addendum revised?

I posted this earlier. Then I took it off because I thought people were thinking it was about me. It really wasn't about me, it was about something that has upset me. When I see injustice, I have to fight it somehow. Generally, I've learned that just about everything that has happened in my life, good and bad, has a way of helping someone else. That makes both the bad and the good take on new meaning. It means that our lives are never wasted, we simply have to be present to what happens and why.
I have had some amazing couple of weeks. Just by being present an available to what is before me. Today, just by itself, took me by surprise. I'm thinking, if a person is in love with God...and God is in love with you...which He so very definitely is...then each day is full of surprise and meaning. I wish that for all of you.
I mean, I cannot believe for even a second that what is happening to me is particularly special. I just think that if you live each day as a gift from God and then give God that whole day back to him...well, even the bad stuff becomes good. I'm thinking that's how it might work.
Where can I start?
It is kind of mind-blowing for me to think that I have become a safe enough place for men to allow me to be present to their tears. I mean, I feel so blessed that a person can be real with me and not feel afraid. Women, I think, we women can cry together...but to have become a safe place for a man...well, I am humbled.

I am constantly "complimented" on my prayers. How can that be? I just listen to what they tell me and I pray it out loud. I didn't create the prayer, they did...but they think because it is my voice they hear, I'm saying it. But I am not saying it. They are saying it. Maybe I get to be brave for them. When the time comes, I'm sure, I'll need someone to be brave for me. But it is so warming inside to think I am helping. I can't hear my own voice, but people tell me I am a calming presence. Like my eyes, people say that they are beautiful, but I can't see them, so I have to take their word for it. I like to think God gave me these blue eyes to help others. Maybe they are the kind of eyes that make people feel safe. I hope so.

I am just so grateful for the work I get to do for God. I don't know how long I'll get to do it...it could all end tomorrow, but right now, I get to "love as He has loved me" and I'll just take today and let tomorrow be tomorrow.

I write this out for you, whoever reads this stuff, because I am begging you to do it too. Reach out, don't over-think it, don't set a goal, but really be present for the person God puts in front of you and see how He uses you to bless both of you. When the praise comes, and it will come, don't let your ego have it, just offer it back to God...thank God you have the chance to love someone for that moment and don't ask for more. I hope that makes some kind of sense.
If you fail, well, then that is grace too. It is all part of the lesson, the constant growth toward spiritual union with our beloved Father in heaven. If He wounds us, He heals us. If the world wounds us, He heals us.
But only if we let Him.
My challenge, I think, is how to be an advocate for someone who cannot yet speak for herself/himself. What might that look like? How do I help? What are my options?
But while I am trying to solve that problem, so many other wonderful things are happening.
Do you have any idea what it is like to pray a rosary with strangers? To teach someone how to pray? To tell them, Yes, of course Jesus wants you...and then get squeezed to tightly because it was the one thing they wanted to hear? To give/watch someone receive Holy Communion again for the first time in YEARS? To pray with someone who told you five minutes before "I don't want a prayer." To have someone tell you nothing, and then pray, and have them tell you everything that frightens them? And, for me, the hardest thing of all to hear is "thank you." How can anyone possible say thank you to me, when God alone deserves the thanks. Yet, I smile politely because it is the right thing to do and much to hard to explain during those moments...and would change the whole focus of the grace.

It's complicated. But it is not very hard to do. Just hard to explain.

If God gives you the opportunity to love, then love. Don't try to figure it out while it is happening. Just love...then write it down later, if you are like me...or go take a walk, or have a cup of tea...and just bask in the graces He gives you.

Probably should stop writing here...but oh, my so much more ahead!

May your week be blessed. May your eyes be open to see it, your ears open to hear it and your heart ready to feel it.

Love, Cindy

EARLIER POST RETURNED...the compliments I got about it have outweighed my insecurities about it...let it help those who need it Lord, and let those who don't just ignore it. It sounds a bit painful, I think...but the problem I am trying to solve is painful. I leave it here because I think I am reflecting back two very different views of the same things. I suppose I want to point out that grace works in a variety of ways. In the dark and in the light, it works. Grace doesn't care. It pours into all the spaces it can, the ones you know about...and delightfully all the ones you don't know about!
DNA
Part of my journey is a constant realization that everything and everyone is connected to everything and everyone else. We are all part of creation as we are all children of the creator.
In the challenges of my childhood, I longed for someone to hear me, someone to ask "What's wrong? Why are you sad?" But no one ever did. No one noticed. It would have been so nice back then to have had someone who noticed.

I think about that when I read that harsh passage in the back of Matthew's gospel: Lord, when did we see you hungry or naked or thirsty?

When you did/did not for the least of these, you did it for me.

So it the world does not listen, then one has to learn how to cry out differently.

Or you could be clever and use 'teacher' terms: 'act out' differently.

I say it over and over again, but all around me, I see most of us are just not listening. We don't want to hear anything but pleasant things and we are encouraged to be pleasant. Look good, play the role, and everything will be just fine. That's not really a bad thing to do...unless you are hurting and have no one to talk to.

So some of us run to God...some of us run to other things, perhaps things that don't really help but just distract us from our confusion and pain.

I found myself in a hospital room recently with a married couple who I have built up a relationship with. I don't know how to share, there is so much good and amazing things about this couple, they make me smile so often, but I can't tell you about those parts.

I can tell you that I walked in and he was looking out the window and crying. I could tell when I spoke with him on the phone last night that I needed to see him as much as I needed to see her. Yesterday I prayed and sang the Divine Mercy Chaplet with her, but today, God had provided and it belonged to him. We talked an hour.

I had a dozen other places I needed to be. I left my day unfinished. I was tired. But, I got to be with a real person. I got to be the listener. I was allowed by God to connect. I was honored with a story.

I have been honored with many stories. And I will listen until I go deaf. For a very selfish reason...no one ever listened to mine.

That is different now. Partly because I decided to try again. Partly because God brought me people who would really listen...and I have this unquenchable thirst for writing things down.

I learned to reach out in different ways. I learned from God that my tears are my gift. I leave them everywhere. In the beginning, it just happened. I'd look down at a church pew, on an a wooden altar and there they would be. In books, on clothes, over my hands and then onto the hands I touch. I am constantly aware of passing on part of who I am to who I am with. I bind us together in that moment of time, for all eternity. I will find a way. And it won't hurt you or frighten you and until today, no one would have ever thought about it at all.

But I am telling you because you need to know that you are connected, too. Each time you hear another person tell their truth, you are listening to God. Each time you you receied another person, you are living as Jesus lived. And Jesus, heal seals the bond with his covenant with us. He remembers what we did, why we did and how we did.

We leave our DNA on someone or on something where another person will reach out and touch and feel love, but will not know why she/he feels love. But a part of them will know, someone left this here for me. Someone is calling out. Someone is giving part of themselves to my journey.

In the midst of a week of great sadness, I held a young baby boy. A baby who I thought would not live, because he was born at a point when some women still abort their children...but this little one held on to life with all that he had. I remember the way the nurse walked away from his bed that first day and another nurse put her arm around her and held her. I remember praying and feeling helpless. I encountered nurses who shared hope and others who just wanted me to go away.

I sang to him "Jesus Loves Me" every time I saw him.

In the front of the church this week, I asked his parents Can I hold him? And mom covered my skin with antibacterial gel and then placed him in my arms. I felt the warmth of his head in bend of my elbow. At long last, we touched. He wasn't sure. And then I sang to him and he laughed and smiled the biggest smile that only babies can smile.

I looked at mom and dad, who having walked a long hard road, we beaming and proud. I thought, oh if every child could be surrounded by that much love our world would work as God intended.

There is more to say, but here is a good stopping point.
Touch each other. Leave your mark.

Love,
Cindy