Let Me Provide

     For well over a year now, God has been hitting me over the head to accept His will in my life, as it is presented to me and to truly trust Him.

NOW is the Present Moment!

     “The present moment is like an ambassador who declares the will of God. The heart must ever answer, ‘Let it be so.’ Then the soul will go steadily on by all means towards its target and goal—never pausing in its course, spreading its sails to all winds. All routes and methods advance it equally in its journey toward the great sea, the infinite. Everything becomes an instrument of sanctification. The soul always finds the ‘one thing needful’ in the present moment.

     It is no longer a matter of prayer or silence, privacy or conversation with others, reading or writing, thinking or abandonment of thought, seeking spirituality or avoiding overconcern with it, abundance or want, illness or health, life or death; the one thing needful is simply what comes to the soul each moment by the will of God. This includes the stripping, the self-denial, the renunciation of earthly things, in order that the soul may be nothing in itself or live for itself, but may live wholly by God’s will, and at His good pleasure content itself with the duty of the present moment, as though that were the one thing in the whole world.”                                                                                                                                                                                            Fr. Jean-Pierre de Caussade


     I had prayed and asked God for guidance in choosing a book to read this Lent; One which would strengthen my walk with Him.

      To my surprise, The Joy of Full Surrender by Jean-Pierre de Caussade, an adaptation of Abandonment to Divine Providence, was the book that kept coming into my mind. I had read it many years ago and it had had a great impact on me. “It must be the time to re-read this again, due to certain situations in my life.”

The Agony of Defiance!

     Lent could not come fast enough for me this year! Life was not as I liked, therefore, an inner restlessness and lack of peace once again, invaded my being. Due to this restlessness, an inordinate attachment, with which I have struggled, on and off again for years, was rearing its ugly head and becoming my unwelcomed guest.

     I had the misguided idea, that with the arrival of Ash Wednesday, I would miraculously be able to overcome myself and “just say no!” I truly believed that Lent would be the vehicle God would use to help me regain my self-control.

     Boy was I wrong!

No Delays

     I couldn’t believe it! In less than two hours our plane would be back in the United States. My pilgrimage to the Holy Land was now a wonderful memory!

     My mind and heart overflowed with gratitude to both God and my husband Johnathan. It was a dream of a lifetime and it far outweighed my expectations!

Mea Culpa!

     “God, give me the Lent I need, not necessarily the Lent I want,” was my prayer on Ash Wednesday. God IS faithful; He answered my prayer. He is using this time to show me how to conquer the flaws with which I struggle. Weeks before Lent God began to teach me lessons in faith and trust. As I entered the desert of Lent, He has allowed circumstances in my life to unfold to give me practice in these areas.

     “Oh, that today you would hear His voice, harden not your hearts” (Psalm 95:7b).

The Lent I Need

     “Come Holy Spirit! Consume in me anything that keeps me from being consumed in You.”


     I thought I had begun Lent on the right foot. For several weeks prior to its start, I had prayed and asked God to direct my path and let me know just how He was calling me to change.

     The answer I received seemed somewhat vague, so I tried to contrive which areas within myself, needed work. Several ideas came to me. My plan was to work on my quiet prayer time. For some time now, I was giving in to distractions, instead of ignoring them. I wanted to nip that in the bud. The other thing I wanted to work on was not snacking after 8 o’clock. Most of the time when I snacked, I was not really hungry. I was trying to comfort a restlessness or disappointment in my life, instead of going to God with my feelings. That’s what I’ll do, I thought!

Begin Again

     “Have patience with all things, but first of all with yourself.”       St. Francis de Sales



     We are smack in the middle of the fourth week of Lent. We may have started out strong with our Lenten resolutions and practices. At times, it almost seemed effortless! We were pleased and amazed with our sacrifices and mortifications, well aware that it was indeed the grace of God that made it appear so easy. Then it happened – we left the valley of ease and began to spiritually scale the challenging peaks of Mt. Everest! We realize we are not mountain climbers and wondered how we even arrived here. It was not part of our plan. Our route was all mapped out. So what changed?

His Gaze of Mercy

     While I don’t really experience a lot of physical suffering, I was being plagued by interior suffering, and I was not faring well! Interiorly, I felt as if I were experiencing labor and could not handle it. I wanted to scream! I wanted to shout! I wanted to give birth without all the pain that goes along with it. I tried to unite my suffering with Jesus,’ but that did not seem to make a difference. I was struggling within myself between what I felt like doing or saying, compared with how I knew I should act. The duplicity in my heart made me feel like a hypocrite. I knew I was in need of supernatural help, so off I went to Confession.

Put Out into the Deep

     “I want to go fishing sometimes. How? I will tell you. The most holy passion of Jesus is a sea of sorrows but, at the same time, a sea of love. Pray to God that He teach you to fish in this sea. Then dive into its depths. No matter how deep you go, you will never reach bottom.” St. Paul of the Cross



     Our minds have become so accustomed to the fact that Jesus suffered and died on the cross for us that we fail to see the immensity and intensity of His passion. His love was met with rejection and brutality. We forget that Jesus was God who became flesh, to offer His body to the Father for our sins. We forget that He was sinless, yet took upon Himself all the sins of the world, from the beginning of time until its end. During His passion, Jesus, in His humanity, felt fear, anxiety, forgotten, betrayal, anguish, and excruciating pain. His love was so pure that His feelings were intensified and crushing. Jesus came, out of His great love for us, to show us how to love by giving of Himself completely and laying down His life.