Tag: Jesus

Circumstances

Published on by Kate5 Comments

No one lives with perfect circumstances. Things might be going really well, but there is always something in your life that could be fixed up. Even in the lives of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus – two of whom were perfect people in that they were without sin – even they lived in imperfect circumstances. We don’t get to pick our circumstances but we do choose how we respond to them. The Christmas season highlights a few different biblical characters and the way they chose to respond to unusual, perhaps even seemingly imperfect, circumstances.

Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist, responded with fear and doubt when told about his coming son by the angel. He relied on his own understanding and was not open to the possibilities the Holy Spirit could create. Mary, on the other hand, received a message from an angel about a baby as well. But in her case, she remained open to the action of the Holy Spirit, being willing to cooperate with God’s plans even though she did not understand them. She was filled with the Holy Spirit and even before Jesus was born we are able to hear how both Mary and Elizabeth (John the Baptist’s mother) speak inspired words to one another. Both Mary’s fiat, her “yes” to God, and her Magnificat spring from her faith and trust in God’s love.

The Holy Spirit still speaks to us today if we are attentive. Sometimes in the words of others, sometimes in the words that come out of our own mouth. Sometimes, even in our imperfect circumstances.

This fall, my mom was diagnosed with a glioblastoma tumor in her brain. This is an aggressive type of tumor and it was less than 48 hours between diagnosis and brain surgery to remove as much as possible. Our whole world was completely turned upside down. Thankfully, the surgery was as successful as the doctors could hope for. There is still a long road to go, and we don’t know the twists and turns that will come.

Before my mom was diagnosed, she had some speech and word finding issues. After surgery, the doctors said she could have a hard time with speech due to the location of the tumor. We have some funny stories of those early days and the word switches, misses, and adaptations my mom came up with as her healing began. Every so often, she still slips. However, there is one particular slip that I believe is Holy Spirit inspired.

While the chemo my mom was prescribed are daily oral pills she can take at home, radiation had to happen at a cancer center. Every weekday for 6 weeks she went to the center for treatment. After a few visits and settling into a routine, she began calling “radiation” “adoration.” Obviously, these two things are definitely different. And yet, as we talked about it, I can’t help but feel there is some kind of Holy Spirit inspiration between the switch.

What happens in radiation? For a few minutes (really, less than 10, it’s rather remarkable), the person has to lie in perfect stillness while the mechanisms and machinery delivers the radiation treatment to a specific and carefully aligned area of the body. There isn’t anything my mom can do to make this process more effective or efficient except to be faithful to the treatment process. If she didn’t go every day, the effectiveness would greatly diminish. If she wasn’t compliant to the doctor’s recommendations for staying active even when she was exhausted, to try her best to eat as well as she could even when all she wanted was saltines, her body wouldn’t be as strong as it could be to continue fighting this invisible enemy.

What is adoration? Adoration is coming to adore Christ. It is taking time out of our day to place Jesus at the center of our life. Typically, people are pretty still during adoration, with sitting or kneeling being the predominant postures. Adoration is an opportunity to open ourselves up to Jesus’ action in our lives, to let him highlight the areas of our life in need of his mercy, his healing, and his love. In Adoration we can receive inspiration for how to live our lives, what actions should we do or avoid that will help us more fully follow God’s Will. We faithfully show up to adoration, but it’s God’s action that is on display.

From this light, there is a lot in common between radiation and adoration. If you are willing, I’d like to invite you to pray for my mom, Mary Kay, and for her healing. I’d also invite you to pray for my dad, Steve, as he walks this journey with her. My parents have both asked for prayers specifically through Chiara Lubich’s intercession. Long-time readers will hopefully recognize Chiara as the founder of the Focolare Movement that our family is a part of. Below is the prayer of intercession that is officially recognized by the Church. Chiara is a named Servant of God but cannot move forward in the canonization process without miracles associated with her intercession. God willing, my mom can be one of those miracles.

Eternal Father, source of Love, and of every light and goodness, we give You thanks for the charism of unity given to Chiara and for the remarkable witness to the Church and humanity that she gave of this charism, remaining faithful to Jesus Forsaken.

Grant us, O Father, through the action of the Holy Spirit and the Word lived in the present moment, and in following Chiara’s example, the grace to contribute together with all people of good will to the fulfilment of Your Son’s will: “That they may all be one!”

Humbly we ask You to grant us, Your children, to live in mutual love and in love of all so as to rejoice in the presence of the Risen One while, in communion with Chiara and through her intercession, we ask You, if it be Your will, the grace for the complete healing of Mary Kay Jennrich from brain cancer, through Jesus and for the glory of the Most Holy Trinity.

Amen

If you’d like to learn more about Chiara and the movement, I have three resources for you. First is the film Love Conquers All that can be viewed on Formed.org. Many parishes subscribe to this streaming database. Check with your local parish if you are unsure if you have free access or not. The second is the primary website of the Focolare Movement. Third is the main media resource for the Focolare which has videos, articles, and other resources you may be interested in.

Daily Graces. kktaliaferro.wordpress.com

A Wellspring

Published on by Kate1 Comment

We aren’t farmers. It’s good to say that from the start. This past summer our family moved again and this time we chose a home that sits on a little less than 4 acres of land. A good portion is woods, but we are definitely “in the country” side of town. Our neighbors have horses that we can see every morning from our front yard. Down the lane another neighbor has a large garden and the best tomatoes at their farm stand during the summer.

When we bought our home we knew it was on a well. Naively, we thought we knew enough about wells due to a few previous experiences that, in hindsight, did not at all provide us with enough information to believe we knew what it meant to live with a well.

You don’t know what you don’t know

After a few formative experiences, such as learning that standing water around the well did not in fact mean we had a such a surplus of water it was literally bubbling out of the ground – this meant we had a serious leak that should have been addressed at least a month prior – we are quickly realizing that there is a lot to learn about wells. There is also a lot that is simply beyond our control.

When we first moved in, we let the well alone. We didn’t know how to measure its depth, and according to our neighbor the well had always been sufficient for the previous owners. It should be noted, again, hindsight being so clear, that the previous owners were an elderly couple. The water usage in laundry alone when comparing the needs of an elderly couple and our family of eight is rather extreme. So, while the well might have produced more than enough for them, our family has a very different level of need.

After the aforementioned leak experience, we figured out how to measure the well’s depth. We have a spreadsheet where we are tracking the depth of the well twice a week. We also have a rain gauge so we can keep a good account of the amount of rain we get. We have learned things like just because it’s raining today doesn’t mean we will see those gains in the well tomorrow. It takes a few months for the rain of today to filter down deep enough to be seen in the well. And, if there is a dry period, we can expect to see that reflected in the well’s measurements a few months later.

To whom does water belong?

We have learned so much in a few months. And yet, there is little of it we can control besides measuring and watching. Laundry still has to be done. Toilets have to be flushed. Dishes have to be washed and showers taken. We use water all the time. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of the well. We have even started including the well in our nightly prayers as a family.

This whole experience has given me a deeper appreciation for those who rely on the weather for their livelihood and way of life. We are fortunate that we can call a company to bring water to refill the well (we’ve had to once already) when, in our ignorance, we ran it dry. Now, as we learn more, we are striving to maintain a better understanding of the well, where it is sitting, and how we can modify our habits to be good users of the water we have available. Not everyone has such a luxury.

I am also praying my morning prayer with more awareness. So many psalms talk about the importance of water and all its many facets. (The following are quotes from the Liturgy of the Hours translation of the Psalms).

  • O God, you are my God, for you I long; for you my soul is thirsting. My body pines for you, like a dry, weary land without water. Psalm 63:2
  • The Lord’s voice resounding on the waters, the Lord on the immensity of waters; the voice of the Lord, full of power, the voice of the Lord, full of splendor. Psalm 29:3-4
  • The Lord’s is the earth and its fullness, the world and all its peoples. It is he who set it on the seas; on the waters he made it firm. Psalm 24:1-2
  • Indeed you love truth in the heart; then in the secret of my heart teach me wisdom. O purify me, then I shall be clean; O wash me, I shall be whiter than snow. Psalm 51:8-9
  • You care for the earth, give it water; you fill it with riches. Your river in heaven brims over to provide its grain. And thus you provide for the earth; you drench its furrows, you live it soften it with showers, you bless its growth. Psalm 65:10-11

The list goes on. Water doesn’t belong to us. This well doesn’t belong to us. I am discovering our relationship with water in this house is a lot like the Serenity Prayer. We can absolutely take ownership of how we use the water, but we cannot control its availability. We have to rely on God’s providence in the weather.

So much of the big things in life are like this. We have the gift of life, of waking up each morning. We can choose how to spend our day, but we rely on God’s love and mercy to wake us up tomorrow. We can take ownership of our actions, but we cannot demand others act or perceive our actions in a certain manner. We can make great plans for the future and have them all change in a single day.

Through this well, our family is learning to rely even more on God. We are learning to be more patient and to be more aware of the gifts He provides the earth in the form of rain. Water is precious. Life is precious. While it would be so much easier to be on city water, I wouldn’t trade these lessons and conversations we have had because of our well.

Daily Graces. kktaliaferro.wordpress.com

Deadlines – An Advent Reflection

Published on by KateLeave a comment

I have a love/hate relationship with deadlines. 

Deadlines are highly motivating. There is a clear project, direction, and end in sight. Deadlines can often spark creativity. Time instantly becomes more precious and there comes a moment when I just have to commit to a plan and go with it so that the deadline can be met. 

However, deadlines can also be hugely stressful. Deadlines apply pressure to finish a specific project in a specific window of time, even if there are other things I am more interested in focusing on. They can be unrealistic for the scope of a project, especially if a project has evolved to something larger than originally planned. Deadlines can feel defeating when they arrive before I am really ready to present what I’ve been working on. The project is finished in a rush and hasn’t had time to grow to it’s full potential, if it gets completed at all. 

I am a stay at home mom with a love of crafting and gift giving, so my deadlines are mostly self-imposed. The biggest deadline of them all is rapidly drawing upon us – Christmas. There are so many crafters in the world who are right now, in this very moment, scrambling to complete the projects they decided would make excellent Christmas gifts. Maybe they started early, but have so many gifts to make they still aren’t finished yet. Maybe they didn’t realize how long their project would take. Some only just began their crafting in the past few weeks because life and timing got away from them. They woke up on Dec. 1 and realized how many hats they wanted to knit for their co-workers and have been knitting non-stop since then. 

I have been in all of these circumstances. There was even one year I completed a pair of knitted socks for a loved one while we were driving to their house. I have made grand plans only to run out of time. This year, thankfully, my gift making required a large loom that will definitely not fit in the car, so I knew that back up plan would not work. I’m so happy to say that as of Dec. 12, my gift crafting is done (well, for now. There’s always the car ride to whip something else up) (Joke’s on me, I wrote that last line before we left. Guess what I’m doing while we drive…). 

As it does every Advent, the Church asks us to consider another deadline, a rather final one – the Second Coming of Christ. It actually brings a whole new meaning to this compound word we use so frequently – Dead. Line. A line which beyond is death. Christ’s return to earth is difficult for us to grapple with. It is a deadline, to be sure. Yet Jesus told us that we would not know the timing of it’s arrival. How are we supposed to prepare for a deadline that we don’t know the time or location of?

First and foremost, we listen to and pray with Scripture. We listen to John the Baptist, crying out in the desert for repentance. We listen to Jesus in His parables that teach us to stay awake and alert. We listen to St. Paul when he tells us to pray without ceasing, and to rejoice in the faith and salvation we have from Jesus Christ.

Second, we continue to seek out God in our everyday ordinary existence. This means looking for opportunities to love our neighbor. If we can go to bed every day thinking about the ways we helped others, served others, died to our own selfishness, and extended God’s love to those we met (be they new people or the same people we share each day with), we will be well on our way to heaven.  

Just because we don’t know when Jesus will come back does not mean the project of salvation isn’t the highest priority. Of all the things on your to-do list today, of all the projects and plans you would like to accomplish by a certain deadline, where does God’s plan for your sainthood fall?