Small Success Thursday

In the past, one of our themes was "March on, God will provide."  We started saying it whenever money got tight and somehow, things would ease. 

We started saying it as a joke when we were faced with a year of uncertainty; but it kept being true despite all our rational thinking and cleverness and American independent first child like thinking.   We kept being stunned by God's lavish abundance when we were nervous or anxious about money, about anything. 

Despite the daily mana in the desert, the Israelites doubted and grumbled and struggled.  Despite the constant showering of opportunities, good fortune and graces, I too doubted, grumbled and struggled.  Saint Faustina knew what we find so hard, how to trust in Jesus, how to trust in God's heart to take on ours with all our trials, troubles and difficulties.  Blessed Mother Teresa also emphasized how utterly profoundly free falling a trust is required if you read about her passages where she has loved Jesus in the night.  Is it any wonder that the modern saints in this world of relativism, sophisitcation, and technology and nuance, emphasize clarity, charity, simplicity and trust?

God keeps coming back and permeating everything until I surrender.  So today, I celebrate God's lavish courtship of my soul. 

1) My children were imploding yesterday and so I drove to the church near our home and phoned to get appointments.  We went to confession, all of us.  It was like hitting the reset button  on our family dynamics and the surest sign of all of this, was the laughter that permeated conversations after that sojourn to the rectory. 

2) Writing requires submissions and for some reason, I haven't been submitting as of late. You may have noticed more links, more repeats, less humor.  Everything I wrote felt unfinished, unclear or too personal. Not funny, not reflective, not real. 

What was I struggling with?  Revealing too much, romancing too much, not quite getting at whatever it was I wanted to write and not being quite willing to be so exposed.  The more you write, the more you spiral into revealing and at some point, you get a bit shell shocked and uncertain.  Then you either quit or you grow a shell or you repeat yourself so as to not continue to advance an intimacy with the readers or you surrender to the reality that if you want to really write, you will be revealed.   I hadn't wanted to surrender but writing the same thing grew very boring very fast, growing a shell meant not being honest and that wouldn't work and lying was out of the question; so that left the final option.  The Catholic Standard had asked for a story on my son Paul.  I hadn't wanted to do it for the longest time for reasons I could only ascribe as artificial.  Yesterday, I finally wrote it.  Yesterday it was accepted. 

3)  I've begun laying out the clothes at night, the lunch bags at night and putting the tooth brushes and pj's out in the morning when I'm making the beds and it has decreased the level of stress at night and in the morning considerably.  No rash hunting for whatever.  

4) Finished the Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary of Saint Louis de Montfort for this year with going to confession. 

5) Got back on the exercise wagon.  153.  Still shooting for ten pounds by July.  Haven't lost hope. 

Hope all of you have a great week!  See you over at Small Success Thursday at Family and Faith Live!