What to expect when you are expecting...something

I graduated from college 4 years and 2 months ago. I started working at my present job 3 year, 8 months and 1 week ago. If I could go back and tell myself "well, honey, you are still working in the same job, you still have tons of loans, you are still single, no husband/kids yet..." would I change anything? I was certainly expecting things to be different...I was hoping they would be.

When we have expectations and they are not met, we tend to get angry...which then leads to resentment. Resentment leads to self pity, but at the same time you've got to blame someone...someone besides yourself because you certainly did not do this to yourself...you would never have chosen to be this unhappy. That is what happens to all of these marriages that "survive" but are miserable beyond belief, with the spouses nitpicking each other to death. People get married expecting it to be one way and it is not, which then occludes their ability to see all of the good that they cannot see because they were not expecting it and are too focused on their own dissapointment.

Perhaps it is better to avoid expectations, but this leads one to abandon hope for better things. Can there not be a middle ground? a balance? I know this to be possible.

No matter what I "expect" to happen in my life, I know that God's will would be so much better than anything I could have dreamed up. It all comes down to a reoccuring theme of this summer: trust. Would I go back and change anything knowing what I know now? Probably not. Do I trust God enough? Absolutely not.

O Lord, be merciful to me a fool.

Christ and sinners

"Christ's love knows no boundaries, stops at no limits, doesn't turn away from ugliness and filth. It was for sinners He came, not for the righteous."
~ St. Teresa of Avila

Christ came to save sinners...not the perfect people.
Have you ever met a perfect person? I've met a few, and believe you me, they ain't perfect....not by a long shot! Perfect people make me nervous...and I often feel terribly inferior. By this I mean those who seem so perfect and who think of themselves as such. Those who are truly perfect (and I've met only a couple of them) are actually perfect and do not make anyone feel inferior because they exude the love of God through their very being, and God, though He is perfection itself by virtue of the fact that He is Truth, loves us unconditionally.

I still find it hard to believe that He could love one so frustrating, so small, so pigheaded as I. And therein we see the crux of the issue: a lack of trust. Christ continues to love me even though I constantly exhibit a lack of trust...human nature perhaps...but selfish and stupid nonetheless.

O Lord, be merciful to me, a fool.

Prayer

Prayer...so necessary...so small...so difficult. Why do I constantly fight against God to pray? How can I cultivate a friendship with him if I do not get to know him?

St. John Vianney noticed a man who came to the church every day and stayed for hours in front of the Tabernacle. After watching this for a while he finally went up to the man and asked "what do you say?" The man looked at the saint and said, "I don't say anything. I look at him and he looks at me."

Methinks it's only complicated because I make it so.

Anthem

O say can you see by the dawn's early light
what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming,
who's broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous flight o're the ramparts we watch were so galantly gleaming.
And the rocket's red glare,
the bombs bursting in air
gave truth through the night that our flag was still there.
O say does that star spangled banner yet wave
o're the land of the free and the home of the brave. 

O thus be it ever when free men shall stand
between their loved homes and the war's desolation.
 Blessed with victory and peace may the heaven rescued land
 praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
And then conquer we must
when our cause it is just,
and this be our motto: in God is Our trust!
And the flag of the free, forever may it wave,
 or the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Complete vs. Finished.

If you look up the definitions of "complete" and "finished" in the dictionary, they mean pretty much the same thing. Someone asked a linguist, "what is the difference between these words?" He answered, "well, think of it this way: if you find the right girl and marry her, you are complete. If you marry the wrong girl, you are finished. If you marry the right girl and do it with the wrong girl, you are completely finished." Told to me by my father. =)

THE FOOL'S PRAYER by Edward Rowland Sill

I loved to read as a child (I still do, though I take much less time doing it) and every now and again I would stumble upon something I considered profound and I would memorize. Every so often, I will mutter under my breathe "Lord, be merciful to me a fool" for it is all of the foolish things I do and have done that bring me pain...and the wretched devil who constantly reminds me of them. A priest told me recently, "okay, so you are confessing the same things every week in the confessional? Stop taking yourself so seriously!!! Offer it to God, and quit getting down about your weakness." For it is my weakness that makes me human, and my weakness that He embraced.

HE royal feast was done; the King

Sought some new sport to banish care,

And to his jester cried: "Sir Fool,

Kneel now, and make for us a prayer!"

 

The jester doffed his cap and bells,

And stood the mocking court before;

They could not see the bitter smile

Behind the painted grin he wore.

 

He bowed his head, and bent his knee

Upon the Monarch's silken stool;

His pleading voice arose: "O Lord,

Be merciful to me, a fool!

 

"No pity, Lord, could change the heart

From red with wrong to white as wool;

The rod must heal the sin: but Lord,

Be merciful to me, a fool!

 

"'T is not by guilt the onward sweep

Of truth and right, O Lord, we stay;

'T is by our follies that so long

We hold the earth from heaven away.

 

"These clumsy feet, still in the mire,

Go crushing blossoms without end;

These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust

Among the heart-strings of a friend.

 

"The ill-timed truth we might have kept--

Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung?

The word we had not sense to say--

Who knows how grandly it had rung!

 

"Our faults no tenderness should ask.

The chastening stripes must cleanse them all;

But for our blunders -- oh, in shame

Before the eyes of heaven we fall.

 

"Earth bears no balsam for mistakes;

Men crown the knave, and scourge the tool

That did his will; but Thou, O Lord,

Be merciful to me, a fool!"

 

The room was hushed; in silence rose

The King, and sought his gardens cool,

And walked apart, and murmured low,

"Be merciful to me, a fool!"