He answered my prayers

She always wanted Love, above all else. She prayed for the highest Love, asked God for it often. Little did she know, He gave his daughter all the Love she asked for and more. He brought her the troubled and broken hearted so that she will teach them and heal them with her Love. He gave her a bad spine so that she would know suffering and how to Love through it and conform it to Christ’s suffering. He gave her many roles as caregiver, to Love those who needed someone like her. He gave her much suffering, so that her heart could become truly purified. Oh, God Loved her much. He gave her His perfect Love. She realized her whole life was, in fact, Love. ❤️ 

I now know he answered my prayers. I am so grateful. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I Love you. Amen.”

To Love a woman…

He is urged to become a better man. If he loves her, he will fight to. He will learn to lay down his life for the other and in his fight to serve by competent generosity, he will more closely imitate Christ. She will open his heart to God and she will let him lift her higher. Hand in hand, flesh of flesh, they walk a shared path to Heaven. And aspire one another to its heights.

Loving Creatures

"Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours."

—St. Augustine, from “Confessions”. 

This quote really resonated with me. The other night, I also read some of Thomas Merton's "New Seeds of Contemplation". Oddly enough, Chapter 4 - "Everything That Is, Is Holy" is about loving created things.

Is it possible, that Saint Augustine is not saying that the creaturely things are themselves actually unlovely, but that he loved them in an unlovely state? (i.e. not loving God with perfected Love?) He still calls the things "lovely things". He says they kept him from God but that if they didn't have their existence IN God, they had no existence at all. So these created things are also holy and exist in Him. Maybe it's not the "things" we need to detach ourselves from in order to attach to God, but from the self that we have made into an idol. When we use these created things for the sake of an egotistical false self, we corrupt these good things (though they may not be inherently evil) and increase the attachment to the illusory self. We can often treat the good things of God as if they are evils and pat ourselves on the back for denying them altogether. 

As Thomas Merton points out, "It is not true that the saints and the great contemplatives never loved created things, and had no understanding or appreciation of the world, with its sights and sounds and the people living in it. They loved everything and everyone."

Can we ever love God perfectly and the way He deserves? No. I don't believe we actually can as broken humans, and most of us have no idea what Love really is. Love has become a socially acceptable ghost to the masses. If we can't ever love God perfectly, can we still love things for His sake and not the Self? Is it our trying to love God perfectly by trusting in His will that allows us to glorify him by his creations?

Merton says, "For until we love God perfectly His world is full of contradiction. The things He has created attract us to Him and yet keep us away from Him. … In all created things we, who do not yet perfectly love God, can find something that reflects the fulfillment of heaven and something that reflects the anguish of hell."

Merton thinks it childish to hate and revile created things to try to please God. Can we have the kind of morality where we love good things without having a perpetual duel with guilt? 

We can’t ever love God with perfected Love, and so we cannot love his creations perfectly. Try we must, to Love him perfectly with our unlovely imperfect hearts and trust in His will so that we can love “things” for His sake, not for our illusory “Self” we’ve created as an idol.

Dear God, grant us your grace as we strive for perfected love of you and your holy creatures that are in and of you. ❤️

Heaven's Little Bird

Little bird builds her nest 

piece by piece for heaven.

She crafts from the rubble in her life

a soft nook to rest her head in.

She carries little twigs and sticks

that no one sees her place. 

The most painful times have left behind

The best cushion, white bridal lace.

Little bird builds her nest, 

gently and discreetly.

Although her wings ache,

she still sings sweetly.

When Autumn ends and Winter comes,

she knows she'll have a place to land;

Secure in the palm 

of God's warm loving hand.

*

(Her song is one of joy and woe

Her flight's been hard

But she's Loved so!)

(Art by Vanessa Horabuena)

"D" and "R"

I do know. Despite my cries that I don't. Despite the fear that sometimes rattles my heart, urging me back to what I know is not right. Anything I move towards, I know that I want to choose someone or something because I CHOOSE it, not out of a reaction to a fear.

My brain is sneaky... I even fool myself into thinking my heart doesn't know truth or what it wants. It does. I do. I need more patience, and above all, the virtue of hope.

For the past year and a half of being single, I kept the prospect of my previous relationship on the backburner. Let's call him "D." It was easy to remember only the good times with D. and the good qualities about him. He's not a bad person, but deeply wounded. He was a former ordained minister at a Pentecostal church, where he was also a youth minister. He is highly intelligent and loves God above all else. He often would do 21 or even 30 day water fasts, so that does say something about his character. He struggled with PTSD from what happened at the church and it was a major pain point that he never really recovered from. He also battled cancer in his 20's, which contributed to his PTSD. When I came into his life, he was drinking heavily and would drink until he blacked out--The "D." that he showed the world would black out and another personality would come forward that was very dark. I do believe that there are demonic attachments to him. 

After God forced me out of that living situation when my mom was sick, I continued a constant connection with him. I conveniently let slip from memory all of the wounds to my heart, psyche and soul. As I remained friends with him, I found him as my only confidante, and in my isolation over the past few years, many of my friendships had fallen away. I felt like he was all I had and he was the only person in my life who really knew me anymore. The traumas we experienced together kept us bonded. For a while, he was seeing a therapist, had stopped drinking, and was even reading some of Saint John Paul II's Theology of the Body, as I was. We sent funny memes to each other almost every day. I seemed to forget that while I was living with him for three and a half years, he would put me in a position to need him and then I would be criticized for not standing on my own two feet. He would give me the key to my cage and tell me I was free.

Over the past year and a half since I left, I allowed him to become a "back-up plan" if it looked as though my life would lead me to a lonely, bleak future. This is not only not fair to his dignity, but it blocks me from actually making way for a bright future whereby the highest possibility of Love can be brought about. 

Recently, God gave me a moment of divine clarity while I was speaking with D. on the phone. He had started drinking again, unfortunately, but not surprisingly. He started making less and less sense as he continued babbling, and then he said something that completely shifted my heart in one moment. I immediately saw things from a higher perspective and dropped all attachments. I felt bad for him and realized he NEEDED my prayers. This could be the entire reason I was brought into his life. Even if it did take me nearly 5 years to realize it. He desperately needs God's help. I realized so many things from so many angles at once, that it felt like it wasn't a human perspective, but divine. I felt Love making way. Not my love. Not for my own highest good, but the highest possibility of love for all. A higher vision. A higher good for all in far-reaching ways. It's not about me moving on or being "happy". It's not about me at all. Realizing that was so freeing. I am so grateful. 

The next day, I reached out to someone from my past. I'll call her "R." When I was thirteen years old, I had a sexual relationship with a girl (before I ever was with a male) and I was with her for two years. This person was R. She was the only woman I had feelings for and I never had a relationship with another woman throughout my life since her. Our dynamic changed to being more like sisters and best friends over time. It was a deep friendship but was punctuated by long periods of separation. During the times we were out of one another's lives, it would feel like something was not right in the order of the universe. I was living with D. during the pandemic, and that's when it seemed the final dissolution of our friendship happened. Not only did differing ideologies create a schism, there was so much hurt under the surface of our skin, that we would easily trigger this pain in one another. It just seemed hopeless. 

Yesterday we talked again for the first time in about two years. We have known one another for almost 30 years now! She has been reading a lot lately, as I have, and has even been reading some work from the saints and mystics! We shared our ridiculously long list of books on our reading lists, and we decided to read one together using an app like a virtual book club. Talking to her again brings so much peace to my heart, and it came at a time when I finally released attachments that were keeping me in a place of fear (especially of being alone). I know that I am never alone, especially since Jesus walks with me, but I really feel a hole has been filled. A hole that only a nurturing friendship can fill. This friendship can now be a holy and spiritually-fulfilling one, too. I am so full of gratitude. God has so many aces up his sleeve. I continue to be floored by his active presence.

ETA:  Oh, but there's more.

God certainly put a PERIODT at the end of the sentence that was my and D's relationship. With this recent revelation, I am free to Love him fully now without any self-interest. This is a more purified version of the Love I could give. It releases the prospect of ever returning to the relationship. I can truly will his good. He has been so angry for so long. Angry at the world, angry at God... but really, he was always angry with himself. I will be there for him as a friend always. For some reason, I usually do end up counselling those who have hurt me (especially exes), and perhaps this is part of my gift, and I should see it as one. God is Love. And Love will always make way. (I can hear Jeff Goldblum's voice as Ian Malcom saying, instead of the word life, "Love...uh... finds a way." Haha.)