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What I learned about our lives from a lightning bolt.

As the sky darkened, lightning lined distant clouds while my dog — a red brindle longhaired dachshund — crossed the mulch in our back yard. The thunder’s rumble, too far from us to faze to him, warned of an impending storm, a norm for five at night in a Florida summer.

I watched from the porch while Rudy frolicked, and I wondered if we should hurry, ’cause there’s a reason we call where I live the “lightning capital.” He wagged his tail and sniffed the earth with curiosity and bliss and innocence — until the lightning struck. Continue reading “What I learned about our lives from a lightning bolt.”

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[Guest Post] What are we so afraid of?

photo-14-Look at the world around us – you don’t have to go very far to see that dinners are being spent looking at phones instead of each other, young women are being asked on dates via text message instead of a real-life conversation, and people everywhere struggle with knowing their worth in relationships. All of these cultural standards come down to one simple truth: authentic relationships are not being formed.

Whether young or old, male or female, platonic or romantic, there is a fear of forming authentic relationships, which stems from a fear of commitment, and a fear of being disappointed. With all of this being said, I’d like to pose a few questions. If the three Divine Persons of the Holy Trinity are in relation, if Christ founded His Church on a relationship between Him and Peter, and if the way He intended for His Church to be spread until the end of time was through relationships, what are we so afraid of?

This message of authentic relationships is something that was not popular or easily understood in the time of the apostles, and is certainly not popular or easily understood in our world today. As Christians it is our call, and our great joy, to proclaim that we know differently. To boldly proclaim that the truth of the Gospel is meant to change our lives, and certainly change how we form our relationships. And it is our great joy to prove by our life and our relationships that authenticity is worth striving for. Simply put, we are a relational Church.

The relationships that we are apart of affect every part of our being, and it is because of this that it is necessary to cultivate authentic relationships. Think about our friends – the people who understand us most in the world, and the people who we can be completely ourselves around. We feel so completely free around them because we are not afraid to ask for help when we need it, to love, and to be loved. Although we cannot be best friends with everyone, what we can do is enter into every relationship, big or small, with the Gospel mindset of authenticity and love.

Just as the earliest apostles spread the Church by proclaiming the love of the Father, we will fulfill our mission of proclaiming the love of the Father by forming authentic relationships with one another. Simply put, we cannot do it on our own. Each and every relationship we form needs the solid foundation of love, authenticity, and Christ Himself. Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans says, “For from Him, and through Him, and for Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever” (Romans 11:36). If everything we do is from, through, and for Him – then the relationships we form should be authentic and fearless. At its core, the Christian life was never meant to be lived alone. We need each other to confront the culture, to spread the incomprehensible love of Jesus Christ, and to grow in relationship with God our loving Father. It is a truth of Scripture that we need each other to grow in authentic relationships, and ultimately to grow in holiness.

We are called to fearlessly form these relationships – to reach out to others, and to build the relational Church by our words and actions. So let us pray for the grace to live this with our lives – to make eye contact with each other and not our cell phones, to have the cultural standard be a real conversation instead of a fleeting text, and to affirm each other of our God-given worth by authentic relationships. After all, there is nothing to be afraid of.

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About the blogger: Hailing from Minnesota, Lauren Scharmer is a senior at the Catholic University of America studying Social Work and Theology. Her current apostolate is bringing Midwestern hospitality to everyone she meets through her work with retreats and youth ministry on the east coast. She has a love for goldfish crackers, making loud noises in quiet chapels, short naps, and a good twitter hashtag (follow her @LaurenScharmer).

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What are YOU giving up and picking up for Lent?

My fabulous friends at Reverb Culture — “a community of young adults creating a culture of wild living by engaging the faith, each other, and the world through the Catechism of the Catholic Church” — have kicked off Lent with a reminder:

Jesus didn’t just give up everything for Lent — he picked up walking through the desert.

With that reminder in mind, Reverb Culture has encouraged us to give something up this Lent, and pick something else up — and to film it in 15 seconds or less for a montage to be created later in Lent. For further instructions and the videos submitted so far, click here. And here’s what I’ll give up and pick up for the rest of Lent:

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This is the only way to grow in your faith life.

god-help-me-how-grow-in-prayer-jim-beckman-paperback-cover-art“I AM THE WORST AT PRAYING.”

I typed the confession to a friend, mildly hyperbolic and wholly rooted in frustration with my apparent commitment to distraction, while I half-watched the Olympics on a giant flat-screen.

I do not need to watch the men’s slalom more than I need to sit with Jesus, but I picked it (and even for a distraction, showed up with divided attention).

Then I thought of God, Help Me: How to Grow in Prayer — the book my friend and fellow blogger Edmund Mitchell recommended.

Then grad school got hard until graduation. Then I wrote a book. Then I wanted to hibernate.

But I stood. I stepped away from the slalom. I searched my room for the book. I found it, buried beneath others, and finished it over the weekend. The book, by Jim Beckman, who works as faculty at the Augustine Institute, is simultaneously a swift kick in the pants and an empathetic hug for whoever is “the worst at praying.”

Below you’ll find my favorite excerpts. Hope they kick you in the pants and hug you, too:

  • “There is very little in prayer that depends on me. … The only things that I bring to the mix are consistently showing up for prayer and the disposition of my heart when I am there. With so little to contribute, I have decided that I want to make sure I’m doing my part every day.” -p. 13
  • “The way we spend our time tends to reveal what we place value on. One author I read on this topic observed with amusement that no one ever died of hunger because of not having time to eat. There are things we do with our time every day, and if we track our activity, we’ll see what is truly important to us. If prayer is something we place value on, we’ll make time for it.” -p. 14
  • “…desolation is one of the main stumbling blocks for many (young adults). The minute someone experiences some distance from God, it becomes a reason to stop praying and to give up spiritual disciplines. Yet the very purpose of the desolation is to strengthen your resolve, not for you to give up! So hold fast!” -p. 44
  • “…This is classic desolation. It is evident even in some of the wording of her emotions: never, always, no one, the only person. This is the voice of the enemy: He tends to speak in absolutes like this.” -p. 52
  • “If you desire to grow in your faith life, you must make a commitment to consistently spend time in prayer. There is no other way.” -p. 58
  • “Little things done consistently become a formidable force in our lives. The issue is which direction these habits are moving us.” -p. 96
  • “Our supernatural habits may deeply desire time with God in prayer, while our natural habits would desire more time in bed! ‘Grace has to operate through our faculties; we have to work for the destruction of habits that make our faculties bad instruments and for the development of habits that will make the good instruments — to the point where the supernature has become as sort of second nature.’ … Get out of bed to pray more time than you decide to sleep, and eventually a new habit will be formed. But get some resolve about you. This way of living isn’t easy, nor should it be.” -p. 112.

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Click here to learn more about God Help Me.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. So, if you click the links and purchase the products I recommend, I earn a little commission at no extra cost to you. And when you do, I am sincerely grateful.

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[Repost] Thoughts on not getting what you want.

Have you ever felt like what you did or said changed your course so completely that you ruined your chances of achieving something?

That a decision you made created conditions that made it impossible for you to get what you want?

That a part of you had so turned somebody off — be it an acquaintance, a potential employer, a guy or a girl — that had you only spoken or behaved differently, the rupture that rendered your relationship over forever never would have existed.

That thanks to you, you lost what you should’ve, would’ve, could’ve had.

As if we have that kind of control.

The truth is we are in control of what we say and do. And sometimes, that thing we say or do does, in fact, change your course so completely that what you thought you had coming never comes. And sometimes, that decision you make does create conditions that aren’t favorable for getting what you want.

But an important and often neglected part of this truth is that because my course or conditions change or somebody walks away because of me does not mean I didn’t get what I should’ve gotten. It means I didn’t get what wasn’t meant to be — that I didn’t get what wasn’t designed for me.

And if it wasn’t for me, why would I even want it?

Once, Job said this to God (Job 42:2): “I know that You can do all things, and that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted.”

…amen.

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A version of this post originally appeared in 2011.