Blog Awards

  

While I was AWOL from blogging, Anabelle at Written By the Finger of God sent me two wonderful blog awards:
                                                   The 2012 Blog of the Year Award
                                                                          AND
                                                      The Food For Thought Award

THANK YOU, Anabelle! Now, I'll have you all know that my dear friend, Anabelle, sweetly blackmailed coaxed me into returning to my blog by threatening to take my awards back offering me a gorgeous pair of designer earrings made by her very talented daughter. (You can get a sneak peek at the earrings here - just scroll down the page a bit.)

I'd also like to send a big THANK YOU to Nancy at The Breadbox Letters (and  
The Cloistered Heart) and Karinann at Daughter of the King for sending me The 2012 Blog of the Year Award too! Right back at you, Ladies!

Here are the rules for passing the award along: (Man, I love cut and paste. Whoever invented it deserves an
award of their own.)

"The ‘rules’ for this award are simple:
1 Select the blog(s) you think deserve the ‘Blog of the Year 2012′ Award
2 Write a blog post and tell us about the blog(s) you have chosen — there’s no minimum or maximum number of blogs required — and ‘present’ them with their award.
3 Please include a link back to this page:   — http://thethoughtpalette.co.uk/our-awards/blog-of-the-year-2012-award/ and include these ‘rules’ in your post (please don’t alter the rules or the badges!)
4 Let the blog(s) you have chosen know that you have given them this award and share the ‘rules’ with them.
5 You can now also join our Facebook group — click ‘like’ on this page ‘Blog of the Year 2012′ Award Facebook group and then you can share your blog with an even wider audience.
6 As a winner of the award — please add a link back to the blog that presented you with the award — and then proudly display the award on your blog and sidebar … and start collecting stars…
Yes — that’s right — there are stars to collect!
Unlike other awards which you can only add to your blog once — this award is different!
When you begin you will receive the ’1 star’ award — and every time you are given the award by another blog — you can add another star!
There are a total of 6 stars to collect.

Which means that you can check out your favorite blogs — and even if they have already been given the award by someone else — you can still bestow it on them again and help them to reach the maximum 6 stars!"

I'd like to pass the awards along to these incredible bloggers:
~ Theresa at My Desert Heart  phew, I almost wrote dessert heart  can't let these folks know how much I pigged out on sweets this week  that was a close call
~ Victor at Time for Confections Reflections
~ Colleen  at Thoughts on those chocolate chip cookies her husband bakes Grace
~ Anne at Imprisoned by my jeans lately in my Bones
~ Kathryn at Heart for God 's good food
~ Monica at Little Jesus and Me love cupcakes
~ Barb at Suffering from sugar overload with Joy
~ Sue at Sue Elvis Writes and I bet she bakes too
~ Jennifer at Catholic Inspired cuisine
 
if anyone notices my slips i'll just blame anabelle for sending me that food for thought award in the first place
besides, I bet anabelle likes a good seven layer bar oh right I forgot that anabelle burns things like i do hopefully she won't notice that i cheated on the rules for the awards  then again she did too 

Capital Sin, Apocalypse Wow

Okay, I realize I've been away from Blogger for a while but:

Since when do we have to answer trivia questions to access our dashboards?

And does Blogger really care whether I know the capital of Texas?

(Now, I'm not sayin' I got it wrong, mind you. Nope, not sayin' that at all. I mean: I got on here, right?)

I admit that "Do you know the 37 things you should hoard before the coming disaster?" has me a bit stumped though.

(Hmm, after looking at some of my post titles I'm thinking that I should know the answer to that one....)

They Did Not Know I was Their Healer

One of my favorite passages in the Bible is from Hosea and it reads like this:

I drew them with human cords,
   with bands of love;
I fostered them like one
   who raises an infant to his cheeks;
Yet, though I stooped to feed my child,
   they did not know I was their healer.
                                    Hosea 11:4

Do you know that God is your healer? As I look around the world we live in today I see so much suffering in people's eyes. Many don't seem to realize that God is their healer in a very real and personal way. I believe that this is an aspect of God's nature that people don't think about often in this day and age where being self-sufficient is praised and looked upon as a great virtue. I think we forget that we are not a world unto ourselves and that the very self-sufficiency we so praise can at times be our greatest downfall. When we forget that we need others we tend to grow very selfish and overly focused on our own lives and well-being. We lose the greater picture that is reality and sit on our little thrones in the little false worlds we create for ourselves.

Pretenders, the whole lot of us. Imagine if God were to show each and every one of us the truth about ourselves all at once?

Ouch.

Like a universal "divine adjustment". (Hey, never say never.)

Thankfully, we usually get this "divine adjustment" over a period of time.

The truth is that we need others and we need God. Those who believe they can "do it all myself" can, if it goes too far, shut themselves off from God and others. When we close ourselves off in this way we also close ourselves off from the deep interior healing each of us needs. Healing that we need so very much in order to grow spiritually.

Many people aren't even aware that they do need healing. They walk around joylessly, believing that this is a normal state of existence.

It's not.

There's a strange ideology in this age (and an odd one it is if you really think about it): that God doesn't  step into our lives in an extraordinary fashion anymore. I think this manner of thinking is more a byproduct of the age we live in rather than a "truth" we should hold onto. As a matter of fact, if you ask me:

It's ALL extraordinary.

Every darn bit of it.

Every single moment of it.

Every last particle of it.

                                                             God with us

At least...it should be.

Brain Drain

Ever have days when you feel as if you are trudging through deep water?  And you wish the day would hurry up and be finished already?

Well, it happens to me. Over the years, I've learned to recognize the patterns of thought that bring it about and how Satan uses it to oppress me. As aware as I am of what brings about the oppression on these days I have to admit that I sometimes wallow in it for a while.

Call it self-pity if you will.

Let's use insomnia as an example since this is a problem for a number of people, including me. I'll have a sleepless night and feel "foggy", tired, and irritable by 7:00 in the morning. Since we are physical as well as spiritual beings, in prances "Old Slewfoot" determined to get a foothold into my day.

And it always starts with the mind.

 If you can overcome these attacks quickly you have a good chance of having a smooth day. If you don't put them down quickly? Well, things will probably just spiral downwards from there.

Usually I am the one who starts the mess with an internal dialogue that might go something like this:

"Oh, how am I going to get through the day? I'm exhausted and of course it's a work day!" (You can fill in things other than work - the point is that we sometimes set ourselves up for bad days.)

"Why can't I sleep normally like other people? Great, just great!  I really needed a good night's sleep, too. Oh well! Another day of walking around in a daze I guess!" (I say this to myself but sometimes secretly wonder if I'm really announcing my displeasure to God. After all, I already know I'm tired so there would be no point in mentioning it to myself, right? Think along the lines of telling others all about your exhaustion to elicit sympathy from them...lol)
                 
If I let thoughts like these fester instead of ripping them out I can almost guarantee that they will get worse:

"I look haggard! Sheesh! Look at those dark circles! And to top it off my head is pounding. I can't go to work like this!"

(moan... groan)

"No coffee creamer in the house? Sigh. Figures there's no creamer today of all days. I could have sworn I just bought some." (Alright! Who used all the creamer?!)

(whine)

Okay, this might be a rather simplistic example of poor internal dialogue but I think you get my point. If we crack the door open through negative thinking someone is going to try to stick his foot in there. And it's not anyone we want visiting. We all have trials of some sort on a daily basis and the way we think can set us up for failure. It can also put a damper on our families. Have you ever noticed that if you grumble in the morning others sometimes "catch it"?

Kind of like a virus. If I get up in the morning and speak any thoughts like these out loud all hell may break loose.

All hell? Very funny! Surely not!

Well, sometimes it seems like all hell. I've long learned that if you give satan an inch he'll take a mile. He thrives on little stuff like this because he knows he has the opportunity to nudge the door open further. And he's going to use that opportunity to his advantage. After all, sowing division is his game. If he can seed the family with discord in the mornings he knows it has a good chance of spreading from there.

Slam the door shut on poor internal dialogue before the foothold becomes a stronghold. If you give in to negative internal dialogue on a regular basis it can become a habit and once it becomes habitual to think in this manner you can be sure that satan will use it to undermine both your life and the lives of others.

And it all starts with the "little stuff".

Two weeks? Did I say a TWO week break?

Oops.

My mistake.

Well, it's like this:

When you take a break from blogging you realize that there really are 24 hours in a day.

Not 2 hours.

No, a full 24 hours.

Minus sleeping time, of course.

Not that I sleep all that much.

This is what I do when I have insomnia:

This is also what I do a lot less of when I'm blogging, unfortunately.

(That raccoon bears a remarkable resemblance to me when I have insomnia, by the way. Especially  
around the eyes...)

Two Week Break

I will be taking the next few weeks off from blogging and will return once school starts. I'm sure all you mothers out there can relate (wink, wink).

See you soon!

The Practical Power of Penitence

One of the blogs I like to read is Fr. Dwight Longenecker's site Standing on My Head. His most recent post is The Practical Power of Penitence and it was very good. I like the way Father Longenecker lays things on the table in a clear manner - his forthright writing style means I don't have to weed through piles of "excess" to get at the meat of what he is pointing out. It's right there before our eyes. 

The Practical Power of Penitence made me smile, especially the ending:

"Stop blaming others–even if it’s their fault. Take responsibility. Claim the blame. Pick up other people’s trash."

"Grow up."

Well, darned if that post didn't make me want to "grow up" right then and there!

Seriously. I was sitting there saying, "That grumbling he mentions? Yes, I know it well."

Grumble. Grumble. Grumble.

I catch myself grumbling interiorly (oops, Google Chrome says interiorly is not a word) on a regular basis. It's a pride thing. After all, it's much easier to grumble than to repair things, isn't it? 

Ahem.

Could you excuse me for a few moments while I go empty the "trash"? And "clean up" the house a bit?

(I will not put up another picture of Pigpen. I will not put up another picture of Pigpen. I will not put up...)

(oops)

(Down Freud! Down Jung! )

Nothing Wrong with Believing in Miracles

In some ways being a Catholic Blogger destroys the simplicity of one's faith.  Personally, I've always been of the mind that it's better to believe in miracles than to despise them.

( The parting of the Red Sea.)

As a matter of fact, until I started blogging I didn't realize how many people did despise miracles despite the fact that the Bible is filled with them as is the history of the Church. There has never been a time that God has not stepped into our lives in miraculous ways as far I know.

 (The manna in the desert.)

I simply assumed that others accepted miracles as part of God's provision and love for us.

 (The  Virgin Birth.)

Until I started blogging that is. Once you start blogging you begin to see that there are millions of Catholics who don't believe in miracles anymore.

 ( Lourdes)

 Or even despise them as only necessary for people of small faith.

 (Fatima)

As in, "You may need to believe that miracles still happen since you are such a spiritual infant but I do not need them myself."

 (St. Faustina... O ye great saint of so little faith!)

The first time I came across this kind of attitude I was a bit shocked.

(You too Little Flower? O the shame of it!)

After all, it seemed to me that if God saw fit to perform a miracle then we should be thankful, right? As in thanking the Giver of all good things?

 (Oh, please say it ain't so St. Paul! Obviously, it was a moment of insanity on your part that brought about so great a conversion.)++

It didn't take me very long to become wary of what I wrote in certain comment boxes. I knew on which blogs it was okay to discuss the miraculous and which blogs to tread very carefully around.

(The lame shall walk.)

I learned this the hard way of course but managed to escape with my head intact.

 (The blind shall see.)

It did occur to me that perhaps there was something wrong with me for believing so easily and maybe I should back down.

(The deaf shall hear.)

Good sense prevailed, thankfully.

(Take this, all of you, and eat of it,
for this is my Body,
which will be given up for you.
Take this, all of you, and drink from it,
for this is the chalice of my Blood,
the Blood of the new and eternal covenant,
which will be poured out for you and for many
for the forgiveness of sins.
Do this in memory of me.)

(By the way, you had a lot of nerve bilocating like that, St Pio.)


++ (Sorry, St. Paul, but it was a rather bizarre mystical experience you had and all that. You can' t blame people for questioning it, can you? Can you?)

Marino Restrepo - full testimony in English

I thought the testimony of Gloria Polo was powerful but, for me, this one is even more so. I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit throughout Marino Restrepo's testimony and have watched it twice. It's very long but well worth the time it takes to view it. To be honest, I felt like I was under a spotlight the entire time watching it.  When he talked about being grace bearers for others I felt the Holy Spirit's presence so powerfully that it left me stunned. This man's words are anointed. A big thank you to Anabelle who posted this video on her blog Written By the Finger of God.

For those who don't have the time to watch the entire video, you can find it on You Tube in shorter segments.

The "Dump"

We have special junk removal trucks up here in New England because most people have waaaaay too much junk. The business must be doing pretty well because I see their trucks everywhere. You pay the guys to remove your junk and then they either bring it to a dump/recycling center or they sell it to someone else so that the other person has your junk too. When they decide to get rid of it they then pass your junk along with some of their own junk to the next person. Soon, a number of people  have some of your "junk" along with their own and that of others.

Sin is like this. If sin is not stopped in its tracks through repentance and reconciliation with God it spreads like a disease infecting those around us. We can see manifestations of this infection throughout our country and world today. It didn't happen overnight and we are all responsible because we all fall short.  And with God's grace we have to repair the mess we've made - this is made possible through Christ who obtained every sort of grace and blessing for us by His life, death, and resurrection. Reparation is an important aspect of our lives here on earth.

I know I've written about this before but I want to share it once again in a bit more detail.
Years ago I had a dream. Someone led me to the edge of a high cliff and told me to look down. When I did I was stricken to the core by what I saw: there below me was what looked like an enormous dump, but instead of trash it was filled with the sins of humanity. Looking down into this dump I could see  drugs, needles, pornography, TV's, condoms, the Pill, books, weapons, and the list goes on and on. All the things we misuse were there. Our sins stretched as far as the eye could see. I don't know how to explain it but I also saw sins like rape and murder in this pile.  What really, really got to me was that strewn amongst the filth of our sins there were thousands and thousands of tiny little dead babies and even body parts. Someone was holding my hand and as I looked down into the pile I shook my head and said, "No hope. No hope."

But hope was holding my hand. I felt the strength of that hand despite the shaking of my head  and my words as I looked into this cesspool of vice. The Lord was simply showing me in a very clear manner just how far we've fallen today. We are even leading children away from Him through our refusal to correct our lives.

This dream was so vivid that I've never forgotten it. Who could?

It's time to turn back to the Lord. We have strayed far beyond what may be termed "human weakness".  Yes, we have natures prone to sin but we can't simply sit on the fence and watch as our brothers and sisters fall all around us. It's our job to help them up.

We cannot be like Cain and say, "Am I my brother's keeper?"  We have been given the responsibility of lifting others up through our prayer, words, and actions. Each of us has a mission here on earth and bringing others to the Lord is part of this mission. He gives us the grace to accomplish our missions if we trust in Him. Abundant grace. More than we can even imagine.

I came across a beautiful prayer in my Magnificat this month:

O God of mercy and compassion, all our guilt lies open to you, all our secret sins are known to you, all our ugly ways are clear before you, yet you never cease to offer us your redeeming love. Have mercy on us in our pitiful attempts to cloak our sinfulness with false bravado, and grant us the joy that comes with full repentance, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

God sees all things as they are. In His mercy He reveals our sinfulness to us slowly over a period of time (though not always) so we won't feel overwhelmed.  However, when we die our entire lives are laid bare before us all at once. There is no gentle lifting of the veil. We will see everything we have ever done (or left undone), thought, or said, in the clear light of truth Himself.

Are we ready for this?

Fudging

Have you ever had someone ask if they can swing by your house for a visit? You say, "Sure! C'mon over!"

And then you look around and realize that your house is a pit and you have about twenty minutes to make it look good enough for company. So you run around like a mad woman in a frenzy hiding the mess as best you can so that your house looks presentable on the surface and hope that your friend doesn't decide to coax your kitten out from under the sofa where he's batting around dust bunnies and shredding your kid's books.

No?

Well, have you ever planned to give your house a thorough cleaning so hubby can come home and say, "Wow! You've been busy!" (UGH...true though - just wanted to pat my own back) but you get caught up on your blog instead? So about half an hour before he is due home from work you give the house a quickie so it looks like you've been doing something besides blogging half the day away?

Never?

Well, the truth is that I've done both.  I've fudged in my cleaning plenty of times. Made the surface look good all the while knowing that it's a mess in disguise and hoping I don't get "caught".

It's a pride thing.

You know...Mary the pharisee and all that.

I get caught sometimes though. The other day I walked in the door and my husband said, "Hon, you gotta see this." He then pulled out his phone and showed me a picture of our dog, Caesar, with a pair of underwear around his neck.

Of course...they were mine.

"Ooops! He must have gotten into the laundry basket."

"I think he found them under the bed, Hon. He was wrestling with something under there and then came downstairs like this."

My husband thought it was hilarious.

 I just hope he didn't post it on Facebook.

Sometimes we can sneak things by SOME people but never past God.  He has full knowledge of "hidden things".  I cannot count the number of times during my bedtime prayers when I sheepishly say to God, "I did it again, Lord. Got caught up on the computer. Just call me Mary the Pharisee."

You can't sneak anything past Our Lady either. When she cleans your inner house she doesn't bypass the closets.

I often wonder how many skeletons tumbled out when she opened the doors.

Sigh.

Muck

All my life I have had strange dreams. As a child, I used to beg my parents to leave the hall light on at night because I often had awful nightmares. They were always the same - I would be running and the devil would be chasing me. And I knew, even then, that he was totally and completely devoid of any goodness. His eyes were as cold as death and they petrified me. I would wake up full of panic, my heart beating wildly, wondering what would happen if he ever caught me in my dreams.

Well, he never managed to catch me as a child but he did lay out many snares for me and as a teenager I started falling into these traps. I fell away from the Church and my prayer life went down the tube as well. I would do my night prayers but they were done in a perfunctory manner with little to no reflection involved. I don't remember very many nightmares during this period.

It wasn't until my twenties that the nightmares came back full force. Only this time, the devil wasn't chasing me. He didn't need to anymore. During the night I would have dreams that I was standing in deep muck with reptilian creatures surrounding me. I would wake up and say Hail Marys until the fear left me. Later I would realize that these dreams were warnings that I was knee deep in hell spiritually. When I read my poetry from this period of my life I can see the warnings there too. Many of my poems were dark  and bleak.

Hell is a state of being and I knew that state personally.

Soon after my return to the Church I had a vivid dream. In this dream I opened my mouth and a worm started coming out. A strong hand grabbed the worm and pulled, pulled until it was all the way out. It was the longest, ugliest worm I had ever seen. The next day when I woke up my heart felt lighter. Gross but true.

Many years ago when I first started praying the Rosary regularly, I had a funny dream. In this dream I had a 7 story house . I was walking around this house when I came upon a lady with a broom and dustpan bustling around my house cleaning it. And good grief, was it a mess! But she started on the top floor and was working her way down. The house had no stairways, it had an elevator and she was using it to get from floor to floor. I followed her and then she turned around and looked at me.

It was Our Lady.

Before she turned toward me, she was pulling down cobwebs out of dark corners with her broom and was entirely engrossed (fitting word I think) in the work she was doing. I remember watching her steady and thorough cleaning and wondering why this woman was so determined to clean my house. After I saw who it was I remember waking up and feeling very blessed that she was taking on such a task.

I never saw her cleaning the cellar in this dream. She hadn't yet reached that point in her housecleaning and I'm a bit thankful that I didn't have to follow her down there.

She's cleaning my "cellar" now. Oh, I could tell you that my "cellar"is neat as a pin but I would be lying through my teeth. My "cellar" is a junk pile and Our Lady is shoveling it out. A broom just doesn't work on this mess. My emotions are flying all over the place as the junk pours out. I feel like a little kid in the middle of a trash dump puzzled (and a bit mortified) by my mother's insistence that all my "stuff" must go.

Oh, to think I've been clinging to trash all these years.

Who knew.

Great Fruit...

                                                        ...but next time hold the nuts please!

When being firm just doesn't work...

                                                 

                                                   As you an see, I am against spanking :)

Faith versus "positive thinking"

One of the things I have learned over the years is that the disposition of the heart is extremely important when it comes to our spiritual lives. A few years ago, the Holy Spirit, in a very pointed manner, showed me how anything and everything (and everyone for that matter) can be used as stepping stone to Him. Even situations that seem to be quite awful in our eyes need not be a stumbling block and can actually be HUGE stepping stones to God. We know by faith that God brings good out of everything and I've seen this at work in my own life in remarkable ways. Illness, deaths, trials of every sort, attacks, little daily irritations - every single one of these things can be springboards into the arms of God.

It's very easy for us to see how the joys in life can bring us closer to God but at times it's a bit harder for us to see how the "not so good stuff" can do the same - at times in more powerful ways than the happier aspects of life can. The conversions of most of the people I know came about through what  people would consider a bad experience (or a series of them). I'm not saying that the wonderful things in life don't bring us closer to God, I'm simply stating that many people I know turned to God wholeheartedly after a series of painful events or circumstances. God transformed their pain into something good.

They "allowed" Him to.  We always have a choice in our response.

When it comes to suffering of any sort the disposition of the heart can be the difference between allowing bitterness to enter the heart or allowing the Lord to  transform our pain and suffering into something beautiful. We can wallow in bitterness (I spent years in this "spiritual state", unfortunately) or we can trust that God is not "picking on us" (obviously I thought this at one point...lol) but allowing certain events to happen knowing that He is going to use these events for our good. This isn't what I would call positive thinking but rather "trusting in the God of all truth and goodness".  The words "positive thinking" make me a bit wary in our days because they can be used as blinders or a refusal to see truth. They can even be used as a way to avoid correction or as a way to avoid responsibility. I'm not so sure the term  means the same thing as it used to. Jesus was a truthful thinker not a positive thinker. He was often very blunt in His manner of speech. When He cleansed the temple He didn't put a positive spin on it "Oh, everything is fine and dandy here in God's house so I'll just leave things be." No, He saw the "truth" of what was going on and did something about it.

Look at the Crucifixion of Our Lord. God changed the world for all time through His death and resurrection. All things were transformed through Jesus who suffered so painfully for our sake. 

Jesus never said we would not suffer here on earth. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke the "conditions for discipleship" are taking up the the cross and following Jesus. After each of these Gospel passages the next passage is about the Transfiguration of Christ. A coincidence? No way. 

Picking up our cross and carrying it transforms us because God made it so.