The language of a child

I have a friend who’s becoming a speech language pathologist. She really enjoys the pediatric population and spends a lot of her time working with kids. We had dinner the other day and she was telling me about how sometimes parents bring their kids for their first visit when they’re 4 or 5, at which time their language development should be well on their way. These kids she sees; however, have a lot of trouble with language. Specifically she told me about one girl who couldn’t make most of the consonant noises we need to make in order to speak intelligibly. And this child first came to see them at age 5, when ideally, she should have been in at age 2 or 3.

Now, the reason it had taken so long for her to come in was because her parents didn’t recognize that she had a problem. There’s this really neat phenomenon whereby parents are often able to understand their children’s communication that the rest of us would be fully unable to decipher. And this had been the case with this young girl, leading to a delayed recognition of this problem until she finally went to school.

So, I think that’s how God is. I think when we pray, our words are often wrong and we don’t know what to ask for or how to pray. We want what is good, we want our friends’ troubles to be eased and our families to be reunited. But I certainly don’t always feel like I know how to ask for that. There’s this funky balance of asking for what I want and think is right and then also just asking God for His will to be done.

As I heard this young girl’s story, I thought it was a beautiful illustration of how our Father hears us when we come to Him in prayer. We may not always be eloquent, we may not ask for the right things or use the rights words – but I think we can certainly be assured that just as a parent understands their child, so, too, does God our Father. He hears our cries, knows our intent and is always faithful to respond.

With this assurance, I think we ought to throw ourselves recklessly into prayer. I think it’s our job to get on our knees and trust that the spirit of God will guide as we pray. I think we need to beg for mercy for ourselves, our families, our friends and our country. And I think we will never be disappointed if we trust that God will do with our prayers what is good and right.

Be warned. but not afraid.

Nobody tells you that growing up is hard.

But it is.

We sort of wander through life when we’re younger – we grow. We develop. We change.

We make friends and we lose friends. And that kind of hurts. But good things seem to follow the bad and we have a path to follow so we keep breathing, keep walking and keep trodding, one foot in front of the other.

Elementary school ends and high school begins. A new set of changes. New situations, circumstances and pressures. New stereotypes to grapple with and relationships to navigate. Things change, but they’re changing in everyone our age, so we walk forward. Perhaps with some trepidation, but we do it knowing that it’s the next step in our life and we walk it with our peers.

When I finished high school, going to university was as easy a decision as going to high school. It wasn’t something that required intense discernment. I certainly thought about the program I would enter and the career it would lead me to, but the actual going to university was easy. So it was for 98% of my graduating class. Faced again by so many unknowns, but assured that we would all face them, there was comfort in the collective unknown.

But when university ends – so do all the givens.

The path is no longer straight and the road is no longer marked.

Everyone born in 1987 has ceased to go where I am going and where they are going, I am not.
Here marks the end of the easy and the beginning of the hard. Here we find the necessity to grow up and to grow apart. Faced again with a myriad of unknowns, the collective unknown is no more. This is now my unknown. It is my choice. It is mine to discover, to face and to embrace. If it’s hard, it’s no longer hard for my entire birth year – it’s just me, and the hard.

And it is hard.

My temptation is to steer clear of this individual growing, choosing and changing. My temptation is to cling to what I know and to find others who will do the same. Because what lies ahead could be anything. And if it doesn’t work for me, it’s now just me who’s made a mistake. And if it’s challenging, I may be the only one challenged. And if I feel alone or scared or unsure, I am no longer certain that I am in good company.

But if I give in to this temptation, if I refuse to move forward and continue to move sideways, I fail.

I fail to become the one I am created to be.

So I choose to walk forward. And I feel a sense of ‘my own’ as I walk this solitary path. For it is on this path that I will discover the plans that have been laid out for me. It is on this journey of mine that I will hope and seek to discover the why behind who I am.

But I will not be deterred by the hard.
I just warn you that is.

Preserved for a purpose.

My fiance and I were in a pretty serious car accident about a month ago. The police man at the sight said that when he saw the car rolled on its side, windows smashed to pieces, he expected to find two dead bodies. Yet, we walked away with nothing but a couple bumps and bruises to show for our near brush with death.

I suppose this is the type of incident that often leaves one with a newfound sense of purpose and passion and enthusiasm for life. And as I reflected on this sort of expectation, and tried to decipher whether or not I was experiencing it, someone remarked to me that my life must have been preserved for a purpose. That there was yet work for me to accomplish before I left this Earth. That God didn’t just protect us for fun, but for a reason. And I thought that was pretty exciting.

But then as I thought about it some more, I realized we all come pretty close to death on a regular basis.

If you’re a teenager or young adult in the Western world, every time you get in a car, you come about as close to death as you can be for those years of your life. With car accidents being the number one cause of death in young people, you’re cutting it pretty close every time you choose to buckle up.

At one time after our accident, I remember feeling kind of jipped – knowing that I could have been closer to heaven if the cops had found what they had expected. It was a fleeting thought – but I don’t think it’s without basis. Though this Earth has much goodness and joy to offer, I firmly believe it doesn’t hold a candle to what Heaven will be like. And I don’t believe God desires to keep us from the joys of Heaven. It’s not as though we’re just killing time until we grow old and fat and have heart attack. Nope, I think our days are quite intentional.

So every time you get in a car and arrive somewhere safely, I daresay you ought to count your blessings. But more than that, perhaps we ought to realize that we made it to our destination safely for a reason. That our presence on this Earth still matters. There are people to know, smiles to share and lives to affect. Just as I was preserved, so too, were you.

The plans of our God are not loosely thrown together.
You’re alive, when you could be dead. Your life has been preserved, where others have not been.
There is yet work for /you/ to do

… so get to it.

Much has got to be expected

I’m doing my psychiatry rotation right now, and I’ve most recently spent some time working in child psych. And every day, without fail, I hear horrific tales of broken and desperate and completely dysfunctional, unacceptable childhoods.

[ That’s the case more often than not – though occasionally we have patients who were raised in supportive, functional families ]

Anyways – the more I see this, the more I find myself (1) thanking God for all that He has given me and (2) asking Him why He did.

I know a few things:

I know He doesn’t love me more that the people who walk in to our clinic. I don’t think for a second that He doles out blessing, or circumstances for that matter, based on how much He loves His children. Nope – we’re definitely all loved equally.

I know that having a mental illness means a lot of hard work in order to get well. Between medical and psychotherapy options available today, it’s a commitment – and regardless of how you go about it, it’s a long and challenging road. And it’s one that impacts many of those who surround you.

I know Luke 12:48, where Jesus straight up says: From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more.

And I know that I’ve been given much.
And I feel like – I haven’t taken this responsibility seriously enough in the past.

My path has been made straight. I’ve been given everything (and more) that I needed to succeed.
I’ve wanted for nothing. And that just isn’t the reality of the majority of the world.

So I don’t believe that I’m meant to sort of float through the world wearing nice clothes and buying nice cars. I believe I’ve been given so much in order to do much. I believe that God uses us, because human hands and human feet are His best tools on this Earth. And I believe my job is to surrender fully to whatever plans He has – and to expect that they will be hard and they will require sacrifice, and to not expect that is just plain insanity.

If not us who have been given everything – then whom? Those who are born in to poverty? Those who are struck with chronic illness? Those who are struggling to pay their bills?

Get me not wrong – every single person has a significant role to fill in God’s great plans; but if we find ourselves expecting things of others with less fortunate circumstances, then we best be willing to step up and drop everything for anything that God calls us to.

MUCH IS REQUIRED.

Worth the effort.

My drive home every evening takes me around a bay – and on a clear, sunny day it’s breathtaking.

Today was one such day. The sky was littered with fluffy white clouds and the sun was present in their midst. As I ogled at their existence, I noticed the effect of the sun on the surrounding clouds.

And it was a pretty ground breaking observation…

WHAT I NOTICED
…was that the closer the clouds were to the sun, the more brilliant they appeared, while those that were found at a distance, took on a darker, less white, more grey appearance.

OUTSTANDING!!!

… or not

So I realize that’s fairly obvious. BUT it made me think about the other Son we know.
And how… the closer we are to Him, the brighter we shine.
Which made me think – that making a sincere effort to go pray in front of the Blessed Sacrament is important.

Hence – worth the effort.

We are ten.

Abraham’s chat with God in Genesis 18 is phenomenal.

As God talks of His plans to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham questions Him of what He will do if he finds 50, 40, 30 and eventually only 10 who are righteous. God agrees that if there are 10 who are righteous, He will not destroy the cities. Sodom and Gomorrah were believed to have been populated with about 1200 people at the time of this discussion, making 10 righteous inhabitants less than 1% of the population.

I think that’s a pretty bold statement about how valuable life is to God.

His promise declares that though 1190 people might loathe Him in all they say and do; though they abandon His laws and reject His love, He will spare their lives for the sake of less than 1% of the population; for just 10 people.

Only 10.

Could this still be true of our lives today? Of our city? Province? Of our country?

As our God endures the rejection of abortion, as He is repeatedly thrown out of public institutions and as His people disagree and seek division instead of unity – does He spare us because of a minority of righteous peoples?

We are 10.
We may be small in numbers. But I wonder if it’s enough.

Though our country is overwhelmingly turning away from our God, will He continue to spare us if we remain faithful? Can our commitment to God’s plans for our own lives save our country?

In his abundant grace, He’s never asked for more than we are able to give.

So choose to be one of 10. Choose to give everything for the sake of the rest.

Live sacrificially. Simply. Faithfully.

We are 10.
And I think that’s enough.

The path of least resistance

Soooo….
You meet this lady. As you begin chatting with her, you discover that when she was a child, she went to a public school. When she got to grade 8, she had a teacher she never really got along with. One day the teacher made a remark that really rubbed this girl the wrong way. In fact, she was so upset by this remark that she decided never to return to school. She was a bright girl though, and did enjoy learning – so she decided that she would educate herself for the rest of her life. It’s 5 years later, and she’s completed her high school equivalent degree through self study. Sure, it took a year longer and a lot more effort – but she did it! And she did well. She has similar plans for her post-secondary education as she intends to pursue a certification she can earn outside the classroom.

Alsoooo…
Your dad doesn’t like the doctor. He went to a doctor when he was in the 12th grade and was advised incorrectly. His doctor messed up and it cost him a year of disability. He promised himself he would never return. He resolved to use the internet for the rest of his life to take care of his health because the healthcare system he had previously been involved in sure didn’t work!

--

We are fallible little human beings. We screw up. We say the wrong things and we act unkindly from time to time. We misunderstand the people we meet and so we fail to meet their needs. It happens – and I suspect it always will.
Occasionally, these dysfunctional interactions are pretty bad. And they manage to skew our impression of an entire group of people, institution or organization based on a single conversation.

But that doesn’t make our skewed impressions right.

If I ran in to lady A, I might try and convince her to give the university system a try. Yes, she was wronged and that shouldn’t have happened. But it isn’t a fair reflection on the education system as a whole. That being said, fair impressions aren’t why I would encourage her to try again. I generally believe that the established post-secondary education system will provide her the easiest route to achieving her educational goals. Sure, she may succeed otherwise, but it would seemingly be a lot of needless time and effort on her part, given that a system is already in place that has repeatedly shown itself to work.

Similarly, I would share these concerns with my dad. While he might successfully bumble his way through an abundance of internet sites and somehow manage to take care of himself and any illness that befalls him – it just doesn’t seem worth the effort, when there’s already a system in place that works.

I think the same is true of the Church. There’s this thought that seems increasingly prevalent these days suggesting that the Church is an unnecessary entity. That eternal happiness can be found on our own and the Church just gets in the way of that. People are choosing to find their own way to Heaven, and see no place for the Church that journey. Whether it’s the result of a disappointing encounter with a member of the Church or an enlightenment of sorts they’ve reached independently – I don’t think it’s the answer.

Since Jesus left this Earth, His people have been banded together to form the Church He established. She has undergone trials of her own and her people haven’t always been faithful, but as an institution – she has successfully led her faithful followers to their eternal place of rest. Those who follow her precepts earnestly find the peace and happiness their hearts desire. She is well established and her instruction is true.

So while there are some who never step foot inside a church who we’ll meet in heaven, I’m opting for the path that is well trodden. Though many of life’s circumstances reward those who make their own way – the consequence here is too great for me to stumble along a path of no guarantees. 2000 years of success sounds good to me!