The journey is the most important thing when trying to discern a vocation.  This is very true, through God's kindness I have had the pleasure of living with some very special communities and learn more about our Lord's wondrous love for us all. Since I have stepped on this path I wondered where God will lead me.  I am still wondering, but now I have learned to not be concerned with the things out of my control (OK, as much lol).  

The more important thing is the journey has enriched me.   God has placed some amazing, holy, fun, touching people along the trip.  Some I met only for a brief moment, others I got to know longer and more deeply.  Through their lives I got to see how living a life completely for God is really another paradox of Christian living, it is a life filled with joy and hardship, with laughter and tears.   The one constant is that despite our humanity, we all know more and more the truth that God loves us infinitely.  He is always with us, in us, and when we surrender to Him and let God take over we must be like little children.  The Father always cares for His children in everything great and small.

So after about 3 years of searching and so many places turning me down outright due my age I am not going to actively look anymore unless I feel a strong push from God to go a certain way.  I am not closing the door,  heavens no!  Deep in my heart, knowing my weaknesses and how much I felt so myself in a community setting, I can never close that small bit of hope that maybe..maybe somewhere God wants me.  But reality of the moment is I will be 49 in a couple months, and as such I have to stop procrastinating on somethings like buying a car and finding a more permanent job.  Getting hearing aides, next month if all goes well. (just do not mention plumbing repairs in our house, lol! Thousands and thousands of dollars worth of repairs in the last two months-ouchers). All that grown up, living in the world as a single woman responsibility stuff that is the daily grind of modern life.

This does sadden me, but I know God will place something before me, even if it is a lesson or penance that will make me grow in some area. And when blessed by God we all should grow more and more for God is never static. And I do need a lot of growth in many areas of my personality and being.  So, I refuse to look at the question marks before me and will try to make the best of life here and now and, hey, let's see what God brings.

As St Teresa says,

"Let nothing trouble you.
 Let nothing frighten you,
 all things pass away.

  God never changes.

Patience obtains all things,
 nothing is lacking to he who possesses God.

God alone suffices."

Now to let that all too human side of me remember that when I feel confused, or lost!  Pax Christi, y'all!

Audrey Assad - O My Soul

wa habibi وا حبيبي - زياد شحاذة

The Great Season of Lent starts tomorrow in the Maronite Rite of the Catholic Church.

Tribunal of Mercy

WHAT IS VOCATION???
"Vocation is about finding what you are best suited to. It's about finding your mission in life, discovering who God has created you to be and what tasks he has created you to carry out in this world. Everyone has a vocation, and finding it truly is the single event that will create more happiness in our lives than anything else. Life, therefore is about vocation. It is about seeking and finding what God created you for -- and then doing it. It is through this process that God will transform you into the best-version-of-yourself and the world into the place he intended it to be."
-- Matthew Kelly

 

"If God should desire beautiful thoughts and sublime sentiments, He has His angels !... Furthermore, he could have created human beings already perfect with none of the weakness of our nature."

St. Therese of Lisieux

Found a wonderful blog the other day, check it out: Coffee and Canticles - The Divine Office in Your Life

The other is: The Cloistered Heart

Both are encouraging, and great food for the soul in this harried world. 

Fernando Ortega - Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,

and with fear and trembling stand;

Ponder nothing earthly minded,

For with blessing is His hand,

Christ our God to earth descendeth,

Our full homage to demand.

King of kings, Yet born of Mary,

As of old earth He stood,

Lord of lords, In human vesture,

In the body and the blood;

He will give to all the faithful.

His own self for heavenly food.

Rank on rank the host of heaven

spreads its vanguard on the way,

As Light of light descendeth

from the realms of endless day,

That the powers of hell may vanish

as the darkness clears away.

At His feet the six-winged seraph,

Cherubim, With sleepless eye,

Veil their faces to His presence

as with ceaseless voice they cry:

Alleluia! Alleluia!

Alleluia! Lord Most High!

O Holy Night - Josh Groban

Sing of Mary

So much I wish to speak about, the wonder of our dear Lord...So much inside that yearns to be shared, spoken, and heard by friends... Friends who would dare to share, critique, and offer advice... So dearly, do we not all want the same thing?  To give all for the greater glory of our dear Beloved Lord.  For the Almighty, the most Mysterious of Beings- Our God and His mercy, what a wondrous Being that holds us so close, so tenderly!  Our sufferings so minimal, our sufferings tender lessons to bring us higher towards His union.  Glory be His name, wondrous is His love!   All praise is our Lord's name... all of us for our Lord..all of our Lord He gives to us, if we just become smaller in our being...if we just dive deeper into His living waters of live!

The joy of Jesus dying on the cross is He knows through His offering to The Father , Heaven opens to all people, starting with His precious mother.  Mother Mary is the perfected human through God's grace that shines for us all to embrace and follow always to Jesus.  She loved Jesus first and most deeply.  The love of the mother for her son is only eclipsed by the love of the Son for His mother.

"My daughter, we should never forget that our self love is the last to die. While we remain in this base world we will always be affected by its sensitive assaults and hidden operations; but God's grace is sufficient for us not to willingly succumb. This virtue of detachment is so excellent that the old man in us, the man of sin, nor the senses, nor human nature with its natural faculties were ever capable of possessing it. Not even the Son of God, who as a Son of Adam, although without any stain of sin, was completely free. He too confessed to His apostles that His soul was full of sadness; He too sought consolation; He too did not wish to die. However, He preserved His detachment, and we too must try to preserve it in imitation of Him, in times of trial and suffering, in the faculties possessed by grace."~ St. Padre Pio

God is so great!

A Post That Won't Last Long

Been awhile...many things happened and happening... 
Tired.
Tired of it all, again...



Never have I felt so old by hearing it so often from others who I hold respect for.  Why bother?  They see me as old and washed up; even  job hunting sees me as another too old and with too few skills... grey and brown..

all is just brown and grey ... all i can manage to hope for today is that maybe, just maybe, at my death God has mercy and let's me hide away in some little space on the distant edges of Heaven... if i trust in hope in this tiny little bit for I know He is love and mercy maybe this life will not be lived in vain? 

How i wish i could feel love, last few months has erased it from my remembering...i know it as an intellectual exercise, a memory that is hazily remembered when listening to a certain song, or saying a certain prayer. A flicker when out in public watching people, walking by with a smile shared. sad, that is the only time i can feel it for now, a stranger's glancing smile...  Instead I just add more lashes and pain to His Pain ... for His pain is my pain... sigh...so therefore i have to push on somehow even if it is dark and bleak and stuff the desire to just give up on it all away until it can be replaced with something more.

God's ways, God's time..never our own.  As it must be for us to be with Him.

Was to leave for my visit to Carmel last Friday but events occurred that lead to its delay.  At first I admit I was a bit frustrated because I was ready to leave town and start this next chapter of seeing where God might be calling me.  All things work out though.  Woke up the morning I would have left sick as a dog.  Not just any sick but a major ear infection which immediately made my hearing drop to levels I have not experienced in a few years.  Let's just say unless I am by the phone I cannot hear it ring, can barely hear a person's voice even when they are talking very loudly looking right at me.  Plus had a terrible chest cold and fever et al.  So glad I was not on the road trying to drive 1200 miles! 

My first thought was, "o crap!" as the pain stabbed my ear making my eye shut and face swell.  But no this is a blessing from my Lord who loves me.  He knows I have been faltering a lot lately.