Jesus gets into my boat

I just finished watching Father Robert Barron's Catholicism Series.  I had watched all of the episodes except the DVD which had episodes 7 and 8.  Episode 8 is about the Communion of Saints.  Father Barron talks about how the lives of the saints are started by Grace entering into their lives uninvited. Father Barron calls the viewer's attention to Luke chapter 5 where Jesus gets into Peter's boat uninvited and starts giving orders.  Jesus tells Peter to go out into the deep waters set out his nets.  To this Peter replies that they have been fishing all night and have caught nothing.  Wisely, Peter does as Jesus says and hauls in more fish than the boat could hold.  It is this intersession of God's grace that Father Barron says the indivdual must conform his/her life to and cooperate with. 

I strive to be a saint.  It is my desire to die to myself and live the life of God.  Each day I ask God to bend my will towards his and to let me do what glorifies Him.  Reflecting back on the where this desire first started taking hold, I have to look to the spring and summer of 2007.  I married my wife in January 2007.  If you have read any of the past posts on this cite you may know that my wife is an atheist/agnostic.  The decision to stay in a relationship with her was one that I entered into only after great reflection and prayer.  At that time, in my professional life, I had just started to get my law firm off of the ground.  We finally started to make money.  However, as God is known to do, he starts my path toward His will with difficulty and trials.  My wife had received Social Security benefits through her father -- she was disabled as a child and had never worked enough on her own to become eligible.  So when we married, that monthly check and equally as importantly her medicaid ended.

It was at this time that it was all on my shoulders.  We lived in a very nice apartment, had just purchased her a new car that was accessible for her to drive and had a nice foundation for a materially comfortable life.  It was in this moment that God interceeded and interjected His plan into my life -- and I didn't have a clue. With the loss of income we had to move to a cheaper place to live, one that was closer to my work.  So, we moved to the same town where my law practice was into a much less comfortable apartment -- the complex had to remove a toilet it one of the bathrooms so that Tamara could get into the bathtub.  Mind you, it was no slum, but certainly less than where we had been.

Tam was miserable.  We never unpacked most of our belongings.  Our living room was filled with boxes.  Tamara didn't get out of bed for almost the whole 6-months we lived there.  It was during this time that she got the idea of moving to El Dorado.  She had a house that her mother had deeded to her that was sitting empty.  Honestly, I was miserable in my work and things were not looking good.  At that time we set out on the path of driving the 3 hours to El Dorado every weekend to clean out the house and the storage units her mother had stuff in.  When I say stuff, let me tell you, there was a lot of stuff.  During that time I started applying for jobs with the state because I knew it had good insurance with no per-existing exclusions for Tamara's disability.  I also knew that paying for her medications and supplies every month out of pocket was a financial drain and any sort of major problem would be a catastrophy for us and my law practice.

Working as the Lord does when he wants you to do something, everything fell into place.  I found a job working for the state in child welfare.  A friend who lived in the town where I was in practice wanted to come back and was able to step-in and take over my cases.  We got a loan for the house that Tam's mother had given her and fixed it up to be more accessable than it already was -- no toilets to remove here! 

During my time after law school I had fallen away from the Church.  I still considered myself "catholic," but had no idea what that really meant.  Even after moving to El Dorado (pronounced like "tornado") I didn't attend Mass.  Oh, I would go with my dad whenever he was down to help us with the house, but that was all.  Oddly enough though, it was my atheist/agnostic wife that pushed me back to the Church.  It was in her challenges to my poorly catechized religious foundation that caused me to seek out what it really meant to be Catholic.  It is in this journey that I have grown to become aware of God's call in my life, or more actually, to seek out awareness of God's call in my life. 

It is in these challenges that I have responded to with a giving of myself to and for her.  It is in these challenges that I have giving myself to and for the children of the counties I serve.  It is in these challenges that I have found true happiness.  That I have found that the only thing that will fill my soul is what Father Barron calls the divine chemistry, or something like that.  It is only in giving of myself that I am truly fulfilled. It is this emptying of myself for my wife and for those less fortunate that I am closer to God.  It is in this that I have found true happiness, happiness unlike anything that I could have ever imagined possible.  It is in this that I have found proof of God's existence.  And it all started when Jesus stepped into my boat and ordered me into the deep.  It is only possible because of God's Grace and my cooperation with it. 

"If you want to be happy, really really happy, use your talents to serve others." - Eduardo Verastegui