How Do You See God?

Close your eyes. Close your mind of all distractions. Think about your answer to this question, right now, in this moment: How do you see God? You’re face to face with Him. What are your feelings? I’m not asking for the right, theological answer, what you learned in Catechism, or how you are supposed to see God. How do you view God, what do you think of when you think of God, right now, in this moment?

Is He there at all? Is He there, but covered by a fog of confusion? Do you know He’s there, but dare not look at Him because of your sins, shame, weaknesses, and unworthiness? Is He angry with you? Is He disappointed in you? Does He care at all? Is He irrelevant? Is He there, but you just can’t seem to find Him?

I have been taught about who God is since the day I was born. But sometimes it doesn’t matter what I know in my head; when I am really honest with myself and answer this question, the God that I close my eyes and see is often so different and so far from the God who is looking down on me with so much love right in this moment.

The root of so many of our problems begins with how we see God. As young men and women, we are under constant pressure to “find ourselves” and figure out who we really are. However, we won’t know who we are until we know Jesus, our maker and our lover and the fulfillment to all of our desires, and know Him as He truly is. I do not think many of us really understand who He is. If we did, the world would be a lot different, because we, especially those that are professing Christ-followers, would all be changing the world.  

I have been struggling lately. I have so much trouble dealing with the pain and emotions of this world, and I am so depressed…I feel like a failure, worthless, hopeless, helpless.

This is part of one of my journal entries from the past year. I think it accurately depicts the deep pain and even deeper thirst that every heart has felt at one time or another. I used to say that life or God or circumstances “broke” me and that’s what got me to that point. But this isn’t true. I was broken already; God doesn’t want to break me more. He allowed Life, the timeless marauder, to pillage and plumage me until all of the things that I held dear, all of my crutches, were gone. When they were gone, I felt worthless, and I despaired. Why? Because my worth wasn’t in Jesus, the Jesus I had thought I had known my whole life. If we ever feel worthless while knowing Jesus, we either don’t know or don’t trust who He really is.

I saw Jesus as someone who was disappointed or frustrated or angry with me and all of my baggage. However, sin doesn’t ‘disappoint’ Jesus in that sense of the word; it wounds Him because He loves us and it separates us from Him. But us coming to Him for forgiveness consoles His sacred heart, and He brings a greater good out of the evil of sin.

Jesus loves us. How many times have we heard that? How many times have we actually understood it? This love goes far deeper than a feeling or an action that the word “love” can justify. It is a thirst. Jesus thirsts for us. He yearns for our love. He makes Himself available all of the time, so that the moment we come to Him, He is right there. He is not a rich prince flippantly granting our requests out of His abundance when we come to Him in prayer. He gives to us until it hurts Him. We are so valuable to Him that He loves us and waits on us and yearns for our love in return as if we are the only person in the world. This is where our worth comes from. Our worth comes from the fact that He loves us, and this love never changes.

The interesting thing is the very next line of my journal entry takes a different tune. I finally heard Jesus’ whispers to my heart that day as I journaled. It goes on to say,

But God made me exactly how He wants me to be.

Think about that for a second. We say that all the time, but do we really understand it? Put your soul up to a mirror and stare at it. Do you like what you see? You are weak. But God made you and me exactly how He wants us to be, weaknesses and all.

When I saw God for who He is, I finally knew what it meant to give thanks for my weaknesses, for how hard it is for me to be holy, for how small of a soul I am: because God will be that much more glorified when He makes me holy.

When I first saw my brokenness, my weaknesses, my failures, it lead me to despair. But that was because I did not or could not see God as someone who was saying “Come to me just as you are, with all of your weaknesses.” A God who thirsted for me to just be with Him, to love Him back, weak as my love was. A God who knew that I was weak, and loved me anyway. A God that, when I dumped all of my heavy suitcases full of sin at the Cross, took joy in forgiving me of my sins. A God that asks me to trust Him, and let Him do the rest. I cannot measure up to the standard of holiness I see before me, but He asks me to trust Him first, and that is something I and anyone else can do.

It was Jesus all along that I was looking for. I was looking for Him in good grades, in boys, in friends, at parties, in approval, in appearances. I saw people on fire for Jesus, people who were changing the world, and I saw them as big souls that I could surely never be. But here again, I wasn’t seeing Jesus for who He was. I do not have to be a big soul to come to Him, I do not have to be strong and perfect for Him to use me. I just have to trust Him, and let Him carry me in His arms up to Heaven and up to holiness. And that makes all of the difference.

“It is Jesus in fact that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be grounded down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.”
—St. John Paul II, Vigil of Prayer – 15th World Youth Day, August 19, 2000

Thank You for the Music

Everyone can sing. This is the motto of the song and dance camp, Summer Show-Offs, that I have been blessed to work at the past two summers. Anyone that knows me knows that the only kind of singing camp that I could be a part of is one with a motto like that. With little to no musical background or training, working and teaching at a day camp where children learn four dances and five songs in four short days has been an experience like no other. It’s been like jumping into a cold pool off the diving board instead of easing into the pool on the shallow end. One second you’re dry and the next you’re head-first in cold water, and it’s sink or swim.

Before you question the legitimacy of a musical camp that would hire a ‘non-musical’ person, let me say that there are extremely talented staff-members on board. It’s a privilege to work along side some of the most talented dancers, vocalists, choreographers, and show people in the country. When I was standing on that diving board staring down at the summer job ahead of me, I kept asking myself why on earth, with all of that talent at their finger tips, Mrs. Cecile and Mrs. Robyn, the camp’s owners, would hire me along with them. I love to sing, I love to dance, but I lack the usual qualities that make someone ‘talented’ in those areas: pitch, a musical ear, range, coordination, etc. But after two summers fully submerged and jamming to that irresistible beat, I finally get it. They hired me and others like me because they understand the goal of the camp, and more importantly, they understand music itself.

Every week at Summer Show-Offs, I help almost forty third and fourth graders to put on a show, complete with props, formations, five songs, four dances, and forty solos, in four days. And let me be the first to tell you, it’s a good show. But parents don’t sacrifice a considerable chunk of money to see a good show on Friday. They don’t pay to have their kids occupied from 9 to 2 during the week. There are much cheaper ways of accomplishing those ends. They pay because of the gifts of confidence and character that music brings to their precious children. This music changes lives.

There is something surreal about how music touches a person. Listening to a song can change our mood in a matter of seconds. It can comfort us. It gives so many gifts to the listener, whether it’s the beautiful poetry of words in a song, a delightful combination of notes that both soothes and rejuvenates, or dancers and colors moving along with the music that both enhances and completes it. What we are doing when we teach children to sing and dance, or like at Summer Show-Offs when they get to do both in the form of a show, is we are handing them one of the most powerful tools in the world. We are giving them something that relentlessly blesses others, and filling them up with it so that they can give it right back. Rarely do we trust eight and nine year olds with things of importance. But when we entrust them with music, a song to sing, a dance to dance, we give them the precious chance to be givers in a world where up to that point in their lives they’ve had to be mostly takers. Children thrive on this trust. It draws out every desire to give and to bless that they have in their beautiful hearts. It impresses upon them the nudge of responsibility that pushes them towards discipline. We give them every tool and training needed to have a perfect show on Friday, they need only work hard and do their best. And it is hard work, much harder than what is normally asked of kids their age. But nothing compares to the overwhelming feeling of confidence that each child is blessed with on Friday after they have not only completed the goals set for them and done their best but after they have had the chance to pour out themselves on stage with the gift of music.

Music does not discriminate. Everyone can sing, as the camp’s founder Cecile Martin always says, just like everyone can jog. Everyone that can walk can jog, but not everyone can sprint or run a marathon or jog for a long period of time. Similarly, not everyone has Mariah Carey’s range or Norah Jones’ soothing voice or Michael Jackson’s dance moves. But everyone can sing and everyone can dance. Luckily for me, I’m part of the ‘everyone’. There are songs I can sing and dances I can dance and therefore a gift that I can give through music. That is one of the beauties of being human. Making music is such a broad concept that uses so many different talents. It teaches you to find yours, use it, do your best at the rest, and work with others of different and, more often than not, better talent. And that’s what kids (and myself) learn at Summer Show-Offs. Music cannot be about one person. If there is a show that seems to have a star, that star would not be as wonderful without it’s background singers or supporting roles. Music is a gift.

Music is pouring out yourself and working harmoniously with other people who are pouring out their own gifts in order to bless an audience, whether it’s an audience of one or of one thousand. Music is about people. Mrs. Cecile and Mrs. Robyn weren’t crazy for hiring people like me after all. I love people and especially kids, and at the end of the day that’s all that matters and all that music itself cares about.

Music has changed my life in so many ways through this camp. So many times people look at music as the opposite of athleticism or ‘brains’, as something that is one category that part of the population can fit into. This could not be farther from the truth. Everyone can be blessed by music and everyone can bless others by music. Maybe not in the same way as others, but everyone can. The notes I sing might be simple and unimpressive, but paired with an exquisite melody and lovely instruments I can help to create a product that is beautiful beyond compare. Don’t ever be afraid of music or stay away from it simply because you have not been labeled ‘musical.’ Sing your song and dance your dance, and give the gift that God has given you to the rest of the world. Give children the gift and the responsibility of music. This is what Summer Show-Offs has taught me.

So, Mrs. Cecile and Mrs. Robyn and music-givers everywhere, thank you for the music. Thank you for giving me and every single camper that walks through your door the tools and the opportunity to give such a powerful gift to others. Thank you for recognizing every part in a song or a dance or a show as important, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. Thank you for valuing every person, every note, every grape vine, and every gift. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the music and for giving it to me.

With a Broken Heart

Everything that I wrote about in the last post, I learned through suffering and pain. So it seemed only fitting that this be the theme of my next post. 

One day, I was sitting in prayer at one of the lowest points in my life that I can remember. I was experiencing pain like I never had before. It was like life had stabbed my heart so many times it had deflated into a little gimpy piece of plastic that throbbed and writhed around inside of me. So many people have felt like that, but the crazy thing is, the devil had convinced me that I was the only one; that I was alone. That is simply a lie. As I sat in the chapel praying, I just cried. I knew Jesus was sitting there with me, holding me in His strong arms and stroking my hair, but my faith is weak and I longed to see Him. I had to know He was still there, because it sure didn’t feel like it. How could He be there with all of this happening to me? I begged Him to show me His face, even if it was just for a second. He gently responded by reminding me of a quote that I had once read that said “to suffer is to see the face of God.” I didn’t know what that meant until later on that night, when I got a call with even worse news, that broke my heart even more.

There are many different kinds of pain. The most bearable kind is physical pain, afflictions of our outer body.  But what about when the pain you feel isn’t physical? What about when you’re so inflicted with sad emotions and feelings of abandonment that we refer to it as a “heart break”? That pain is much more somber. You can’t just ignore it like a pinch in your side. It has to be dealt with; ignoring it only delays the process. There are no pills for heartache. So, here comes the age-old question: how do you get through it?

When faced with emotional pain, whether it’s because of our own sin or because of an outside circumstance, most of the time our knee-jerk reaction is to shake our fists and frantically, desperately search for how to make it stop.So why doesn’t anyone know how to make it stop or how to fix a broken heart? There are things we can do to distract us from it or think more positively about it, but at the end of the day, nothing human can stop Pain’s gnawing in the deepest part of our souls. The more we push it down or try to ignore it, the stronger it seems to grow. As a fellow victim in the brutal warfare of heartbreak, I too asked this question. I was desperate to find the solution, angry I couldn’t, and finally completely hopeless. But I, like so many other people, was asking the wrong question. I was looking at pain and suffering the wrong way.

We must embrace pain. Yes, embrace suffering. Give it a hug and welcome it into the home of your heart. This sounds crazy and counter-cultural, but what else could you expect as a follower of Christ? Suffering shapes us and refines us, like a jewel stuck in the fire. It is not an excuse to lash out at people or to sin. It is not a license to sin, but the opposite. How you behave when your very soul aches is the true test of a person. That is when we are called to look different from the world. When you are hurting, make an even bigger effort to love your neighbor, to serve the poor, to pray, to be disciplined. The longer you sit around and mope or try to numb the pain with various people or substances, the longer the pain stays with you. It will not leave until you have learned what you are supposed to from it. And praise God for the chance to be refined!

That night that I mentioned earlier, when I thought things couldn’t get worse and they did, it hit me. Jesus was showing me His face. I was suffering in a more real way than I ever had because that’s how much God loved me and desired intimacy with me. He was exposing my idols and tearing them out of my cold, stiff fingers. The pain made me bury my head in His chest so deeply that I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t escape. It is abiding in Him in a deeper way than I could have conceived. He turned my mourning into dancing, but not because I no longer hurt or cried or because He snapped his fingers and made my life perfect. I rejoice because every time I hurt I get to share in my Lord’s sufferings. When I hurt because I’m rejected or betrayed, I get to feel a tiny version of the pain that He felt on Calvary, the pain that He feels when I run to other gods instead of to my King. So any pain you and I feel is a cause to rejoice because we can comprehend a little bit more the depth of God’s incomprehensible love. 

Suffering is for our good, if we accept it and embrace it rather than feel sorry for ourselves, ignore it, or try to numb it with things of this world. If our Master came to the earth to suffer in the most profound way, why should we, the servants, expect anything different? Every time hardship comes, and your heart hurts so badly that you want to scream, offer it up to Jesus. Thank Him for it. Ask Him to use it to purify you. Thank Him that He loves you so much He would allow you to experience pain. You might feel like you can’t do it anymore, like you cannot possibly bear your cross for one more second. The thing is, you and I can’t. But God can. Give your burden to Him and let Him give you the strength to bear it. As followers of God, we don’t have the right to give up.

He might not take our suffering away for a while, but He will never leave you. He will catch every teardrop and He longs for you to let Him just hold you as you cry. He will give you the strength to endure it if you only ask for it. “No trial has come to you but what is human. God is faithful and will not let you be tried beyond your strength…” (1 Cor. 10:13). And when you are tempted to feel alone in your pain, like no one knows what it’s like, no one understands, no one can make you feel better, remember that to some degree you’re right, no human will probably completely understand. But that is one of the devil’s sharpest weapons: to make you feel alone. Other people have pain, some that is buried so deeply no one would ever know it. Go find those people and comfort them. Be vulnerable about your own pain, so that they too can know that they are not alone. But above all, remember, Jesus knows what every kind of pain feels like and understands it more than we can imagine. Rejection, abandonment, humiliation, and being misunderstood are nothing new to Him. He even understands the pain of a loved one’s death or separation; He wept when His friend Lazarus died knowing full well He would soon resurrect Him. Life is painful and He understands that more than anyone else. Meditate on His life and Passion. You are never alone.

If you don’t have pain in your life now, there are still little grievances that we can offer up for our own sanctification. Every “first world problem”, every hurtful little comment directed at you, every time someone or something let’s you down or doesn’t go according to plan, we can offer it up to God and thank Him for it. He can use anything from the smallest discomfort to the biggest heartache caused by our own sin to sanctify us. What an amazing God we have.

Mother Teresa, in one of my favorite books No Greater Love, puts the key to joy amidst suffering far better than I could: “Don’t be afraid. There must be the cross, there must be suffering, a clear sign that Jesus has drawn you so close to His heart that He can share His suffering with you. Without God we can spread only pain and suffering around us. We all long for heaven where God is, but we have it in our power to be with Him right now, to be happy with Him at this very moment. But being happy with Him now means loving like He loves, helping as He helps, giving as He gives, serving as He serves, rescuing as He rescues, being with Him 24 hours a day, touching Him in His distressing disguise. Jesus is going to do great things with you if you let Him, and if you don’t try to interfere with Him.”

What I Would Say to Myself Freshman Year

If I could travel in time, I would deliver this letter to myself before the beginning of my freshman year of college. Since I can't do that, I'll just publish it here. 

You're about to start college. Hold on tight, because it's going to be a bumpy ride.

College, for you, is going to be a time of God breaking you. You are going to be broken in ways you cannot even comprehend right now. But don’t be scared. It’s worth it. The flame that burns also refines, remember? By the end of your sophomore year, you will be so humbled that you won’t ever be able to judge anyone again. And that’s a good thing. But it’s a hard road that leads to that.

You are a woman. God created women with complete attention to detail. Women are complex, because that’s exactly how God wants us to be. That complexity will separate the men from the boys: the cowards will shy away from it, the men will embrace it and try to understand you more deeply all of the time. But never forget this: no one will ever understand you fully except for your Creator. Embrace that now, and don’t let it drive you to depression years later when you are searching endlessly to be understood by someone to no avail. Stop seeking that now. Instead, recognize the deep desire in you to be understood and to be wanted. It’s a desire to be deeply known and still loved. Every woman has that desire, and it’s not a bad thing. God created you that way. But it is the driving force behind many of our actions, and sometimes those actions can be futile. Recognize this force. It’s more powerful than you realize. It will leave you clinging on with clenched fists and white knuckles to things that are of this world: relationships, people, bad habits, etc. Nothing in this world will make you feel completely known and completely wanted. Eventually, everything fades. Men leave. People forget. A boy changes his mind.  

After you search high and low to fulfill this desire, one that is as strong and as natural as the desire in animals to eat, you will feel empty. Probably emptier than you ever were to begin with, because there’s usually sin involved in the chasing. Sin is like a black hole. It creates emptiness and total destruction wherever it goes. It’s daughter is guilt, the ghost that relentlessly haunts every heart.

You’ll never feel more alone, never feel more unwanted, more rejected, more forgotten, more unworthy. You’ll avoid God. You might keep chasing more things, but eventually you feel that the desire will never be fulfilled, that you will never be happy, and that you are a failure. So your actions become less about being known and wanted, and more about surviving each day: the struggle to simply live, the struggle to numb the pain, the struggle to blindly fight through the fog of your thoughts. You’ll be lower than you thought you could be.

The only way out is Jesus. He’s the only light in an otherwise black tunnel that seems to keep shrinking and shrinking. You’ve heard this a million times, but you won’t fully understand what it means until you’re desperate and have no where else to go and no one else to turn to. Some people reach this point early in life, some after years and years, and some probably have to hit it several times. You’re going to hit it at twenty years old.

What does that even mean? Look at Jesus. Just look at Him. Sit in the chapel. Sit in prayer. Just be with Him. Like Moses, you cannot look at God without being changed.

Once you look at Him, you will see Him on the cross. You will see pain and agony written in blood on his body but love in His eyes. You will hear him say “I thirst” and realize it is your soul He thirsts for. You can’t do anything else until you realize that He thirsts for you. It’s stronger than a desire for, an admiration of, an approval of, or a thinks fondly of. He thirsts for you. He doesn’t thirst for the old you who had it all together, or the future you that will be well past this and have life figured out. He thirsts for you as you are right now. He thirsts for the you that sits there and slaps Him in the face. He thirsts for the you that nailed Him to the Cross by your sins. He thirsts for the you that yells, “Crucify him, crucify him!”

You cannot look at the deep, bloody wounds of Jesus and not feel wanted.

He knows you and loves you. He would not create you with a desire that He cannot fulfill. You just have to accept His love.

How do you accept it? Like Mary’s fiat, you say “yes” to Jesus. You say yes to whatever He asks of you, because He first loved you. That is how you love Jesus. It’s not by thinking nice thoughts about Him or wearing a necklace of Him or speaking the Christian language with empty, over-used phrases. It’s saying yes to Him. It’s taking up your cross and following Him to your death. It is a death in and of itself.

It’s you sacrificing yourself to Him and to every single person around you. It’s you pouring out yourself over and over again, every day, to every person, like Jesus gives His body and blood at every sacrifice of the Mass. It’s you giving every part of your life to Him. It’s you loving the people that are hardest to love. It’s you loving your family. It’s you accepting all humiliations.

You’re going to feel so overwhelmed with how far you have to go, but I think every saint feels that way on earth. Don’t focus on yourself and how bad or how good you are. Examine your conscience daily, confess your sins, repent, and ask for the grace to try again tomorrow. Put one hundred percent of yourself into each moment. You cannot do this if you have part of your heart in the past or part of your mind in the future. Don’t try to save the world or become a saint in one day. A good place to start is to every day pray and do one thing that you do not want to do to serve someone else. The rest of the time, listen to God and say yes to Him. To do this, you have to actually listen. Sit still. Turn off the music and the phone and the distractions. Don’t worry about what you’re supposed to do with your life. God will tell you in his perfect timing. If one day he tells you to go join a convent or move to the inner city or date that boy or go to that school, go do it. But until then, stay where he has put you.

If you don’t know where he has put you or what the means, start with your name. You belong to a family that shares that name. You are a daughter, a sister, a granddaughter, a niece, and a cousin. That is your vocation. Start by loving them. If you can’t love those that you live with, how can you expect to love your enemies?

Be disciplined. Sanctification lies in the little things. Clean your room, wash your clothes, eat well, exercise, and do your work. You cannot say yes to God in the big ways that you dream about if you do not say yes to Him in the little ways.

You still have the desire to be wanted and to be known. Open up every part of your heart to Jesus so that He can satiate that desire. This is not a one time action, but an action that we must make every day until we die. Use that desire to recognize it in others, and to seek instead to understand and love someone else. We were created to be relational people. In your relationships, don’t have any expectations of the other person. How they treat you is none of your business. It’s between them and God. Your relationships, at the end of the day, are not about you and that person, but about you and God. See Jesus in every single person. Treat everyone like you would treat Jesus, because He thirsts for them as much as He thirsted for you.

The theme of college might seem like God breaking you. But that is only the subtitle. It’s ultimately about Jesus thirsting for your heart, and stopping at nothing to get it.