Trusting Jesus in my Art

I was complaining to myself earlier today that 1. I hadn't posted anything for this 7postsin7days business yet, and 2. it was really, really hard to write this week.

Then I sat down to write, and I finished off two pieces that have been sitting in my Evernote for awhile, made some good progress on a few posts I've been wanting to write, and started a mini-series I've been wanting to do for awhile now.

But I didn't want to publish any of them. I wanted to save them for later, edit them up, add some images, make them more perfect. But most of all, I wanted to protect myself for future weeks with some back up posts. I wanted to schedule one a week, so I could feel confident in my blogging stability for the next few months. Get ahead, you know?

The question I must ask myself is if I truly believe I have been called to share this and gifted with writing, why don't I trust myself or Jesus with what I'm creating?

So though I chose to write this instead for today's post, those other posts will come out later this week. I'm choosing to trust myself with this skill I have developed and Jesus with the gift he has blessed me with.

And, I'm combating my perfectionism by keeping this short and image-less. :)

surrender

I just love this. It's so simple, yet when I stumbled across this little quote, it challenged me. Do I truly trust that Jesus has my best in mind? That in the midst of struggle and suffering, He is actually working for my good and ultimate happiness?

This quote is a little reminder for me to let go of my tendencies to control. Man, I like to grab onto everything. I tend not to trust, I tend to take the reigns, and I tend to forget all the good He has given me before.

So this week, I'm asking Jesus to come into my life and be the source of my happiness. I'm working on trust and surrender, and I'm asking my new friend St. Paul Miki to intercede. 

Come Lord Jesus. Help me be joyful and happy.

Emotions, Schemotions

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a lot of feelings. I remember laying on the couch watching The Santa Clause for the first time last year and experiencing approximately 7 different emotions at the same time. I think I freaked my male teammates out a little bit. My current teammates can tell you multiple stories of tears shed in the office due to different touching/beautiful/sad moments. Yeah, yeah, it's because I'm a woman - whatever. I like to look to my girl Zooey on this one:

I love this quote from Zooey because I think I have been told that my emotions are bad. 

Recently, my friend Matt made a comment that emotions are bullshit. When I went home that night, I realized I was really mad at him for that comment. So I vented to Jesus and I realized it was because I took what he said personally. And then I was annoyed at myself for feeling that.

I think what is hard about emotions is that when we feel something, especially if we feel it intensely, we think we have to act. However, simply following everything that our heart desires is an extreme and will not lead to you making the best choice you could make for yourself. The opposite of this extreme is to view emotions as 100% bad (or BS as Matt would say) and simply live in our heads. We need to understand that our emotions are not bad. Jesus had emotions! He cried, He got angry, and most of all He loved. Yet He did not let these feelings rule His choices. 

I think we each naturally gravitate towards one of these two extremes. We can shut off and completely ignore our feelings and over analyze everything - this is being driven by our intellect. Or we can lean towards being emotion driven. This is what we do when we follow the different ebbs and flows of our heart in each passing moment. 

The trouble with following one extreme over the other is this: if we shut out our emotions we lose the ability to know and understand the deep desires that God has placed on our heart, and if we only follow the emotional highs we can easily chose a lesser good. Our intellect does not have the ability to see what your heart feels, but our heart does not have the ability to order goods, it simply seeks to love and be loved. 

We need to work to find a balance. We need to learn to pay attention to what our hearts are telling us, but we need to learn how to reconcile that with our intellect, what we know to be good and True.

But what does listening to your heart and reconciling that with your intellect and your will look like!? It does not mean justifying what you feel. It means listening to Jesus, taking what you know to be intellectually True and fitting what you're feeling into that. Sometimes this will mean we have to walk away from things that our hearts are still attached to. But other times it means we can follow our hearts. The goal is to make a choice and live in a place where our hearts and intellect are aligned. 

Unfortunately, this is going to look different for everyone. My balance between my heart and my head is going to look different from yours. But the first step to figuring out that balance is silence.

The other beautiful thing about this situation is this: if you truly love God and are in communication with Him, you can do what you want. Seriously. This is a thing!

Last year my disciple Amy told me that "Love God and do whatever you please" was a quote from St. Augustine. I laughed at her and told her that was relativism. She then explained to me that it's not (my students were so much holier than me). Here's the whole quote:

"Love God and do whatever you please: for the soul trained in love of God will do nothing to offend the One who is Beloved."

If you really love Jesus, that means you're in a real, personal, relationship with Him. To be in a relationship with Jesus means that you are communicating with Him, listening to Him, and learning what He wants. If there is a good desire on your heart that is not evil, and you are talking to Jesus and a good spiritual guide about it, you can (probably) move forward with it. 

A recent example of this is my life was last year when I started feeling a desire to join the FOCUS Events Team. I was so torn up over this decision, I really wanted it, but did God!!?? I had no idea. Back and forth I went, until one day, my super holy spiritual director told me to forget about what God wanted for my life for a minute and asked me to consider what I wanted. I told her that I wanted to join the events team. Her response: "okay, then join the events team."

Here's the thing: God is now blessing that decision. I know I could still be in Nebraska living out life as an on campus missionary and God would be blessing that decision just as abundantly. This isn't to say that God doesn't have a plan for our lives - He does! And it will be an incredible plan beyond our wildest imagination! This just means that we are using the gifts God gave us by properly using faculties and our free will! (Check out my friend Caitlin's sweet post about free will in our dating lives.)

So, in conclusion...

Emotions are not bad. Our hearts are the maps that show us God's will for our lives; our heads are the tools for navigation. 

Don't beat yourself up for having negative emotions (Remember Jesus got angry too). Feeling angry, sad, or whatever is not a sin. How we choose to act on our feelings is how we will be judged. And don't get catch up in the back and forth of trying to figure everything out: take what you feel under advisement and then act. If your choice is wildly out of line with God's plan for your life, we must trust that He will correct it.

"Remember that nothing is small in the eyes of God."

Today I am really grateful for the women in my college. We are starting to develop closer friendships and I have really needed their sisterhood.

On Tuesday we had dinner together and laughed a lot about frogs and how they're creeps. Sarah does a great impression of the way frogs would say "hello."

That night we went to Cocomero, Champaign's local froyo shop, to talk about emotional chastity and the dating fast. When we commit to our two years in FOCUS, we are in a really unique postion where we commit to fast from dating for an entire year.

 The fast looks a little different for everyone, especially if someone begins their work in FOCUS already in a relationship, but for me it means a 100% fast from romantic relationships and to discourage romantic feelings. I know this sounds crazy to a lot of people, but this fast is actually a great gift. This is a way for me to truly allow Christ to be my most intimate friend and for me to allow Him to be my first love. It will drive me to be a woman of deep prayer, it will allow me to heal from broken relationships in the past and the world's view of relationship, and it will allow me to grow in emotional maturity. Most importantly, this fast will allow me first view men as my brothers in Christ.

I know that this fast can sound like a lot of rules being put on to us by FOCUS. But really, this fast is completely about freedom. It is an opportunity to grow closer to Christ and to commit myself 100% to my mission. Yes it will be hard, but I think we grow the most when times are hard. 

Today we started to learn about salvation history (we are completing a 24 hour long session class in 9 hours) and then had team time. Since the whole UNL gang won't be here until Friday, my team got the afternoon off. It was nice to be able to catch up on some rest and catch up on work.

This evening we had women's recreation. It was a two hour scavenger hunt running across campus. It was hard. I am not athletically gifted at all and I can't even run for five minutes without feeling like I'm going to pass out, throw up, or just die. It was really hard for me knowing I was the one slowing our group down and keeping us from being quicker. I really struggle with allowing other people to see and know my weaknesses so that made this even harder.

This scavenger hunt allowed me to begin to open up and share this minor weakness with others. I had to accept their offers to slow down and walk with me. It was definitely a pride check and I was not very excited about it for the most part. Despite being constantly winded and feeling really embarrassed, I loved walking with these women and tackling the challenges at each station with them. I am so grateful that they were willing to love and respect me in my weakness and lift me up in it.

Tomorrow, the rest of team UNL comes into town. I'm really excited to meet them and to start our work together.

St. Therese of Lisieux, pray for us!

Letting Go

Camp Tecumseh Staff Training started today. And I'm really struggling with it.

When I was on my JVC discernment weekend we spent a lot of time talking about our attachments. They defined them as people or things or events that would keep us from serving with JVC. God really showed me how attached I was to Camp. To be honest, it was a big factor in my decision making process and organizations that would not allow me to be at camp this summer had a huge strike against them.

I was really looking forward to working in the formation of the Lake Village staff this summer. I was excited to teach them how to pray, be third, how to be the best counselor possible, and how to "love those kids." I was pumped to partner with Tom, Mike, and the LV coords to improve the day to day functioning of Lake Village so we could take strides to make CT2K12 the best summer yet. But God had other plans. 

I am so happy to be here with FOCUS shaping college students full time. My job will be to "love those students" and to bring them Jesus. Yes, I will miss the silliness of camp and working alongside some of my absolute best friends and people who have shaped who I am today. But through those struggles, Jesus is starting to show me that every moment, camper, and friend at Tecumseh was never mine to begin with. They are all His and He loved me enough to give them to me to love for Him for a few years. But now He needs them back so He can do big things in their lives at camp and big things in my life with FOCUS. As one priest put it today, "don't ever give up on what God has given you to do." God has given me this part in the Great Commission and I cannot give up on it.

College of St. Therese dominating at Volleyball

Yes, it was hard to know camp was so much fun today without me, but that's okay. I know this is my time to give Camp back to God. Every person I met and every moment I had at camp will stay with me forever. I will still continue to love those people and those kids. So now I turn the page and anxiously await the countless number of missionaries and students I am being called to love these next two years. Nebraska, you better watch out. God has big things in store for us.

3/4 of Team UNL!

Written on the Bus Ride Home.

What I am learning to appreciate about Ignation Spirituality is when you boil it down, it is all about being in touch with your real self, in touch with your emotions, and in touch with the core of who you are. This weekend we pushed past some limits and recognized things that we are attached to and why they are there. The discernment weekend brought up a lot of questions and a lot of things that I never even realized are in the way of my decision making process, and thus in the way of my relationship with God. The weekend really brought to light some things I need to truly sit and wrestle with. Coming away from this weekend I have discovered an intense ambiguity surrounding my future. And I'm actually okay with it. Maybe I will be in Belize, Tanzina, or Micronesia next year. Maybe I will be in Denver, or on a college campus. Maybe I will be traveling around in a van meeting thousands of high school students. Or maybe I won't be doing any of those things. I am working towards that place of active indifference so I can freely give my "yes" to Christ.

On Saturday we read a poem to open our prayer. It is beautiful and there are so many different parts that I love, but I think what I love the most (at least right now) are the stanzas that say:

 "I want to know if you have touched 

the centre of your own sorrow

if you have been opened by life's betrayals

or have become shriveled and closed

from fear of further pain. 

I want to know if you can sit with pain

mine or your own

without moving to hide it

or fade it

or fix it." 

-"The Invitation," by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

When I experience somthing negative I jump to address it and fix it, or shove it underneath the rug. It is how I dealt with negative relationships, how I dealt with my Dad's cancer, and how I deal with a lot of the wrong I have done. But what Ignation Spirituality is teaching me is that we have reasons for these desolations and rather than ignore them, it is so important to name them, sit with them, and accept the fact that they could be a sign from God. I am learning how to "sit with pain" and I am learning how to understand what it means.

It is extremely overwhelming knowing that I have to make some major life decisions within the upcoming month. I am reading Discerning the Will of God: An Ignation Guide to Christian Decision Making by Fr. Timothy M. Gallagher and stumbled across this question: "What growth did God offer this person through the process of discernment?" (p. 131). It is a great question to pose as I am attending these interview weekends and handing my future over to Christ. I think God is trying to teach me something important in each weekend I attend. At the FOCUS interview weekend it was trust. This past weekend was about a real, intense way of living, and being in touch with Christ within me. I want to incorporate all of what I am learning in this process into who I am. This process is long and confusing, but I know at the end of it I will not only know what I am doing next year, but I will also have a deeper understanding of who I am and who Christ is.