#godswill – Women Who Walk By Faith

Good vs Evil

“A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. What you say flows from what is in your heart.” Luke 6:45 NLT Catholic Edition

Have you ever watched the series “Once Upon a Time”. My kiddos absolutely love this series and I have to say I have also developed an interest in it – although I often am lost in the twisted story line.

“Once Upon a Time” is a very twisted series of all the fairy tale stories we heard growing up and even some of the current fairy tale stories produced by Disney. I have found it extremely interesting to understand good and evil in this series. What is most intriguing is that good and evil is dictated by a person’s heart. The more the heart becomes dark the more evil the person becomes. The heart literally becomes black as a person embraces evil. Evil is dictated by the person’s choice to do harm to others, in most cases by using dark magic. An evil person, like the “Evil Queen” from Snow White, can become good by choosing to help the heroes save others by defeating those that are inflicting dark magic to harm others.

Reflect on that for a minute and what Jesus says in Luke 6:45. Pause for a second and think about how sin eats away at you when you haven’t sought reconciliation.

lighted candle — Photo by Rahul on Pexels.com

When you are carrying your sins within you, do you feel this dark cloud hanging over you? Does your actions come from a place that is not of love? Do you see small little signs that reveal a relationship of darkness in your heart from sin and your choices, especially your choice of words to others?

Dear sisters and brothers, when we carry sin, we are right where the enemy wants us. He directs our heart away from God by covering it in darkness. As we continue to carry it, the darkness continues to grow and we become more separated from our Father in Heaven and our ability to hear Him begins to fade.

Jesus says in Luke 6:42 “get rid of the log in your own eye.” A little further, in Luke 6:48, Jesus describes what it looks like for a person who listens and does what He says. He compares it to a person who builds a house on a solid foundation that can withstand the floodwaters that break against it.

In the context of these verses, I find a lesson of reconciliation and a strong statement of what our heart produces and the strength of our faith when we don’t reconcile our sins against our sisters and brothers.

I have been in this place a number of times and I’m sure you may have as well. We dwell in the sins of anger, unforgiveness, jealousy, resentment, and judgement and our heart reflects that place of establishment. This may weaken our faith when we need it most as it begins to separate our heart from God. In some cases, it may totally fill the vessel within us so that we are not able to allow God to reside within, disabling us from reflecting the spirit of light onto others.

We are all called to shine the light of Christ to our brothers and sisters. In order to do so, it is essential to reconcile our sins and fill our heart with the goodness of our Lord.

God bless each of you.

Prince, King, Lord and Hero – Happily Ever After Awaits

“He said to me, ‘My divine heart is so in love with people, and with you in particular, that it can no longer contain the flames of its ardent charity. It needs you to spread them. It must manifest itself to people and enrich them with the precious treasures that I will reveal to you. These treasures are the graces of salvation and sanctification, necessary to rescue people from the abyss of perdition…’ This divine heart was shown me on a throne of flames. It was more resplendent than the sun and transparent as crystal. The heart had its own adorable wound, and was surrounded by a crown of thorns, signifying the stings caused by our sins. And there was a cross above it.” St Margaret Mary Alocoque

Once upon a time…. A young woman stumbled in the darkness, seeking something deeper… a love, a desire for ecstasy and happiness that only one true prince could provide. She searched the land, her heart and only found pain, fear and loneliness. On one fair day a great light shined upon her and directed her to a castle. She wasn’t certain of it’s existence. As she followed the light directing her path, she stepped through the doors and fixed her eyes upon her Prince Charming, her Lord, her King, the one true love of her hearts desire.

Have you ever dreamed of your fairy tale, your happily ever after? Or perhaps your fairy tale or happily ever after has come true?

I’ve spent a week in Disney World among princesses, princes, and villains. I’ve watched the fairy tales of my childhood unfold before my eyes. Among the adventures and the thrills, there is always a hero or a prince and a happy ending.

The fairy tales we heard as a child have a few things in common…

1. Heroine

2. Hero

3. Villain

4. Magical element

5. Happily ever after

Being engrossed in all of these fairy tales and happily ever after, I venture to imagine my own happily ever after, my own Prince Charming.

As I marvel in this dream of my personal fairy tale, I realize my life has definitely had these elements and I’m certain yours probably has as well.

Take a moment and reflect on these elements and your life. Reflect on yourself needing to be rescued, awakened from the depths of your sin and temptation. The villain is lurking around constantly trying to pull you away from your hero in your story…. Jesus. You may say, “well, my story doesn’t have a magical element.” What if the magical element is not supernatural but a decision, a choice that only you can make. That choice becomes the defining moment when the hero, your Prince Charming swoops in and rescues you from the villain that lurks around you and may be even within you. The story you were living begins to turn, perhaps rewritten, into the elemental finale of a happily ever after – your prince has rescued you and resides with you throughout eternity.

Yesterday, as I entered a place that had once given me great peace in a time I needed it the most, I fixed my eyes upon the prince that has always been a part of my life. It was then that I realized my Prince Charming was always there – here in this peaceful castle, the chapel of my church. I had already met my Prince Charming. He had captured my heart in the purest, deepest way many years ago and continues to do so. My satisfaction can only be found through Him and in Him. The key ingredient was that I had to choose Him. I had to make the decision to open my heart to Him and let Him fill it.

Phil Wickham has a song called “Til I Found You.” This song is a constant reminder to me in how my own story as I knew it was being rewritten as God’s story, my happily ever after when “I found [Him].”

I invite you to search within find the magical element to choose your happily ever after by finding your Prince Charming, residing in the castle – YOU.

Although He lives within me, I find great comfort in visiting Him in a tangible castle, the chapel of my church, as I fix my eyes upon Him in Adoration in the most simplest form waiting to satisfy me in every way. “I see you in a transparent Host as material substance, but faith takes away the veil with which you cover yourself, love shaking the foundations of my heart makes me feel your presence, and the joy you cause it to feel lifts it up to the sublime hope of possessing you, overcoming all the obstacles that separate us.” Conchita Cabrera de Armida’s, Irresistibly Drawn to the Eucharist

Good always wins

“I give you a new commandment: love one another as I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.” John 13:34-35

I’m sure everyone has watched at least one Disney princess movie, if not several. Each is a story of love and each has some version of good and evil. What I love about these movies is that good always prevails in the end and most of all LOVE.

LOVE can be easy at times and it can be very challenging. Have you had those relationships where it was very easy to love the other person? They made it so easy because they loved you back with a selfless kind of love. What about those challenging relationships? Some of these can be within our own families. It can be a mother, a father, a sibling, a spouse, a child, or a good friend. They may have hurt you in some way or their form of showing love was demanding and selfish.

I think when Jesus was giving this commandment to love one another as He loved us, He may have had these difficult relationships in mind. I can’t remember where I read this but in this piece I was reading the author was comparing what it would look like for us today to resemble what Jesus did on the cross. Would you every consider volunteering to take the place of a man who is about to be executed for murdering your child? Consider what Jesus did for each of us. That kind of love for another is pretty hard to swallow for probably all of us – to take the place of another on death row who murdered your child.

Truly let that sink in for a bit in alignment with this very commandment Jesus gives us to love one another and the very action Jesus did by giving His life for each of us, who was on death row for our sins against our Father.

sunrise under cloudy sky illustration — Photo by Public Domain Pictures on Pexels.com

I’m not a saint by any means but I want to share a personal story that helped me to realize what Jesus meant in relation to me when He said “love one another as I have loved you.” After Mass on Sunday and hearing the nice homily that the deacon delivered, I went about my normal business. Later in the week, I attended a banquet with my daughters. It was my evening to have my daughters. My daughters saw their dad and went to tell him hi and returned to my table. After sitting for several minutes, waiting for our table to be called up to get food, I caught a glimpse of their father on the other side of the cafeteria alone. I whispered to both my daughters to go sit with their dad until our table was called up for food. Now, this may seem like a normal story to most people and you may be saying I don’t get it. What I want to share is that deep down I knew that my ex would never do this for me. His actions have repeatedly been quite the opposite – and this past week was proof of the repeated offenses. My actions were a result of Christ within me and not a result of me as my selfish human form. It was Christ’s love that flowed through me to give me the grace to turn the other cheek and show love to a person who has hurt me deep within, who has left very deep scars and continues to inflict me. It wasn’t until later that I realized the connection between my actions that night and the reading and it brought some peace to me.

I won’t pretend it’s easy to respond in love to those that hurt us or someone who just makes it difficult to love them, because it isn’t. It is expected of us. Even those individuals are God’s children and He loves them just as much as He loves us. To love like Him, we MUST love those that we may feel don’t deserve our love. Look at the cross, we didn’t deserve God’s love either, yet He freely gave it to us.

Choosing to do what Jesus would do will always bring light in the darkness. GOOD ALWAYS WIN – just as in the Disney princess stories. So the next time you are faced with the challenge of showing love to someone who has made it difficult for you to love, take that initiative and act in loving kindness just as Jesus would do for you after you committed your worst sin.

Managing expectations, not disappointments

“Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interest, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 – the reading during my wedding ceremony. It seems forever and a day but I remember the voice of the person who read it. As my dear friend read this reading during my wedding ceremony, many dreams and expectations filled my head. Love was this GREAT EXPECTATION. It was supposed to be exactly like 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. Why? Because God said it was.

I’m sure no one else has done this – had GREAT EXPECTATIONS.

Towards the end of my marriage another set of verses filled my head as they were repeated to me often, Ephesians 5:22-23 “wives should be subordinate to their husbands…. for the husband is head of his wife.” Everything in between and afterwards was strategically omitted during these reminders of the Word of God.

I don’t want to dwell on the details of my past. The important thing I want to point out is I started my marriage with expectations of this blissful marriage with no problems, with an image of love as in 1 Corinthians 13. And I ended my marriage with grave disappointment. My ex-husband is human and I am human, neither of us are God and the marriage could never be perfectly blissful, with the perfect love of 1 Corinthians 13. In a relationship, both individuals should definitely strive to uphold God’s definition of LOVE but we are not perfect. We are going to miss the mark sometimes and that’s ok as long as we respond to the missed mark with this definition of LOVE.

My marriage seemed to be the exact opposite of what I think God intended in the covenant of marriage. Towards the end of the marriage when I kept hearing the verses from Ephesians 5, I thought something was wrong with me. I was broken and therefore my marriage was broken. I was failing at fulfilling what I thought the expectations (key word) God had in Ephesians 5. Part of that could very well be my own fault as I was ignorant to what God really meant in Ephesians 5 – perhaps because most of the message was missing when it was told to me over and over again and I accepted that as it was.

belief bible book business — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Ok – now, I’m hoping to tie both of these things together. I want to first focus on expectations and disappointments.

We wrestle in our lives with disappointments because of our expectations. If our expectations aren’t aligned with accepting God’s plan, His Will in our lives then we are greatly disappointed when something happens or doesn’t go the way we planned or we prayed for. I’ve blogged a lot about God’s Divine Providence in our lives and sometimes it involves bad circumstances in our lives to bring the beauty or fruit. If our expectations are anything other than what God has in store for us, disappointment rears its ugly head.

What often happens when we become disappointed?

We start pulling away from God. We start questioning God’s motive in our lives and whether He is a good God, a loving Father. Our faith starts to suffer.

So when Ephesians 5 kept being brought before me in some things that I felt weren’t healthy, I really began to question God and who I was. This was embedding inside of me an image that I was a failure in my marriage, not good enough, a disappointment to my husband and to God. Fast forward to where I am in my faith today, I have a more informed knowledge of the entire message of Ephesians 5:21-30. As I read Theology of the Body, a wonderful book by the way, I began to put these verses in perspective. Here is my new perspective and new understanding of Ephesians 5:21-30. God does intend for wives to submit to their husbands and He also intends for husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the Church. So, God’s intentions are exactly 1 Corinthians 13-4-7 in Ephesians 5. In order to be obedient to Ephesians 5:21-30, both husband and wife have to give themselves freely to the other. Christ loved the Church so much that HE gave Himself to His bride, the Church, by offering His life. So in order for a husband to “love [his] wife, even as Christ loved the church (Ephesians 5: 25),” he must give himself completely to his wife. A wife in return must submit to her spouse, giving herself entirely to him. It also says that the Church, the bride of Christ, is subordinate to Christ. I think this is fulfilled by desiring all that God desires for us – alignment to His Will.

Going back to my own story, at the end of my marriage, I had become disappointed in myself because of another expectation. Looking back, this is a very good lesson to me on my expectations and disappointments and it reinforces my desire to be aligned with God’s expectations, His Will in my life.

I invite you to evaluate your expectations – may be they involve your children, your parents, your spouse, your job, a friendship or an illness. Are they aligning with God’s Will? Are your expectations flexible to accepting circumstance that is part of His plan for you? If so, you will have less disappointments and more life giving joy. Blessings!

“Do not, my child, approach Jesus Christ with the hope of bending his will to yours: what I desire is that you yield yourself to him and that he receive you, so that he, your Savior, may do with you and in you whatever he pleases.” St. Cajetan

A path covered in crosses

“For I hold you by your right hand – I, the Lord your God. And I say to you. ‘Don’t be afraid. I am here to help you.” Isaiah 41:13 NLT

Do you sit and imagine places you will travel? Roads and trails you will walk? Perhaps, you sit and dream about walking along the beach on a quiet morning as the sun begins to rise? Or you imagine walking near the streets of Paris? Whatever your dreams are, do you imagine a walk with your Lord?

I long for moments I can spend with God, especially in nature. Nature is where I connect the most with Him. It’s where I feel I’m open the most to hearing Him and seeing Him in the things around me. I learn so much about myself and the things in the world that affect me within through watching nature.

Earlier in the week, I was walking around the pond at work and I just asked Jesus to take a walk with me. Funny thing about it was that He reminded me that He has been walking with me, EVERYDAY. He reminded me of these little visible signs of His presence in my life – crosses that I see along my path. These aren’t just any crosses. These crosses are my crosses. They are the ones He has helped me carry in life. They each have a story. Some of the stories are harder and more painful – I think those are the tougher twigs. Some are quite small, most likely the pine needles I see in the shape of a cross. Some have been really hard to carry, they have been buried or embedded within – these are the ones found in the concrete.

Somedays, I may only see one cross in my path, others 20. When I see these crosses, my heart leaps for joy and my face morphs a smile. WHY? Because I know that each of these crosses has a story that has led me closer to God. Each has created a greater dependence on Him. I know this is how to discover trust in God, accepting my crosses with joy.

Of course many of these crosses have come and gone but some still linger. Today I struggle with the one that is embedded in the concrete. This cross is one that will reshape me within. It’s the one that bears the greatest level of pain. It’s the one that will give me the greatest peace of who I am as God continues to pour into me.

I love hearing songs, reading Bible verses, or reading books that talk about God not being finished with us or Him writing our story, creating music from the chaos, reforming us from the dust. It is truly in these crosses that God is rewriting our story. He is rewriting it to align with His story, His plans for us.

The greatest message I could ever tell in my story is trusting in God’s Divine Will and discerning what His Will is by aligning your life to His Will. Are you willing to allow Him to rewrite your story by accepting your crosses, allowing Him to carry you through them? I invite you to stretch out your hand and ask Him to take it and walk this journey with you. And if you happen to see a cross in your path, remember your crosses that He has helped you carry.

May you be filled with the Holy Spirit and your desires align with His desires. Blessings!

The journey continues

“For I know well the plans I have in mind for you, plans for your welfare and not for woe, so as to give you a future of hope.” Jeremiah 29:11

In my last blog, I wrote about how much Jeremiah 17:7-8 described my journey and how amazing my journey has been.

I want to start by asking if you have a unique descriptive of your journey? Can you see your story still unfolding before your eyes? Does your past surface from time to time, unraveling more of your path ahead?

What if the story continues to unfold by taking the deeper wounds illuminating and enhancing the new creation that God has reshaped from the dust? What if the most painful memories were surfaced, skimmed off the top, fired up, crystallized into tiny jewels and used to ornate the outer surface of the newly formed you?

A few weeks ago, I sat in my study frozen as I held several pieces of paper that were written in my hand writing. The only movement was the droplets falling from my eyes. There were things written that I had forgotten about, had buried. They were words that brought grave painful memories rushing back into my mind. As I read the words on these papers, I felt like I was trapped back in a place I had traveled as the pain stung so sharply deep within me. I knew I didn’t want to be in this place, yet it was something I had to do.

Going back to that place, uncovered an area I have not dealt with along my amazing journey. I can’t tell you how many times I feel like I am totally healed from my past and then something else surfaces that causes me to look deeper, to realize I have more cracks to mend. This was exactly one of those moments. As my eyes peered through each page I had written and the hurt rushed in, I knew God had more He wanted me to see. I had more work to do, there was more fruit to bear but I had to first pull up the weeds and lay down the new soil.

Our story is written, yet our journey of being refined is never complete. The purification, the reforming is a known fact in our spiritual journey. It is allowing ourselves to be vulnerable to look deeper within and uncover the areas that need refining and/or healing. To move closer to God’s perfect plan for us is allowing Him to shed light on the dark areas in our lives, to illuminate them and bring goodness from them. I always like to go back and compare my refinement to the process of purifying gold or the formation of a diamond. It takes extreme conditions to form this precious metal and valuable gem, just as it does in us.

antelope canyon arizona — Photo by Ray Bilcliff on Pexels.com

Next time your past surfaces and the flood of emotions roll in, take a look deep with in and see what gem God is perfecting to ornate the outer surface of His new creation in you because He is not done with you. He is inviting you to uncover more, to move forward, closer to Him.

Just as in the lyrics of Tauren Wells song “God’s not done with you.”

There’s a light you don’t notice
Until you’re standing in the dark
And there’s a strength that’s growing
Inside your shattered heart
God’s not done with you
Even with your broken heart and your wounds and your scars
God’s not done with you
Even when you’re lost and it’s hard and you’ve fallen apart

A journey defined

“Blessed are those who trust in the LORD. The LORD will be their trust. They are like a tree planted beside the waters that stretches out its roots to the stream. It does not fear heat when it comes. Its leaves stay green. In the year of drought, it shows no distress, but still produces fruit.” Jeremiah 17:7-8

Have you ever had a Bible verse or two, just speak volumes to you? What about a few lyrics in a song? May be you have read a passage in a book by your favorite author or heard words of wisdom from a sage soul that spoke to the inner core of your heart?

Almost three years ago, I attended a retreat and heard the verses in Jeremiah 17:7-8 for the first time, deep within my heart. I’m not sure that I understood then how much these verses would be the verses that would truly describe my journey. Although my life began in my mother’s womb, my true journey of faith began six years ago.

I think my story is amazing. It is amazing because God has laid small and large stepping stones in front of me with an intended purposes. And I truly believe the intended purposes that He has been leading me to is exactly Jeremiah 17:7-8 -to grow in trust in Him and through this to strengthen my roots in my faith so that no matter where life takes me, it will always produce fruit.

This amazing story of mine is a story of trust. But this story began with tremendous hurt and lack of trust. In the darkest hour of that pain, God answered my call. He literally lifted me out of my situation and He began to lay before a new path. This path would still not be easy but would refine me, purify my heart and cleanse me from my past. It would provide me with a new compass and a new focus – “the Lord [would] be [my] trust.”

Through the last six years, my journey has gone through many phases that have lead precisely to this moment. These stepping stones I have been walking on have each served a purpose of leading me to trusting in God. I could write a book on the details of God’s hands and feet along the way, the people He placed in my life, the obstacles placed before me and those removed, the books, the readings from the Bible and the list goes on.

Some of the amazing details are centered around the obstacles that seemed to be removed that were in my way at times. There was no doubt that God’s hands and feet were a part of it. Most of the phenomenal movements of God’s presence was internally within me. This is the purification process that has been leading me on the path of trust. It is the interior spiritual movement that is the description of my journey expressed in Jeremiah 17:7-8. This is where the external stepping stones have led me to the deep roots, nourished by life giving water, bearing fruit in my life.

In one of Lysa Terkeurst latest books, “It’s Not Supposed to be This Way,” she describes an image of life being shattered to dust. What she goes on to say in the book is that sometimes our life has to be shattered to the point of dust so that we can be reshaped. It is through the reshaping that God’s perfect plan for us is placed in motion. As I look back on my life, I see this very process – my life shattered to fine dust and God picking every ounce of that dust up and reshaping me – from the inside out into exactly what He wants of me. The root of this process is trusting Him to do so, being vulnerable to the shattering and reformation. It is here where the fruit is produced, where the dead branches begin to grow new life.

So, when I heard the song on the radio by For King and Country, “God Only Knows,” and tears stung my cheeks, I knew that “God only knows what [I’ve] been through… God only knows the real [me]… God only knows where to find [me]… God only knows how to break through… There’s a kind of love that God only knows.”

Each of us go through some form of struggle in our life where the branches seem to be bare and darkness filters in. In many cases, life as we know if feels like it has shattered into a million pieces and we don’t know how to pick up the pieces. I invite you to trust in God to pick up the pieces and reshape you as He leads you on a path of reformation, purifying and perfecting your path He has laid before you.