Greater Peace, Joy, and Freedom!

Greater Peace, Joy, and freedom! Below is a Self-Evaluation regarding the pillars of connection.  I share this tool with you to help you find the areas where the Lord may have even more profound peace, joy, and freedom for you.  This is not a weapon to use to beat yourself up, but is meant to be an aid for you to know better how to focus your prayer in a way to remove the blocks from receiving God’s love.

Human & Spiritual Integration Self-Evaluation

Chosen:

• Do I lack a sense of belonging?
• Do I feel insecure or self-conscious?
• Do I feel or am I told I lack self-awareness?
• Am I frequently at odds with others?
• Do I have prejudices or judgments in my heart towards other individuals or groups of people?

Known:

• Do I feel forgotten, abandoned, or rejected by God when things don’t turn out as I wish?
• Do I find myself being self-critical and unforgiving toward myself?
• Do I find it difficult to pay attention to others?  Am I easily annoyed by others?

Valued:

• Do I struggle with scrupulosity?
• Do I find myself focusing on the externals in spirituality and religion?
• Do I focus on the law’s letter rather than the law’s spirit?
• Am I preoccupied with my looks, image, success, etc.?
• Do I need expressions of gratitude and/or affirmation from others, and the lack of such robs my peace?
• Am I saddened at the success of others and see others as competition?
• Do I find it challenging to share the spotlight or credit with others?

Boundaries:

• Do I experience morality and prayer primarily as what God wants from me more than what He has for me, as a gift?
• Do I struggle with perfectionism, negative self-talk, being self-critical, or overextending myself and have difficulty resting or relaxing?
• Do I struggle to set boundaries or to respect the boundaries of others?
• Do I find the need to control others?
• Do I experience boundaries from others as rejection, or do they anger me?

Openness:

• Do I struggle to pray from my heart with authenticity and honesty?
• Do I avoid self-reflection?
• Do I fear my weaknesses being seen by others?

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Discipline and Discipleship

Why does discipleship conjure up such a beautiful sentiment for most of us, but discipline not so much?  If you’re like me, you might feel like discipline is about how you are not good enough, that something more is going to be required from you, and you already feel like you’re at your limit. By contrast, discipleship can make us think of sharing intimately with the Lord and participating in His mission.

In the book of Hebrews, we are told that the Lord disciplines us because we are His children.  Discipline is because we are deeply and dearly loved.  It’s how He aligns more closely with Himself and fine-tunes us to His voice.  Only when we are submitted to the Lord’s discipline are we ready to be commissioned for more intimate service?  Put another way, only when we follow the Lord’s footsteps closely are we prepared to lead safely.

When the archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary, she did not say “yes” because he did not ask her a question.  He told her what was going to happen.  She submitted to the Lord’s way.  The same is true of us.  The Lord does not ask our permission.  Loved ones are taken, we get ill, things don’t go as it seems they ought to, all without the Lord asking if that’s ok.  However, we are called to submit our mission to the Lord’s mission.  We sub-mit, that is, we put our plan under (sub) His and leave it to Him to order things rightly according to His infinite wisdom and goodness.

Sometimes, stretching in charity or generosity will not feel very natural at all.  That does not mean we are being inauthentic.  The truth is that we have a concept of ourselves based on where we are and how we are feeling today.  Only the Lord knows who He made us to be and what He is fashioning us into.  He is the Potter.  We are the clay.

Let’s submit ourselves to discipline in our lives so that we may be aligned more closely to the Lord and get under the spout where the glory comes out!

May the Lord give you His peace!

Margaret

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Parenting as God Parents

Parenting as God Parents. Parenting is a tall order.  Not only does it mean forming little minds and souls while keeping little bodies protected and provided for but parents image God.  How we relate to little people as parents or in roles of authority becomes how they perceive the Lord.  Because they perceive us as all-knowing and all-powerful (even though we are NOT), how we interact with them becomes how they perceive He Who is really all-knowing and all-powerful.  This can be done in a beautifully good way, as St. Therese of Lisieux’s parents imaged God for her.  Through her autobiography, Story of a Soul, the reader can see how she so naturally transitioned from being related to in a loving way that she came to understand that she is lovable and then could so easily perceive God as loving her deeply.  It was the reception of that love that filled her and strengthened her interior life. So, when it was lacking externally from uncharitable experiences from her religious sisters, she could maintain her peace.

In psychologist Madeline Levine’s article, Raising Successful Children, she explains that being overly protective and controlling of children does them no favors.  It can cripple them emotionally.  It’s the sweet spot of setting high expectations, being available, and attentive but letting go that is most beneficial.  When we focus on controlling the external results, a child loses motivation, comes to see themselves as incapable, and can become fearful of trying because of possible failure.

On the contrary, when we foster the internal development of the child – focusing on the development of character rather than external results, a child develops a self, an interior sense of who they are as someone who can struggle through obstacles and so is capable to handle the challenges that life might put in front of them.

I know this can be easier said than done if we were neglected in some way as children.  We can want to catch them before they fall.  Also, if we see their achievements as a reflection of who we are, we can try to live vicariously through them.  Let’s consider, though, how God parents us.  He has set high expectations of us by calling us to love Him, ourselves, and one another.  He is always available to us and yet respects the free will He has given us, and He doesn’t interfere with that.  As we choose the good it is not just the good result that is good, the choosing itself is good.  It’s the exercise of virtue and freedom when we had the ability and option of doing otherwise that is so precious.  It’s not just winning the good fight that is good.  The choosing to fight the good fight is where the victory begins.  Otherwise, we wouldn’t be persons.  We would be robots.

If you struggle to allow your child the good struggle that will allow him or her to develop interiorly, ask the Lord to show you what fear might lurk behind that.  Good Father, please give us the grace to parent as you do and so endow the children you entrust to us with truly free wills that are capable of choosing the good, especially You who are the greatest good.

May the Lord give you peace.

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Tips for Connection

Tips for Connection. Following are some very practical ways you can approach parenting to give both you and your child a sense of predictability and peace.  Know that if you are a new parent, these will be easier than if you have not been parenting in this way and make the switch to them.  It is normal and natural for a child to test boundaries that are set for them.  It’s part of how we learn.  Eventually, a child will learn that the boundaries you set will hold (if you stick to them) and there will be less and less testing, just as we only drop things intentionally when we are very little.  Once we see that when dropped an object will fall to the ground, we know that the law of gravity pertains to us and we don’t wonder what will happen if we drop something.

Parenting Tips

• Address only the “wise”/cooperative part of the child from your true self.

• Do not make the child responsible for your emotions. Relate to the child out of calm compassion and encourage him/her to take responsibility for his/her emotions.

• Be calm and assertive. If you cannot be and stay calm and assertive, look at and address why you cannot.

• Affirm and accentuate the positive minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour, and day-by-day.

• The child fundamentally wants to feel safe. When behavior is oppositional, angry, and defiant simply state and reassure emotional/physical safety.

• Give free choices between true options whenever possible and affirm the choice that is made.

• Create “no fail” situations that do not have any objective other than BEING one-on-one together with the child. This is time to develop relationship – not to reprimand or give directives.

• Have and keep clear house rules with clear privileges and consequences that all caregivers enforce.  This prevents a sense of unknown/unpredictable for caregivers and child.

• Focus on affirming and enjoying them rather than being afraid of or for them or controlling their behavior. The better he feels about himself the more he will control his own behavior.

• If you expect her to fail, she probably will.

• Be the leader. Do not wait for your child to set the tone for the day.  Treat oppositional behavior directly and immediately with the agreed upon consequences and then move on.  If you’re holding a grudge, deal with yourself and what that’s about.

• Being frustrated is normal. Be frustrated with the behavior and not with the child.  If he becomes frustrated with himself as well, his behavior will only worsen and compound the problem.

Know that unaddressed trauma – even traumas that happened in the womb or as an infant can cause many confounding emotional and behavioral problems.  If a child is consistently in crisis, even behaviorally, that may indicate a need for trauma therapy.

Parenting is so important.  Consider that you are imaging God for your child.  How you represent the Lord far more than what you say about Him will come to be how he or she understands God.  It’s a noble calling and crucial to the forming of a world of peace.  May God bless your efforts with His own grace and strength, He who is Father of us all.

May the Lord give you peace.

Margaret

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Diligence Overtakes Sloth

Diligence Overtakes Sloth. One of the cardinal or key virtues, that of fortitude, helps us in the forming of the virtue of diligence.  Being diligent means being consistently oriented toward the good.  It helps us take the desire and aspiration for good and make it practical and real.  The strength (fortitude) when exercised in very human or even seemingly mundane duties forms a habit of diligence.  We become consistent in our ability to choose the good.  We know God is the greatest good and so the exercise of actual movement in the direction of choosing the good is essential.  How amazing to think doing our daily duties, when done out of love for God and as a way of exercising self-discipline and diligence can help us in our spiritual lives.

By contrast, sloth is an apathy towards the good and can even end us up with a lack of desire for spiritual things.  The giving in to the lack of discipline can be a slippery slope.  Rejoicing in the Lord and delighting in Him isn’t just a saying.  It’s a real injunction we ought to take seriously and follow with constancy by choosing the good for love of Him.

We tend to think about and move towards what we keep in the forefront of our minds.  We can think about uprooting any of the vices but how beautiful when we ponder the love, goodness, and beauty of the Lord.  There’s a supernatural attractiveness toward Him because He is the ultimate good.  As we allow these things to fill our minds, hearts, and speech they become that much more what animates our lives in all areas.  We look back after some time and see how far the Lord by His grace has brought us.  The pressure isn’t on us to transform ourselves.  The Holy Spirit is the Sanctifier.  We simply need to cooperate – work with – His grace and allow Him to transform us from glory to glory.  When we give the Lord our five loaves and two fish, He multiplies our meager offerings.  Let’s trust in His goodness and power to do far more than we can ask or imagine!

May the Lord give you peace!

Margaret

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Growing Charity to Uproot Greed

Growing Charity to Uproot Greed. Charity is the virtue that wars against greed.  Generosity can be used interchangeably with the word charity.  Perhaps charity has become so overused that we can forget the real meaning.  We give to charities which do good to those in need and are called to be charitable or kind toward others.  We don’t hear the word generous used so often in so many ways.  So, it can more readily bring to mind the image of someone giving to a point of sacrifice in a way that is unexpected and moving.  That is how we are called to give, and it is also how we are called to be in our interactions with others.  That means it doesn’t just pertain to the giving of material goods but also the giving of our time and attention in acknowledging others, affirming the good, expressing value of the other, and so on.

St. Francis of Assisi cautioned his brothers against ‘appropriating’ anything as their own.  This is the attitude that underpins a generous heart.  When we stay rooted in the fact that everything we are and everything we receive is a gift from God, we are able to give of our goods and of ourselves in a way that doesn’t count the cost because we know we are not the ones who paid the price.  It was paid by the Lord.

This fundamental attitude helps to fix us in a stance counter to greed.  Generosity focuses us on allowing the flow of God’s goodness to flow through us.  Greed seeks to get for ourselves.  The Lord has so made us for generosity and charity that we receive a physiological benefit from it.  When we act in charity, are the recipients of a charitable act, or even witness a charitable act a hormone called oxytocin is released within us that fosters further acts of love, trust, and friendship.  Oxytocin is the physical basis for the warm, fuzzy feelings we experience when we see or experience loving interactions between people.

May the Lord make us conduits of His infinitely generous love!

And may the Lord give you peace!

Margaret

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Meekness, Uprooting Anger

Meekness, Uprooting Anger. Growing in virtue is what happens when our conscience becomes more and more penetrated by the truth that the Lord perfectly provides for and protects us within the loving boundaries of how He has called us to live.  We needn’t struggle and strive to earn a sense of value.  He poured His very Self out for us to reveal His love for us and redeem us.  He knows everything about us, far more than we could ever hope to know ourselves because it is He who made us and created us in love!  This is the foundation of living a life of Divine Intimacy.  These truths are the superabundant supply for what our hearts are longing.

Transformed by this reality, we realize we don’t need to protect ourselves.  We become less and less fearful and self-reliant for protection.  Eventually, we come to realize that regardless of what tragedy might ever befall us, the Lord will use it for our good.  I think of the example of St. Stephen being stoned and how Scripture tells us his face was like that of an angel while it was happening.  His was a tremendous example of not responding in anger but meeting circumstances with meekness.

Meekness is said to be “strength under control”.  He found that strength by remaining united to the Lord trusting in His protection that is so thorough death has no power over it.  He patiently endured the ignorance, violence, and hostility knowing he didn’t need to rely on himself.  He trusted instead in God.  That can sound extreme!  What?  We can even die, and God is still in control, in charge, and using even that for our benefit???  Absolutely!  That is exactly the example Jesus gave us!  He trusted in His Father and now sits at His right hand in glory for all eternity.

We, too, can grow in meekness and let go of the burden of self-reliance when we stay grounded in the reality of Jesus’ love for us.  Let’s not feel like we need to engineer our own sanctification.  It’s a lie and a trap.  Self-reliance is self-reliance.  Let’s instead rely on the Holy Spirit Who is the Sanctifier!  Let’s seek to surrender to Him in everything and so be transformed by Him through whatever comes our way.

May the Lord give you peace!

Margaret

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Friends in High Places

Friends in High Places. Sometimes in life, we can feel quite lonely for reasons that might be physical, emotional, or spiritual.  Perhaps we are living far away from support, need to travel a lot, or perhaps we recently lost a loved one.  We can feel emotionally alone, as though no one understands us.  Our circumstances can leave us feeling isolated.  We can feel spiritually isolated because we find ourselves in the circumstances it seems our friends don’t understand.  Any of these types of loneliness can be very painful.

The truth is that we’re never alone.  We know our Lord sees and knows all we are enduring.  Yet, when the suffering is great, it can be helpful to have the awareness of someone who was not divine praying for us and cheering us on.  Thankfully, there are saints of all ages, all walks of life, and who were challenged in just about any way you can imagine.  They responded to the grace the Lord held out to them and in doing so chose to grow through hard times rather than go through hard times.  The same God who extended such grace to them extends grace to us that is just as powerful!  He is unchanging and is All-Powerful!

A couple of years ago a friend and I were chatting in a coffee shop, and I was sharing about how much I really love Simeon, the old man in the temple when Jesus was presented to and dedicated to God.  He had been promised that he would not die until he saw the messiah.  How many babies must have been brought in on a regular basis and dedicated to God.  Yet, on the day Jesus was brought in Simeon knew that he knew that baby was Jesus!  He was so sure that was the fulfillment of God’s promise that he prayed, telling God he could now die happy because God had done what He said He’d do for him.  That is amazing!  How in touch with the Holy Spirit must he have been to see that so clearly!  It’s not like Baby Jesus had a neon flashing light on Him.

When I shared this with my friend, she said that Simeon must be really devoted to me.  What???  Isn’t it that I’m really devoted to him?  She said the way she thinks about it is that in Heaven they are so filled with charity and knowing what we’ll endure or be called to in this life they are drawn to us and decide to commit to praying for us.  Wow!!!  That made so much sense to me and at the same time it has also given me a tremendous sense of being really cared for by the saints – our heroes and big brothers and sisters who are committed to pray for us.

You are not alone!!!

May the Lord give you peace!

Margaret

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Humility Month

Celebrate June – Humility Month!

Humility Month. In 1675, Jesus appeared to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, revealed His Sacred Heart, and asked for a feast celebrating His Heart in June.  There are so many things in the image of the Sacred Heart for each one of us to receive personally and to imitate.

First, the fact that the King of Kings, the Most Majestic One, reveals Himself to each one of us is mind-blowing.  What a tremendous gift that is far beyond what we could ever ask!  Secondly, His Heart is offered to each of us personally and in a very real and specific way in the Eucharist.  Also, we see His Heart crowned with thorns reminding us of the mocking and belittling He endured from the soldiers during His passion.  Another thing we see is that His Heart is pierced with the lance because He so completely emptied every drop of blood and water for us.

He held nothing back.  His Heart is mounted with the Cross that He transformed from a sign of torture and suffering to a sign of victory, reminding us that if we bring our sufferings to Him, He will transform them and us.  Finally, we see the roaring flame, which represents His passionate love for each of us.  It consumes Him and brings Him from Heaven to earth, and by it, He fits us for Heaven.

We can seek to imitate each one of these same aspects of His Heart, exposing our hearts to Him, offering them to Him we each one of our sufferings for Him to transform us by the fire of His Love and affect His victory in us and through us.  He calls us to Him saying that He is meek and humble of heart and will give us rest for our souls.  We do not need to rely on ourselves!  That is a sure recipe for anxiety!  Let us rely on Him, who is all-loving, all-good, meek, and humble, totally with you and totally for you!

Let’s let every time we hear ‘pride’ this month be a reminder to us of where our pride leads us and yet the humility of the Lord’s own Heart to which He longs to draw us.

Jesus, meek and humble of Heart, make our hearts like Yours!

May the Lord give you peace!

Margaret

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Growing Chastity and Uprooting Lust

Growing Chastity and Uprooting Lust. We are bombarded with lustful images daily.  Billboards, commercials, song lyrics, and the like are often filled with impurity.  It can be difficult to live lives of purity and chastity.  Yet, it is that to which we are called.  Why does God ask that of us?  It’s because He is very invested in our freedom!  He was from the beginning when He created us with free will, and even when man failed and turned away from Him, He sent Jesus to restore our freedom.

Sometimes, we can get the idea that lust is true freedom, but that is a lie.  Lust is a counterfeit attempt at the connection that leads us to compulsive and even addictive behavior.  Ted Bundy is a notorious serial killer who said that it was his early childhood exposure to pornography that led him into deeper and deeper bondage.  Ultimately, the desire to possess and use another human being for his own gratification led him to kill many people.

Chastity is expressed differently according to our state in life.  If we are married, it is being faithful to our spouse and sexuality, being oriented toward self-gift, and proper reception of the other’s gift of self.  On the contrary, lust is about taking rather than giving or receiving.  It is disordered and is about pleasure for the sake of pleasure.

How are we supposed to find the strength to live in such purity when we are surrounded by the sexually impure and when our culture is so accepting of lust as though it is normal or even good?  It is too much for us to do on our own strength and gratefully, we don’t have to.  Instead, when we turn the desire for intimacy and connection to the Lord and accept the infinite power of His love for us which is far more than we could hope for or imagine, we are filled to overflowing.

That might be difficult to believe if you have become immersed in impurity.  Instead of hiding in shame, expose your need to the Lord, who already knows and loves you more than you can believe.  Let Him know your need and use the occasions of temptations as reminders to you to ask for His help.  He will hear your prayer.

May the Lord give you peace!

Margaret

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Growing Gratitude, Kindness

Uprooting Envy

Growing Gratitude Kindness. Envy is the vice of wanting something that isn’t mine.  Which is actually wanting something contrary to what the Lord knows will lead me to the joy, peace, and contentment He has for me.  When we don’t stay rooted and grounded in love like St. Paul tells us to in his letter to the Ephesians, we can quickly get off track and end up in such self-defeating and relationship-disrupting behavior.

King David gave into envy when he wanted Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, for his own.  He didn’t value her rightly by lusting for her and certainly didn’t value Uriah properly by sending him to the front lines in battle so that he would be killed.  Before that, he failed to stay rooted in God’s love for him and the knowledge that the same God who protected him from Goliath when he was a shepherd and provided for him to be an anointed king was providing for him.  Instead, he went outside of God’s boundaries seeking to provide for himself.

Another example from Scripture is the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son.  He was so envious of what his brother had received and may stand to receive in the future that he refused to go inside and celebrate his brother’s return.  Because of his envy, he lacked gratitude for the safe return of his brother to a relationship with himself and his father.  That lack of gratitude led to a lack of kindness towards his brother and father.  We can see why gratitude and kindness go together as virtues.

The Lord has so made us for acts of virtue that our bodies respond positively to them.  In a very real sense, the wages of sin are death, and virtue leads to life.  When we show kindness, receive kindness, or even witness kindness, oxytocin (one of the four feel-good hormones that foster love, trust, and friendship) is released in our bodies.  Being grateful feels good.  It brings light, peace, and joy.  Being envious feels bad.  Our bodies cry out to tell us what we are and aren’t made for.

If you struggle with envy, take some time to praise and thank the Lord for the revelation of His beauty and power in whatever it is you value.  This will get you back to being grounded in the Lord’s love and valuing things rightly as flowing from Him for His glory.

May the Lord give you peace!

Margaret

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Growing Humility Uprooting Pride

Growing Humility Uprooting Pride. Scripture tells us to choose the way of humility rather than pride.  It tells us that God favors the humble and humbles the proud.  Jesus even came to give us an example to follow.  His whole earthly life was, from first to last, a wondrous showcase of profound humility.  He emptied Himself and took on our humanity, was born in humble circumstances to poor parents, associated with the lowly, washed feet, and was buried in a borrowed grave.  We are told that is the example that we are to follow.  Yet, if we rely on our own ability to act with humility, we immediately fall into pride.  So, how is this to happen?

Fortunately, the Holy Spirit is the Sanctifier!  We are called to respond to God’s grace, not to be the source.  When the Lord told Peter to put his nets out on the other side after he’d fished all night and caught nothing, it required an initial act of humility to respond to a carpenter’s advice about fishing.  Yet, when His grace-filled Peter’s nets to the point of tearing with 153 fish, he grew in humility, even falling at the Lord’s feet and asking Him to depart, confessing his own sinfulness.

When we experience suffering, powerlessness, and insults, we can turn in fear to reliance upon ourselves, but that will ultimately lead to anxiety, shame, and feelings of disconnection from the Lord, ourselves, and others.  That only fuels the vicious cycle as our fear increases and around and around we go.  However, if we respond to suffering by sending our roots more deeply into God’s love for us, it is readily apparent that He is the one to rely on, our hearts are lifted in gratitude to Him, and we experience a sense of intimacy with Him.

We can have confidence – literally being ‘with faith’ when that faith is in Him rather than ourselves, knowing that His power is able to do anything, even though frail instruments like ourselves.  He is all-powerful and loves us more deeply than we can ever imagine.

May the Lord give you peace!

Margaret

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Freedom from Pornography Part 2

Interview with Steve Pokorny

Freedom from Pornography Part 2 with Steve Pokorny, founder of Freedom Coaching and author of Redeemed Vision:  Setting the Blind Free from the Pornified Culture, sat down with me to finish our discussion.  Make sure you check out Part 1 from last week to hear how Steve himself ended up addicted to pornography.  It’s amazing how the Lord uses those who have struggled and suffered to minister to the very people who are struggling the way they once did.  He, indeed, is the Redeemer!  Find Steve’s site at Freedom-Coaching.net.

He lost his father and mother to cancer, so he was desperate to learn how to pray.  He began to have a relationship with the Lord but hadn’t yet opened to Him the area of pornography.  He moved in with his aunt and uncle.  He was highly involved in school but didn’t feel known for who he really was.  He was living in a sexual silence because he wasn’t being educated on human sexuality.  His identity was being chipped away at by his addiction to porn.

Steve highly recommends the document Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality.  It’s only by living in the truth that we are set free.  He was in the seminary in Cleveland, OH, for four years and still didn’t receive proper healthy sexual formation.

Steve met a girl he really came to care about, and his love was unrequited.  He tried to cope with the apparent rejection by way of pornography.  He discerned out of seminary, taught for a year, and then ended up at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.  The Lord broke into his life at a Festival of Praise at FUS.  He was coming to know the Lord’s love and his identity as God’s son.  The Father’s love broke in and changed his desire to lust after women to want to serve them.  He ended up backsliding and wondering if it that freedom had been a mirage. He ended up finding Theology of the Body but living with the struggle towards porn.

Steve shared that he went through a week of intensive trauma therapy with me and that through the experience, the Lord set him free from the guilt and shame he was carrying and from the addiction to pornography.

No matter your struggles, the Lord can set you free and redeem the pain for your good and His glory.  There is nothing beyond His reach.

May the Lord give you peace!

Margaret

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Freedom From Pornography

Part 1 Interview with Steve Pokorny

Freedom From Pornography with Steve Pokorny, founder of Freedom Coaching (Freedom-Coaching.net), joined me to discuss his mission to set the captives free from the addiction to pornography.  He grew up in Cleveland, OH, suburbs.  His father was a Vietnam veteran and suffered from its lingering effects, particularly depression.  He was an attorney and worked long hours.  He got caught in a get-rich-quick scheme, and, to his knowledge, he had lost a lot of money, after which he attempted suicide.  He did not complete the suicide attempt but remained without short-term memory because of the damage.  He was very impaired and was moved to a nursing home.  This left Steve very disconnected from his dad from the time he was five years old.  This drastically interrupted his ability to connect to his father.

One day as a boy of 12 years old, he found in the middle of his street images of hard-core pornography.  He had had no education about sexuality or education.  He shared with other kids about the images and ended up selling them images to his friend for $20.  For Steve as a boy, there was a space in him that created a perfect storm.  Lust, anger, control, and fear were layered within him.  He points out that lust leads to violence, as many serial killers start out with exposure to porn.  It also leads to the violence of abortion.

For Steve, pornography was a poisoned apple that was dropped into an area of hunger.  He was thirsting to have his masculinity affirmed.  He felt fatherless, even though he had some good men in his life.  He was searching for a connection and was left to settle for a counterfeit.  This worsened things even more by filling him with shame.  The shame left him afraid and hiding from the people he needed.  Dr. Vincent Felitti once said in a talk I heard, “You can never get enough of what almost works.”  He didn’t feel comfortable in his own skin and found it difficult to connect with others.  He ended up feeling pain or numbness with feelings of guilt, shame, and self-hatred.

Make sure you turn in next week to hear Part 2 to hear how the Lord set Steve free and moved him into ministry to others!

May the Lord give you peace!

Margaret

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Repentance Those Hurt by Church Leadership

Repentance is important, especially if you have been hurt by church leaders. I was away from the Church for a number of years because of the abuse I suffered at the hands of Church leadership.  Maybe you or someone you love is in that same place in their walk.  During that time, annual programs welcomed Catholics back to the Church.  I felt that there was a step missing, that of acknowledging the hurt done by those in leadership.  This is what we extend to you today.

If someone in Church leadership offended you, I am so sorry for your pain or abuse.  Those in Church leadership have every bit as much of an ability to hurt people as anyone does.  People are still people, no matter what title they hold.  However, because of the roles they hold, those in leadership can wound us in the depths of our person, in the core of our spirituality.  They are meant to represent the Lord, so it can almost make us feel like God abused us, as crazy as that may sound.  Sometimes, even sacred art, music, and sacramentals can become triggering.

Repentance Heals

On behalf of the Church, Fr. David Tickerhoof and I acknowledge the pain and hurt you’ve endured and ask for your forgiveness.  We don’t want you to remain separated anymore.  No matter how little you might think you are, you are a crucial part of the Body of Christ, and we need you!  No member of the human body is disposable, and nor are you.  You are an essential member.

You actually have a special ability to minister to others who have experienced pain.  I remember something the Lord told me at one point when I was suffering because of those in the Church.  He said, “Everything you want from the Church, I want you to be that for the Church.”  It immediately refocused me on the Good Shepherd rather than the sheep.  Please return and extend that compassion you deserve to receive to those who are in the spot you were.

This Easter, we invite you to consider coming back to the Lord.  It doesn’t mean the hurtful way you were treated is right or doesn’t matter.  I invite you to think of that as our Good Father bringing you back into His House.  He can restore.  He does make ALL things new.

May the Lord give you peace!

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