My Silly Fears vs Doing God's Will

Last week I was offered a job by a priest and I ended up doing something I never thought I'd do: I declined it. The girl who wants to eventually get her Masters in Theology... who loves going to adoration and daily Mass... who fangirls over seeing nuns and priests in places like Disneyland... that girl declined to work in a place where she'd be content.

Before you ask why this is a big deal, please refer back to my post about being apprehensive about taking a job and entering a field that was not fully immersed in the Church; a "secular" job. It was written right before I "bit the bullet" and decided (almost impulsively) to apply to Utah State's Communicative Disorders and Deaf Education program. I used to think that if I didn't have a job doing something related to Catholicism, I would be in danger of being pulled away. It was silly but I'd seen too many people fall away easily.

I spent the first 7 years of my reversion (late summer 2006 through autumn 2013) wanting to be completely immersed in Catholicism. I didn't really want to do anything else. However, I was stuck. That isn't to say that the Church and my Faith has kept my back; it was my own lack of trust of God and my own silly fears that kept me from moving forward. Then (with a lot of help from my spiritual director) I decided to let go and to trust God. "Okay, Lord, you want me to do this? I'll do it," has been my motto over the past couple of months... and especially over the last couple of weeks.

As I shared with y'all, I failed my first couple of exams when I started the COMD (that's the nickname we use) program last month. I over-studied for one class and I didn't study well enough for another. I wasn't the only one; those of us newbies who don't have a background in linguistics were (and still are) struggling. However, as much as it stung for this self-described academic nerd, I am still grateful because it only fueled the fire to do well. I could've easily said "well, I tried... this isn't for me" or "I should've stuck to Theology." I could've withdrawn from my courses right then and there since it was still early enough in the semester to do so... but I didn't. I didn't want to quit because I feel such a wonderful peace and happiness when I am doing my coursework. No matter how hard my courses may be (and they are hard; I didn't blog for weeks because of difficult exams/midterms I had to study for), I'm sure I'm doing what God wants me to do so I keep fighting.

The job offer came the week before my difficult Chemistry exam. For those who know me, y'all know that science (and math!) and I don't get along. At all. Those had been my biggest weak spots as a student from junior high until the end of my first Bachelor's degree. The thought "well, if I fail this thing spectacularly, it'll be a sign that maybe I'm not in the right field after all" popped up but I wasn't convinced. While it would have been a dream come true to get this job offer up until a few months ago, it doesn't feel right anymore. I still feel an immense love for the Church but having a job at a parish is not where I'm meant to be at the moment.

At the risk of sounded boastful (which I'm really not trying to do), I have never had to really work hard for desired grades. Everything came easy to me... but it took me these first 7 weeks in the COMD program to realize that it was all easy for me because I didn't have to push myself. I was coasting; I did things that didn't really challenge me in any way out of fear. The same could've been said for my spiritual life. I lived in fear (which produced anxiety) and that was what kept me in my "comfort zone"; it kept me from moving forward.

Having to let go of my silly fears and learning to have complete trust in God (even when I'm not sure of what He has in store for me) hasn't been easy. I know I've said this a lot over the last couple of weeks but it's still very true. Part of what I had to let go of was my fear of not having a job that was connected to Catholicism in any obvious way. "Okay, Lord... you want me to do this? I'll do it."

While I was studying Chemistry last week (and Anatomy... and Speech Communications in previous weeks), I came to realize just how amazing God is in ways I never really considered. Instead of being grossed out in anatomy (yeah, I don't do blood and guts too well), I've been able to see how amazing the human body really is. Instead of just learning how to help children speak, I've seen how incredible babies are and how they begin their understanding of language from the moment they're born (or even while still in the womb, according to some scientists). Instead of just learning what formulas were needed for conversion, I was able to see how even the smallest atom has an important role in His creation. Who said Catholicism and science can't be friends? ;)

So, yes, I did turn down a job that would have me in a happy, comfortable place... but it's because I don't believe it's what God wants for me. (side note: before you ask me, no, I can't do both right now. The program I'm in is too intense and requires most of my time.) I'm no longer going for comfort due to fears or my selfish wants. I'm doing what God wants from me, even if that means I'll get challenged in ways I never imagined. For me, that currently means enduring an intense program so that I can help others. If God gave me the gift of patience (which seems nonexistent when I drive sometimes, lol), the ability to hold babies and little children's attentions (baby magnet *points to self*), and a great desire to and love of helping others, I think I'm entering the right field. A rose from St. Therese of Lisieux on her feast day, an acceptance letter to the COMD program on St. Teresa of Avila's feast day, and an overwhelming sense of peace can't be wrong. ;)

So, final score (sorry, World Cup on my mind): Emmy's silly fears: 0 and Doing God's will: 1... just as it should always be. :D

Alright, I need to go finish cleaning up my desk before I study for one of my COMD courses. :)

I hope y'all have been well. Keep sending me those prayer requests; I've gotten to them all thus far. ;)

As always, thanks for reading and God bless! :D

My View, Vol. 4: Adoration

This morning I took my mom to a new church (new to her, not to me). The last time I was there, I went with my friend Delaney for confession and ended up getting some Adoration time in before we left. I've always felt so at peace there that I'd been trying to get mom there for the past couple of months. Since mom is on vacation, I was finally able to take her and it was so worth it. She loved it. You can't see the whole thing (the room is so small and Instagram likes to crop pictures anyway) but, trust me, it's lovely. We spent some time there before really starting our day. They've begun celebrating Latin Masses at this particular parish (once per month) so we'll be back sometime soon. :) And that's my view for the week.

For more views, check out the link up at The Corner with a View.

I hope y'all have a blessed weekend. :D

As always, thanks for reading and God bless. :D

What I Learned Wednesday #33: Trust, St. Catherine of Genoa, and a Chaplet

I know, I haven't written in over a week. I have at least one major exam per week and a ton of reading and homework to do so that's my excuse. lol. Sorry but I'm basically doing grad level work (or so I was told) in my pre-grad program so I don't have a lot of free time. I'm making time for this post though. :)

So what have I learned since my last WILW post?

I

I've been trying to let things go and trying to trust God more. As someone who has suffered from anxiety disorder since she was 15 years old (almost half of my life thus far), it's been hard to not worry or to not try to do everything possible in order to not get a bad experience. A lot of times I want to revert to my old self because it's safe and comfortable but I don't. I'm not letting anxiety get the best of me anymore. I still get anxiety from time to time (and it's been a particular pain in the tush the past two days) but I've learned (thanks to both my spiritual director and my PTSD therapist) to stop it in its tracks so that I don't get derailed. While I'm driving or out, anxiety begins to creep out for whatever reason but I take a deep breath and say "nope, not this time; Lord, I trust in You" and keep going on with whatever I was doing. My SD has been drilling this idea (to let go and trust God despite what I may be feeling) into my head for months now and it's finally sticking. That's nearly 13 years old fears and terrible habits that I'm undoing. I still have a long way to go but I know I'll get there with the help of God, my SD, and some saintly intercessions. :)

Lesson (is being) learned: It's better to simply trust God instead of trying to control outcomes and/or worrying about things that may or may not happen.

II

I'll admit that I haven't read much on St. Catherine of Genoa just yet but what I have learned about her has hit really close to home. Not to say that I endured what she did through a husband (I've never been married) but I've had someone in my life who reminds me of her husband. Without going into detail, I will say that it was not a romantic relationship and that the actions and his later conversion of St. Catherine's husband reminded me so much of that of person. Furthermore, her own personal interior struggles in letting her spiritual director "in" is something I've been working through with my own (very patient and wonderful) spiritual director. This goes back to the whole issue of my learning to trust God. I'm not there yet but I'm slowly getting there. As I said earlier this month, I had never heard of her before the dream I had but I'm so happy that she came up when she did.

Lesson learned: we can learn a lot from the lives of saints. I also have a new saint who inspires me to keep working hard towards my goal of living a more saintly life... and wearing my mantilla more often. St. Catherine of Genoa is a patron for those who are ridiculed for their piety so it works.

III

As I mentioned in my last 7 Quick Takes post, I recently learned about the Chaplet of St. Michael the Archangel and I absolutely love it. The chaplet is a bit different than the Chaplet of the Divine Mercy (which I actually prayed before I finished writing this blog post) but it's so lovely. I love the idea of having an escort of nine angels chosen from each of the nine Choirs accompanying me when receiving Holy Communion. Did you know that was attached to this chaplet? Well, now you do! I have yet to figure out when I will be able to do this (because my day is mostly spent studying/reading) but you can bet that I'm going to try to get into the habit of reciting this chaplet daily.

Lesson learned: there are still a lot of great chaplets, novenas, and prayers out there and all are worth giving a shot. Also, I've inherited my mother's love of angels. 

Well, that's it for now. I need to get back to the salt mines.

I hope y'all are having a great week thus far. 

As always, thanks for reading and God Bless! :D

I Smiled When I Failed

I failed twice in a row and I'm absolutely grateful that I did. That probably sounds weird, doesn't it? I should probably explain my mentality behind this...

As most of you know, I've been back in school for three weeks now. I've had major tests for three of my five courses, with the fourth major exam coming up next week. I've studied to the point where my head aches and my hand hurts from all the note taking. I've given up all socializing so that I can spend my entire day studying. I aced my first exam on Morphology with a 97%. I was so excited. I took my Phonetic test an hour later... and failed. 68%. Ouch. I only had (less than) 24 hours to cram 123 terms for my anatomy exam yesterday. I spent hours doing it. I made my own flashcards (yes, hand wrote all 100+ of them). I went over them a number of times and managed to memorize most of them. Unfortunately, the exam covered most of what I didn't manage to memorize. Of course. 67%. Ouch again. Instead of feeling like a failure, I smiled and shrugged it off. Do you want to know why? No, not because I don't care (the overachiever in me isn't thrilled)... or because I've lost my mind. I did it because I've been trying to trust God more... and that includes being okay with failing once in a while.

I'll be honest here: the reasons why I passed one test but not the other two were very simple: I didn't manage my time right and I overstudied. Boy, did I overstudy. I learned from the gals in the post-baccalaureate program that my professors tend to pick exam questions based mostly on the lectures they give (which I did watch); that reading the textbook is pretty useless. Guess where I focused most of my studying on for one course: the textbook. I had way too much information crammed into my brain that I didn't actually need, which I'm sure meant I confused a couple of things on the exams. Okay, so that's out for next time. Also, I needed more time to study the anatomy terms. I thought I was going to have at least three full days to study for it; I only had less than 12 hours to do it because important things popped up and I simply had no time to study like I wanted. Problems identified and solutions planned.

So, again, why the smiling? Because I saw the whole thing as a metaphor for my life: I've had a lot of "tests" in my life that I've failed but I've always managed to overcome them with the help of God. I handled certain situations in my late teens and early 20s very poorly. Did I give up? No. Did God give up on me when I was being a rotten brat? Nope. When you love something (or someone), you don't give up on it (or them) easily. We as human beings continually fail at doing little things. That's why we have the wonderful Sacrament of Reconciliation. It doesn't mean that we're failures; it just means we have to work a little harder where we have weaknesses. (For the record: the thing that will continuously land me in the confessional is being not completely nice when I feel I'm put into danger by reckless drivers. I don't cuss but... sarcastic remarks can border on my being a brat with lack of charitable words.)

By the way, if you're asking if I prayed to St. Joseph of Cupertino that I pass my exams, I did. Yes, I certainly did... but he's not going to intercede for me if I don't put more of an effort into it. He actually did come through for me with Morphology so he gets props for that! I'm actually happy I didn't miraculously pass because I didn't deserve to pass. I needed to fail so that I could find a better plan of attack for the next couple of exams. I'm not going to give up on finding new ways to memorize things for certain classes, especially now that I have an idea of what the professors add on the exams. Am I going to be bugging the Holy Spirit for a clearer mind for the rest of my program (until May 1st, 2015)? You bet! I'm sure the Holy Spirit and a couple of saints won't mind if I spent a little more time in prayer, asking for their intercession. It'll be a better use of my time than studying things I won't need in exams ;)

I've never been as happy studying as I have been these past three weeks. I've actually caught myself smiling when working on lecture notes, when my hand is cramping and I have to pause the lecture video. I have a real passion for this subject; much more than I ever anticipated. Sure, the work is hard (um, hello, I failed two exams... and I wasn't the only one who tanked them either according to classmates) but I absolutely love it. Even if it means I'm going to have to work even harder, I don't care. I've never felt more sure of my path in life than I do now. I do have moments of doubt ('cause you-know-who loves sneaking those in when you least expect it), but I am trusting God with my path. If I don't end up passing my courses, despite all my best efforts, it's because I'm meant for another path... and I will let God lead me down that path. Still, I feel like this is where I'm supposed to be and I will work as hard as necessary to make sure I achieve my goal (which is a Masters degree in Communicative Disorders aka Speech-Language Pathology). A little hard work never hurt anyone. :)

And that's where I'm currently at. I do have a ton of homework and a big exam for this week and into next week but I will hopefully have a little more free time now that I've figure out what works (less textbook, more lectures) and what doesn't (overstudying textbooks).

Anyway, that's all I wanted to share today. I still have another 20 minutes left of lecture to get through and I want to at least get the notes done tonight so that I can go over them a couple of times before my exam next Tuesday. :) I will try to blog tomorrow but we'll see how I am with time. :)

I hope y'all have been well! If you have any prayer requests, feel free to send them my way. I'm still praying and doing novena despite all the studying I've been doing. ;)

As always, thanks for reading and God bless. :D

7 Quick Takes Vol. 17: Study Breaks and Saint Dreams Edition

-- 1 --

I hope y'all enjoyed doing the St. Dymphna novena that was posted over the last couple of days. I failed to post the link to day 8 on the FB page but I know y'all knew the posts were still posted daily as I scheduled them ahead of time. ;) As I posted on the page, the Mary Undoer of Knots novena started yesterday via Pray More Novenas. If you haven't started it, there's still time. It's one of my all-time favorites and quite powerful.

-- 2 --

Speaking of the FB page, I've been more active on it because it's sometimes easier to get certain content seen than on Twitter. That and I'm trying to stay away from Twitter during the day. lol. I use Twitter for everything, not just Catholic content. I try to keep the content on the FB page purely Catholic so, in case you want more of that, please consider "liking" the page. ;)

-- 3 -- 

I can't believe my debut novel has been out for two weeks today... and it's still selling! That's still kind of crazy to me. Did you know that if you have Amazon Prime you can also "borrow" it? Seriously, I'm not about making money (and I would host a giveaway if it wasn't my contract with Amazon to not give it away); I just want young women (and fellas) to have something else to read that doesn't contain smut or any of the other problematic issues other novels have. The characters are flawed and they don't always make the best decisions but parents don't have to worry about their teenagers reading about "sexy times" or other questionable things. I personally like the sequel better but you need to read the debut to make sense of the second one. ;)

-- 4 --

As some of you might've seen on Twitter and the FB page, last week I had a very interesting saint dream. Basically, there were three saints: St. Catherine of Genoa, St. Catherine of Siena, and Bl. Pier Giorgio. Bl. PGF is a veteran (in terms of the number of appearances in my dreams) but it was the first appearance of both St. Catherine of Genoa and St. Catherine of Siena. I had actually never heard of St. Catherine of Genoa prior to the dream so the fact that she popped up was interesting. It's kind of how it happened with St. Teresa of Avila upon my reversion. Anyway, in the dream I had a sense of St. Catherine of Genoa wanting to help me, but I was unclear as to how. Then St. Catherine of Siena and Bl. PGF were there, by my side, because they were also going to help as well. I figured out what St. Catherine of Genoa is patroness of and it still amuses me because I'm currently trying to figure out a situation pertaining to my vocation. No clue what it means but I still laugh over the coincidence. lol.

-- 5 -- 

And while on the topic of the dream and coincidences, I figured out two very cool real life coincidences connected to the dream. First: Did you know that the female protagonist in my novel, Lina (Catalina), was named after St. Catherine of Alexandria... who appeared to St. Joan of Arc in real life? Yep. Guess who was born of St. Joan of Arc's feast day? This girl! I didn't even realize that until last week. Funny! Also, it just dawned on me that both St. Catherine of Siena and Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati (who appeared in my dream) are both Dominican saints... and I'm looking into becoming a lay Dominican. Loving the connections. ;)

-- 6 --

Update from my studies: I am drowning in the amount of reading, assignments, and exams I have to do on a weekly basis. :( So far I have all possible points in most classes (I got a 9/10 in one assignment for one class) but it's hard to maintain near perfect grades. One of my professors is allowing us to do quizzes an unlimited number of times because of how dense the material is and how much of it we have to memorize. I have two big exams coming up (one tomorrow and the other -- harder! -- on Monday morning) so I'm taking tonight through Monday morning to step away from social networks to really immerse myself in the material. I knew the program was intense (as will the grad school program; I'm in the post-baccalaureate program) but, goodness, I didn't know it was going to be this bad. I have 5 courses, too! I'll just offer it up. This is something I really want to do so I will work hard in order to achieve it. A little (or a lot) of hard work never hurt anyone. No, shush, let me believe that. lol.

-- 7 --

There's really not much to report on. My days are filled with lectures, note taking, reading, etc. I have been keeping up my daily prayers (except last Sunday morning; oops!) and I'm trying hard to examine my conscience on a daily basis so that I'm aware of my actions. Hopefully the Undoer of Knots novena I'm doing will help with that. Oh! And, thanks to Thomas Pringle, I learned about the Chaplet of St. Michael the Archangel! I knew about the scapular (blue and black; looks like a shield) but had no idea the chaplet was so good! :D I'm going to incorporate that (along with the Chaplet of the Divine Mercy) when I take my study breaks. Need to do prayer in between study to keep myself sane. lol.

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

That's it for now. I need to go pick mom up from work and then turn in an assignment early (doing everything early this week) so I can focus on studying for my exams for the rest of the weekend. I hope y'all are doing well!

As always, thanks for reading and God bless! :D