Our Very Hearts

First off, Happy Feast of St Monica (mother to St. Augustine)-praying for her intercession in my current and future family.

There's poison about in my work.
I guess that's what happens when you work with human life so closely, things get petty because to see things as they actually are is not easy.

Gossip, it's been a killer to my soul lately. It happens all around me and from my very mouth as well. The "Pick a little talk a little" song from the Music Man is the anthem to my floor. Pick pick pick all day long. Not something I super mind IF it's being done in a charitable way. A way that builds someone up, not tear someone down. Sadly, not the case. I start my shift with every good intention of being my chipper joyful self, only to find the coworkers before had every intention of tearing me down. Dreadful, but hey, it happens. So it started off my day bad to which my day ended as well. I don't mind criticism, but when it's done as a personal attack against my character (whether intentional or not) yeah...I take it personal.

So it's hard when I brought this up to a coworker about intentionality and being charitable when we're correcting each other (again, we deal with human life when it's vulnerable so we do need to he HELPING each other be better). This coworker's reply: "well you should start with night shift".

Well great comebacks always come later for me when I've had time to think. My comeback (could I live it all over) "No, actually change begins with our very selves". You can't change anyone but yourself. Victor Frankl has the best quotes about this:

When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves.

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

This man should know, he lived in one of history's darkest times, the Holocaust. He found a way to be happy, he found a way to reflect on this same human condition in which I am reflecting.

And then there's the frivolous things that get talked about (when coworkers aren't the ones being bad mouthed). I mean this: http://themattwalshblog.com/2013/08/26/offensive-absurd-and-pornographic-on-mtv-you-say-i-cant-believe-it/ (kudos to my fiance for showing me this).

This Matt guy has a point, we have brought this culture on ourselves by the choices we make. Choices that begin in our very heart. My coworker's reaction "man, she's not even hot what makes her think she can dance like that?!" Well, not the reaction I was hoping for, my fiance says it best when "someone's looks don't determine the moral right, if it's wrong it wrong. Physical attributes don't give a person license to be crude".

Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.

So...what's the destiny you choose?

yup...annoying isn't it

The Recurring Problem of my Life

It's that whole being stuck in the middle "looking back for inspiration looking forward for motivation" type of deal. I've never been good about making a choice, I've been good about holding onto a choice already made. I don't like making choices because what if I make the wrong one.

For example, I wanted to be a religious sister but I never want to make a choice that would be permanence to that longing. Once I made a choice to be open about it, I got labeled, and God change my heart (slowly and quickly all at the same time, it was weird). And of course I'm going through the whole "I hope I'm making the right decision" debate in my head...because it is a sacrament and it will bring permanence.

So looking back, I miss my life so much. I miss who I was, what I felt. I miss being blessed when I come into work, I miss the feeling that my work somehow has meaning beyond myself. I miss my roommates who filled my life with such JOY! Who loved me when I was most unlovable, who cuddled when I needed physical touch, and people who I didn't need to explain myself. I could simply be and that would be enough. I miss compline at the motherhouse where 200+ nuns would chant the psalms, and that was a little dash of heaven any night I wanted to go.

Now we have the present...I think for me it's been the hardest place to be. People don't like my cheerful attitude they think me weird. It's a constant struggle to explain who I am, what I'm made of, why I am joyful. There are no religious, and I'm so busy that I can't take the time I usually have to go pray with them every night. There's no roommates here, just the own voices inside my head. I get calls from former roommates, and I feel like things are falling apart. I am supposed to be getting married, but my fiance and I haven't lived in the same states in over a year. I feel so very separated even from him. Mostly, there's this God-sized hole with where I wish my life where and where it actually is. Sometimes it's filled, but most of the time it's lonely.

Then I look to the future and there's two things: doom/gloom or the brightest hope in the world. The doom/gloom part is how hard it's going to be to raise little saints in this future world. The brightest part will be their smiles, and seeing them become their own. When I think of the future this poem always comes to mind, it's George Gray by Edgar Lee Masters:

I have studied many times

The marble which was chiseled for me --

A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.

In truth it pictures not my destination

But my life.

For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment;

Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;

Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.

Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.

And now I know that we must lift the sail

And catch the winds of destiny

Wherever they drive the boat.

To put meaning in one's life may end in madness,

But life without meaning is the torture

Of restlessness and vague desire --

It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid. 

This guy is looking at his tombstone wondering how he put meaning, how he made his mark only to realized he had missed all his chances. I dread this someday happening to me; for life without meaning is torture. When I look into the future I see God somehow, in His own way (through prayer and following Him) putting that meaning there in a way I never expected. This is what my boat longs for, to be tossed in the waves of God's ocean.

And that's the deal about making choices, you just gotta do it! It's figure out your choices, pray, and do! We can't sit forever on our choices, we can't let our boat sit in the harbor waiting for the "perfect day" or else the opportunity can be lost in time, and boats were not made for sitting in harbors. I may not know the future, but it is for God to know and me to make the choice. And even though I dread making the wrong choice, I trust that God will have guided me through it. My sails, His winds.