Hello my brothers and sisters in Christ, I hope and pray you are having a great and life changing Lent. I also hope your Holy Week is going good as well. As we come to the end of another Lenten journey, let us try our best for the rest of the year to do better with either bible study or be more involved in praying. Lent isn't to make you struggle for 40 days it is to strengthen you.
Today I'm going to cover simple but complicated topics about Patience and God's timing. We never seem to get the idea of patience because we all have iphones now. We have answers for everything at the end of our fingertips. We no longer have to wait to check our calendars, buy a CD, go on itunes or go home to check our Facebook.
Sometimes when we wait to see God's plan we kind of feel stuck in the woods. You may be a little lost and confused because God has an interesting and different way of telling us what his great plan is for us. I think when we look back on what we were so impatiently waiting for it all seems so simple and yes, I did just quote Taylor Swift's song.
I am not a patient person. I deeply despise waiting. I don't like waiting in lines, I don't like waiting at the doctors office (or any office for that matter), and I don't like waiting for midnight showings in the movie theaters. I tap my fingers and shake my leg and fidget with my purse and pick off my nail polish.
This past year I never looked at patience through God's eyes. I never saw patience as anything else but pure boredom. I hope this post changes your views on how you see patience and maybe next time when you feel impatient you can remember this story and try and look at patience in another perspective.
I know a handful of you (okay a lot of you) know I'm making my Confirmation soon! I'm super psyched and can't wait until I get a greater outpouring of the Holy Spirit's gifts. At the beginning of my first year in Confirmation I didn't think much of it. I didn't think much of Confirmation and to be honest I didn't realize the importance of it. All I knew was my brother and sister got confirmed so I needed to as well.
I wrote papers, read books, and did the curriculum my Church assigned me. I slowly started learning more about Confirmation and understanding what it actually was. Almost done with my first year for Confirmation I really wanted to get myself ready, I felt something in my heart, and I felt this great feeling.
Going into Confirmation 2 I was the most on fire for my faith that I have ever been on. I couldn't believe what I was doing. I was posting God related statuses, reading the bible, actually studying the bible, praying the rosary without being with my family, and making time for prayer in the day, not just at night. It was a crazy time for me and I felt really good and healthy. Everything was going great and smooth. I LOVED CONFIRMATION!
A few weeks after Confirmation 2 had started I was told I had to pick a Confirmation Saint and Confirmation Sponsor. I picked my Confirmation saint relatively easy. It took me about a month of looking through different saints to find the perfect one, which is *drum roll please* St. Thomas Aquinas! I was really happy with my saint and honestly knew God had intended for me to pick St. Thomas Aquinas without a doubt.
The next thing I had to do was pick a Confirmation sponsor, Ahhh! Such a daunting, exciting, and awesome task. Most of my friends have already been confirmed so I asked them what they did to find their confirmation sponsors. They told me to pray a lot and to ask my confirmation saint to help me on this journey because it is not only your choice but God's choice.
I was so happy because I had this weird idea that God was going to put my future Confirmation sponsor in plain sight for me. I thought I would wake up from a text, message, phone call from the person God wanted me to ask.
I should've known better. God isn't a wizard or magician. He is SO much better than that because God always wants the best for you! I woke up the next morning, I checked my phone to find......nothing there. *Rolls eyes* I asked God the most commonly asked questions from us humans when his plans don't go our way, 'Why, God?'
I thought this whole picking a sponsor thing would be easy. I didn't know it then but I do know it now. Do you want to know why it's not easy? You're picking a role model to lead you closer to God and deeper into your faith. Your trusting that person to help you make decisions. That's a really big deal!
Thankfully that night was adoration and that was a true miracle because praying in front of our Savior is the best kind of prayer because you feel like your prayers and petitions go straight into his hands. So all throughout the day until adoration I was praying and praying because as I said previously I HATE waiting so this was quite irritating to me that God hadn't shown me who to pick yet.
The whole day had passed. It was 6:30, I knelt down on the kneelers and lowered my head, closed my eyes and prayed right before my God, my Lord, and my Best friend in the entire universe. I prayed in the dead silence of the church and this one person came to mind. I prayed about this person for quite some time and as I said in the beginning. God's plan is not always our plan. I was like "Yup. I'm picking this person right now. I'm going to go ask her right now. I'm going to do this right now". I waited until the end of adoration to ask but as I prayed more and more about this person I got this gross, stirring, nasty feeling in my stomach. At the end of adoration that night I kind of heard this voice saying, 'No.' it was a whispering voice in my head and so I walked out of church that night annoyed but also sort of happy.
This story of mine could go on for a few more weeks, or longer. I prayed hard on this. I just couldn't seem to find someone that I wanted but who also God wanted. One night after talking with my friend I sat down on my bed, told God I needed a sponsor, a great Catholic role model. Lord I need someone who is great, amazing, and someone I can talk to easily. I then asked him to put me at ease and to bring me peace in this part of my life and to welcome someone into at this point and time at my life who he wanted for me. I asked God to give me extreme patience. That's when it happened. Once I let Jesus Take The Wheel (No Carrie Underwood pun intended. Maybe a little). It became easier to be patient which I was never really good at.
The next day was a very exciting time in my life because God had answered my prayers and he had shown me who he wanted me to ask. This was the first time I had felt no stress, this was the first time I actually knew this is the right person and this was the first time I heard God saying, 'Yes' and not in a whispering way.
Don't worry there is no plot twist where I was going to ask this person and someone else came along because the person who I felt like God wanted me to ask is my sponsor today. I asked him to give me patience and ease because without it I honestly feel like I could have asked the wrong person and I would not be writing this post right now.
If there are any Sponsors reading this right now I am praying for you as you live your life of faith showing your candidates how to live their life according to the gospel. If there are any Candidates getting confirmed soon I am praying for you and your sponsor at this point and time right now. A big high five to you too for doing a job well done for choosing to be confirmed and if you went through the journey I did trying to find a spiritual role model.
Finally, a big hug to my sponsor for always being there for me, Thank-you! You are crazy awesome <3
As we have entered Holy Week already and Easter is almost here I am praying for you all so much this week. May you have a blessed Easter and live your Catholic life, fearlessly.
-Sammy
