the battefront of the mind

This week has been a bit rough at my house. We are not yet settled into the kids school days routines, my own online school starts Monday. My daughter Corrie had another seizure at work, and my daughter Melissa is suffering. Her fiance suddenly called it quits, with no warning and apparently, little or no remorse. She is a college student, just getting settled in herself,or trying to. She has fought and overcome so much in her life already. One of my prayers for her is that God blesses her richly someday with a husband that loves her for exactly who she is.




Also, I have had some light bulb moments get past the noise in my brain. God is so impressive. When He wants to tell me something, He makes sure I get it. So much better than Fed Ex. But they're not bad.

Last evening, I drove out to pick up Melissa at her school. Her father also went to school there, and, at the time I met him, still lived near the campus. Whenever I would drive there, I remembered the directions by saying the name of the streets, in the order I took them. Yesterday, driving that route again, I saw them go by, and said to myself the names, the way I used to---High---Price.
Lesson learned.

Also, several days ago, while commenting on a friend's blog, I was telling about the time I was hospitalized for a  four month long headache. While writing, another one of those little lights popped on. Ah, the lessons taught by my friend, Hindsight.

During that time, I was; 1.a new convert; 2.In the process of extricating myself from yet another bad relationship; 3. Meeting resistance from said relationship-ee, resulting in being harassed and stalked at every turn; and 4; scraping to make a living for the three kids under my roof at the time, two in schools that required tuition. I will spare you the gory details. Cause they are. Gory.

The headache varied in intensity, but never went away. It was affecting my ability to work. After many doctor appointments, tests, and trials of medications, I saw the main doc of the headache clinic at Jefferson Hospital, a Russian woman, (and quite fabulous). She said I was suffering from a headache "cycle." That, basically, I was having the headache because I had the headache for so long. And that what I needed was to go into the hospital for three days, where I would be administered a cocktail of IV drugs that would "break the cycle." Again, I'll spare you the ins and outs, except to say that it didn't work right away, but within a few days, I felt a lot better, and though I did and do get headaches, it has never gotten that bad again. That is the human part of the story.

Here are my impressions of the supernatural part.

I was mired in a way of thinking for most of my adult life up to that point, and it was holding me back from being able to mature in my faith. The internal script-loop went something like this:

"I am tired and sad." (this was my depression mantra, not surprising, right?)

"I am not allowed to be happy."

" I got myself into this situation (enter the bad situation of the day here), so I am stuck with it."

"I need to stay with my current choice of a man and prove to God and the world I can have a stable relationship and life." (never mind the fact that God gave me plenty of warning about how I made my choices, and let me know He was never invited to that particular party. Oh, I thought I had asked Him, but it was the kind of asking your kid does when they're already halfway out the door, coat on, friends waiting outside, "It's okay if I go out, right?" _not that my kids ever do that_)
* (I must qualify a teeny bit here and say I am not advocating everyone to abandon their marriages. All but one of the relationships I am referring to here were not the married kind. And the one that was, was 1.invalid, and 2. abusive)

There were other premises I worked around, but that gives you the idea. My point is, all that talk was occurring in my mind. In my head. My head was the battlefield .My thoughts were being held hostage, and God, seeing as how I converted and all, now had His proverbial foot in the door. So He went to work. It was kind of a labor and birth. The headache part was the pushing. (Gar, those poor newborns!) I think God was saying, "okay, I am intervening here, and taking back the territory of your mind (and heart) so you can finally move past this destructive pattern. And to top it all off, I am going to bring your future husband into the picture. Cause, girl, you can't do it yourself!" And He did. Somehow, once I addressed the headaches, the bad life-stuff started to unravel and get worked out. I still had plenty of work to do, but the results were starting to show.
*(another note. If you have not read the part of my conversion story in which I explain the power of the Eucharistic Lord,you can find it--here. Wow, I refer to that post a lot.)

Do I ever still think wrongly? Yes. But the difference is, I see it quicker that I used to, because it seems so out of place now. Do I still need lots and lots of work? Yes. Lots. But Praise God, it doesn't seem to involve headaches.But please do pray for my dear friend Joyce over at The Little Way. She suffers with monstrous ones.

Blessings and Peace

Kelly

Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!

I say this as a prayer when the priest is receiving the Eucharist, right before we go up to receive. 

I have often thought that if we really believed that we were in the presence of Christ's actual body,  (*note--we are.) we would fall on our faces and be unable to move. We would be frozen with awe, overcome by the power and passion of His presence, terribly aware of our shortcomings, but simultaneously overcome and filled with His all encompassing love and mercy. This is not strict church teaching or theology, just my thoughts about how little we grasp of what is actually going on at mass. 

I have heard Father Corapi speak about how much we could change just by receiving the Eucharist once. If we were able to fully cooperate with, and submit ourselves to God in that moment, there is no telling how much we would grow. ( a very loose paraphrase)

 It is not that we have to understand the mysteries of the Eucharist with our minds in order to receive grace, but rather that we believe the realities of what is contained in the host, and through faith, are open to the effects the Lord would lay upon us. After all, what Christian would not agree that if Jesus were to stroll in to a Sunday mass or service, we would all either 1. flee under the weight of or own sin and condemnation, or 2. be changed on the spot.

When I am at adoration, I have to continually reign in my mind. Interestingly, I often experience clearer thinking and have ideas about different things-both weighty and trivial, while in the presence of Jesus. My strategy is to have a pen and paper handy to jot things down so I then can not strain to remember them and let my mind quiet again. Many times, I must do this over and over. A very helpful thing to do, and this told to me by a beloved priest and friend, is to contemplate the crucifix. Another help, for me, is to picture Jesus standing or sitting in front of the exposed host. He is there, truly, so by doing this I can visualize what my place is before Him. I must do this because of my unbelief. Don't get me wrong, I believe. But my human limitations are such that I can't appreciate the Lord's presence completely . 

So, what the above phrase means to me, when I breathe it in prayer is; Lord, I believe in you as much as I am able at this moment; please increase my faith and allow me to absorb and appropriate as much of you as I possibly can.

Here is a larger section from which the passage I spoke about is taken-

Mark 9:20-29 NASB

They brought the boy to Him. When he saw Him, immediately the spirit threw him into a convulsion, and falling to the ground, he began rolling around and foaming at the mouth. And He asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. “It has often thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if You can do anything, take pity on us and help us!” And Jesus said to him, “ ‘If You can?’ All things are possible to him who believes.” Immediately the boy’s father cried out and said, “I do believe; help my unbelief.” When Jesus saw that a crowd was rapidly gathering, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You deaf and mute spirit, I command you, come out of him and do not enter him again.” After crying out and throwing him into terrible convulsions, it came out; and the boy became so much like a corpse that most of them said, “He is dead!” But Jesus took him by the hand and raised him; and he got up. When He came into the house, His disciples began questioning Him privately, “Why could we not drive it out?” And He said to them, “This kind cannot come out by anything but prayer.”

---

It is interesting that the man, upon being told that "all things are possible to him who believes", knows his own limitations, and wants to be full of that kind of belief, so he asks Jesus for it. That is my aim during mass and in many other situations, that I ask Jesus for what I don't have, and can't get without Him. Another nugget from Father Corapi, is to recognize what we need and ask for it. I am not talking about a shopping list here! But if you need faith, ask for it! If you need to have more disciplined prayer time, ask! If you need to want to pray, then ask for the desire for God! I have to laugh, but really it makes sense. Just keep backing up until you get to the thing you need first.

 I definitely need to exercise but I desperately need to pray regularly. I have thought of this before, but today I started a "rosary-walk". On days I can't make it to mass, but still want to pray, I want to grab my Rosary and walk while I pray. This accomplishes two things: 1. I move around and count it  as exercise while I pray, and 2. I don't have the distractions of the house (phone, laundry, kids, etc...). It was nice today, I hope to see some spiritual and physical results!

God's Blessings, 

 Kelly

~and now, for something completely different~

You know you live with a Lot of People when... 

1. a regular dinner uses all the dishes in the cupboard.

2. the refrigerator is emptied daily.

3. you need lane markers and a blinking light to regulate traffic in the hallway.

4. you have made two trips to go places when everyone would not fit in the car.

5. everyone's schedule is so different that there are only one or two hours in which there is no one awake in the house at any given time.

6. the bathroom never really dries out.

7. whenever you approach the house, you can always hear the hum of the dryer--it is known as the House of Perpetual Laundry.

8 .there are so many shoes piled up inside the door, people think they have stumbled onto a thrift store.

9. on the rare occasions you all go to church together, you take up a whole pew.

10. you have to jockey for a seat on one of the couches. Usually a few end up on the floor.

11. You have to jump over bodies when they are playing video games (certain ones lay on their stomachs stretched out horizontally across the traffic lane in the living room.

12. you refer to any place in your house as the traffic lane.

:)