God has a plan

Who has a plan?
God.

Who do you want me to love today, God?
Me: the person right in front of you.

Be patient.

Respond versus react.

Forgive.  Then, do it again.

Pray.

Even in the midst of wool carding and untangling wind chimes.

I have a simple, powerful plan.

The Boot

The Boot

I gotta gangsta cure-all boot

That brings out my inner swagga

I pump it up like Air Jordans

Cause dat left side is a lagga

Doctor says most homies got two bones in their toe

Three’s rare; my big’s got four, and neither of us know

The cause of this phenomenon

That tiny, extra calcified jawn

He said it might have fractured off

One of the other three

Or like a clutch Coach handbag

It’s maybe an accessory

A month will tell the secret of this wheel, tootsie mystery

I’ll either have three bones again

Or four with no pain

Another option’s no result

And I’ll feel just the same

In any case this boot is blessed

With water straight from Lourdes

I also took my foot to Him

To cure me of my sores

Prayer of Mary

"Mother, now that the need is at its greatest and the powers of darkness seem to have free rein, we come to you with childlike trust and implore your powerful aid.

We consecrate ourselves to you. Preserve us in the love of your Son, protect us from the evil of this world and lead us safe to the heart of God. Amen."

--Aid to the Church in Need, a Catholic charity under the guidance of the Holy Father

Go out!

"Do you love me? Is it reciprocal?" A woman who has prayed with me asked me that tonight after she told me she loves me and prays for me and has a special place for me in her heart.

I was taken aback by her love--thank you, God--and her question; I assured her that of course I love her.

Maybe she needed to hear it like every person needs to hear they are loved. (I know I need to hear it very often). Or maybe it was God using her to remind me of his words to Peter: "'Simon son of John, do you love me?' 

"Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, 'Do you love me?' He said, 'Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.' Jesus said, 'Feed my sheep.'" John 21:17)

I milk His goats. But do I feed His sheep? What does that mean?

When I went to Lourdes last month I prayed for Mary to heal me of depression. I felt like she told me at the baths, "Go out!"

I couldn't believe it. I spent half of my savings to go on the trip; I wasn't cured and I didn't know what the heck that meant. "Mary, how can I possibly go out of myself when I feel so miserable?"

So I cried. Then, I prayed the Stations of the Cross by the Gave de Pau river which runs parallel to the grotto where Mary appeared to St. Bernadette and encouraged that simple girl to go out of herself so miracles could happen.

At Station nine, Jesus falls the second time, I saw a man with intellectual disabilities sit in his wheel chair and point to Jesus, then to himself, smile and make a telescope with his fist over his eye while the other was shut tight. I read the reflection in the pamphlet I held and saw that it mentioned Jesus had just fallen, now He falls again. He is ready to pick us up every time we go to Him for forgiveness of our sins.

I thought, "This man doesn't have the capacity to freely choose wrong. How could he relate to Jesus in this station?" But somehow he did; he understood in a simpler, perhaps deeper way what it meant to go out and have Jesus mysteriously meet him there.

Then I stopped at the 12th station, Jesus is crucified. I saw a mom sit on a bench across from that station and nurse her child. My heart longed to hold that baby and I felt sad that I had no husband or babies of my own. I walked past her and then turned back.

"Do you speak English?"

"Yes, I'm from Texas!" 

(Ironically, everyone from the group I traveled with was from Texas).

"Can I hold your baby?"

"Of course!"

"Yes! Thank you! Praise the Lord!" 

The woman's husband, 2-year-old daughter, sister and mother shortly arrived on the scene. She told me they decided to take the trip because her mom always wanted to go to Lourdes and they weren't sure when they'd be able to make the trip in the future--"There's no time like the present," she said.

While we talked, the 2-year-old daughter switched my beautiful purple rosary that lay on the bench with her dirty white rosary from her purse. My rosary had been blessed by Pope Francis and dipped in the Lourdes baths. I hadn't observed the replacement.

"Give the nice lady back her rosary," the mom told her daughter. 

The girl looked at me, removed my rosary from her clutch, then dropped it back in and said, "A rosary for the princess."

Ha! Wow. I thought that I need to see myself as a princess and I'd rather have that child's rosary than a rosary blessed by the pope. So we kept the exchange. 

That moment was a gift because God gave me the grace to Go Out! If I had stayed in, I would have remained miserable.

A few nights ago, I was miserable again. I had the choice to stay home or attend a house concert. I procrastinated, ate some chocolate and painted my toenails because I wasn't sure that I had enough energy to exert with people. 

Grace got me in the car, but I still struggled. Then the Holy Spirit inspired me to pray to Mary. So I prayed, "Mary, cover me with your beauty so that people don't see my misery." 

I didn't pray that the misery would be pushed down and away, but that I could have a different appearance at this party so I could really meet people and Go Out.

My friend saw me at the party and told me my eyes were beautiful and had a different kind of light to them. I knew it wasn't me; it was the miracle of Mary.

Tonight I heard again, "Do you love me?" 

I still don't know what "Feed my sheep" fully means in my life. But I trust that God will show me the more I go out. 

Tonight I sat out on the porch with the farmer, ate watermelon and listened to folk songs played from a record through an open window. And that was a miracle too.

We marveled at the fog above the trees, the chickens that walked and pecked on the grass, and the lyrics from those songs--reminders of the dance of love and loss in life.

People suffer in this life. But there is joy. I see that better if I go out.

Lord, help me to go out again and again so I can learn more how to love. Through Mary. Amen.

A Good Neighbor

My neighbor hung banana leaf wallpaper in his kitchen because he thinks it's "sharp as hell." He has a huge garage called "Big Blue" where he plans to install crown molding. He's a gourmet chef, volunteer firefighter, wallpaper hanger, and one heck of a generous, creative and humorous man.

It was two nights before I moved from my apartment and I'd still not fulfilled his open ended dinner invitation from when I first moved in. So I called out to him as he drove his white contractor van into his unfinished driveway which he ripped up conveniently around Christmas.

"When can I come for dinner?"

"How about tonight?"

I'm busy tonight."

"Tomorrow. Our door's always open, babe."

So I went the next night at 5 p.m. and rang the bell. No one was home. I went for a bike ride and tried again at 7. Still no answer.

At 7:15 I ate a snack on my back porch and heard Frank Sinatra blasted from Big Blue. My neighbor was home. I called over the fence to see if we could do dessert instead.

"Come over right now!"

He poured wine and made leftovers from a gourmet feast he and his wife had for their children the weekend prior. He rinsed our dishes with the industrial sprayer above his sink after dinner. Then, he gave me a tour of his tree fort-like house.

His wife doesn't have a preference for the decor so he followed the inspiration of a client's house and chose banana leaf wallpaper for the kitchen. He added the MF (Monday Night Football) room with a step down to the left of the kitchen. The room includes a cardboard cutout of his daughter and her husband propped near the fireplace, a wall covered with other large and small family pictures, and a restaurant booth for intimate meals.

The kids took over the MF room as they grew, so he made the "Crystal Room" upstairs for him and his wife. The personal cocktail lounge makes the fourth bar in the house (including the one in Big Blue). There's also a cat door from that room to the roof where my neighbor created a ramp for the cat to run down. And there's a balcony off the second floor outfitted with a hot plate and coffee pot, and exercise bike discretely privatized with a window blind from the ceiling.

Outside was the masterpiece. "Little Blue" was pulled by a friend with a rope and construction machine farther back in the yard --past the waterfall and lighted pine trees-- to make room for Big Blue.

My neighbor turned on some Springsteen to its normal volume and asked if I could usually hear that over the fence. I admitted I could.

He cranked Margaritaville to the volume he'd like to play it and said he hoped to insulate the garage soon--right after the crown molding.

Once he papered a house with his music blasted too loud. A neighbor knocked at the door. "Mother of God," she said. "Yea I know who that is. Mary," he replied. The expression on her face made him quickly realize what she meant and he turned down the music. "Sorry about that, babe."

For another job, he recently contracted Mexican men who stood outside Home Depot as day laborers. He doesn't know any Spanish.

Fortunately, his wife Googled simple Spanish words and wrote them phonetically for him on a paper --which he left at home. So he made do with sick figures which he drew with marker on the dry wall where they worked.

He included shorts on himself and speech bubbles with "Hola" and "haha."

The men became friends that day despite the language barrier.

There was no language barrier when my neighbor and his wife first met at a nightclub--they spoke the same neighborhood slang.

My neighbor noticed that the girls in his area didn't like to be called "hun," so when he slipped, he'd say, "Sorry about that, babe." But his wife didn't mind, because she grew up a mere block from his house.

Neither wanted to go the night they met. My neighbor's friend convinced him. He said his wife owes her happiness to that man (to which she agreed). 

My neighbor was persistent in the pursuit since he wife did not readily fall for his creative genius.

Nowadays, he continues to show his wife how he loves her in inventive ways-- like when he bought her a motorcycle for her birthday, so he could drive it while she sat on the back.

He called their relationship a miracle. 

Recently I gave my neighbor miraculous holy water from Lourdes. He ironically called it "precious as hell."

My neighbor sees simple things in life as miracles-- like snow.

People were sick of snow by the final storm last winter, but not my neighbor. He smiled huge and told me how stupid snow blowers are because it takes all the fun out of shoveling. He said snow also gives people a break, and people need a break.

One day last winter, my neighbor told me all about his brother’s snow blower--how it doesn’t work half the time, how it takes the joy out of manual labor. 

His love for physical work and generosity was evident when he shoveled his neighbor’s driveway because her husband had a stroke. He then walked down the street with his shovel on his shoulder like a chimney sweep from Mary Poppins and asked me, “Where’s your car, babe?"

We went to another neighbor’s driveway where I had parked my car to get it off the street, and he said, “I’ll go sweep that off too,” – as if the five inches were a light dusting.

His own driveway was un-shoveled.

He also noticed my landlord’s driveway, which was cleared by snow blower.

“She used a snow blower on that?” he marveled. “I take back half the things I said about that damn machine.”

He redid his driveway a few days before Christmas, and my sarcasm about his impeccable timing was lost when he responded with glee, “I know, isn’t the weather beautiful?” – which, incredibly, it was.

The weather was not as great when he attached extension cords to a Christmas star suspended by helium balloon 30 feet into the air Christmas Eve. Curses flew as that ornament swayed into trees and all over the place.

My neighbor is the go-to man for homemade eggnog at Christmas, the one who entertains many, and the one who gets "the call" if my lady landlords needed a man to help them.

My neighbor was an excellent help when he arranged a funeral procession and prayers for my landlord's dog after another canine delivered a fatal bite to its neck– the girl too small to hold the larger dog’s leash watched in horror. 

He dug the dog’s grave with his son, took the deceased pooch on a solemn funeral procession to all her favorite places around the yard, and prayed a Hail Mary by its graveside for the sweet pet's soul.

My neighbor is a miracle. Amen.

Secret Life of Slurpees

Last night and today were a bit like The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. 

Walter Mitty pretends fantastical things happen in his life, but after he realizes how dull his life has become he actually does them. 

My life is not boring; I have a strong imagination like Walter, and perhaps a tendency to use the thought of adventure as an escape, but nowadays I strive to find the ordinary remarkable.

So, yesterday my friend and I got all day free parking at a $14 lot because the power went out shortly before we arrived to get the car, and the machines weren't working. 

After I climbed the Himalayas and fought ninjas in my dreams, I woke up at 10:34 today for 11 a.m. Mass at the cathedral 20 minutes from my friend's apartment. I got in my titanium rocket ship and made it at 11:05 because the Mother of God got me a metered spot across the street from the church. 

(The Himalayas, ninjas and rocket ship are creative embellishments just like the movie!)

And then my adventures got more real...

When I returned, a car full of young ladies pulled up at my friend's house with free Slurpee's in hand and told me how happy they are to be alive.

One even offered me her cherry coke concoction.

I ended up behind them in my car and one of the young women waved out the back window until she could no longer see me.

Two friends met me at an adoration chapel that evening, and when I got back to the apartment again, another friend drove up, blasted his radio and stood on the roof of his car to dance while I kicked up the driveway dust in solidarity. 

We decided to have an impromptu party and about 15 people split up like Rat Race and hit the grocery stores for refreshments.

Then we sat on the porch with a grill, iPhone stereo and told stories, danced, joked and played games.

Reality can be an adventure.

Thank you Jesus for spontaneous little gifts and childlike messengers of joy.

Street Beat Hope

Sunshine and the sound of live music stirred up gratitude in my heart yesterday as I walked the streets exhausted and looked for diversion. I needed a little break from the conference I attended, and man, I wanted to get down to that bucket drum.

The closer I got, the more I accepted the reality that it wasn't African dance party but a protest. People need just wages --that's true-- and I appreciated that the workers were outside using their rights to voice injustice. But I still debated if it would be appropriate to bodily jam with that old paint pail beat.

I shared my lament with a passerby, a young woman with short hair and fluorescent gauges in her ears. 

"Even in the chaos of the world, God has a plan," I told myself, but out loud to her.

"You gotta hope," she replied, to my delighted surprise.

It's the summertime and I don't have a routine schedule. I don't know where I'll live next month. My mind has listened to inner emotional strain and pain for many years. And I've been overwhelmed. 

But...

That's not the end of the story, babe.

Today I saw my friend who was forced to resign from her job, yet even in her tears, she has hope that something good will come out of her loss. She's already prays for new life in her career.

Last week I met a woman whose husband, and father to their seven children, died a year ago. This woman comforts crack babies at a hospital as therapy for herself. 

I also met a woman a month ago who is in her third marriage. She has been married to her current husband for 29 years. He supported them for decades through his air conditioner business that installed cooling systems in Houston attics, which heat up to 130°F. 

And last night I listened to a speaker tell 700 people about her mother who has dementia. She had everyone laughing for more than an hour, and at the end was given a standing ovation. She found joy in the monotony and annoyance of life repeated, sometimes every 10 seconds.

There's incredible pain in the world. And even more miraculous hope--in Faith and perseverance. Thank you, Jesus, for the hope in these stories that gives me strength to know I'll be OK.