For Such a Time as This

Have I mentioned that I love being Catholic?  It's exactly where I know I'm supposed to be.

I grew up with a nominal Catholic foundation (one day I'll go into that more), so I became a Protestant at the age of 15 after meeting someone who showed me how much Jesus loved me.  For 18 years I was passionately in love with Christ as a Protestant.  Then I was called home by the lover of my soul.  Now I am passionately in love with Christ in the Church that Jesus gave us to guide us.  That's not to say the Church has been perfect, but it has been guided by the Holy Spirit amid any attacks from the gates of Hell.

I like to get the background out of the way so that you know where I'm coming from.

Being Catholic has been very difficult in so many ways.  I've had the chance to take a deeper look at myself (and while that's good, it certainly is ugly), and I've had to stand strong to people who oppose my move.  I haven't known very many passionately Catholic people in my life.  Honestly, most Catholics I know don't even seem to know what they believe or why they believe it.  And most Protestants I know have had the same experience with Catholics. They are baffled when they see someone who is a Bible-believing Jesus freak moves back to the Catholic Church.  They are speechless.  I can feel the speechlessness.

I constantly feel like I am fighting from the inside and from the outside.

But I didn't expect anything about my conversion (reversion) to be easy, so I'm OK with it.  I was prepared for it.  I have been silently letting the Holy Spirit build things in me that should have been built in me in the first 15 years of my life.  I've held these things close to my heart.

During the end of 2011, I felt God telling me it's time to speak up.  Time to stand up.  Time to be a light for His Church.  All for His glory, not mine.  All for His people, not for me.

This is the thing about me - I don't like to go against the crowd.  I don't like to stand out.  I don't like to speak up.  I don't like to be the odd one.  I've always stood firm in my convictions, but I've resisted being outspoken about them.  I like to stand in the corner and watch life from a safe place.  So I pondered what I kept hearing and tried to explain it away.  Surely that's not what God is telling me.

The Time Square ball dropped and 2012 was here.  I still wrestled with the message I felt like I was getting from God.  The message I felt like I was getting from Him to go and stand out for Him, which is an absolute paradox to my personality.

January 20, 2012.  Obama announces that he is not giving any religious exemption to his HHS mandate.  Catholic institutions will have to violate their consciences and pay for birth control and abortion-causing pills or suffer large fines.  The Bishops speak up.  They stand firm.  They stand for the teachings of the Church regarding contraception.  A teaching that many - including Catholic and Protestant Christians - feel is antiquated.  Religious liberty is threatened and the Bishops are not caving.  The drama begins.  Suddenly the Church and her 2,000 years of teaching on contraception is shoved into the limelight.  People start asking the question - why does the Catholic Church teach against contraception?  A teaching that was long considered old-fashioned and irrelevant is suddenly being discussed everywhere.

Something in me has changed.  Now I'm ready.  Time to stand up.  Time to speak up.

Am I the only one who feels like there's something happening?  I can't put my finger on it, but there is something in the air.  Israel and Iran (and China and Russia) are getting ready to go to war.  Religious liberty is being attacked by our government.  The Bishops are finally standing firm for something.  People are flocking back to the Catholic Church, spurred by a deep desire to get to firmer ground, beyond themselves and their own opinions about the Bible.  Deep, thoughtful Christians are making the move more and more.  Why?

I think a major reason is because God needs unity in His people.  Something is happening in the world, and Christians would be stronger against evil if  they were united.  Unity is also necessary to reach the lost in the world.  On the night before He died, Jesus prayed for all Christians to be in unity.

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one — I in them and you in me — so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." John 17:20-23


This passage never meant anything to me before I started taking a closer look at the Catholic Church.  Now my heart echoes Jesus's heart when he prayed this.  He knows he's about to die, and he is praying for us to be united.  I feel like screaming, "Doesn't this mean anything to anyone?!"


It's time to reach the lost, and we cannot reach the masses without unity.  

no regrets

I have been trying to figure out a way to write about what I am going through without giving it all away.  The internet is this mass of eternal information, and I don't want to post something on here that I will regret.  I am in the midst of my life crisis, and I am not sure how things will turn out.  Things will turn out either good.  Or bad.  I am hopeful for reconciliations, but in order for reconciliations to happen many deeply rooted changes have to happen.  I do not doubt that God can change people, but I doubt the willingness of people to make those hard changes.

Either way it goes, I know that God will take care of us.  The pains from hurts will either be large and will be a life challenge to overcome, or the pains will be a minor hardened scar that has changed me and taught me and reminds me of this time in my life.

I must remain somewhat hidden during this time of uncertainties.  If I say too much and reconciliations become a possibility, I don't want to have major regrets about what I've written here.  I.  hate.  regrets.

I ponder why I hate regrets so much.  I think it all has to do with pride.  If I have regrets for my actions, it reminds me that I am not perfect.  Outwardly I admit that I am not perfect, but inwardly I try to tell myself that I am almost perfect.  I almost have it all together.

But I don't have it all together.  God reminds me of that, and it stings my pride.  So I am learning that He is in control.  Even in acknowledging that He is in control, I still try to figure out the details of my future.  And it drives me crazy.  Because I can't figure it out.  So I have to give up my "plans" and lean on God.  It's this ugly cycle that keeps repeating itself.  My hope is that one day I will truly get it.  And when I learn what I need to learn about not being in control, I imagine that my first reaction will be to lean on my Lord.  Instead of spinning the wheels in my brain.

Why is it so hard to learn to trust Him without hesitation when I can look back at every problem in life and know, truly know that everything that I have let Him control has turned out beautifully?  I desire that utter beauty that I have experienced when I lean on His grace and mercy.

Change is so hard.  Yet I become impatient when others take time to make their changes.  

I am learning to be at peace with being imperfect.  Even as I write it, it stings.  

hello!

I'm not even talking to anyone, yet, since I am just starting my first blog.  Blogging is one of those things that I was comfortable with not knowing or ever caring about.  Only weird people who had nothing better to do blogged.  This is what I told myself, at least, so that I could remain comfortable not knowing a single thing about blogs.

Then I had a life-altering event in my life.  I am not sure I can call it a single event, but one day I woke up and saw the chaos in my life.  Bad chaos, not like the kind of blessed chaos that comes with raising children, but the kind of unwanted chaos that others can selfishly bring into a person's life.  I saw the chaos and I chose to remove myself from it.  I don't plan on focusing on the circumstances that lead me to where I am now, because amid the chaos, I realized there is a whole world out there that I have been missing.  The world is a beautiful place and has wonderful things to offer.  My eyes opened up to poetry, beautiful poetry.  And photography.  And music.  And reading.  And blogging and finding out about so many different people in the world who have so many things in common with me.  I plan to use this blog as my own journal, and if anyone finds it interesting enough to join me on this journey, I'd be touched and honored. 

It won't be the most creative blog.  It won't be the funniest.  It won't have the best poetry.  It won't display the best photography.  But it's mine and I need it right now.

Kristy