Grief
Being Done
I listened to a great homily by Fr. Mike Schmitz this morning before I went to Palm Sunday Mass. He talked about something that I have struggled with. Fr. Schmitz admittedly looks forward to being “done”. He anticipates what the outcome will be and gets nervous or anxious not knowing. When it is done, he […]
Spiritual Friend
Over the past couple of months, I have been reducing the amount of visits I have with my Stephen Minister. It has been a couple of weeks since I have seen her, so we got together today. The first thing she asked me was , “How is your Lent going?” This is one of the […]
Still Didn’t Understand
My sister and I have been watching The Chosen, getting caught up on Season 4. It was pretty somber, and neither of us were ready to watch it before. My heart ached, but I thought the messages were very well done with empathy and kindness. We unknowingly finished it just in time for episodes 1 […]
Death is an Encouragement
In the Lenten meditation today, the story continued of Takashi Nagai who lived in Nagasaki when the atomic bomb was dropped. In this part of the story, he had a cancer diagnosis and was told he had possibly 2 years to live. He had converted to Catholicism and left his life in God’s hands as […]
Kind to Myself
As I was listening to the radio today, I heard an introduction to the song, “Kind to Myself”, by Tenth Avenue North. The singer explained that we are so quick to put ourselves down and get frustrated with our own behavior. However, God sees through all that and loves us the way we are. This […]
Spiritual Maturity
Today I spent some time at the Newman Center and met a couple of the young adults. I had learned the other day that tragically one of the students died over the Christmas break. The campus minister had to break the news to the community when everyone returned from their holidays. There was a memorial […]
Sharing Grief
I thought I had scheduled a Mass intention for my dad to be celebrated yesterday. However, when I looked at the church bulletin, it was actually today. That turned out fine, because I definitely would not have wanted to go out in the weather yesterday. When I got to the church today, I saw a […]
Pondering and Healing
I woke up this morning not feeling very good. I have had kind of a cold thing lingering in the background for a while. So I was actually happy that it resembled a blizzard outside. I cancelled the 2 appointments I had, pulled on a couple layers, and got cozy. Today also marks the third […]
Remembering Time With Mom
Today as I was going through things on my computer, I came across a video that I made with my mom several years ago. A flood of emotions rushed over, into, and out of me. First, I was sad and missed her tremendously. As I watched, I realized how much she suffered and for such […]
Thinking of 2025
Coming to the end of the year gave me good reason to reflect back and look forward as perhaps many people do. I have seen several suggestions and ideas of how to do this. It is helpful to me to process through and write things down. I’m going to try to make it simple – […]
Still Finding God 