiness the price of remaining faithful to one’s vows?  Is not tediousness and boredom the burden of being dutiful to the daily round?

Love and suffering are inseparable.  If we are unwilling to suffer, then we cannot love.”

“broken prayer”

Sr. DorceeLeave a comment

Guest blogger: Mary Anne Morgan.  Love her blog.

broken prayer

all rights reserved Mary Anne Morgan
all rights reserved Mary Anne Morgan

To me, this is what freedom looks like. This leaf, done with gathering its own glory is the perfect window in which to view the true glory. When I found this fragile beauty in my yard last week I immediately bent down to pick it up. It held within its tender frame the similar magnetic powers of a newborn child, with vulnerability it’s greatest strength. This paradox sends me swooning and I want to be like this leaf.

Let me be like this Father. Let there be nothing in me to hold on to offense when the enemy of my soul slings it unreservedly in my direction. Let hurt pass right through me so that it never grows into bitterness and resentment, thus rotting my bones.  Let there be nothing in me that insults and injustice can stick to, only you who fills the broken spaces.

Yes Father fill the broken spaces.

You can read the rest here.

 

About all those shadows we live with

Sr. DorceeLeave a comment

I haven’t reposted from Ann Voskamp recently.  Probably because I figure that you all follow her.  But just in case, you don’t, here’s the latest:

I take the kid that fell off the rip stick and broke his foot back to the doctor.

He may or may not have laid an afternoon or two on the kitchen floor, wailing that I had ruined his life.

Because I had the audacity to not let him and his cast go drive a tractor or jump on the trampoline or swing down the zipline. Yeah, I’m sorta old fashioned and ridiculous like that.

The doctor says one more week of cast swinging. I think the kid may become a happy human pinwheel on crutches, flipping all the way out the doctor’s office.

I get pink eye.

And then youtube how to unclog a toilet so I don’t have to bother the Farmer who is putting in 24 hour days back to back in the field, because yeah, nobody wants to drag their dirt-crusted selves in after 48 hours on an open tractor only to meet a reeking toilet.

You can read the rest here.

“My weakness in mothering”

Sr. Dorcee5 Comments

I have counselled a number of mothers whose children have disappointed them in some way or another.  Most of them have the same first response as Lysa TerKeurst : “And you know what I’m tempted to do as a mom?  Draw a straight line from my child’s wrong choice to my weakness in mothering.”

If you’d like to know more of her thinking process about this, go here.  It’s worth the read.

Sun spots

Sr. DorceeLeave a comment

sunspots_full_disk

“There is nothing so perfect in the world as to be quite above objection and criticism.  The very sun which gives us light and warmth is not free from spots, yet notwithstanding these defects it does not desist from its regular duty.  It behoves us in like manner to carry on to the best of our ability what has been entrusted to us . . .” (Sundar Singh)

Loving my littleness

Sr. Dorcee2 Comments

I have a flip-top collection of quotes of St. Thérèse in the room where I pray, and I have had it flipped to this quote for a few weeks now: “What pleases Him is that He sees me loving my littleness and my poverty.”  This morning as I read it, I was struck by the word “loving.”  She doesn’t say “accepting” or “living with” or “bearing”, but “loving”.   Loving?

And then it struck me: that is exactly where I meet Christ in my life–in my littleness and poverty.  He favors the poor.  He came to us as the poor Man. So, of course, I should love that place and love dwelling there with Him.

Thank you, St. Thérèse.  Pray for me that my love for my littleness and poverty will increase.

A Better Resurrection

Sr. Dorcee1 Comment

A Sunday poem from Christina Rossetti:

A Better Resurrection

I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numbed too much for hopes or fears.
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall–the sap of spring;
O Jesus, rise in me.

My life is like a broken bowl,
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perished thing;
Melt and remould it, till it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me.

~Christina Georgina Rossetti