I Saw the Face of the Moon for the First Time in 2 Years

I saw the face of the moon for the first time in almost two years last night & it made me tear up. I couldn’t help saying, “What a beautiful gift God has given me on the vigil of Easter.”

My Lent was beautiful yet hard. God showed me that I’m not my sins & that the mistakes I had made didn’t mean I was unlovable or doomed. Instead He showed me that I’m still His beloved daughter & He would always be waiting for me with arms wide open, as the father did for the prodigal son. There will always be hope for me, no matter how arduous the spiritual desert might be. (Side note: I’m definitely completely out of it at this point & have been for weeks.)

God showed me that the parts of myself that I loved & thought were lost forever are still within me. I just have to not let the negativity & doubts keep me down. It’s easier said than done but some of the characteristics I rediscovered should help me along the way. 

He showed me what sins, vices, & (particularly) what root sin keep tripping me up. He made me completely aware of things I either didn’t see properly or tried to excuse; things that keep me from Him. I saw what my shortcomings are & how hard of an uphill battle I have for each of them. At the same time, He showed me how these things could be combated. These battles won’t be easy & it might be a lifelong struggle to get rid of some of them but it will be worth the hard work to win the war. 

I failed at some of my Lenten sacrifices (honestly, who didn’t this year?) but I found good things about myself in those failures. I saw that I’ve begun to grow & mature in my spiritual life. I’ve become a lot more Benedictine in my everyday life & have even started to embrace moderation in all things. Those who know me well know this is nothing short of miraculous because it’s been something I’ve always struggled with. I’m very much a “go big or go home” person; I’m either all in and go 110% or I do nothing. Or, I used to. 

I saw that my failures weren’t always failures as my way of thinking has begun to shift. Instead of beating myself over not completing a self-appointed task or goal, I was able to see that I expect too much of myself… and barely anything from God. I want to control things; to do what I can to make sure I can get things done. And it doesn’t work like that. Sometimes (okay, most of the time), I need to let go and let God take care of things. I’ll do my part but I need to become a lot more dependent on Him. It makes complete sense since He is all good and knowing and I’m a sinful cotton-headed ninny-muggins who knows squat and fails all the time. Yet He will lovingly teach me what I need to know like a father does for a child. 

I need to learn to trust Him more; to be more child-like in my dependency on Him. Just like I failed in my Lenten penance to not nap (when my body & mind obviously needed it), I’m going to let go of these harsh, restrictive ideas & goals for myself. I’m going to take everything to God (and my spiritual director), take my time to discern whatever comes up, and move forward with confidence, trusting that He is leading me down the path He wants me to take. That won’t mean I won’t fall flat on my tush sometimes as I am still human but, even if I *do* fail at times, doing my best is really all I *can* do and He will love me regardless. 

I can’t possibly put into words all the graces I’ve received & all the love I’ve felt from Christ this Lenten season but I hope that the new path I unintentionally embarked on will speak for itself.

Just like I saw craters on the face of the moon for the first time since losing my eyesight almost two years ago — albeit in little chunks with help of glasses as I can only see a tiny bit out of only my left eye — I know God will continue to show me more of who I am — who I’ve always been — & how being true to myself, following His lead, & not letting others influence or dictate my thoughts & actions will lead me to a place of eternal beauty. I’m grateful for the reintroduction to myself & look forward to seeing what else God has in store for me as I move forward on this beautiful path He has set me on.

I hope you all had a fruitful Lenten season!

As always, thanks for reading and God bless!

The Vulnerability of Being a (Wannabe) Consecrated Virgin Who is Also Legally Blind

 

I haven’t been blogging as much as I had planned because I’m in full-on writing and editing more. With the May 27, 2022 tentative publication date for novel four, I’m trying to get everything ready. The cover is ready, I just need to choose the title. The manuscript is getting cleaned up and fleshed out a bit more. It’s been exciting and a little nerve-wrecking at the same time.

In all that wonderful busyness, I finally got the official written diagnosis from my neuro-ophthalmologist: I am officially diagnosed as being legally blind. I’ve known of the permanence of my condition since November but I hadn’t heard the term “legally blind” used until last week. It was expected but it also hit me hard.

Saying that I’m visually impaired is one thing. It sounds less severe despite my condition (bilateral optic nerve atrophy) being serious. Saying that I’m legally blind has left me feeling very humbled and vulnerable.

A few days ago there was a shooting in my apartment building. Within minutes there were helicopters overhead and nearly a dozen policemen swarming our area of the building. I don’t know what happened — we tend to keep to ourselves and later find out when neighbors talk about it — but it was just the latest incident that made me think about my safety. (Side note: my mother’s near-assault two weeks ago was the first thing that triggered these thoughts.)

We live in a world that is becoming more and more hostile and violent… and that scares me. As a woman living in a working class neighborhood that often sees women being mugged, it’s concerning. As a young woman who is visually

Impaired, that fear gets multiplied exponentially. As a legally blind young woman living in a not-so-great neighborhood who is discerning consecrated virginity, that fear has hit a level I didn’t know existed. 

While there were safety concerns before — and a big reason why I don’t write or talk about it as much online anymore — it’s become something that is always present in mind. The addition of having the label of being legally blind really put a spotlight on those fears and I can’t look away. 

I think the best I can do is try to learn how to protect myself and rely heavily on my Guardian Angel and (hopefully) future Spouse for that protection. I know that those who aren’t Catholic and/or those who aren’t convinced that consecrated virginity is a legitimate vocation will think I’m absolutely nuts for putting my physical safety in the hands of those who aren’t physically next to me 24/7 but that’s what my reality will be. I can’t get myself a guard or guide dog because I won’t be able to take care of it with my physical limitations. Unless I move in with a roommate, I’m going to live on my own and that adds some vulnerability. But, either way, I will have to trust that I will protected and taken care of, even if I can’t physically see them. 

If God is calling me to be a consecrated virgin living in the world (as I believe He is), I know I will be a little more “public” than what I had wished. I always said that I would walk away from social media and writing to focus on my husband and children but God apparently has other plans for me. 

Away go the plans of a family in a traditional sense. Away go the plans of being the independent woman I’ve always been (which has been an incredible learning experience for me). Away go the plans to be an “urban hermitess”/an anchoress (thanks for the correct term, Fr. DBH). In its place: being a living sign of the Church as a CV. Having a family that goes beyond my immediate home and a Spouse who will make sure I never lack anything. Putting myself “out” there and letting go of my comfortable bubble. All of that is scary but also beautiful. 

Is there another consecrated virgin living in the world who is legally blind! I don’t know. Maybe? If not — if I’m the only one — I hope that my life shows others how beautiful and fulfilling life can be despite this vulnerability. If I’m one of others, I hope I can add to the witness of how we can still serve the Church despite having this physical limitation. Either way, I hope I do a good job despite feeling incredibly unworthy and unprepared for it. 

May God’s Will be done.

Anyway, it’s almost time for Vespers and day two of the consecration to St. Joseph renewal so I shall this post here. 

I hope you’re all doing well!

As always, thanks for reading and God bless! 

What Do I Have to Offer You, Lord?

“What do I have to offer You, Lord?”

This has been the question I’ve been pondering as I prepare to move forward with my vocation discernment. 

Yes, I’m still moving forward and have continued to do so despite having gone through the worst spiritual dryness I’ve ever experienced in my life and especially since my reversion in September 2006. I’ve already written about that so I won’t repeat all of that. Suffice to say, it was an incredible blessing to have endured it, even if I had an tremendously difficult time in it. 

This Lent has been very vocation and “Emmy” oriented. (For those of you who are new around here: Emmy is my nickname and is the name I used online before I began writing professionally). I didn’t plan for it to be this way. In fact, I didn’t have major plans for it because I was still coming out of the spiritual desert and, after discussing the situation with my SD, it was decided to not do too much because of the state of my spiritual life with the time. I have my Lenten penances/offerings in place but I was going to focus on keeping my spiritual life afloat and adding daily Mass to the mix, even if only streamed due to my health obstacles. 

So far, Lent has brought me back to how things were pre-pandemic lockdowns. Daily Mass (I drove to our local FSSP parish; our home parish every chance I got). Divine Office hours. Solid spiritual life. That naturally led to my vocation discernment. I really can’t say much more about that at this time because I don’t have much except that the green light to move forward is on and I’m just waiting for the formal process to begin.

Part of the process in moving forward has included asking what I can offer the Los Angeles Archdiocese and the Church in general. It’s not something that we’re required to ponder but it’s something that I’ve personally had to think about, especially since my discernment and state in life now is vastly different from what it was at the beginning. 

Losing my eyesight and having to radically change my lifestyle to fit my medical and health needs has altered what I can offer. I can’t work as an SLP (speech-language pathologist) as I had hoped and studied for due to my eyesight. I can’t volunteer to do much at my parish. I served on the hospitality committee for only a few months before lockdowns went into effect. Reflecting on that, and how I’m limited to what I can do, has had me thinking about what I can offer. 

I know God has given me two big gifts — “interpersonal intelligence” and writing. I don’t think I’m a particularly good writer (no, that is not me fishing for compliments) but I never lack work or offers to write. I also don’t know why on earth people seek my advice on things but I know that my heart feels full when I’m able to help others that way. I was considering finally taking a chance on getting a Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT) license and even attended a virtual open house at my alma mater before losing my eyesight but that didn’t work out for obvious reasons.

“What can I offer You, Lord?” 

I don’t know the answer to that question. Beyond offering up my physical suffering, I don’t know what I have to offer. I’m not going to stress myself out trying to get the answer, either. Instead of pestering God for a concrete answer, I’m going to focus on taking things as they come and living in the present instead of the future like I’d always done up until recently. 

If God is truly calling me to be a consecrated virgin living in the world as I believe He is, I know the answer will be clear when it’s meant to. For now, I will continue to focus on my relationship with Christ and my prayer life as they will be the most important things in my life moving forward.

Anyway, just a couple of thoughts from this gal. :)

I hope y’all had a lovely weekend and have a great rest of the week. 

As always, thanks for reading and God bless. 

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!