Move!

Yesterday, I mentioned moving day.  Today, I'm thinking about moving but in a different way. 

So I started Lent, I've already messed up every day, and yet, that's the purpose of Lent, to be reminded every day of how much we pretend we don't need saving, how much we deny, we need saving.  The best Lents aren't when we adhere to whatever our Lenten promise is perfectly, but when we are perfected by the trial of seeking to adhere to it in the first place.  

What we do matters, and yet like receiving, how and why we do it matters too.   The matter of our sacrifice matters.  That's why sacarments have an unbearably physical element to them, an undenyable physical reality.  

It's the everyday progress, that comes with acknowledging how much we regress, that makes for true humility --can't do this without grace, not even for a second.   It's the everyday little surrenders that make up whole splinters of a cross that over a lifetime, is the whole cross. The nails of our life are those big moments, where we were given the opportunity to say yes or no to Christ, and the crown we weave, is of all the times we've managed to cooperate with grace and the world hated us for it, and our keen awareness of all the times we failed to love those around us --all the moments we could have cooperated with grace and did not.  We get to offer all our failures to Christ, along with a humble, "I am sorry, I am nothing but a poor ungrateful servant.  Here I am Lord, do with me what you will."   

This past week, many in my family were reminded of what most of us take for granted, heat, power, water and food.   This week, many in our nation were reminded, our world is much more fragile than nature, and this past twelve months, our nature, much more fragile than we believe.   

We are always practicing Catholics, even when our practice sounds terrible, even when we screw up, especially when we don't recognize we're screwing up.  God knows this, God tells us over and over again, He knows this.  He compares us to sheep.  That's not flattering. It is however, a reality.  

This week, I sat thinking about spiritual practice and discpline being like weight loss --the most success is when we stop looking at the problem as something to be solved, and instead embrace it as a way to live.   The same is true for spiritual exercise.   When it is part of breathing, we are closer to "doing it well" because we aren't doing something to check off a box, but as part of an ever on going progression.   

Editing, parenting, writing, exercise, prayer, all of these things are the cumulative consequence of a regular constant willingness to do and do again and be willing to do poorly but do every day.   

So with that in mind, I'm going to go edit my book and go for a short exercise...if only to start.   
Because all of these habits require first, foremost and always, my cooperation, and none of these will happen if I do not will to do them.   That includes Lent.  

The desert everywhere is calling.  Inviting us to will to go into it.   Lent is the time to be willing to move.   

The Triumph is Not Mine

Every Thursday, Family& Faith Live celebrates the little victories that make life something beyond survival, that indicate the times when we come close to following Blessed Mother Teresa's mantra of doing the little things with great love.

Searching for something to say, I thought of my daughter being moved up in reading groups. I thought of my oldest son volunteering to take the bus in the morning so as to take the stress off of me this week when their dad is on a business trip. I thought of the financial aid woman who called me to let me know they were missing a paper I'd sent and to please send a new one, rather than simply discard my application for being incomplete.

Then there was the miracle of my youngest son, Paul. He has Down Syndrome as many of you know, and we just evaluated him for the upcoming year. Sometimes it seems to me as if he's listening in on the objectives and goals the teachers set for him. This week, he transferred a spoon from left to right. He also helped feed himself. He is pulling up in his crib. These were all things we were to be working on, and he has started without us.

My husband's cousin has been battling cancer for many years. She has suffered from the treatment greatly. Two days ago, she started bleeding internally. The ulcers in her intestine had ruptured. Prayers are still needed for her continuing recovery but the initial scare has passed.

So this week, there were miracles, big and small, even as there were failures and tragedies, big and small: a bad grade on a paper, fights and fits of temper, the devastation of Haiti, the madness that is politics, the tears of another mother as she struggled with her daughter's clinging at school, and fears of a friend over how out of control her life feels at the moment.

But I look at this past week, and how it has been. The Triumph was not mine; but I was blessed to witness them.

Have a Triumph to Share? Put it on your Blog, then link to Family & Faith Live, Small Successes Thursday. http://www.faithandfamilylive.com/blog/small/