Another great week in the books. We spent the first 3 days of the week going through a retreat and it was great, and hard and tiring but uplifting all at once and there were all the feels. We’ve started to do training in the scriptures and Papal encyclicals and it’s a great time to get to un-pack these things together {because if I’m honest, when I read an encyclical by myself, I fall asleep…oops}. Encyclicals are these documents that the Pope writes - Pope Franny writes them but right now we’re reading through a couple that St. John Paul II wrote. Other than that it’s *somewhat* of a typical schedule - just out in the Bayou of Louisiana. We eat foods, sleep, (try to poo…if anyone has some home remedies for that, I’m all ears), and sometimes at night we watch Boy Meets World (one of the girls brought all of the seasons…and I willingly admit that I am in love with Cory Matthews). But, we’re also saturating our life in prayer, both personal and community prayer. I’m loving this specific time to intentionally seek Jesus and to get to know this community. Pray for me as I press deeper into what Jesus has called me to do, and puhleeeease let me know what your prayer intentions are (head on over to my 'contact' tab) - because as I mentioned…I’ve been doing a lot of that lately. Last night I wanted to do my nails and I soon had a line of girls waiting for me to do their nails. It was quite comical. Dinner last night was a little fancier than normal buuut I forgot to take a picture before they took away our foods, so...here's us and our plastic cups. The chapel that was just built a couple months ago and can now fit all of us who are going through training. Beautiful. My roommate, Rachel, and I outside :) I stopped her as she was walking to the chapel and said - 'Wanna take a selfie for my blog?' #millenialsrock
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(Continued from part 2)
The search to fill this ache in my heart continued. If I’m honest, I got frustrated and annoyed because I had this feeling that I needed to go somewhere but I didn’t know where and I didn’t know how I’d get there. In my frustration, this past January, I Googled ‘Catholic volunteer trips’ and FMC came up. I had heard about them a couple years back and pushed them out of my mind, but when I saw that they were going to Kolkata, India in May 2018…my heart jumped a little inside. Kolkata is where Mother Teresa formed her order of sisters, Missionaries of Charity, and I’m a little low-key obsessed with Mama T. So. I signed up. I thought to myself ‘Okay, Colleen. Who knows what’s going to happen on this trip, but you’ve got to go and find out.” A few weeks after my trip to India I wrote this reflection and I think it’s fit to share. But first, I want to share this scripture that I prayed with earlier this week, They are happy who dwell in your house, forever singing your praise. They are happy, whose strength is in you, in whose hearts are the roads to Zion. -Psalm 84: 4-5 - - - - - ‘Tell me about India; what was that like?! It was like seeing my dreams turn into reality. It was like watching my heart outside of my body - actually seeing my heart outside of my body. That if my heart had faces, they would be the faces of the people who slept outside of where we were staying, the man who set up his barber tools beside a pile of cement so his customers had somewhere to sit while he shaved their face, the girl who wouldn’t eat her food at the children’s home, the woman who laid out a tarp for us to sit on in her sidewalk home. If my heart had an atmosphere it would be wildly colorful. Various hues of teal, purple, red and pink would paint the buildings and homes in my untamable heart. It would be dirty, and have areas that smelled like the wrong end of a dog, while simultaneously containing some of the most peaceful, quiet and beautiful places I have ever seen. If my heart had to choose which mode of transportation it would be to get itself from point A to point B, it would be a bus. Not always knowing its end destination, I hop on, knowing that I can trust that the bus knows where it’s going (and praying that the driver tells me when to get off). Or, my heart would be a rickshaw where I’m holding on for dear life, not knowing if I’ll survive the trek but laughing and loving it all the while. Or perhaps a train; where the lives of the poor flash before me for just an instant and I’m brought to a life-altering halt. If my heart was a schedule, it would wake up early - before the noise of the day - and walk. It would sit in silence before its beloved; its savior. It would sing His praises and consume Him before doing anything else. It would eat breakfast (and a hearty one too) and then work with its hands and build relationships. It would rest and take a nap. It would go for a run. It would go on an adventure. It would go and meet people on the streets. It would go back and lay everything before the Eucharist at the end of a long, sweaty, wonderful day. It would make dinner, eat and then sit around a dinner table for hours - laughing and talking and getting to know the other hearts that have joined it. It would play games, the guitar and eat dessert. It would shower, read and go to bed by 9 (yes...9 is my ideal bedtime (heart eye emoji)). This was India. So. Apparently, I’ve found my heart. Or a piece of it at least. And my heart can live outside of my body. Who knew?’ - - - - - After I wrote that it hit me that I could no longer deny my desire for this work in my life. It’s as if I had been shown what my heart truly desired on a silver platter - why wouldn’t I take it? For some reason, Jesus has given this gift to me and I am in awe. Friends, let us pray today that we may be open to all the gifts Jesus has for us - all of the gifts that He wants to give us. Whether they be big or small, let us be open and ready to receive them. Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord; His appearing is as sure as the dawn; He will come to us like the showers, Like the spring rains that water the earth. -Hosea 6: 3 For the next 3 months I'll be training to be a full-time foreign volunteer with an organization (email me for the name). Here's some pics so you know that I'm alive and well and l o v i n g it here. Here's my home for the next 3 months...it's cute, cozy and can fit all 60 of us for morning prayer In Louisiana there are these things called "spiders". I call them monsters. See an example of one in the picture above. I have what one calls, 'arachnophobia'...a highly irrational fear of spiders. Well. This is just one picture of a banana spider. I walked outside wanting to find one so I could snap a pic for all of you and I found one right outside our door. Yesterday I was on a run and I looked up and there were two spiders that had made webs that stretched ACROSS THE STREET AND WAS CONNECTED TO TWO DIFFERENT TREES. WHY. but in all honesty, I'm trying to face my fears and I'm getting better with the spideys. When I see a particularly large one, its become sort of fascinating and their webs are extremely intricate...so that's kinda cool. There's this big ol' back porch on the house that I'm in and it looks out over this gorgeous field and forest (insert heart eye emoji here). I've been in training for a week and it's going great. I'm really loving the people and the environment. I celebrated my birthday and they made me chocolate cake and showered me with love and quality time (yay).
For now that's all until I update next Sunday :) The lingering question from before is: Can I trust Him, and trust that life can still be good (dare I say, great) if I step away from an already existing good thing?
“We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it's our life or our possessions and property. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand.” Page 93 The Alchemist. A fantastic, short read. At one point in the book, as the main character journeys towards his final destination, he winds up in a town he never expected and has to stay there for 2 years because of unforeseen circumstances (yes, I’m trying to be vague so you go read it). In this town, he falls in love and gets to a point where he doesn’t want to travel on to his original destination that brought him to the town in the first place. HIs mentor urges him to continue on his journey - telling him that if he stays, he will enjoy his life for a while, but that he will reach a point in life where he will have wished he would have continued on because his life doesn’t feel as complete as it could. (I can’t find the exact quote online that I originally wanted…all the more incentive to read this book…but here’s a great quote regarding the same subject): “Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity.” Page 130 mic. drop. I relate to this main character in many ways. Here, in this new place, he found someone he loved. He could see himself staying with her and being happy, yet, there was an even deeper desire in his heart. It was easier for him to stay where he knew there was happiness than journey into the unknown. He didn’t know what the treasure was that he searched for, but if he stayed he would never find out. It was really quite hard for me to leave the life I had in New York. And, similar to the main character in The Alchemist, I had the desire to stay. I had friends, a good job, fantastic roommates, a home in the city that never sleeps. So, yes. I could have stayed. But, I knew that ultimately, staying wasn’t going to bring me what I was seeking. If I’m honest, I wasn’t sure what I was seeking until I found it. I had this ache in my heart to do something more, but I didn’t know what that looked like. I thought it meant I wanted to give back more, so for half a year I tutored on Saturdays and played sports with adults who had disabilities. But that didn’t quite fill the ache. Then, I thought that this ache to do something ‘more’ (whatever that meant) was because I didn’t have a creative outlet in my job. So, I started doing more creative things with my friends. I acted in plays, sang in shows, and played music with my roommates. I had an i n c r e d i b l e time doing these things, but the ache still remained. Other things and conversations happened (those will probs come up later), but ultimately I started praying. I started praying that Jesus would show me what it was that I was longing for; what it was that I searched for. I had exhausted my own ability to fill this longing in my heart, so I turned to the person who created it. "So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” - Luke 11:9 Classic scripture verse…am I right? But it’s also so applicable. To be continued…because I like to write and details are important ;) (written as I waited to board my plane from La Guardia to Milwaukee in early September 2018)
Today I leave New York. I knew this wasn’t going to be forever. I didn’t have a big dream of moving to NYC and making it big. What I needed was a place to heal. I needed a new place. new experiences. new memories. I received those thing in abundance and was given the space and time to b r e a t h e. And sometimes, when you breathe in the air in New York City, you get a big ol’ whiff of what could be a dead molding rat. But other times you run to Central Park on a fall morning and you’re up in Central Harlem and you escape for a minute and forget about everything else. A few months ago I was sitting in a Starbucks and this woman asked to share my table. She sat and started to talk to me about how she used to live in NY and was an artist who moved to Florida. I was busily deleting and filing away emails because I was organizing a woman’s event and needed to have my emails clean so I could figure out what I needed to do and what was old email. She asked me the typical, annoying questions and I told her what I do. “You came to NY to work for a doctor?” She asked me, with a tone of shame in her voice. Shame, that I wasn’t pursing a career in the arts, trying to be famous, or create a startup. I recognized it for what it was and let it deflect right off of me. It frustrated me that someone who knew n o t h i n g about my life somehow thought that she knew how I ‘should’ be living it. Because the truth is, yes. My job wasn’t flashy. I worked for a doctors office (yes, It was for one of the top cancer hospitals in the world…but still. Not flashy). But I don’t need to bash on her. She clearly had some personal shame within her and was projecting it onto me…a typical response to shame. But, I’m glad she said that. Because it allowed me to realize this: yes, I don’t have a flashy job and I live in one of the flashiest cities in the world. But. This job allowed me to have nights and weekends free so that I was able to be in plays with friends, train for a marathon, have countless dinner and movie nights and time with my roommates, go to daily mass (3 daily mass options only blocks from where I worked…#thanksJesus) and gave me time for daily prayer. I was able to bike or walk to work every day, which gave me *some* of my I-need-to-be-outdoors quota. I was able to leave work at work, which allowed me to plunge into scripture and run towards Jesus. And now, Jesus is bringing me somewhere else. Now, I don’t know where I’ll be living in 6 months. And now more than ever, I must trust Jesus. Trust that even though I’m leaving a city that I love so much, {a city that holds friends that my heart will ache and yearn to be with} Jesus has something more in store. Can I trust Him, and trust that life can still be good (dare I say, great) if I step away from an already existing good thing? Let’s explore that one next. For now, please pray for me as I head down to the swamp land of Louisiana. Jesus, I trust in you. |
hey.my moto is summarized best by these words:
“Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.” -Brene Brown thanks Brene. you're quite the gal. Past Musings
July 2020
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