It's raining outside

I love days like today. I'll be going into work a little bit later, so since I woke up early, I thought I'd just let out some things I've been thinking about lately...

...like how my relationship with God has its ebbs and flows...sometimes full of sweet consolations and other times wrought with desperate dryness. I figured everyone goes though the same thing in one way or another because if we always felt close to Him, we'd be in Heaven.

I want to go to Heaven...but I can't yet. It's not time. I'm not ready. There's still lots to do.

Yes, so much to do.

How limited I am in this body...and I feel the strain...but there is always so much freedom in prayer. I experience that grace in the morning as I'm praying the rosary, during adoration at St. Dominic's, at Mass as I lift up my communion for others in the world, and each night as Gary and I pray for the people in our lives who need our intercession.

God is there. He always has been.

So the slight sadness I was feeling last night because I felt so far away from Him, I now attempt to relate to all the times Jesus must have longed to return to Heaven but chose to continuously say yes to His mission while He was on earth. I try to unite myself to the "holy tiredness" He felt when He was sought after...to His need to leave the crowds for a moment of prayer...to the love that brought Him back to them time and again because He knew they needed Him.

This will all end, and someday I, too, will utter the words, "It is finished." But in the meantime, I ask you, Lord Jesus, to please fill me with Your Spirit so that I can persevere as did the hundreds of thousands who have walked the long and narrow road before me.

It's true...there isn't much I can give them by myself alone. But with You in me, I can give them the greatest gift I have ever received...

...an encounter with God.

"My anguish has turned to peace;
You have retrieved my life from the pit of corruption;
You have cast all my sins behind You.
The living, the living alone can give You thanks and praise, as I do;
fathers will tell their sons of Your fidelity." (Isaiah 38:17, 19)