Category: good for the soul

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A little fun in “the garden”

Some Highlights from Flourish

This weekend my joy tank was filled to the brim and overflowing . I had the pleasure of speaking at Flourish, the inaugural women’s conference at St. Columba’s Catholic Church in Dothan, Alabama. What an honor! And what a blessing!

I’m usually content with a pen in my hand and a brand new journal, but getting out in front of a group of people and sharing my testimony is an invigorating and fun complement to this writer’s life. I enjoy these conferences, and while technically, I am working, it’s not work at all when the speeches are over and I get to interact with the women in attendance. They are, after all, why I’m there.

Everyone has a story — and these women are all wonderful to share a little bit with me. Some of their stories are funny, others are touching or heart-warming. And more than a few are intimate and special in their vulnerability and honesty. I hold each of them in my heart and in my prayers.

Here is the gist of the weekend: to bloom where we are planted, a celebration of our uniqueness and the knowledge of He who made us in His image:

“I understood that every flower created by Him is beautiful, that the brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not lessen the perfume of the violet or the sweet simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all the lowly flowers wished to be roses, nature would no longer be enamelled with lovely hues. And so it is in the world of souls, Our lord’s living garden.” 
― St. Thérèse de Lisieux

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by the water

collecting crabs

When my husband and I took a leap of faith a few years ago and disrupted our lives to take an early retirement, we moved to coastal Alabama and built a little cottage on Mobile Bay — the Bay of the Holy Spirit!

Let me just say that original name is everything.

This adventure has brought us new friends, new experiences, and, among other things, a crazy collection of animals visiting us. I’ve become quite adept at catching just about anything in a crab trap instead of crabs. That’s part of my story here.

Joyful Adventures

My mornings definitely involve coffee. and absolutely involve a little quiet time in prayer and journaling. Both go perfectly with the rising sun over the bay and the sounds of birds waking up. I’m afraid I bore social media followers with too many morning sunrise pictures, so I quit doing that, but let me assure you the sun still rises. Every day.

Those quiet morning hours have brought me quite a bit of entertainmentment. I’ve rescued turtles who’ve fallen into the pool, stepped on a copperhead, watched dolphins swim up and down the bay, caught catfish off the pier, scared away jack rabbits and raccoons, chased squirrels away from my tomatoes, mistaken a coyote for a really ugly mangy dog, watched a shark circle its prey before disappearing under the surface, photographed an alligator staring at me, and scratched my head when a wild boar washed up dead on our little beach. Who needs Animal Planet?

But nothing, nothing has brought me as much joy as the crab traps. That’s a lot to say because I am allergic to crabs. I’ve caught dozens of crabs, nearly all of them given away. But I’ve also caught a speckled trout, a shrimp (it wiggled out when I pulled up the trap), and just yesterday, a baby stingray.

I’ve caught a little faith, too. Well, maybe a lot of faith. I’ve learned a little something about myself and how grace flows through my life as easily as the tides move before my eyes. I’ve learned about hope, too, and that has come as a surprise. Every day I walk to the end of the pier and sit on the end to pray. Then I pick up the traps to take a peek inside. It is always with anticipation. Even if I haven’t baited the traps, I still pull them up out of the water hoping to see some little critter in there. Sometimes they are empty, sometimes not, but always I have this joyful anticipation that I’ll find something there. More often than not, I do have a surprise. And when I do, it’s shared — remember I can’t eat crabs.

Fishers of Men

Isn’t that what the Apostles did? Jesus went to find his Apostles among fishermen. Men who already knew and lived the meaning of hope and joyful anticipation. What fisherman doesn’t cast his rod with hope? And pull up his line with joyful anticipation?

 They became fishers of men with hope in the Lord. In my own little way, on the end of a small pier, I feel called to do the same. Every day begins with hope and joyful anticipation.

Jesus, I trust in you!

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Quiet the Noise

This morning after an appointment in town, I took my journal to the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception to have a little quiet time with the Lord. While there is no exposition of the Blessed Sacrament in the middle of the morning on a random Wednesday, Jesus is certainly present in the Tabernacle and, I’m sure, welcoming a visit.

The Cathedral is always open during the day, and a lovely retreat from the activity of a busy town center. I was looking forward to the soothing silence.

Instead, I encountered a crew of workers cleaning the spacious window by the altar. There is a huge restoration project going on, and the stained glass windows are looking beautiful. The restoration, however, requires a mess and a bit of chaos first — as evidenced by the noise in what I thought would be a prayerful and silent retreat for me.

You have to crack a few eggs to make an omelet, I suppose.

The noise was not distracting at all. On the contrary, it became a little bit of white noise as I went deeper into prayer until it finally disappeared from my conscious awareness. It was only when I started to journal that I became aware of the noise again.

I had gone to the Cathedral to seek silence, and I found it in the Lord. He quiets the turmoil, the chaos, the noises that distract me from Him. I was grateful to experience this literal expression in order to really see with my eyes or rather, with my ears, what my heart already knew:

“Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”

~St Augustine of Hippo

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