Tag: birthday

My Jesus Year (Death Wishes You Shouldn’t Worry About)

When I was 18 I was in the throes of intense vocational discernment (perhaps better described as grabbing Jesus by the throat and demanding that he tell me I didn’t have to be a nun). After months of talking to God only about myself–and ignoring any contribution he might try to make to my prayer time–I realized that I had a problem and decided to fast from discernment for a month. Only a month because I had already committed to spending that summer with the Missionaries of Charity and figured it would be a waste not to discern while I was literally living in a convent for an entire summer.

So I spent 30 days trying not to pray about my vocation. It was incredibly freeing, giving me time to love on God instead of just demanding that he act as a magic eight ball for me. The day before this fast was supposed to end was June 21st, the feast of St. Aloysius Gonzaga. Father began his homily with this line: “St. Aloysius Gonzaga died when he was 24 years old.”1 Suddenly it hit me: what if I’m going to die when I’m 24? What if I’m wasting all this time obsessing about a vocation that I don’t even have because I’m going to die young?

It’s not as morbid a thought as it sounds. In fact, if heaven is the goal of your life, it’s not morbid at all. And while I went on to discern and plan for a long life, there was a part of me that didn’t think it would happen. To the point that I was actually disappointed when I turned 25. I remember sitting in the car, driving back from a retreat, and sighing when the clock hit midnight. “Ah, well. Looks like I’m not getting off the hook that easy.” So I prepared to live.

"Hang on, Jesus, I just need to finish respectfully lambasting the Holy Father before you take me home."
“Hang on, Jesus, I just need to finish respectfully lambasting the Holy Father before you take me home.”

But not all the cool Saints died at 24. A bunch died at 33.2 And this year, I’m 33.

I spent last week with my marvelously inquisitive 5-year-old godson. All week we were talking about Saints, about martyrs who were killed because they were telling people about Jesus. As I was leaving, not to return for another year, he looked miserable. “Hugo, my love, I have to go. I have to go tell people about Jesus!”

Very seriously but without a trace of sorrow, he asked, “And will you be killed?”

I responded honestly, “Probably not. Probably I’m going to be just fine. But if I die, is that a sad ending?”

“No,” he said, with absolute conviction.

“No. You’re allowed to be sad, but it’s not really a sad ending because I’ll get to go be with Jesus.” He nodded solemnly, gravely agreeing with my assessment.

Of course, he doesn’t really understand death. But he gets it more than most of us do. I have a habit of flippantly mentioning my desire to be a martyr,3 to which most people respond, “That’s so depressing!”

But it’s not. Arrogant, yes—presuming that I’ll have the fortitude to withstand threats and torture and death. But it’s not depressing because the death of a Christian is not a tragedy except for those left behind. I remind my poor mother of this from time to time. For all I’m shockingly guarded by Providence, I do live a fairly reckless life and I think it’s good to have my bases covered. “Remember,” I say, “the goal of my life is to die well. If I die doing God’s will, that’s not tragic.” It’s the beginning of a marvelous adventure.4

For years, the passage of the Chronicles of Narnia that’s struck me the most powerfully has been the desperate longing of the mouse Reepicheep to make his way to Aslan’s country:

pauline-baynes-dawn-treader“My own plans are made. While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I paddle east in my coracle. When she sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws. And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan’s country, or shot over the edge of the world into some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise.”

On my best days, this is how I feel. I just want so badly to go home. This world is beautiful and you people are amazing and I’m so grateful for the work I’m able to do, but I miss my Father and I want to sit with my Love. I feel like I’m on an extended, arduous trip abroad, far from friends and family and everyone who loves me. And it’s wonderful and exotic here and I’m meeting all kinds of marvelous people, but I want to go home.

Except that I’m not actually ready yet. Emotionally, perhaps; but morally and spiritually I need major work. So he leaves me here to let me grow, much though I’d rather be a poor, weak Christian in my Father’s lap than a mature Christian far from him. But he loves watching me grow, so here I am.

I’ve spent the week since I turned 335 thinking about death. It’s a sign of how much I’m formed by this world that I feel the need to tell you again and again not to worry about me. I think about death the way I think about going on a cruise one day—it will be amazing and I’m not going to do a thing to hasten its advent.

Odds are good this isn’t the year I die. So I’ve been asking the Lord what else it means to be 33, to spend a year the age he was when he laid down his life for his loved ones. And it’s got me wondering if maybe the point of all this isn’t to prepare me for imminent death but to prepare me to be like Christ in all things. I ought to focus on all this every year, but maybe I can double down this year and see if it sticks once I get past the mild disappointment of turning 34.

What did Jesus do the year he was 33? He loved deeply. He listened to people with broken hearts. He spoke truth, whatever the cost. He went away to pray, even when it meant abandoning people who were certain that they needed him more than he needed the Father. He forgave those who loved themselves more than they loved him. He brought new life to the dead, both physically and spiritually. He sacrificed himself again and again in the days leading up to his one sacrifice for all. He allowed people to love him. He walked into hard places to do hard things he could easily have avoided. He laid down his life every day.

That’s what my Jesus year needs to be: learning a thousand times to die to myself and live for him.

A few years ago, my birthday fell on Sunday so I got different readings from the usual St. Matthew ones. The Epistle struck me: “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain,” Paul said.6 Ever since, it’s been this verse I come back to on days when I long for heaven, either out of love of Christ or despair over the state of this world. It will be marvelous to go home, but until then, let me be Christ in this world.

to-live-is-christ-homescreen

 

  1. Turns out he was 23. I wonder if my life would have played out differently if he’d gotten that right. [↩]
  2. Okay, my research is only turning up Catherine of Siena and Jesus, but statistics suggest that there have to be more than that. Why aren’t there websites that list Saints by age at the time of death? Come on, internet. [↩]
  3. “I stay at strangers’ houses. If somebody tries to serial kill me, I’m going to yell, “I love Jesus!” while they do it and then I’ll be a martyr. Jackpot.” [↩]
  4. If you’ll excuse me paraphrasing Robin Williams in Hook. [↩]
  5. Happy octave of my birthday to me! [↩]
  6. Philippians 1:21 [↩]

30 Lessons from My First 30 Years

Tomorrow I turn thirty. And as I wrap up my thirtieth year ex utero, I’m feeling remarkably wise and mature–or at least blessed to follow a God who teaches me the same lesson over and over and over until I mostly get it. I’m not who I should be, but (praise God!) I’m not who I was. Here are the most important things I’m still trying to learn:

  1. If Jesus is God, that changes everything. Everything in your life has to look different because you (all of you, without exception) are loved beyond reason by Love himself.
  2. Jesus is God.
  3. The mercy of God is nowhere more evident than in the confessional. Go to confession. You have nothing to lose but your sin and your shame. You have everything to gain.
  4. There is nothing you can do to make God stop loving you and aching for you. He went to hell and back for you. He’d do it again.
  5. Prayer works.
  6. There’s never a good reason not to be kind.
  7. Kind is not the same as nice.
  8. God’s plan is always better.
  9. Bad prayer is better than no prayer.
  10. It’s going to be okay. Not because everything’s going to work out and everyone you love is going to be happy and healthy but because there is more to this life than this life.
  11. “Life holds only one tragedy: not to have been a saint.”1
  12. I am all beautiful and beloved and there is no blemish in me.2
  13. Self-loathing is not humility.
  14. God is not good because of what he does but because of who he is.
  15. Jesus didn’t just die for me, he lived for me. Every moment of every day for me.
  16. If you’re too busy to pray, you’re too busy.
  17. There is great freedom in submission.
  18. Joy is not just a side effect of the Christian life, it is a duty.
  19. It’s all grace. Every good thing and every failure, too–grace.
  20. It doesn’t matter what people think. Only God matters.
  21. Nothing but sin merits shame.
  22. “The greatest love story of all time is contained in a tiny white Host.”3
  23. People are different. There’s no one way to be holy.
  24. If you ask God to teach you to trust, he might take you up on it. Buckle your seat belt.
  25. If your life isn’t built around prayer it’ll start to unravel.
  26. Men and women are different–and that really matters.
  27. “Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.”4
  28. Every life is a gift. There is no such thing as an unwanted child.
  29. I can’t save anyone–but I also can’t mess up so badly that they’re condemned. It’s just not about me.
  30. I am deeply, unceasingly loved by a God who sees me as I am and knows I can be better.

It might be tacky, friends, but I’m going to ask you for a birthday present. Will you go to confession tomorrow? My favorite thing in the world is convincing people to go to confession and odds are really good that your church has confession at some point tomorrow, probably right before the vigil. So go! Especially if it’s been a long time and it’s going to be an ugly one; that’s the best kind of confession. It’ll be the best present you ever gave me–even if I never know.5

And now, because nobody likes a blog post without a picture, here's me in front of a waterfall.
And now, because nobody likes a blog post without a picture, here’s me in front of a waterfall.

Also, you might be a hobo if your plans for the next 8 months look something like this:

Through MayBroadly, anyway. Google Maps wouldn’t let me have more than 25 destinations.

  1. Leon Bloy [↩]
  2. Sgs 4:7 [↩]
  3. Ven. Fulton Sheen [↩]
  4. C.S. Lewis [↩]
  5. But you should tell me. What a great birthday–all filled with emails and comments telling me people across the world are being washed in the blood of the Lamb!! [↩]

Birthday Blessings

September birthdays are awkward. They’re at the beginning of the school year, so you don’t know quite who your friends are this year. Or you’re at a new school and nobody knows it’s your birthday. Or maybe you’re (I’m) just an awkward person. For whatever reason, my birthdays are often anticlimactic: the day in high school when not one person remembered; the party I threw for myself while I was teaching that almost nobody could come to; the cafeteria chow mein I celebrated with my last year in Kansas. Much like New Year’s Eve, my birthday just doesn’t live up to the hype.

For some people, birthdays are about cotton candy. I want to be friends with those people.

So a few years back, I started to look at my birthday a different way. Instead of spending the day getting other people to celebrate me (which I’m not averse to), I try to take a good chunk of time with the Lord to look at what he’s done in my life over the past year.

For some people, birthdays are about presents or parties or long phone calls with faraway friends. For me, they’re examens, days of gratitude and contrition and petition. The day I turned 20, I learned to be grateful for the suffering I’d endured that year. The day I turned 23, I was so overwhelmed by the blessings of the previous year, I asked God for fewer consolations. The day I turned 25, the Lord asked me to be his bride. These are days that stand out in stark relief against the confused background of my busy life.

Today I am 29—which seems much older than I could possibly be—and I am just so grateful. I wanted to take a moment to share the things I am most grateful for:

1. My vocation. More than anything else, I am so grateful that the Lord has called me to belong completely to him, to give him my undivided heart. The greatest joy of my life is the promise that I will be his bride. He has given me such a deep love for him—despite the nonsense that I try to fill my heart with—that I’m really beginning to hunger for him, to delight in him and to rest in him.

The day he called me—4 years ago today—I sobbed. I told him I would be his, but I “knew” I’d never be happy about it. But God is so much bigger than my shriveled little heart, and gradually it’s been swelling with love for him and his Church and his people until there’s so little room left for envy or anxiety. I almost don’t long for marriage any more. I almost don’t ache for children. I almost don’t worry about being alone. I almost don’t feel bitter. And each time I forget how enraptured I am by the gift of my vocation, he lifts my chin and gazes on me and I know—I know—that I am radiant with his beauty and captivating. I am so beautiful and so worthy–by his grace–and oh just so blessed to be his.

The more I love him, the more beautiful I am because he begins to shine through me. Most of the time I’m just little fallen me, but more and more I’m reminded of who I am in Him. More and more he draws my attention back to him and I fall in love again.

Marriage is so beautiful and so holy and such a blessing, but this? This is so me! This fits the joys and the struggles of my heart so perfectly—there’s nothing I would trade for this. Nothing.

2. My faith. I so very nearly wasn’t the person I’ve become. Everything good in my life is so clearly a product of grace. I am so grateful for having been chosen and claimed. It’s not just loving Christ that brings joy to my heart but knowing him, especially in the Eucharist. I’m so blessed to have been drawn into the Church and led to seek truth in his Word.

I was too cynical and too arrogant and too enamored of my own intelligence to  accept the truth of the Gospel. I’m still a self-important mess but–wonder of wonders–he’s given me the gift of faith. Every once in a while, I get a glimpse of the life I could have been living if not for his grace. I am so blessed.

3. My ministry. I haven’t written anything that wasn’t assigned since I was in grade school and I never would have started had it not been for the Lord—but I love this! I love expressing myself in this way and I love that my work is touching hearts.

But more than blogging, I’m so grateful to be able to travel and speak to such different groups of people. This week, I got to talk to a group of holy young women about discernment and my particular vocation and answer their questions. The next day, I was off to a youth group to talk about God’s desperate love for us. Yesterday, I presented on defending Christianity and the divinity of Christ. Then this morning, I met a young woman for coffee and an incredible conversation about discernment and prayer and mortifications and consecrated virginity.

I feel outrageously blessed that the Lord continues to use me with large groups and in one-on-one settings to speak his truth to souls. I’ve wanted to be a missionary since I was in high school and I’m so grateful that he knows how to use me best and that he’s entrusted some part of the mission of his Kingdom to my weak hands.

I am especially grateful that these kids put up with me.

4. My loved ones. I’ve mentioned before that I hate to be needy or burdensome. All this living out of my car and off the generosity of others? It’s really hard for me. But I’m surrounded by beautiful people who are so gracious, people who don’t think they’re doing me a favor by letting me stay with them—people who even ask me to stay longer and longer still. They offer prayers and spare rooms and graphic design and introductions—and they’re happy to do it! It’s so humbling to be so well loved by so many amazing people.

5. You! I can’t believe I have so many subscribers (almost 500)! I’m so grateful to you for reading my posts and sharing or liking or commenting. Thank you for praying for me, for offering a place to stay, and for helping out financially. Thank you especially to those who’ve invited me to come speak! God is continuing to surround me with generous people who are so willing to help me even if we’ve never met and I’m so blessed by all of you.

 

This year, I got the rug pulled out from underneath me—again. After 15 years of wanting to be in the classroom until the day I died, the Lord asked me to teach in a new way. After a lifetime of wanting roots and stability, he called me to drop everything and follow with nothing but a walking stick. He is providing, as he always does. He is blessing me, as he always does. And he is holding me close and drawing my heart gradually, gently, with such tender love. I just—I can’t—friends, there aren’t even words. I am so blessed. Praise God with me.