Whittling Down Pride

Ask anyone who knows me: I’m terrible at asking and receiving help. I have to be quite desperate to ask for help. It has all the coloring of pride but part of that has been learned. 

From an early age, I was taught to never ask for help. If I needed something, I had to work for it myself. Asking for help was seen as a weakness… or an opportunity for someone else to later ask for a favor in return. It was all about control. Either I control the outcome or someone else controls it for me. So, as you can imagine, becoming blind was incredibly hard for me. 

I am incredibly grateful to God for restoring enough of my eyesight so that I’m not 100% dependent on someone else for all my needs… but I still need help to do a lot of things. I can’t cook for myself because I don’t have either depth perception or enough clarity in eyesight to not potentially burn myself. Same with using a sharp knife. I can’t pour myself anything because I’ll spill it — either liquid or solid. I can’t get around without help from someone (or my new “white cane”). Obviously, I can no longer drive. The list goes on but you get the picture. 

Becoming visually impaired has been life-changing, and not just because I’ve had to radically change my lifestyle. Yes, I’ve had to learn new ways of doing physical things but the best changes have been (and continue to be) internal. 

I’ve had to swallow my pride and ask for help, something that I’m still learning to do. I’ve had to keep working on undoing a lifetime (so far) of the negative and erroneous thoughts I’ve associated with the word “help.” I’m still a work in progress and I probably will be for a very long time but I’m trying. On some days it’s easier and on other days I’m in the front seat of the struggle bus. 

One of the best experiences and lessons of humility in this area was my trip to Clear Creek Abbey. It was the first (and, really) only time I didn’t feel like a total burden to someone. I had let my Oblate sister (with whom I traveled) know of my limitations and the things I needed help with. I felt embarrassed but I knew I couldn’t do most things on my own. She showed me what it was to love someone as Christ loves us; to help someone out of charity (in the best sense of the word) and friendship. It helped me realize that allowing people to help me was a form of giving as well — a chance for them to serve me as they would Christ, which could be seen as a gift I was giving them in return. 

I’ve only recently received my white cane because my health insurance refused to cover the expense for it… or for  Orientation and Mobility Training (OMT) which I’m currently saving up to pay for myself. In the meantime, I’m going to use it however I can… and try to not let it make me feel weak or ashamed for the help I may need. I hate feeling like a burden or a nuisance to anyone. I especially hate feeling like I’m attracting attention (it’s an anxiety trigger in me) which the cane will undoubtedly bring. But, like I said, I know God will use it to further whittle away my pride even further and give me the opportunity to love others by allowing them to help me. 

Just a few thoughts I wanted to share with y’all on this Ember Friday. 

I hope y’all are having a fruitful Lent so far… and, if you’re not, that the Lord uses this time to help you get closer to the person He wishes you to be. 

As always, thanks for reading and God bless. 

 

I’m Coming Back Home

I’m coming back home. 

It’s still in the early days but, man, does it feel good to be back. 

I don’t even know what to attribute this new page to. Everyone’s prayers. Bl. Carlo Acutis and St. Therese playing tag-team in the last week; all those roses from St. Therese… with her name on them! A fellow consecrated virgin “in training” (we started our discernment two months apart and she’s also ahead of me in the formal process). The Holy Spirit using everyone and everything… the list can go on and on. The important thing is that I’m coming out of that spiritual desert I’d been trying to survive in.

I first noticed it about two weeks ago but only told my spiritual director about it since I’ve been sharing everything I’ve wrestled with in recent months. Even if I don’t tell anyone else, he gets all the good and bad because he’s helping guide me through this discernment process and it’s so important that he helps me figure out if I’m truly called to the vocation of consecrated virginity lived in the world. But this blog post isn’t about that. It’s about the journey I’ve had these past couple of months. 

I’ve already written about how difficult it’s been. It was the most spiritually arduous thing I’ve had to go through since my reversion in 2006. I saw habitual sins I thought I’d seen the last of in 2008 pop up once again. I found myself reliving a lot of things I’d dealt with pre-reversion. For the first time in over 15 years, I found myself re-living some of the desires and aspirations that the world was offering me prior to me choosing my current path. 

It almost seemed like God was saying, “this is your last chance to live and experience this before you make a life-long commitment. This is what the world offers you. You can be ‘happy’ and you can feel ‘joy’ but it’s all fleeting. You will always be left feeling empty at the end of the day.” I jokingly told my SD it felt like a “Catholic rumspringa” — a last chance to experience things away from the Church before committing myself to it. (side note for those not familiar with what Rumspringa is: in a nutshell, it’s when Amish youth are allowed to live in our modern world so they can decide whether to be baptized in their church or stay out in the world.) 

But the thing is that I was never really away from the Church. I didn’t *feel* it — I didn’t feel close to God, I I didn’t want to pray, and I felt completely numb to everything faith-related — but I kept going. I kept praying. I kept my promises as a Benedictine Oblate. I slipped in other areas of my life but I kept these things even when I was sleep deprived or feeling so sick that I just wanted to sleep through my regular hours. 

It wasn’t until I was coming out that I realized that I was showing my love for God by staying faithful to the promises I’d already made. I’ve already written some of this in the previous blog post so I won’t repeat all of it. Let’s just say that I’m grateful for that journey because it showed me that I could do it — stay as faithful as I can and even make that life-long commitment if Archbishop Gómez agrees that God is calling me to this vocation. 

And that’s saying a lot since those close know I’m incredibly indecisive and am often nervous of committing to something so permanent because I’m afraid of messing up or choosing wrong. But, by doing that, I wasn’t trusting God. It’s not about what *I* can do on my own but what God can do in and through me; what I can do with the graces He gives me. 

There have been three major things that have also helped:

• the daily Mass
• the chaplet of Divine Mercy
• being completely honest and vulnerable with my SD

I’ve unfortunately not been able to get to daily Mass but that doesn’t mean I’m not getting my daily Mass dose. I watch it streaming every day. I figured that simply because I can’t get to one (yet!) doesn’t mean I have to be completely devoid of it. I have my hour (or longer on Sundays) carved out to myself. Even if my neighbors are being their usually noisy selves, I can see enjoy the Mass and sing the hymns. Even if I can’t receive the Eucharist, I can still receive spiritual communion. And this is where my fellow “CV in training” comes in. 

I saw how on fire and in love with Christ she is. It is very inspiring to see. While the temptation for jealousy and comparison was (and is) there, my mind didn’t go there. Instead, I was reminded of how I was in that same position pre-pandemic / pre-health crises. I went to my last daily Mass the Friday before Los Angeles went into lockdown. I was attending daily Mass at least 3x per week (if not more). I went even when I wasn’t feeling my best; when I was already showing signs of an adrenal insufficiency, which I didn’t know about at the time. If it wasn’t for the lockdowns, my emergency gallbladder surgery two months later, the adrenal crises that could’ve been fatal that summer, and the eventual loss of my eyesight, I think I would’ve kept up my routine. 

When I reached that realization, I had a moment of desperation. I wrestled with the idea of playing the bargaining game with God. You know, “If you restore my eyesight, I promise I will try to…” That’s such a dangerous game to play and I’m glad the Holy Spirit was there to remind me not to go there. So, I decided to do the next best thing and stream the daily Mass. I haven’t missed a single one in the last week or so and the changes are very noticeable in that tiny period of time. 

As much as I would’ve loved to have stayed on the path I was on, I still truly believe that I was meant to go through it to grow from it. If I hadn’t walked, stumbled through, cried through, crawled through the desert, i wouldn’t be where I am now. I needed to mature in my spiritual life while being reminded of the good parts of myself that I’d lost over the years. And I’m not even fully there yet. I have a lot of work to do, but I’m going at a slower pace than normal because rushing rarely leads to anything good.

So, that’s where I am right now. I’m coming back home. I’m taking it one day at a time. If I stumble, I seek God’s hand to stand up once again. I’ll keep moving forward. 

Anyway, I just wanted to share that. 

As I mentioned on social media a few weeks ago, I’m taking a short break from writing articles due to my eyesight getting worse lately. That doesn’t mean I’m not working — I’m still busy with my fourth novel — but at least I don’t have the worries of a weekly deadline or pushing myself too much when I know I need to rest. I hope to return to writing in a couple of weeks, once I get an update on how my vision has progressed? regressed, or stalled. You can bet I’m doing frequent novenas to Bl. Carlo in the meantime. 

I hope y’all are doing well and that you’ll be ready for Lent next week (!!!). 

As always, thanks for reading and God bless! 

Oh, My Love!

Every consecrated virgin’s journey is different, even if all end up having the blessing of calling Christ their Spouse. While I’m not (yet) one, my journey has also been a unique one. 

Some CVs (and religious, for that matter) never dated. I did. I was in a relationship with one guy for almost two years. I was proposed to, twice. As I’ve already mentioned in previous posts, there was someone in my life at the time when I could no longer deny that I was being called to properly discern this vocation. I didn’t date a lot (at least not by modern standards) but I dated enough to know that I really didn’t like it. 

A former spiritual director dissuaded me from making the choice to stay single at an earlier age because of how I disliked dating. We had that conversation when I was in my 20s. He said it was a necessary evil if I wanted to be sure of my vocation. I think it was the best advice I could’ve been given (at the time) because I had to really date with the right mind frame (dating with purpose instead of dating for fun) to know that what my heart longed for was much greater than what I was finding. 

And this is not me throwing dirt on the guys I dated. Some of the guys were really great. Some weren’t the best but they helped me grow as a person and for that I’m grateful. One left me with wounds that took time to heal, but they healed. All made me appreciate the vocation of marriage as a Sacrament, rooted in Christ. 

This journey has not been easy as I am still human and one who feels things deeply at that. It would be dishonest for me to say that I’ve had no temptations to stop the discernment along the way. There have been two very rough periods in the discernment that I seriously questioned continuing. It’s something I didn’t share with anyone but SD and one of my best friends at the time. That and I’ve always been notoriously private about things until I’m ready to talk about them in the past tense. 

Thankfully, I was able to quickly see it for what it was (a temptation) and was able to move from it through prayer and honest vulnerability. That promptly quashed the thoughts and feelings and that is how I’ve learned to place distance and add more prayer during these situations. The enemy knows my weak point as a sensitive, emotional person who feels things deeper than most. Getting me to feel things deeply is one of (if not *the*) the easiest ways to derail me from this path, even if it’s just a slight detour. It’s something I’ve learned (and keep learning) how to best manage through prayer and unreserved honesty with my spiritual director  

There is one thing that is certain: no matter what (or who) has come up in the last 2+ years of this discernment journey, the conclusion is always the same: I’m not called to marriage and no one will be able to fulfill that longing in my heart but Christ. That has been made abundantly clear. I’m not called to be a wife. I’m not called to biological or adoptive motherhood either, though I am quite maternal and love children. Furthermore, the desire I once had for marriage and a family of my own have been replaced by a desire to do what I can for others, on a larger scale — a larger family than an immediate one. I cannot imagine myself not being there for anyone who needs me, even if that person tries to take out their pain and frustration on me in the process. 

I don’t have much to add beyond that. I’m still coming out of the spiritual desert so I’m not going to write anything I don’t feel (have we established I’m an emotional person? lol) and I’m afraid the logical parts won’t be worth writing/reading. 

I mean… well, I guess I could give it a go… I’m not used to writing unless I feel it so let’s see how it goes…

Though I don’t currently *feel* it, I know that no earthly man will ever make me happy like Christ will. No marriage is perfect and all have their crosses and a mystical one with Christ won’t be too different. The only difference is I’m such a sinful creature and am 1000% not worthy of being called His bride while He is the perfect Spouse. I won’t have someone there with me to help me carry the crosses I don’t feel strong enough to carry by myself, but I know that God will provide the help I need when I need it. While I struggle with the feeling of loneliness (yes, even as an introvert), I know that I have a greater community and support system that will be there when I need them. Logically, I know that I’ll be okay and that God will give me the graces necessary to fulfill my vocation and provide whatever else I may need. I don’t currently *feel* it. And that’s okay.

 I don’t have to feel to know. I know, big words from little Miss Sensitive over here. Lol. I haven’t spent the last 2 years and 3 months going solely on feeling. Yes, there have been strong feelings of love and consolation but God is allowing me to live part of this discernment process in the spiritual desert to remind me that I don’t *have to* feel to know that Christ is the only Spouse I’ll ever need. Despite not currently feeling it, I know that this vocation journey has made me sure (as certain as I can be without the official ceremony having taken place) that I voluntarily choose Him as my Spouse and that I choose to give up a possibility of marriage and family for a love greater than I will probably ever understand. I choose to love others and help others see Christ, as His most unworthy bride. I choose to die to myself and give my selfish wants and desires for the Kingdom and His greater glory. 

And that’s how I’m ending this post. It wasn’t exactly what I had originally planned to write but that’s what came out. 

And sorry if the that last long paragraph was a bit of a downer but, like I said, I wrote it from a place of understanding and peace (after years of prayers and discernment) as opposed to feeling. 

For those who are celebrating St. Valentine’s Day with a significant other: I hope you have a wonderful day with your special person.

For those who are celebrating with friends and/or family: hooray for love in all its forms! Enjoy the day!

For those who are longing for a spouse or are nursing a broken heart: this feeling isn’t forever. Pray for your future spouse or for the one who is no longer in your life. 

No matter how or even if you’re celebrating the day, I hope it’s a lovely one and that are reminded of His eternal love. 

As always, thanks for reading and God bless! 

A Month That Has Left Me Empty

 What I anticipated the first month of the year to look like:

• a more relaxed January after a lovely but hectic end of the previous year 
• my prayer life not being as packed with end of multiple long-term novenas (9 month novena & 54-day Rosary novena) and consecration (Marian & Divine Mercy) and oblate promises renewal. 

What actually happened:

• first hospital (emergency room) trip in 14+ months due to the aftermath of a digestive issue (which has not resolved as of yet) and the fears of a possible adrenal crisis (which can be fatal if not addressed quickly) or sepsis
• The lowest point of the spiritual aridity I’ve been experiencing for the last couple of months
• Being completely inactive for weeks because of how much this relapse has knocked me down
• My eyesight once again worsening for the first time since almost completely losing it in late 2020

As I’ve already said on both my Instagram (@lapetitefleurmariale) and Twitter (@MelissaCeciliaG) accounts, this has been a rough month for me… but it’d been building up for months. 

I’ve been dealing with a lot of things, internally, that I hadn’t shared with others. 

The loss of one of my best friends. 

Seeing someone I love deteriorate before my eyes due to their long-time battle with depression and feeling helpless when they refused help. 

Noticing the decline in my eyesight in recent weeks but hoping it was nothing that would last this long. 

Then we have the spiritual battles.

Unable to get to Mass and/or confession in the last 3 months due to health, lack of transportation, and other factors outside my control. 

No desire to pray. Zero. Not being able to concentrate or even pay attention due to an easily distracted mind. 

Feeling absolutely stagnant in and not even wanting to continue my vocation discernment. 

Feeling completely disconnected from God and my faith. 

I could go on and on but you get the gist. All of this seems to have hit me all once — this month — but I know it’s been building up for some time. I was just trying to push it to the side until I couldn’t anymore. 

Since I couldn’t do much — and slept so much when I was really struggling, physically — I ended up discovering my new favorite show… and binge watched it (twice!) in 3 weeks-ish and that brought some enjoyment but it still wasn’t the same. (For the record: the show only had 2 seasons and a movie and I did a lot of fast forwarding and playing at 2x speed to get through parts I could’ve done without so it isn’t as bad as it sounds.) once I finished the show, I felt the void of having something bring me a little bit of relief from the desolation… but it was never the same. It still left me feeling empty. And numb. The show was just a temporary bandaid, not the cure. 

I don’t know what the cure is. I don’t know how I will get out of this spiritual funk… but this evening I had a little ray of sunlight I hadn’t seen in a long time. 

As I wrote on my IG post evening, “I’m not out of the spiritual desert yet… but I have hope that is starting to bring me some consolation.

I didn’t ask for the consolation. I didn’t ask God for anything…. & yet He let me know He was there even when I couldn’t feel Him. He showed me His love. He showed me I’m His beloved daughter. He showed me that what I was going through was a growing pain because I’d outgrown the spiritual state I was in & that had thrown me off since I’d gotten comfortable in that little bubble. He showed me that even if this desolation were to last for the rest of my life, I would be okay… because, despite what was being said & what I felt, I was still trying. 

I’ve kept up my prayer life — majority of Divine Office hours & daily Rosary — despite not feeling it. I’ve kept my promises as a Benedictine oblate as well as I could in my current state of life. I’ve not given up when it seemed like so many others had.

S

Like I said, I’m not out yet. I don’t expect this aridity to leave anytime soon… but I’m now willing & even maybe a little more prepared for the suffering that will endure. 

Like I said on the last blog post I wrote last year, St. Joan of Arc’s quote, “I’m not afraid. I was born to do this”, has once again “entered the chat” & will be my motto as I try to find the light in the darkness once again.”

So; that’s where I am right now. There is a little glimmer of hope. It’s teeny tiny, but it’s there. 

I truly do believe that this might be a spiritual growing pain, one I need to go through to get to whatever God has in store for me. Whether that is moving forward with my vocation discernment or “discerning out”… whether that is embracing a new way of life… or whether it’s something that will be even more life-changing than I expect, I don’t know. I just know that I will keep trying, even if the path is filled with tears, cuts, and bruises along the way. 

Social Media is a Lion’s Den But I’m No Sts. Perpetua & Felicity

As I was praying Prime this morning and meditating on Psalm 6:3 (“Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak: heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled”, Douay-Rheims) I had a very curious and random thought pop into my mind: the internet, specifically social media (especially Twitter), is like a Roman arena… and I’m guilty of being weak to its siren song. Well, the second part didn’t come until I prayed the Rosary after breakfast but it’s something that’s stuck with me. I know the psalm isn’t about this — it’s about mercy and how God loves us despite our weaknesses — but that’s what came to mind. 

I thought about how people use the internet to attack others and how those with more power and influence can utterly destroy the lives of others through it. I thought about the mob mentality that gets intense on Twitter. I thought about what I personally went through on the last day of the year for simply stating that superstitious traditions associated with the New Year go against Church teachings earned me verbal attacks and criticisms. I thought about how all those gossip accounts and websites report fodder for the masses, wasting our time. And I thought about how I’ve been guilty of falling into those traps. 

I’ve come to the conclusion that my love/hate relationship with social media comes from a combination of my want of privacy, my weakness when it comes to moderation, and all the bad things that happen on it. Of course I see the good: the friendships I’ve made through it, the growth I’ve made as a person, the good things I’ve learned… but the negative is what affects me the most and usually outweighs the good for me. 

I thought about Bl. Carlo Acutis (thanks to that funny yet not actually real tweet about a guy supposedly talking smack to him on an online gaming forum) and how he limited his time on things like gaming to do better things for the world. Actually, I think about that a lot since I’ve been wasting a lot more time online during the holidays. I thought about how prayers have become an afterthought during this time and how hard it’s going to be to get back into my prayer groove after 9 months of a specific novena routine and another 54-days of another novena routine. 

I actually cleaned up my Instagram feed quite a bit yesterday since that’s where I’m weakest. Yes, I know it’s funny that the place I’m most addicted to is a visual site while I’m visually impaired. lol. But I cleaned it up because I was spending way too much time on it and a majority of the accounts I was following were not good for me. They didn’t add anything good except some extra dopamine hits and it actually detracted from my spiritual life. Bl. Carlo’s example was like a bucket of ice water that woke me up from that (as I’m calling it) siren song. 

Then, as I mentioned in the beginning of this post, I thought about how social media is like an arena and we’re sent out to the lions… except we do it to ourselves. Those who imprison us are both those created the sites for making (and keeping) them as addicting as they are and ourselves for willingly using them. We’re social creatures so it’s natural for us to want to connect but I think a majority of the time we put too much of an emphasis on the online connections and we neglect those offline. 

I thought about how we Catholics and non-Catholic conservatives who don’t go to extremes are very likely going to become, in a way, white martyrs for professing our faith in the lion’s den that is the internet. The only thing is that I’m no Sts. Perpetua and Felicity. I may say what I say but I don’t have the courage they had to face that martyrdom. I log off. I hide. I don’t regret what I post but I also don’t stick around and that makes me feel like a coward in a way. There’s some great people who fight for and defend the Faith online and do it in a wonderful way that I could never do. That’s not my forte. I’m too sensitive for that. 

All of this is going to make me think long and hard about how I’ve used the internet and social media, how I’m currently using it, and how I want to continue using it from here on out. It’s going to be something that will undoubtedly take time for me to figure out as I’m still struggling with moderation when I’m not busy. 

And that concludes this year’s first blog post. lol. It’s not exactly what I had in mind but it’s something I felt like sharing.

I’m going to go ponder this a bit more and see what the Holy Spirit will help me figure out. 

I hope y’all had a lovely New Year’s Day and have a wonderful year! 

As a always, thanks for reading and God bless!