One Nation... under God

I'm sorry if you are extremely sick of election stuff... this is more about post election stuff. I promise to move on to other things after this, but as a missionary, the results of the election have been a major talking point in teaching students how to live a Catholic life.

My conversations have been a lot about why the church is against the legalization of marijuana in Colorado, why the HHS mandate is an attack on religious freedom, and some on the same-sex marriage issue.

There is one issue, though, that is starting to take over my current discussions:

Rendering unto Caesar.

["But it's OBAMA!?" Yes, I know... you can read my thoughts on that matter if you haven't already.]

Anyway... this is all coming up because of the astonishing piece of news that over 40 states have filed petitions to secede from the United States!

This is going to come out as an exhortation... forgive me in advance :)

This is OUR country! This is OUR government! We can't run. If we won't fight for America, who will? We need to fight for the goodness of our country and the principles it was founded on. We voted, as a country, and Obama was elected. We need to unite as a country - one country... if we are going to bring this whole country to the under God part. That means uniting behind Obama. Yes, certain things he stands for, we disagree with - I'm not saying we have to give in - just not give up! We need to fight for what we believe in and value. We need to fight him when he is unjust; we also need to work with him on the things he is willing to work with us on. Catholics were generally more democratic until the life issue came up - meaning the democratic party has a lot of good things that we as Catholics also need to be having a say in --- our Gospel is a Gospel of life AND social justice. We also care about the common good - which, luckily, (as long as we can't change Obama being in the white house) Obama is willing to work with us about. These areas are things we CAN make a difference in right now that DO need to be reformed.

"Be soldiers." These are the words of Pope Benedict. Soldiers don't leave the battle field. Soldiers don't watch from the sidelines. Soldiers stay and fight for what they believe in.

Yeah, 'Murica! :)

... and the Election (FOR SOULS!)

Obama.

I'm not upset Obama was re-elected.

I didn't vote for him. I don't agree with a lot of what he stands for.

I DO, however, know our God.

The biggest disappointment I had was watching all of the Christians on my facebook feed give in to despair. "Who wants to move with me to (insert country that isn't the USA)?!" "The mayans were right, the end of the world will be in Dec 2012!" "How stupid are people that we re-elected Obama?!" "There goes religious freedom and protecting life. out the window. done deal."

Come on! Y'all are the CHRISTIANS! We don't fear. We don't worry. We don't complain about what God gives us - good or bad, comfort or suffering. We trust. We love. We have HOPE. We take the situation we're given and make the most of it and have joy in Jesus Christ. We don't need to agree with them, but we need to show respect and honor to every child of God.

Anyway, not the point of this blog post.

The point is, I'm not surprised that God allowed Obama to have another 4 years with us. Look at what has happened in these last 4 years within the church! As a church, we've become more united, we've been forced to know what we believe and why, we've been standing up for the things we value, we've been obligated to explain our beliefs and share them with the world, we've been praying and fasting, we've been trusting in God...

We've been actually acting like Christians.

I think another blog I read this morning put it really well:

One “positive” thing you can say about Obama is that he’s done more to unite the Catholic Church in America than anyone in the past 50 years. He got every Catholic bishop to stand against him. He also did a lot to unite the Christian Church—remember Mike Huckabee saying, “Today, I’m Catholic!” Heck, he even got evangelical Christians to back a Mormon for president.

If we had woken up this morning with the headline, “Romney is the President,” we might have gone back to sleep feeling secure in one nation under God. We could be thankful that this HHS nonsense is over and we can go back to our lives. We could be hopeful that abortions would be reduced thanks to government intervention. That’s how I hoped to start the day.

But God does not want us asleep. He wants us awake. He wants us to do the same thing we’ve been doing: pray, work, and fast for our country.

If we thought we could wake up and feel safe about these issues because Romney got elected then we’d be as foolish as those on the other side of these issues who think Obama is the “savior.” We can’t depend on the government for our spiritual “welfare.” We’ve got to go out and proclaim God’s truth with our lips and share His love from our hearts.
 

God is bigger than an election - He is about winning hearts and saving souls. I'd like to take a moment to remind you that Obama isn't our enemy. Satan is our enemy. Satan wants souls. This war we're in is a war for souls. Satan wants Obama's soul. We are fighting to win souls that are victims of satan. Obama is a victim. He is one of the souls we are fighting FOR, not AGAINST.

If it takes Obama being in office to make Christians act like Christians, bring it on.

Reflection...

Yesterday, I took a day of reflection.

As a missionary, I am so blessed to be able to take a day once a month for reflection and recollection!! This means that I take a day off to spend all day in prayer (as in fasting and silence and hours of adoration) to reflect on my life and relationship with God.

In discipleship with my girls I ask them the same question every week: "How is your soul?" I love this question. It's the same as asking how someone is doing, but it brings their relationship with God into the conversation. We talk about their desires, their struggles, their values, the state of their soul and all of the things that affect it. This was essentially what I was asking myself and Jesus yesterday... How is my soul? How is my heart? How am I doing keeping God at the center of my life? Am I making this mission about HIM or about ME?

For those of you that have been reading my blog, I've been talking a lot about being busy and needing to reorder my life and priorities and being tired and how hard it's been to choose joy lately. You've also maybe noticed that I haven't updated in about 2 weeks. Two weeks ago, I got pretty sick. I was out of commission on and off for about a week. This is something that was extremely hard for me to deal with - I felt helpless. All I could do was lay in bed, sleep, drink some tea, sleep some more, answer a few emails, sleep some more... you get the idea. I couldn't do my bible studies, I couldn't get up for prayer in the morning, I couldn't meet wth my students for discipleship, I couldn't go out on campus and meet students... and all of this was made more frustrating because I was the one "in charge" for the week while our team director was in Rome. Power Hour didn't happen, women's night ended up just being a movie since I couldn't give the talk, etc... needless to say, I felt a little like a failure when Kelley came back and I had to recount all of this to her when she got back and asked how all of it went.

During prayer, I was praying with scripture and stopped to mull over for where your treasure is, there also your heart will be. What is my treasure? Is my treasure really God alone? Am I putting things above God in my heart? Not money, not worldly success, not what people think of me... Ah, yes. There was something. My idea of being "good", my plan for my holiness, reaching my expectations for myself. ME. I was putting more importance on what I needed to do to be a good daughter of God than the fact that I am a daughter of God.

So all this talk about busyness and such? Obviously I knew I needed to do something, but I hadn't. God kept tapping on my shoulder and showing me it wasn't good... and still I didn't. So what did He do? He slowed me down Himself. He let me get sick and stay in bed for most of a week. He allowed me the chance to be weak. He allowed me to see what was truly important. He allowed me the chance to not put me in the equation for what was done on campus that week. He allowed me to refocus on Him. He allowed me to trust Him and that He would be the salvation for the students at UNC. He gave me permission to have fun, to spread His truth in love and joy, to share His greatness through my own weakness.

God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong. - 1 Cor 1:27

God chose the foolish and the weak to be the ones He uses. If I want Him to use me, and make me perfectly into who He created me to be, I must allow that I am foolish and weak. AND I must give myself permission to be silly and weak in the eyes of the world (and myself!).

Thought to leave you with:

Let us think for a moment about the concept of vacation. We need to get away, relax, rest, enjoy life a little... so we go on vacation. Our lives have become so unlivable that we need to escape from them.

Living a life that takes time to enjoy spending time with our family instead of working long hours, tithing instead of giving ourselves a little more comfort, having true Christian values in America... looks foolish to our culture. We look weak. We look stupid. It looks inefficient and like we're not reaching our full potential or making as much money as we could. But I'll guarantee our lives are more livable. And that God blesses us with what we need.

Minnesota!

This weekend I visited Duluth, MN for the first time! You see, there is a certain someone there named Rosalin who I missed terribly and decided to go visit. She is my "focus bester" :) She would joke about how I called so many people my best friends, and so we decided to make up a new term that would only be ours.

It was a little bittersweet flying in since I wouldn't get to go home... but my parents were in Philly anyway, so I wouldn't get to see them if I did.

We had such a good time! We did a lot of the touristy things and just plain old enjoyed each other's company. We made Mass and holy hour a priority - was neat to see their chapel and Newman house so I know what the place she lives and works in is like! We ate at a little cafe. We went to Split Rock light house, unfortunately it was SUPER foggy and we couldn't really see over the water, but we DID get peanut butter cookies! We stopped and ate at Betty's Pies - a must if you're ever in the area! By the time we finished eating and got our pies, I felt like my french blueberry cream slice was about a quarter of the pie. I heard my grandma Lil's voice in my head saying, "It's just a jam pie!" :)

We took the scenic route along the lake back to Duluth. We went to the tower at the top of the hill in town where you could look down over Duluth and the lake. It was really pretty. We found this chicken on the way... I would've been disappointed in myself had I not taken a picture with it. I was raised in a family where you always take pictures with statues, especially of large animals, and you obviously have to try to act the statue out!

 

We stopped at the mall because my phone was acting funny and, since Rosalin was wanting her hair cut, decided to up and cut our hair! She cut over 6 inches off and I took a chance with straight bangs. We had late night perkins and fell asleep watching a movie!

 

Sunday, we got to spend some time with Father Mike Schmitz after Mass. It was so wonderful. He exudes Jesus all over the place. If there were one person who overflowed joy and love, it would be him. He took us out for lunch at Sir Benedict's Tavern where I enjoyed a delicious bacon and avocado sandwich and soup. We talked and joked until he had to go and then stopped for coffee on the way home. It gave me so much life to just spend time with him. I can see why Rosalin and he get along... I've decided they are perfect complements: quite different in personality, but very similiar in interests and sense of humor.

 

Rosalin and I took our coffee and headed out to walk along the Lake Walk. We noticed along the shore below there was a cave in the rock. Luckily for us, we were able to get down to the shore and get over to it - no easy feat in our church clothes!! It was slightly anticlimatic when we realized how small it was... I was secretly hoping, but strongly terrified, that there would be a wild animal inside. Not the case, just some sharpie writing on the walls. Rosalin had her pepper spray to ease my nervies, just in case.

 

We spent some time in good conversation with a couple of young adults in the community - so refreshing to be able to just hang out and talk. Then, we got a little sentimental and had McDonald's and jack and coke while watching the BBC series of Robin Hood.

 

"True friendship presupposes equality." It's so good to spend time with someone who genuinely knows and loves you, with whom there is nothing expected from one or the other in the relationship, with whom the only goal is to joyfully find Heaven together.

 



Human Beings, not Human Doings

Today, we spontaneously took the day "off". I say "off" because we still somehow managed to do a full day of work, but still managed to spend a majority of the day just being. We had prayer, Mass, a meeting with Father, our team meeting, and planned and put on a formation night for our student missionaries... AND spent a few hours in Fort Collins with the FOCUS teams from CU and CSU going on a brewery tour, eating at Choice City, and playing pool downtown. It was great to get together with friends and discuss life and being a missionary and BE together.

Sometimes as a missionary, it's hard for me to take some down time. Since my schedule is so random I sometimes don't notice that within Mon, Tues and Wed I've already worked over 40 hours. When your job has eternal significance (bringing people to Jesus, possibly helping save their soul), it is hard to not do it 24/7 - if I take some time for fun or relaxing it feels selfish.

This spirit creeps into my perspective of the world, of my God, and of myself. It slowly turns inward and I begin to place my worth on what I do instead of who I am as a daughter of God. It is hard to tell myself that even if something is good, it isn't always good for me to do. That if I'm not living a life worthy of imitation, I'm actually having a negative effect on the people God has placed in my life. That actually God doesn't need me in order to save the souls on campus, but allows me to be a part of it. That it isn't in the things I "do for God", but in how I live my everyday life that people can see Jesus in me. In a recent FOCUS Blog article titled What I Wish College Students Knew about Joy, I read:

Too many modern Christians fail to stand up or to stand out. We are called to live differently, are we not? And not just in what we refuse to do, say, or wear, but on a far deeper level of how we live out our vocation to love with unwavering joy, peace and, dare I say, a sense of humor. All of the atheists, pagans, and anti-Catholics combined have not done as much damage to the gospel in our modern age as joyless Christians have done.

Prayer is the key ingredient to evangelistic “success” – for it is only through prayer that we keep this divine perspective, fan the flame of our joy, and laugh in the face of death.

So what do I wish all college students knew about presenting their faith to others? I wish all students focused more on the “good” in the good news. I wish students understood the importance of joy as a fundamental daily disposition and of laughter as the most effective tool to open a hardened heart. And I wish that other students would have modeled a vibrant, joyful, and authentically Catholic life when I was in college…it would have saved me a lot of years in my own personal prison.

My job is not about doing as much as I can on campus, but in doing well what I can while modeling a vibrant, joyful, authentically Catholic life. And today, God used my team to help remind me of that and force me to have a little holy leisure!

 

Roses are Red...

One of the major criticisms we hear of the pro-life stance is that we care about babies, but not about the mothers. Even though this is not true, I understand how it could be misinterpretted to feel that way. For this reason, we added another event to Bearfoot for Babies that seemingly has nothing to do with Babies. We handed roses out to women on campus today and told them they were beautiful.

On these roses, were tied little notes that the young religious education students at our parish wrote for them. Most of them said, "You are Precious!" or "You are Precious to God!" We did this to treat them with and help them know the dignity they have in being a daughter of God. It was such a beautiful treat to be the one handing them out. Each time I gave a rose away, I was blessed to witness their eyes light up. They would get a little excited and look a little giddy. You could see in their eyes something that said, "Wow... for me? :)" Then, they would become a little skeptical. I think our society has done this to us - made us skeptical of any genuine generosity. We get uncomfortable allowing anyone to do something for us without giving them something in return. Even those of us who can be generous sometimes struggle accepting someone else's generosity. Oftentimes we expect there to be a catch. It was refreshing to be able to honestly answer there inquiries about why I was giving away free roses with a response that told them just because I care about you, just because you are beautiful, just because you are worth it, just because you deserve a little joy and surprise today, just because God was thinking about you... I was honored to receive each of those little smiles for Jesus.

 

And let us not forget the men. The students also made little notes for them. These read, "Man up and defend life." Although my personal favorite was one that read, "You are precious to God? Man up and defend yourself!" haha. We attached these to packs of M&Ms and the men handed them out to men on campus. Sounded like they brought up a lot of good pro-life discussion.

For The Babies!

It is Bearfoot for Babies week (we're the UNC Bears, get it?!). That means all week the prolife students on campus have been walking around barefoot in silent protest as a witness for those who will never have the opportunity to wear shoes. There are also events going on every day. Today we had a Life Expo in the main student center on campus. There were booths set up for pro-life, the pregnancy center, NFP (natural family planning) information, ENDOW and theology of the body stuff, and the ask a priest booth.

I helped out there for a while and then walked out to watch over the 3300 cross display outside. This was to make people more aware of the fact that 3300 babies are killed in the US alone EVERY DAY by abortion. Many people came up to ask me about it. Some thought it was awesome and took their shoes off to join us. Some thought it was not so awesome and let me know it. Others just walked by and tried not to notice. Overall, it gave me so much hope! People were willing to stop and ask me about it and actually discuss abortion with me - whether or not they agreed. I was able to share truth about how abortion and contraception not only hurt babies, but mothers. And fathers. And the relationship between man and woman. I was able to give hope to some who needed healing.

After that, I went to my ballroom dancing class. This class is something I'm not actually enrolled in since I'm not a student, but they needed more girls, so I go every week. It isn't mandatory, but for leisure, and I tell you what - I have learned more about myself in this class than from anything else this year! That is a complete other story, though. Today, I was able to be a witness as a barefooted dancer. I had asked the teacher if it was ok right before class started so I didn't break any rules and she decided to make an announcement out of it. Therefore the whole class knew I was going barefoot that day, but not why. This brought up a number of discussions during class with the men I danced with - the only unfortunate part was we were learning the Argentine tango: the dance of passion. If any of you have seen dirty dancing havana nights, we learned moves like that on day one. Not a modest dance to say the least. One guy was enjoying it so much he warned me not to do the next move she was teaching us or he wouldn't be able to control his urge to lick my neck. It was awkward.

Walking back from class, I walk by one of the sorority houses. We are actually on good terms with this sorority and hang out sometimes. Today, though, was the serenade. The fraternities come and sing to the women and the women sing back. I'm not going to quote what they said, but it was all about sex. The vulgar humor and dirty jokes made my heart hurt for them! This is what they have been told will make them happy by the world. They are told they are made for pleasure. Oh if they knew their dignity! If they knew they were made for real love! If they knew Jesus Christ loved them so much and died for them and they deserved more!

Tonight, we had a speaker come in to talk about Hope and Healing after an Abortion. She gave us her life story. She talked about the abuse, the sex and drugs, her perspective and why she went to those things. She told us about the abortions and attempts at love and worthlessness she felt. Then she told us about meeting Christ and His love and mercy. It was a great talk and reminded me of why I became a missionary. It was a little painful as it reminded me of the hurt I've been through and the things I've struggled with, but helped me once again to better appreciate the love of Christ that I've grown so accostomed to knowing - helped me to take a glance through the eyes of fear and pain and remember that sharing faith is about compassion.