Best Moments from our trip to Maui

Aloha, friends! I am back from Maui quite a few shades darker (seriously, I am so tan). Hawaii was incredible. The weather was perfect (minus a minor hurricane glitch), the landscape was so beautiful that it looked fake, and the people were incredibly laid back. I don't think I've ever felt quite so disconnected from the world while on a trip before. It was a perfect nine days of just relaxing, being with family, and trying not to get too sunburnt.

Here's a quick recap of our trip, in the format of a list of bests!

Best Adventure: Biking down the side of a volcano! More details to come on this tomorrow.

Best Meal: Crab Mac & Cheese at Honu on our very last night. Oh my goshhhh. I would go back to Maui just to eat this again.

Best View:

Drinking: Iced White Mocha
Reading: The Paper Magician

Just kidding. Here's Ka'anapali Beach without anything blocking your view! That island in the distance is Molokai.

Best Sunset:

The sunset in Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii

Best Loss of "What are the Odds": "What are the Odds" is a game where you challenge someone to do something. You ask them, "what are the odds you'll eat an entire pizza?" and they answer saying something like, "1 in 10." After counting to three, the challenger and the challengee say a number in that range. If they say the same number, they have to do it. If they say a different number, they do not have to complete the challenge. At the end of the beach, there's a giant black rock that juts out into the ocean. If you swim out far enough, you can climb up 20ft and jump in. Tommy is not a fan of doing things like this. Steph, Joey, & I all jumped, and we wanted Tommy to join in the fun. After making all sorts of offers (like endless baked goods, Joey being nice to him forever), Tommy lost What are the Odds and had to jump. It ended up being a great experience, and we were all glad he did it!

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Best Ocean Experience: Snorkling right next to a sea turtle off the coast of Maui! Amazing.

Best Hawaiian Moment: Either surfing, or attending the Luau! Surfing is hard, but super fun! And the Luau was a sweet way to try traditional Hawaiian foods while watching hula!

#nailedit

Best Book Read: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. This book was so enchanting, I could hardly put it down. It's the story of two opponents, competing to show who is better skilled at magic. The two main characters have been bound together their whole lives, and the story is about how they overlap and how the magic that they create is a gift to others. I highly recommend it.

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Best Parents in the World: MINE. Huge shoutout to my generous parents for taking us on this trip!

Aren't they so cute!?

But the best part of the whole trip was being able to spend 9 days of carefree timelessness with my family.

Aloha, Hawaii! Can't wait to see you again.

5 Favorites: Weird things you can buy on Amazon.com [2]

Welcome to May where the Events Team is buys out of their minds and we are 20 days away from NST. So not only is work crazy busy, but I'm spending my evenings hanging out with people before I'm gone for a full month. So instead of a post with substance, I give you to my five favorite weird things you can buy on amazon.com that I discovered yesterday (meaning, I'm sure there are a lot of other weird purchases you can make).

ONE: AN INFLATABLE UNICORN HORN FOR YOUR CAT.

Who DOESN'T want to be a unicorn? This cat.

This is how looking at weird things on amazon started when amazon tweeted this. WHAT!? Why is this a thing?! I mean, do you need anything else in life?! Buy this amazing product here.

TWO: A monocle. 

Christine learned on on NPR that the cool new thing for hipsters to do was wear monocles. So, obvioulsy we had to investigate to see if it was really a thing. It is. You're welcome. Become the hippest of the hipsters here.

 THREE: This hilarious book about grammar.

THIS BOOK IS THE BEST because it shows why we need to use commas. Amazing. I actually discovered this book at a trendy bookstore in Denver, but you can buy it on amazon. Explain to your friends why the oxford comma matters here.

FOUR: Emergency Googly Eyes.

For EMERGENCIES. 

My roommates may or may not have put googly eyes on random things in our apartment my senior year of college (i.e. microwave, light switch, chair, etc.). And it may or may not have been amazing. Stock up for your next googly eye emergency here.

FIVE: A coffee cup for your squirrel.

Squirrels need caffeine too.

Some of you may know of my love for squirrels. If this fact is a new fact for you, I present to you this picture of me and my DG taxidermy squirrel, Evil Kenevil:

He is not gross or weird. Okay, maybe a little.

 Unfortunately, he was a will, so I had to give him away when I graduated. Saddest day ever. But now someone else is being his loving mama, so it's all good. Buy the mug here so you can enjoy your morning cup of joe with your squirrel.

So there you have it, my friends. What weird things have you found on Amazon?

how I learned nothing and everything on my dating fast

What's a dating fast, you ask? It's when a person chooses not to date or have any romantic relationships for a certain period of time. All first year FOCUS missionaries go on a dating fast of some form. 

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My dating fast was the bomb.com. It freed me to worry about nothing besides my students and my relationship with Jesus. I was free to deeply discern my vocation, and I was significantly closer to Jesus when my fast was over than when I started. 

But the real test comes when the dating fast ends. How was I going to live my life now that I was free to date?

I was terrified to go to summer training, hot off the dating fast. I felt like I was going to have to confront my vocation right in the face since pretty much every religious order I was attracted to would be at training, and there were all these holy FOCUS men who were also hot off the fast.

I got to Florida, and SURPRISE! Nothing changed. I continued to pray and unite myself with Jesus each day. Yet I noticed a difference in myself. No longer was every guy I met a potential boyfriend. For the first time, I truly felt like I was able to honor my brothers in Christ as what they were: sons of God striving for holiness. Which helped me to truly be myself at all times. It was pretty cool.

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Fast forward to September when I met someone who I liked and who liked me back. The minute he asked me to open my heart and let my guard down without any commitment or actual dating relationship, I did it. What the heck, Michelle!? I began to allow my heart to run free and my imagination to see a future with this boy. I mean, he told me he liked me, we were just waiting a few weeks to start dating, so no big deal, right? I was excited, my emotions were going crazy, and my heart was full of this boy.

But here's the thing, without Jesus, there is only so much room in your heart. Since all I thought about was this boy, I was rapidly shoving Jesus out of my heart and mind without even realizing it. So imagine my hurt and confusion when we didn't end up dating.

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Sure, there's a lot of things he could have done differently, but I was mainly mad at myself. I literally did everything I learned not to do while on my dating fast. Ugh. 

Unfortunately, getting Jesus back to the center of your heart is a lot harder than kicking Him out. I now had to detach myself from the plans I had made. And since my heart was so closely tied to those plans, it was painful. It was even harder since I was so angry with myself for failing.

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Yet our God is patient and forgiving and loving. He does not love me less because I chose not to listen to Him. He writes straight with crocked lines. He healed my heart and showed me great love despite my failure to love His son correctly.

So now that I've been on a dating fast, grown immensely from it, and epicly failed at living it out, here's what I've learned:

1. God desires to be at the center of my heart, but He won't force His way in. 

2. It is easy to replace God with other things, and extremely hard to put Him back in your heart once you've kicked him out. But the beautiful thing is, even though we've ignored the Lord, He has never left us. All you have to do to put Him back in the center of your life is ask. And then pick yourself up and start living your life with Him.

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3. My worth does not change whether or not I'm date-able to someone. It lies in the fact that I am a beloved daughter of God. And the same goes for men. Their worth does not change based on how date-able they are to me. 

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4. There is an appropriate level of intimacy that can exist between a man and a woman, and it should not be crossed without the proper levels of commitment.

5. What not following the will of God feels like.

6. Don't over spiritualize. Discernment is about action. Don't get me wrong, prayer does need to be in the center of discernment, but we need to act and step outside of ourselves and move. Sometimes, we need to make an educated, prayerful decision and trust that God will bless it or He will intervene. 

7. Jesus wants to love me right where I'm at - even if I mess up. 

If I had to do it over, I would change a lot of things. I would guard my heart better and combat my attachments with greater devotion to Jesus and the Blessed Mother. But now I better understand the right way to love because of the pain I went through. I know that next time I will be better equipped to love rightly with Jesus, and that His love will continue to conquer and transform my heart. Thank you, Jesus for being patient with me, for teaching me how to love, and granting me the gift of self awareness through this time!

Be Free

What I love so much about the saints and the apostles was their ability to respond to our Lord when He called. When I picture these saint's lives, I see them sitting patiently in prayer, receiving Jesus as He chose to come to them each day. No anxiety, no waiting for perfection, but a complete surrender and trust in His Divine Goodness and Will. When He called, they didn't wait around and mull it over. Rather, they were disposed to do His will freely and immediately. Oh Jesus, how I long to be this way. 

Except that sitting around opening my heart to Jesus is really, really hard. I get in the way 99.9% of the time by talking to much, slacking off, or just not paying attention. 

The good news is, it is easier than we think. Here are 5 ways to free us so we are ready to respond to The Lord:

1. Commitment to daily prayer

2. Frequent (if not daily) Mass

3. Good Counsel. Every notice that saints come in clusters? The apostles, Benedict & Scholastica, Ignatius & Francis Xavier & Loyola? Surrounding yourself with people who are striving for sainthood will help you get there too.

4. Daily Examen

5. Action. This may seem counterintuitive, like if we choose and take action we will get in God's way. But we won't! In order to be free to respond to the graves God wants to give us, we must already be in the habit of action.

Through our surrender, God will make His will known. These 5 simple habits will help us get ours hearts in a state where we can freely respond to God when He calls. 

How to Pray Like Pope Francis: The examen prayer

When you enter a religious community, you commit to saying certain prayers every day. For the Jesuits, one of those prayers is the Examen Prayer. They pray it twice a day - once at noon and once at the end of the day. And sine Papa F is an every day Jesuit, we know that he prays the examen each day!

Lucky for us, the examen is a very simple prayer. It is all about reflecting on our lives and looking back through our day to see where God was. It teaches us to be more present to God in our every day lives, and it helps us grow in self awareness. Since I started praying an (almost) daily examen, I have had an incredible gift of clarity of how God is working in my life.

St. Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuits, thought the examen was so important that he said if you could only pray one type of prayer in your whole day, this would be it. The examen is a gift of self-awareness, and self-awareness is one of the two basic foundations we need to grow in holiness.

One last great thing about the examen prayer: it only takes about 5 minutes to pray! So go ahead, try it out!

How to Pray the Examen Prayer: Walking Around Your Day

1. Gratitude: I thank God

I tend to make this a litany: Thank You for coffee, the beautiful mountains, my hilarious team, my cat, my roommates, that nice text from my friend, etc.

A litany of thanks works, or you could find a few things and go into greater detail as to why you're thankful for those things. This method of gratitude inclines our hearts towards God and allows us to see why we are grateful for things. This is the one I choose when I'm not being super lazy.

2. Ask For Light: For the grace to see myself as God sees me

Here I simply ask God for the grace to see myself as I truly am; to see myself as His beloved daughter.

3. Look for God in my life: Lord, where have I been for you? What did I do for love? This can be done in feelings or re-experiencing events.

Where did I experience love? When did I choose to love when I could have chosen to be selfish? When did I speak up for Jesus? When was I aware of God during this day?

4. Contrition: Honestly facing what's wrong

Where did I choose selfishness? Where did I ignore God? Where could I have handled a confrontation better? How could I have been more present to The Lord?

5. Resolve: Determine what to do now

After seeing what went well and what didn't go so well, I take a few minutes to talk to Jesus and ask Him what I can do tomorrow to be closer to Him. Sometimes it's as simple as just keep on keepin' on, while other times I make a very concrete resolution on something to do or not to do.

6. Look to the Next Day: Pray through the next 24 hours

I pull out my iPhone, open my calendar app, and pray through all of my meetings and my appointments for that day. I ask God to be with me and ask Him to bless all that is on my plate for the next day.

7. Close: With a Hail Mary or an Our Father

I typically close with Night Prayer, unless it's really late.

So tonight, take five minutes and ask Jesus to walk through your day with you. You'll be joining the ranks of St. Ignatius, St. Francis Xavier, and Pope Francis if you do.

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