God has been sending me not-so-subtle reminders to be patient for the last week or two. Actually, some of them have been more of like a smack in the face (like the Catholic Newman Club officers deciding to do a reflection on patience at last week's meeting). But I've needed it.
As much as I hate running, I function best moving at a fast pace with everything else. I was one of those kids that as an undergrad, was in way too many extracurriculars, worked a job or two, took more than the normal amount of credits, and was more productive with an extra-large (that size isn't on the normal menu, you have to ask for it) french vanilla cappuccino from Tim Horton's than I was with an extra hour or two of sleep. I love being productive, crossing things off to-do lists, and going home exhausted at the end of the day because I got so much done.
Needless to say, every day can't be fast-paced. A lot of times, it's just humanly impossible to get things done in the time you'd like them to be finished. And honestly, it's just not good to be fast and hyper-productive all the time.
Even though I got a lot more work done during those days, I burned out at the end of my senior year. I remember pulling an all-nighter before my senior marketing plan presentation (a marketing major's equivalent to a thesis presentation) to make sure everything was perfect... and then blacked out during my own presentation (apparently I kept talking through it all, and I got a good grade for it, but all I remember from it is "waking up" halfway through a video I showed in the middle of my presentation, and I can't recall anything I said/did for the first half of my project).
I went through a lot of checklists in college. Yay! But I wasn't always around to just hang out with my friends, to Skype with my family, to spend a lot of time in prayer and reflection. I was too busy running a meeting, or finishing an extra project, or putting in a few more hours at work. There are definitely days now where I wonder what I missed out on.
Patience takes practice -- and a LOT of it. I'll probably always struggle with patience... and being impatient with people. I've slowed down a bit since my undergrad days (maybe that's because if I tried to survive on 3 hours of sleep and an extra-large coffee for another whole semester, I would be a very grumpy campus minister -- but I hope that I've also slowed down a little because I've learned something over the years).
It's more important to thank God for a beautiful day and notice the sunshine as I walk to my office than it is for me to take those ten minutes to be productive and answer e-mails on my phone as I dodge cars in the Kean parking lot (and it's safer, too). Waiting on another campus office to return an important phone call gives me a few minutes (or a few days) to talk with students about new programming ideas. In a few years, I know I'll remember the meaningful chat I had with a student
way more vividly than the 20 minutes I spent making sure my filing
cabinet was alphabetized.
Earlier this week, I woke up to a message from my Daily Bible phone app (yes, I am a Catholic nerd): "Better is the end of a thing than its beginning, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit." -- Ecclesiates 7:8 -- after this past week, I definitely needed that literal wake-up call.
A patient spirit is absolutely better than a spirit that's proud of their finished to-do list. Patience makes you appreciate the end of a project and the journey it took to get there, instead of being stressed about each individual stepping stone. It gives you a sense of the bigger picture of what you're doing, instead of confining your life to a checklist on a brightly-colored post-it. Patience gives you a look at your priorities, and your memories. Patience brings peace.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Struggles, a gift, and a song
I heard something awesome yesterday while listening to the Christian radio station on my way home from work. They were interviewing Brandon Heath, a Christian singer who has struggled with stuttering his whole life (you can't tell by the way he sings), and the radio personality said something along the lines of "You know, it's funny -- usually the things that we struggle with the most are really hidden gifts that God has given us to share with others."
This is so incredibly true -- and yet most of the time, we're so wrapped up in how much we're struggling with something that we can't see what a gift that suffering, that pain, that daunting task really is. I think I was paying attention to the radio interview because I love Brandon Heath, and music in general, and I play the guitar and sing myself.
I lead music at Masses and Adoration and things frequently now, but it's been a journey getting myself to that point. I grew up singing at church, and playing various instruments (piano, drums, even a little soprano saxophone, which I failed miserably at), and I always loved jamming to songs in the car or the shower -- but in a crowd, or even around my family and friends, I couldn't get a sound out -- I was terrified.
I gave up music for a few years in high school in favor of sports, and spontaneously decided to pick up guitar in college. It took me a while to get good enough at it to play in front of people, but my junior year I joined the college's music ministry group. We had a blast - I'd play guitar, our piano player/music minister was incredible, we had a bass guitarist and violinist sometimes, and a big group of students singing -- it was so much fun! They asked me to lead a few times, like when the Erie snow got so crazy our music director couldn't make it to the Chapel -- I survived, but not without at least a few others singing with me, and some minor panic attacks. I dreaded those nights.
I'm still not sure why I did, but one summer they asked me to be the musician for a Catholic summer camp for high school students that I volunteered at each year. I had played at Sunday Masses before, but not like this -- this was leading an hour of Mass, an hour of Adoration, and miscellaneous times of prayer -- for a whole week. It was probably my stubborn Irish-German blood in me that made me say yes -- even though I knew that I was SO not ready for that. I freaked out every time I thought about it for a solid 8 months, practiced way more than I needed to, and made one of my best friends force me to sing in front of at least her... and then camp came.
The team members for that camp are some of the most supportive people I've ever worked with, and I never could have gotten through that week without them. I survived with only one awful night of panicking and crying, and by the end of the week I had gotten what I needed -- a swift kick in the pants. That week made me remember what I was really doing -- I wasn't playing meaningless music in front of thousands of people. I was in a small chapel, with some of my closest friends and some high school students, playing in front of a God that can handle so much more than my crazy stage freight issues -- and it wasn't just music. It was prayer.
I cared that I was singing on key and using the right strum pattern and doing my best to keep my mind off of the fact that I was singing in front of people and not sounding like a dying duck. But God didn't care about that. He cared that I was present, I was putting my soul into what I was doing, I was doing my best, I was praising Him, and leading other people to Him through that prayer and song. That's what mattered. And nothing else.
Don't get me wrong -- getting over that fear has been one of the hardest things I've ever done. I wasn't magically cured after that week, and I still sometimes get nervous and freeze up when I'm about to sing or play. But I have a new perspective on it now -- it doesn't stop me. I hope that one day, I'll be jamming to some praise song up in heaven, and I'll hit every note perfectly. But for now, I'll have to be okay with not being perfect, and just being me -- the slightly nervous, kind of crazy, bounces when she plays, awkward girl that smiles when she sings and tries her hardest to put her soul into her music. The ability to pray through music has been one of God's gifts to me -- even when I was too scared to unwrap the present.
This is so incredibly true -- and yet most of the time, we're so wrapped up in how much we're struggling with something that we can't see what a gift that suffering, that pain, that daunting task really is. I think I was paying attention to the radio interview because I love Brandon Heath, and music in general, and I play the guitar and sing myself.
I lead music at Masses and Adoration and things frequently now, but it's been a journey getting myself to that point. I grew up singing at church, and playing various instruments (piano, drums, even a little soprano saxophone, which I failed miserably at), and I always loved jamming to songs in the car or the shower -- but in a crowd, or even around my family and friends, I couldn't get a sound out -- I was terrified.
I gave up music for a few years in high school in favor of sports, and spontaneously decided to pick up guitar in college. It took me a while to get good enough at it to play in front of people, but my junior year I joined the college's music ministry group. We had a blast - I'd play guitar, our piano player/music minister was incredible, we had a bass guitarist and violinist sometimes, and a big group of students singing -- it was so much fun! They asked me to lead a few times, like when the Erie snow got so crazy our music director couldn't make it to the Chapel -- I survived, but not without at least a few others singing with me, and some minor panic attacks. I dreaded those nights.
I'm still not sure why I did, but one summer they asked me to be the musician for a Catholic summer camp for high school students that I volunteered at each year. I had played at Sunday Masses before, but not like this -- this was leading an hour of Mass, an hour of Adoration, and miscellaneous times of prayer -- for a whole week. It was probably my stubborn Irish-German blood in me that made me say yes -- even though I knew that I was SO not ready for that. I freaked out every time I thought about it for a solid 8 months, practiced way more than I needed to, and made one of my best friends force me to sing in front of at least her... and then camp came.
The team members for that camp are some of the most supportive people I've ever worked with, and I never could have gotten through that week without them. I survived with only one awful night of panicking and crying, and by the end of the week I had gotten what I needed -- a swift kick in the pants. That week made me remember what I was really doing -- I wasn't playing meaningless music in front of thousands of people. I was in a small chapel, with some of my closest friends and some high school students, playing in front of a God that can handle so much more than my crazy stage freight issues -- and it wasn't just music. It was prayer.
I cared that I was singing on key and using the right strum pattern and doing my best to keep my mind off of the fact that I was singing in front of people and not sounding like a dying duck. But God didn't care about that. He cared that I was present, I was putting my soul into what I was doing, I was doing my best, I was praising Him, and leading other people to Him through that prayer and song. That's what mattered. And nothing else.
Don't get me wrong -- getting over that fear has been one of the hardest things I've ever done. I wasn't magically cured after that week, and I still sometimes get nervous and freeze up when I'm about to sing or play. But I have a new perspective on it now -- it doesn't stop me. I hope that one day, I'll be jamming to some praise song up in heaven, and I'll hit every note perfectly. But for now, I'll have to be okay with not being perfect, and just being me -- the slightly nervous, kind of crazy, bounces when she plays, awkward girl that smiles when she sings and tries her hardest to put her soul into her music. The ability to pray through music has been one of God's gifts to me -- even when I was too scared to unwrap the present.
Faith In Transition, once again.
We were talking about transitions at our first Catholic Newman Club meeting of the year, and it got me thinking about my own transition, or sometimes a lack thereof.
It's been a big adjustment for me coming home -- not only moving back in with my parents for a while, but being around people that know me as the girl I was in high school (I'm not sure that I'm THAT different... but still definitely changed), and who I am as a young woman as well -- a young Catholic woman, to be specific.
My faith has grown in leaps and bounds since I went to college - which for the past 6ish years I've attributed to the faith community I built up around me when I was in Erie. Deciding to go to a Catholic university was a big step - but my freshman year was a head-first dive into my faith. Within the first few weeks, I had found an awesome group of girls to go to Masses with on Sundays, started going to Ichthi, the Catholic faith-sharing group on campus, and made a TEC (To Encounter Christ) Retreat with the Diocese of Erie -- all of which were serious game changers.
That group of girls, which was also about 2/3 of the wing of our dorm, became my sisters, and I'm still best friends with many of them today. We were such that stereotypical group of college freshmen girls -- traveling in packs, sitting together, laughing along the way -- except we would do the same going to church on Sundays (even the ones that weren't Catholic). When I started going to daily Masses on campus too, they were my accountability check as well -- if I decided I needed to take a nap more than I needed to go to daily Mass, I'd get the third degree from one of them about why I was still in my dorm room instead of at the Chapel. They didn't come with me most of the time during the week (nothing against them for that), but they knew what I needed to keep my head on straight and encouraged me to stick to that.
Ichthi fed me spiritually, and made me realize that I was so hungry to learn more about my faith. Don't get me wrong -- I'm a cradle Catholic, my mom taught most of my CCD classes growing up, and they did an awesome job of raising me in the faith -- but I knew there was so much more to learn. Ichthi is where I started to learn more about things like Theology of the Body, and got hooked on researching things on my own.
And TEC -- TEC because my huge extended family in a way that's too hard to describe with words. I had my first Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament experience there, got introduced to the amazing 24-hour Adoration Chapel at St. Joe's, and met some incredible people that I've become so close with. It's been such a blessing being able to make, and work/direct, TEC weekends.
Long(er) story short, my faith transition from high school to college was easy -- going home for the summers was hard, I was living 6 hours away from my "faith family," there wasn't three Churches with daily Mass times that fit my schedule within walking distance. I continued to grow when I was in Erie, especially in my faith -- but it was stuck in Erie -- it wasn't stuck with me.
Transitioning from undergrad to graduate school was different though, and definitely an adjustment - I didn't go to all of the undergrad events anymore, and a lot of my friends moved away after graduation. Then graduate school to "big kid world" was tough again - making time for daily Mass with a crazy work schedule and remembering to pray every day was hard, and I struggled. And moving from PA to NJ was harder still - so much that had helped me grow was back in Erie, and I felt a little lost.
I can't pinpoint the moment when I put two and two together to make four -- I had had amazing experiences with my Catholic faith, and the Catholic Church is everywhere -- therefore I can have amazing experiences with my Catholic faith everywhere. Key word -- CAN.
It's not easy transitioning any time -- especially 6-7 hours away from the guys you've seen go through seminary and are now some of your big-brother-priest-best-friends, and the young women you've done everything with from talk about boys to pray together before a Tabernacle. But it CAN be a great experience.
The struggle is in the routine -- finding a new place to go to daily Mass or confession on a regular basis, your new favorite chapel to pray in, a new spiritual director, new friends to sit with in church -- all of the physical places or the people you're close to. But while it's hard to separate those things from your actual spiritual experience of God, and they are an important part of that experience, those physical things are not God. They are not the Catholic Church. They are not your faith.
The Church and God aren't things that are tied down by where you're living, where you're working, or who you go to Mass with. They are not luggage that you drag behind you when you move, or a house that you sell when you leave one town to buy a new one. God is bigger than that, and He is a part of you -- and so is your faith. One of my favorite things about the Catholic faith is that it's the same wherever you go -- so you CAN have that spiritual experience, at any time, at any place. We just have to remember where those great moments really come from - our awesome, incredible, ever-present God.
It's been a big adjustment for me coming home -- not only moving back in with my parents for a while, but being around people that know me as the girl I was in high school (I'm not sure that I'm THAT different... but still definitely changed), and who I am as a young woman as well -- a young Catholic woman, to be specific.
My faith has grown in leaps and bounds since I went to college - which for the past 6ish years I've attributed to the faith community I built up around me when I was in Erie. Deciding to go to a Catholic university was a big step - but my freshman year was a head-first dive into my faith. Within the first few weeks, I had found an awesome group of girls to go to Masses with on Sundays, started going to Ichthi, the Catholic faith-sharing group on campus, and made a TEC (To Encounter Christ) Retreat with the Diocese of Erie -- all of which were serious game changers.
That group of girls, which was also about 2/3 of the wing of our dorm, became my sisters, and I'm still best friends with many of them today. We were such that stereotypical group of college freshmen girls -- traveling in packs, sitting together, laughing along the way -- except we would do the same going to church on Sundays (even the ones that weren't Catholic). When I started going to daily Masses on campus too, they were my accountability check as well -- if I decided I needed to take a nap more than I needed to go to daily Mass, I'd get the third degree from one of them about why I was still in my dorm room instead of at the Chapel. They didn't come with me most of the time during the week (nothing against them for that), but they knew what I needed to keep my head on straight and encouraged me to stick to that.
Ichthi fed me spiritually, and made me realize that I was so hungry to learn more about my faith. Don't get me wrong -- I'm a cradle Catholic, my mom taught most of my CCD classes growing up, and they did an awesome job of raising me in the faith -- but I knew there was so much more to learn. Ichthi is where I started to learn more about things like Theology of the Body, and got hooked on researching things on my own.
And TEC -- TEC because my huge extended family in a way that's too hard to describe with words. I had my first Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament experience there, got introduced to the amazing 24-hour Adoration Chapel at St. Joe's, and met some incredible people that I've become so close with. It's been such a blessing being able to make, and work/direct, TEC weekends.
Long(er) story short, my faith transition from high school to college was easy -- going home for the summers was hard, I was living 6 hours away from my "faith family," there wasn't three Churches with daily Mass times that fit my schedule within walking distance. I continued to grow when I was in Erie, especially in my faith -- but it was stuck in Erie -- it wasn't stuck with me.
Transitioning from undergrad to graduate school was different though, and definitely an adjustment - I didn't go to all of the undergrad events anymore, and a lot of my friends moved away after graduation. Then graduate school to "big kid world" was tough again - making time for daily Mass with a crazy work schedule and remembering to pray every day was hard, and I struggled. And moving from PA to NJ was harder still - so much that had helped me grow was back in Erie, and I felt a little lost.
I can't pinpoint the moment when I put two and two together to make four -- I had had amazing experiences with my Catholic faith, and the Catholic Church is everywhere -- therefore I can have amazing experiences with my Catholic faith everywhere. Key word -- CAN.
It's not easy transitioning any time -- especially 6-7 hours away from the guys you've seen go through seminary and are now some of your big-brother-priest-best-friends, and the young women you've done everything with from talk about boys to pray together before a Tabernacle. But it CAN be a great experience.
The struggle is in the routine -- finding a new place to go to daily Mass or confession on a regular basis, your new favorite chapel to pray in, a new spiritual director, new friends to sit with in church -- all of the physical places or the people you're close to. But while it's hard to separate those things from your actual spiritual experience of God, and they are an important part of that experience, those physical things are not God. They are not the Catholic Church. They are not your faith.
The Church and God aren't things that are tied down by where you're living, where you're working, or who you go to Mass with. They are not luggage that you drag behind you when you move, or a house that you sell when you leave one town to buy a new one. God is bigger than that, and He is a part of you -- and so is your faith. One of my favorite things about the Catholic faith is that it's the same wherever you go -- so you CAN have that spiritual experience, at any time, at any place. We just have to remember where those great moments really come from - our awesome, incredible, ever-present God.
Back to New Jersey... again.
Once again, I'm making a commitment to keep this thing going... for real this time. I have to find something to keep my journalism minor relevant, I guess...
If you've missed the memo, I started a new job about a month and a half ago -- I'm the new Catholic Campus Minister at Kean University in Union, NJ. Yup, back to my original home, the lovely Garden State! It's good to be back - although I've apparently started talking a little too much like someone from NW Pennsylvania, and I've gotten used to driving around crazy PA in the snow, so I have some adjustments to make. I guess it kind of paid off that I never got around to getting a PA driver's license, getting new plates/registration on my car, or any of that logistical nightmare of paperwork that goes along with moving between states.
It's weird being home though (to avoid losing my mind over simultaneously starting a new job AND apartment hunting/moving for the third time in 3 months, I've temporarily moved back in with my parents... and it's free). While I haven't really kept in touch with most of my friends from high school, a LOT of them are still around Mount Olive. It's a little weird coming home and seeing the girl that was in your 9th grade home ec class be your waitress at the Budd Lake Diner, or running into a guy at the gym that you were friends with in 11th grade, but now couldn't remember his real name if he paid you (his nickname is a little strange, maybe that's why it's the only thing I remember about him)...
It definitely has its up-sides though. It's great living about 7 hours closer to family members though (for my birthday dinner last week, we had 3 generations of the family together for the first time in too long), and it's cool seeing where people from home end up -- like one of my high school friends also just started working at Kean, and another friend works about 10 minutes from here too -- it's much better than starting over from scratch.
Coming back has also been a huge reminder of how much I've changed and grown over the past 6 years... and has provided some very interesting perspective on how much of a hand God has had in where I'm at in my life. To think that just 6-7 years ago, I was planning on going to St. Joe's in Philly for their food marketing college, and if I had done that I probably would be working for Campbell's in some major city with some marketing job that wouldn't be nearly as fulfilling as were I'm at now. Who would have thought that instead I would have taken a crazy adventure to Erie, PA, gone to Gannon University, decided I wanted to work for non-profits, used the GU Director of Campus Ministry as a reference while applying for non-profit/religious jobs in grad school, gotten recommended for the Campus Minister job at Penn State Behrend, decided to leave for a full-time job, and ended up back in New Jersey, working for the Archdiocese of Newark?
God definitely laughs when we make plans. And although I will be a stubborn Irish-German woman for the rest of my life, I'm glad that I've learned a little bit about trying to listen to Him over the past few years. And I've got a lot more learning, and listening to do, too.
If you've missed the memo, I started a new job about a month and a half ago -- I'm the new Catholic Campus Minister at Kean University in Union, NJ. Yup, back to my original home, the lovely Garden State! It's good to be back - although I've apparently started talking a little too much like someone from NW Pennsylvania, and I've gotten used to driving around crazy PA in the snow, so I have some adjustments to make. I guess it kind of paid off that I never got around to getting a PA driver's license, getting new plates/registration on my car, or any of that logistical nightmare of paperwork that goes along with moving between states.
It's weird being home though (to avoid losing my mind over simultaneously starting a new job AND apartment hunting/moving for the third time in 3 months, I've temporarily moved back in with my parents... and it's free). While I haven't really kept in touch with most of my friends from high school, a LOT of them are still around Mount Olive. It's a little weird coming home and seeing the girl that was in your 9th grade home ec class be your waitress at the Budd Lake Diner, or running into a guy at the gym that you were friends with in 11th grade, but now couldn't remember his real name if he paid you (his nickname is a little strange, maybe that's why it's the only thing I remember about him)...
It definitely has its up-sides though. It's great living about 7 hours closer to family members though (for my birthday dinner last week, we had 3 generations of the family together for the first time in too long), and it's cool seeing where people from home end up -- like one of my high school friends also just started working at Kean, and another friend works about 10 minutes from here too -- it's much better than starting over from scratch.
Coming back has also been a huge reminder of how much I've changed and grown over the past 6 years... and has provided some very interesting perspective on how much of a hand God has had in where I'm at in my life. To think that just 6-7 years ago, I was planning on going to St. Joe's in Philly for their food marketing college, and if I had done that I probably would be working for Campbell's in some major city with some marketing job that wouldn't be nearly as fulfilling as were I'm at now. Who would have thought that instead I would have taken a crazy adventure to Erie, PA, gone to Gannon University, decided I wanted to work for non-profits, used the GU Director of Campus Ministry as a reference while applying for non-profit/religious jobs in grad school, gotten recommended for the Campus Minister job at Penn State Behrend, decided to leave for a full-time job, and ended up back in New Jersey, working for the Archdiocese of Newark?
God definitely laughs when we make plans. And although I will be a stubborn Irish-German woman for the rest of my life, I'm glad that I've learned a little bit about trying to listen to Him over the past few years. And I've got a lot more learning, and listening to do, too.
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