I have full confidence that St. Joseph will find me a more permanent place soon. (If you read this blog, please pray a novena with me :) http://www.ewtn.com/devotionals/novena/joseph.htm
Goodbye, little farm chapel!
In the meantime, God continues to use people as vessels to show me His personal love.
Tonight I visited a friend from whom I rented a room when I first moved to this city six years ago. God brought me back to the beginning. (God also brought me back to the last room I rented before I went to Canada -- which is where I will sleep this week!).
Now, a Chinese student stays in my first old room and because of the language barrier, she jumped up and down to share how excited she was that I had painted three walls in that room yellow and one cobalt blue. Her laughter was contagious. I had no idea the recycled paint from my parents' house would bring another person so much joy!
My friend and I encouraged each other in drafting and writing; she said it's impossible for a Christian to be bored!
She also shared her love of Jesus in the Eucharist -- a new bastion of hope for her since she cut ties with her fiance two days ago. My friend stayed true to her values of openness to life --contrary to her fiance's choice-- despite familial pressure to get married because she's almost 40. She is so happy that she made a decision that leaves her more whole.
It's been years since I visited her house and the kitchen plants are like trees! The whole windowsill is covered with geraniums, philodendron, an Indian rubber tree, and others with huge stalks and leaves that creep up the sides of the windows. To me, they are a metaphor for the spiritual growth in my friend's life. She gave up the man she loved because she loves God more.
My friend believes that God has a plan. She showed me through her witness that God' plan isn't easy --it requires everything. But it's worth it.
God also showed me this reality through the man who kayaked with me.
This man will join a religious order in September. His dad invited him to a retreat in college where he first experienced the reality of Christ in Adoration. A few years later, his dad died of cancer.
My friend mentioned that he went through a period of anger (I don't know if it was related to his father's death), but he also shared that his dad provided the impetus for his conversion--Jesus' real presence in the Eucharist, a real God who loves His people. When my friend's dad died, he realized that death is real; when he discovered the fullness of Christ, he saw that the immoral lifestyle he was living was empty.
At that retreat, my friend heard a priest give a talk about a man in Africa: a blind leper with no limbs, who couldn't stop exclaiming how much Jesus loved him. The man offered to sing for the priest and the priest played a beautiful recording of that song at the retreat.
My friend cried. He saw a joy that he didn't have, but wanted. Later, my friend saw Christ in a poor child's face when he went on a mission trip and knew he was called to give his life to show Christ to broken people.
When we went kayaking that morning, I saw that God put people in my life to be vessels of His love. Our oars made ripples in the dark pre-dawn waters as we waited for the sun to rise. And I thought that each ring that appeared from the dip of our oars was a circle of unrepeatable wonder.
We were shrouded in darkness, but slowly, shade by shade, story by story, experience by experience, we paddled against the current into the light.
The sun wasn't visible through the clouds, but it was still there; nothing could deny the light.
And my friend reminded me of the Psalm 119: 105, "Your word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path." He said my life is not about what I do, or the stress of discovering my vocation, but rather, closeness to God.
Later that day I read a quote from St. John Paul II's play Radiation of Fatherhood, "And in the end...everything else will turn out to be unimportant, and inessential except for this: father, child and love."
John Paul lived that in his heart. He was a vessel of love too. He demonstrated that simplicity, order and peace in one heart, like a placid lake, can impact the whole world because when a person is empty and calm he can reflect out Christ.
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