Hope

It takes a lot to disrupt the rhythm of work at my newsroom. We are a daily newspaper, and for most of the reporters, deadline is always looming.

But on a Wednesday afternoon three weeks ago, white smoke from the Sistine Chapel brought our workday to a standstill.

I am the only Catholic in the newsroom, and some of the editors began to pepper me with questions: how long until we know? What are the odds it'll be an American? Who are some of the front-runners?

I told them what I knew, then spent the next 20 minutes with my other half on the phone, glued to both the TV and my computer. Whenever something big happens in the news, I immerse myself in social media. It's an incredible way to gauge the world's pulse. But I digress.

Habemus papam!

Finally. Finally the Chair of Peter was filled. The uncertainty and waiting were behind us now.

I remember the first time I heard the name Jorge Bergoglio. "What?" I asked aloud, as if the cardinal making the announcement would repeat it for me. "Who is that?"

Of all the names I had read and studied since the announcement of Pope Benedict's resignation a month before, Bergoglio's wasn't one. He was brand new to me and, judging by the muted reaction from the crowd, I wasn't alone.

But like many, in the scramble to learn as much as I could as fast as I could, I grew to like him.

And when the smiling, easygoing Pope Francis bowed before the crowd in St. Peter's Square to ask for their prayers, my heart swelled with hope.

In the days immediately following his election, just about everyone buzzed about this gentle, but uncompromising Jesuit from Buenos Aires. And to my great surprise, the reaction was overwhelmingly positive, even among those in my life who are fallen away or non-Catholic.

He had reached them already with his unassuming acts of love.

Only three weeks into his papacy now, Francis is still causing ripples across the Church and the rest of the world. Some are incredulous at his unprecedented break with (small "t") tradition. Some are hopeful it means the Church will change her teaching. Others are convinced he will reverse much of the good accomplished by Benedict.

I try to ignore all that. What I know for sure is that the Holy Spirit will always protect the Church, whether Francis succeeds or fails.

But from what I've seen so far, I believe God has given us just the man we need right now. I say to the doubters what he said to us just a few days ago: "Don't let anyone rob you of hope."

I won't.

Faith and Feelings

Happy Easter! I come to the end of the day as I do every year: relieved, at peace, and full of amazement that I am sustained by God's grace.

This Lent was a challenge in ways I never expected. I've spent the entire season tending to my health, and the demands of recovery often caused serious distractions in my prayer life.

Now that I'm finally beginning to recover, I confess that part of me wants a second chance at Lent, another shot to "do it right."  At the same time, though, I was confident that there would still be lessons to learn.

The biggest lesson of all came during the Triduum this week.

Recently, during a discussion with my deacon's wife, I was asked to confront my feelings surrounding death and the afterlife. Both of these are difficult subjects for me — I've struggled with an intense fear of dying since I was very small, and the idea of an afterlife is perhaps the most trying on my faith. That conversation, coupled with my own contemplation in the following days, prompted a visit from my old friend Doubt.

But I've walked this road so many times that it almost doesn't hurt anymore. Almost.

At the Good Friday service, I found myself feeling desensitized by the Passion. It was all so long ago, and we are so far removed from it now. Can we trust what we've been told? Do I really believe all this?

I cried as we knelt for Communion. There are days when I feel like I have no faith, that I'm living a lie and shouldn't really be there at all if I don't feel it ring true in my soul.

But as I walked up to receive, it hit me.

I might not have warm fuzzies of belief in my heart or a bedrock certainty of God's existence, but I do have the desire to believe. I'm very far from perfect, but that's not going to stop me from showing up and living out my life trying to love like Jesus. God looks at our intentions, especially in our struggles.

Faith, like love, is a decision that we have to make every day. It's not the consolation. I was mistaking faith for feelings.

And I may not always have belief, but I've learned that I really do have faith, after all. That is something to rejoice in this Easter season.

"Create in me a clean heart..."

"Do you realize what I have done for you?"

I can imagine the night when Peter sat down for the Seder with Jesus. The stuffy warmth of the upper room full of conversation, prayer and song, and in the midst of it all, a torrent of emotions.

Judas' impending betrayal. The devotion and zeal of the Eleven. Jesus' fear, pain and doubt.

And I can imagine the awestruck hush that settled over that room when, moved by love, the Messiah stooped down to wash the feet of the one that would deny him the very next day.

Can you imagine it? By then Peter knew the truth about Jesus, but didn't quite grasp its full implications. He knew that he had been named the Rock, but didn't understand what that would mean.

And now the Christ was condescending to him?

Peter's reaction to this gift — vehement refusal — rang familiar in my heart. "But why?" the both of us seem to think incredulously, "Why are you doing this? This shouldn't be!"

Yet Jesus did it anyway. He washed Peter clean knowing full well everything that would transpire in mere hours between them.

He wanted to set a precedent. Serve even when you are no longer served. Love without limits. Give without expectation. Forgive before the apology, or better yet, forgive even before the sin.

His is a radical, earth-shattering, life-altering love that offends our sense of justice. With Jesus, we never get what we deserve.

Or perhaps we do. In the midst of our grit and grime, sin and shame, failure and floundering, we are still children of the God who loves us with immeasurable depth.

And he will continue to wash us clean. All we have to do is ask.

Knots

I've been joking lately that my hair is becoming my vanity.

I'm a brunette with the blessing of natural highlights in auburn and blonde; it's almost radiant when the sun catches me just right. And these days it's longer, falling to my shoulder blades.

It's a beautiful thing, but more hair means more maintenance.

And more maintenance means more hassle.

I get these awful knots almost every time I wash my hair, tiny, impossibly tight tangles that take ages to work through. Most of the time I get impatient and either leave some in or rip through them.

Last night, standing in front of the bathroom mirror and attempting to tame that knotted mop got me thinking.

The state of my hair was a reflection of my heart: a mess.

So many different elements have woven together at the wrong time and place. They were pulled, twisted, bent and broken until all that remained was an incomprehensible, painful web.

It got that way by accident. And now, my task is to untangle those knots.

It took care and patience to fix my hair last night. Slow, gentle working strand by strand, first with my fingers and then a brush. I couldn't just run a comb through my hair from roots to ends and expect results. That would have just left me with a pound of hair in the sink, and less of it on my head. Ouch.

I had to take my time. I had to go slow. I had to be compassionate and careful.

Yes, it took longer than I hoped and I was certainly frustrated, but after some honest effort, I was back to looking my best.

I have to step back and remember to treat my soul with that same tenderness and love.

I'm realizing that I'm not going to get to where I want to be overnight or as quickly as I expected. It is becoming a true test of humility to accept that the journey toward healing will be a long one.

But if I'm prepared to truly take my time, to respect what my body and intuition are telling me, and to allow others in to give me the help I need, I think I'll be okay eventually.

Scratch that. I know I will.

Lessons from my Papa

Today the Church will say goodbye to its physical head as Pope Benedict XVI abdicates his role as Bishop of Rome.

For the first time in my life as a practicing Catholic, the Chair of St. Peter will be vacant.

There will be no Papa.

And oddly, it's not because he's died.

In so many ways, this resignation allows me to rejoice. So many young people of my generation will always hold up Bl. John Paul II as "their" pope, the one who crystallized their faith and encouraged them in times of weariness.

I never had that grace. When John Paul died in 2005, I was still actively involved in the occult. As far as I was concerned, he was not my pope.

And yet I still found myself glued to the TV that day after school, unable to turn away from the vigil taking place in St. Peter's Square.

Something flickered in me then, and I felt it tangibly. Perhaps it was the flame of grace that would lead me back home almost exactly two years later.

The flicker came again a few weeks later, when I watched Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger emerge from what we still all considered John Paul's apartment, wearing John Paul's clothes, giving John Paul's blessing.

It felt strange, even to me.

But that shy man's smile stuck with me that day. And so did the stories that poured in as we learned more: his love for cats, his classically-trained piano skills, and his reluctance to accept the papacy.

Maybe we should have known then that he would leave it this way. Indeed, it seems now that he left us little signs everywhere. We just failed to see it then.

The day Benedict announced his resignation brought a storm of mixed feelings in the Catholic circles I'm in. Most were confused. Some were even angry, asking how he could abandon us, abandon his mission, like it was nothing. They compared him to an absent parent, to a Christ who came down from the Cross because it was just too much.

And they all spoke of John Paul and the hero's death he died after bearing the terrible burden of Parkinson's disease.

But I saw something different that day.

I saw a man who grappled long and furiously with the ever-increasing demands of his Church.

I saw a man who was self-aware, honest and humble enough to admit that the role he held for eight years was now overwhelming him.

But most importantly, I saw a man who was brave enough to let go. He knew that the best thing for the Church and for his flock was to step back, lay down the Cross, and allow Jesus to care for his wounds.

I was in bed that day, still very sick after weeks of a viral infection, and crippled emotionally by the sudden, vicious return of anxiety that's stalked me for years.

And in that moment, my Papa's actions said to me, "You don't have to be superwoman. You can let go. You can get the help you need and deserve as a dignified daughter of God."

He has followed the invitation of our gentle Lord: "Come to Me, all you who labor and are weary, and I will give you rest."

He has gone to rest and gone to heal. And thanks to his example, I will do the same.

Waiting in the Wings

Happy New Year. I missed it all in the flurry of holiday parties and cold nights curled up with that man I love so much. I've been feeling guilty, almost, about not being present here. It's that journalistic urge to archive and document. It gets upset when I let the moments pass undocumented.

But I wanted to forget all that for a while and just live.

I wrote this after some time spent poring over the beautiful soul that is Sarah Koller. Her words woke up my muse again.

My resolution this year is to be real. Normally, I would hesitate to post this ... but it is about as real as I get. I won't hold that back.

~*~*~

I am a bundle of unopened potential.

So often I look at myself as a butterfly still encased in her chrysalis, her wings still knitting together bit by bit, cell by cell. The process, the waiting, it's all painstaking. It makes me want to MOVE.

I don't want to wait. I want those wings, here and now, today. There is a place for me, a ministry, and God pulls with such vigor on my heart that all of me aches to GO.

But I can't. Not yet. I need to still the longings that threaten to burst out of my seams long enough to realize a bit of truth. I am living with my head, my heart, my soul engaged in a moment -- a version of myself, even -- that hasn't been born yet.

 I ache for Wife. I ache for the moment when I can do more than sit and watch two separate and separated lives unfold. I am restless with My Life and all its beauty because my heart is so invested in the hope that is Our Life.

I ache for Mommy, for the grabbing little hands at my skin and little smiles at my heart. Even if they aren't my flesh and blood, I want nothing more than to pour love out on little souls like water to flowers. I want to watch them blossom. I want to raise up love and joy and courage in young hearts, so that they can mend a little of this world's broken one.

I ache for youth minister and blogger and teacher and freelancer and neighbor and a million other things.

But along the way, I feel a bit of gentle urgency in my head, a little voice of reason in the midst of all that heart: "Do not forget today. Do not abandon now. Do not bury YOU."

Sometimes, I forget to be content with me. Content with my weakness and vulnerability. Content with a hair part not quite straight, a shirt that doesn't fit quite right, a sandwich taking 20 minutes to make, a heart not quite committed, a soul not quite convinced.

But that is Me. She is ME. I love her. I have to love her now, today. Not when I get to where I'm going.

Love, it grows. It’s knit together in that chrysalis, just like me.

I need to be patient. The little growth of today is in itself, at its core, a miracle. My days are a work of God's artistic brilliance.

The chrysalis is beautiful. Its fragility, its safety, its promise ... that is where I live today.

And even though sometimes I catch myself forgetting, I do like it here.

What Christmas really means

I've got to admit, it hasn't been the easiest of Advent seasons.

It remains and probably always will be my favorite liturgical season. I love the sense of wonder and hushed anticipation that falls over my heart that first night we sing "O Come O Come Emmanuel" at Mass.

We are waiting for the arrival of Love Himself, the very reason for our joy.

And yet, the darkness of this world has cast a somber shadow over that hope.

We know the world needs God. But then a young man succumbing to mental illness and rage takes the lives of so many little children.

We know that God provides. But then end of the year layoffs come, leaving many jobless just in time for the new year, with little or no time to prepare.

We know that God calls us very good. But then it seems like even the best of our actions with the purest intentions are tainted by pride and sin.

We know that God's ways are above our ways. But then someone barely older than you dies tragically only days before Christmas, leaving his family shattered.

Scandal, loss, death, destruction, violence, selfishness, sin ... it's everywhere. And in our grief at the state of our society, in the struggle to find answers, healthy dialogue dissolves into bitter arguments, hurt feelings, and empty political rhetoric.

It's enough to tempt even the most steadfast believer to ask, "Where is God?"

My heart has been heavy over the last few weeks, weighed down by both personal trials and grief for the world around me that is hurting so badly.

The other night I went to a little chapel in town barely the size of my bedroom, a property built and maintained by five generations of a local family. I admired their large Nativity scene that was set up along the entire front wall and simmered in thought, trying to make sense of all that's happened.

I came up with only one thought. It's not an answer to the "why" on everyone's mind, and it doesn't attempt to pinpoint God's will.

But what I do know is this: this is why the Christ Child came. This is the world to which he was given, a world as marred by devastation then as it is now.

In the midst of this senseless pain ... Jesus has come. And He is restoring the world, one broken heart at a time.

Jesus is our Emmanuel. He truly is "God with us."

Christmas Magic

I stumbled upon this video while browsing Facebook tonight. What a beautiful way to kick off the Advent season!

Enjoy.

On catharsis and hurricanes

Last summer, Hurricane Irene barreled up the East Coast, plunging my home and my soul into darkness.

It was a pivotal time for me, a distinct event that opened my eyes to the miserable status quo I'd resigned myself to years before.

When the lights came back on, I emerged with a renewed desire to do things right. And, thanks be to God, that resolution continues to carry me through. Holiness is no longer something I achieve by "luck" in rare, isolated circumstances. It's a lifestyle choice.

But sometimes I stumble, as we all do. 

And a few weeks ago, Hurricane Sandy brought with her a torrent of rain and emotion.

I was down for a lot of reasons, struggling with some old sins and past hurts in a way that made me wonder if I've really grown at all. That discouragement only further weakened my soul and stoked a nasty temper to boot.

So last Saturday, I sat in the confessional with my father confessor, lamenting my actions and berating myself in the process for feeling sad and broken.

"But what are you really angry about?" he asked.

I was confused. But he told me that all of the lashing out and other sins were rooted in deeper problems that I hadn't considered. More importantly, he identified my tendency to hold things in as gasoline for my fire.

My penance that day, in addition to some Hail Marys, was to start talking about the things that trouble me. And not only did I have to talk about it, but I had to give myself over to whatever emotions I experienced. He wanted me to truly feel in order to come out the other side actually relieved, instead of resorting to quick, random outbursts.

And worst of all? He wanted me to do this specifically with my boyfriend. I fought Father on this, but he was unrelenting. "Hey, you want to share real love with him, right? Then you have to share yourself," he said. "Even the ugly parts."

That poor, poor man, I thought wryly. I already burden him so much. The last thing he needs is more of that nonsense...

But I listened. And this week I have soaked that poor man's chest with my sobs and given voice to deep worries I've only half talked about for years.

I'll be honest, it sucked. It hurt my pride. It made me feel even weaker and even more of a burden. I was angry all over again.

But at the end of that, I felt a relief that was palpable and lasting. I'm learning so much humility in this new little experiment. 

I'm learning that flushing those emotions out makes room for a clearer, calmer head, too. It's easier to make reasonable decisions when your head isn't full of junk.

And I'm learning that love, real love, is about a lot more than the moments when you're on the top of your game. 

Even with tears still dripping off my chin and snot bubbling from my nose, I am still loved. I am a hurricane in my own way, but I am still strong. I have ugly moments, but they will never take away the fact that I am a wholly beautiful woman.

What wonderful lessons to learn.

Older and Wiser

In the morning, I turn 23.

It's always a little bittersweet for me to leave one year behind and move into a new one. It's a poignant reminder that time doesn't stop for anyone, no matter how much we'd like to freeze some moments forever.

This year has been far from easy. I've been challenged in more ways and experienced more heartache than I think I ever have before.

But here's the thing: in all of that, I got stronger. I changed and grew. And I can say with a quiet sort of pride that now, on the other side of this year, I truly have come a long way.

The girl I was a year ago was someone defeated. I was trapped in sin, despair, and so much self-criticism that I couldn't even see straight. I looked to the future, to the life I saw ahead of me, and I choked on it. I didn't think I had it in me to become the woman God is calling me to be.

I learned something important about that from Simcha Fisher, a blogger at the National Catholic Register.

It's true that the present version of myself isn't ready for the future. But present-me is perfectly suited for where I am right now. And when I get to The Future, whatever it holds, I'll be ready then, too.

I've seen the hand of God all over my life, especially looking back on the tough seasons when I thought He had abandoned me. The truth is that He was never gone. If anything, He was closer then, working in the midst of it all to mold me into something even more graceful and good.

This year, he freed me from addiction. He brought me to love His wonderful Mother, who I've always been lukewarm about. He allowed me to face some of my greatest failures from the past in order to forgive myself.  He showed me I could be trusted to love and support another precious soul. He showed me I'm not the failure I thought I was. He showed me that I am good, that I can love fully, and that I am, in every sense of the word, unquestionably beautiful.

If that's not a laundry list of triumphs, I don't know what is! Alleluia!

The year ahead is full of questions and difficulties; that much is certain. But it's also full of hope, discovery and transformation.

I have God. No one can or will ever take Him away from me. With Him, and with the wonderful people He's blessed me with, I really can get through anything.

All I want this year is to experience more of that beauty, love and joy in my life, and to share that everywhere I can.

I can't wait to get started!