Humility before God

During my prayers tonight my mind drifted off to a time not to long ago when I received a complement about my lawyering ability from an attorney whom I admire greatly.  We had recently had a 3-day trial and a relative passed along some kind things the attorney had said.  I remember being humbled and honored that this attorney, whom in my estimation is the best courtroom tactician I have every seen in person. This got me to thinking about how other people when they win awards or are elected to a position say how humbled and grateful they are.  Whether they believe it or not, I think we can all relate to that feeling. 

Then I got to thinking that if I felt that way about this other attorney, and we all (at least should) feel that way when given an honor or placed in a position of responsibility, how can we not feel at least that when coming to God in prayer.  How do we dare speak when in God's presence?  How can we dare ask for anything?  How can we feel anything other than the utmost reverence and praise that such an awesome God would honor us by allowing us to call him Father.  "Our Father," the words that begin the Lord's Prayer should make our knees tremble and our hearts rejoice each time we say them.

Pentecost

Without a doubt, one of the biggest obstacles, at least in my thinking, is my struggle to form a prayer life.  Granted, this is only something I have really concentrated on in the past few months, but for someone who often have things come fairly easily, it has been very frustrating.  That frustration has boiled over into sin.  So, when I went to confession today, of course that was one of the sins I confessed.  My prayer these past few weeks has been mostly about me, my struggles, my desires and not focused on others as I know it should.  So, I must say it was surprising when my penance included praying and asking God to send the Holy Spirit upon me to strengthen me. 

This makes sense, given that it tomorrow is Pentecost.  Pentecost is of course when the Holy Spirit descended upon the Disciples and gave them the Grace to spread the Gospel throughout the world.  We should all pray that the Holy Spirit consumes our soul and leads to the life God has planned.  Only with the help of the Holy Spirit can we find true happiness and peace. 

Doing things differently

I have been pretty down in the dumps the past week or so.  I have prayed and contemplated the causes of this feeling and have it boiled down to two things:  1) a lack of a prayer life; and 2) unhealthy meal choices.  I also think those two are somewhat interrelated.  I overeat often times out of boredom.  Its really not so much out of boredom as it is out of needing to fill something in me, well, that and food is good.  I made the mistake weekend before last of getting vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup at the store.  Only my fear of my wife's comments has kept me from eating some on a nightly basis.  Anyway, back to the point, I know in my heart that that hole I am trying to fill with food can only truly be filled by a more complete relationship with God.  And (all together now) the only way to have a more complete relationship with God is through??? Prayer!!

The figuring out the problem was the easy part.  (Honestly, I have known these are the problems for most of my adult life.)  The part that is obviously difficult-to-impossible for me to figure out is how to solve these problems.  As for the eating, I have been doing better the last year or so on portion sizes.  This has helped, but hasn't stopped the snacking between meals.  The snacking that I know will only make me feel worse, but that feels so good for the short period of time the food is in my mouth.  It is in that moment that I need to find a way to find the grace and strength to overcome my mortal weakness.  That is something I hope to find through prayer.

In the past when in a funk like this I would have no problem with running to God, begging for his grace and promising to continue praying after he grants relief.  I think we all know how this story goes, God grants me his grace to overcome my difficulties and I continue with the prayers for a while.  But soon, I allow pride, life and the world to get in the way and the prayer falls to the wayside.  This time has to be different.  This time I have to find a way to make a better path. 

The good news is that I have made a new exercise plan that includes prayer.  I had been trying to run, but my body is telling me that it is just too much to continue at this weight.  I am being careful not to pray for a quick fix and make promises.  I am praying for the wisdom and grace to be able to offer my suffering for God's glory.  In fact, my prayer this time around will be two fold: 1) to be able to find a way to glorify God in everything I do; and 2) as perfectly state by Greg on The Catholics Next Door this morning, to feel God's love comforting me.  Sounds like a good start on a different path.

Decisions, decisions

In contemplating this blog and its role in my life, I am trying to decide whether to spend any money on it, i.e. registering a domain name, etc. and its focus. The title is "A Catholic View," but I have found another blog with this same title. I should have known that someone would have already chosen such an uncreative title. That blog is older and honestly much better. So, I guess I need to change the name. The next question is "what name to change it to?" For that I must look at the description I have for the blog. How I currently describe it, in short, is that it is a blog about me growing up Catholic in protestant Arkansas. I did that in an attempt to sort of separate myself from the thousands of other bloggers out there who are Catholics who blog. Yet, not a single post has been about that subject, and honestly, I don't know how much I have to say on that subject.

The reality is that this blog is not about much more than my current life. I guess that is ok, but I don’t know how that plays into my inspiration for this site. It started as a politically oriented blog, but in growing more in my faith I came to the realization that the Lord was calling me in another direction. Since that time, I cannot decide if this is a tool for growth in my own faith or one used to help others. Honestly, I don’t know that it matters because it has helped me. How it helps others is in God’s hands.

So, now the issue becomes do I change the name and if so, what to? Do I keep the current "theme" in the caption, if so, how much do I need to write about that theme (certainly more than zero as I have done up till now). If I change the "theme," what would the new "theme" be? Do the "theme" and the title have to match? How much input does the availability of a domain name play into the title? All these are questions that must be answered, so how do I do that.

In the process of writing this post I have been inspired to the new name, Growing Catholic. That name is available as a .com domain name and I cannot find a blog by that name already. So, that is it, the official new name of my blog. Now, its lunch time and then off to figure out what to do for the rest of the day.