Processing Encounter: I have something to offer?!!

Lord, make me your bread, your body.

Take me. Bless me. Break me.

And share me with everyone you know.

Amen.

This is my prayer. This was our prayer on ENCOUNTER last weekend. At first they were just words (more often than not, that is how I feel about “premade” prayers) but as I reflected on the meaning of those words, they came to life. In fact, they came to have intense meaning for my life.

I feel this deep satisfaction from the idea of being taken, blessed, and broken for the greater glory of God. But that's pretty vague--what does it really mean for my life?

It means I'm doing something right. It validates my vision of what my life is developing into. As a social work student, I'm becoming increasingly aware that my heart will be broken over and over again as I pursue others. People are my passion, they always have been. People who have experienced things unfathomable to many ooze strength by the simple act of getting up each morning and continuing with this thing we call life. These are the people I want to serve. I want my heart to break as they share their brokenness. I want to be present with them in their pain. God blessed me with a desire for brokenness. 

He doesn't break you without building you back up. It may take time but His love never fails. 

This all made much more sense in my head but I find trouble to articulate it clearly. 

Basically, in the last week I've been affirmed in my life journey multiple times by multiple people and experiences. Things I once saw as personal flaws are becoming sources of blessing. My impulsiveness gets me to ask the questions everyone is thinking but won't ask. My bluntness offers me a bit of ease when it comes to asking the tough questions. My silence in tough situations allows me to  assess the person's needs and  meet them better. My stubbornness breeds intentionality. I was made as me, imperfections and all, for a purpose. I am the only me this world will ever experience and so I better make the best of that--leave this world a little different than it was before me. 

Step 1: be. experience. live.

I'm so physically and emotionally exhausted. School has been kicking my butt and I've been letting that happen. During my work shift on Friday I made the conscious decision to not allow school (junior seminar, in particular) stress me out and control my happiness and worth anymore. These things are here for me to learn from not to slave over. School is forming me into the person I want to be--I most certainly do not want to be the woman I've been recently stressed out beyond belief and not completely functional due to sleep deprivation. I only have one life to live. I only get one chance at each day. I do not want to keep regretting and dreading these days. 

Processing Encounter: Anger to Acceptence

With the retrieval of the authenticity of my heart this past weekend, I wish to reinstate the regular functioning of this blog. You've missed me, I know.

ENCOUNTER. 

what does that word mean to you?

To me, ENCOUNTER means being blessed in my brokenness. It means listening and really hearing what has been drone out for so long. ENCOUNTER means together. 

This past weekend, I went on Saint Louis University's 41st Encounter retreat. Campus Ministry advertises it as being similar to Kairos, TEC, and Search, if you are at all familiar with those. It was similar but my experience was much different. 

I went on Kairos as a junior in high school. I was chomping at the bit to go on the senior retreat as a junior so I could lead my senior class the following year. This plan flopped on its face because not only did I not end up leading in the fall, I didn't have that great a time. I was too busy trying to impress the seniors that I was neither focused on myself or God. Fail. Now, I'm a junior in college. 4 years later. I had the opportunity to go on Encounter beginning with my first semester here in the fall of 2009 but I didn't. I was a retreat junkie but I knew there was something special about Encounter and I wanted to make the retreat at the right time--whenever that would be. The right time was now. My friends ask me how the retreat was and I cannot come up with a more fitting answer than "perfect."

God and I experienced a definite shift in our relationship beginning last March when He began challenging me in ways I did not appreciate. Anger is the easiest emotion for me to experience and so, naturally, I thought I was mad at God. False. It's a lot more complicated than that.

On Encounter (just like on Kairos and the other retreats, I'm assuming) we talk about a relationship with God as a friendship and I was hesitant to relate to this when we began on Friday. I mean, when I pray, I call God "Daddy" and when I think of our relationship, I wasn't feeling too buddy-buddy. Upon reflection, however, I realized that friendship is exactly what it is. Because we're involved in a friendship. I feel free to have these emotions toward God and treat Him the way I have been--though, I admit, it's not the way a good friend would treat someone. 

I'm not mad. I'm disappointed. I feel let down. I feel like He wasn't there when I needed Him most. And if He was there [because people say He never leaves us] He stood there and watched as evil occurred. What kind of friend does that??? You see? It's complicated. 

We were engaged in something called 'Ignatian Contemplation' yesterday morning. SLU is a Catholic school of the Jesuit tradition and as such, we pray with Ignatian spirituality often. It basically involved allowing your imagination to propel you through a scripture passage as a character in the story. We were using the post-resurrection story of the road to Emmaus. Not a story I've found a whole lot of meaning in in the past. I LOVE Ignatian spirituality. God speaks to me in a very present way through this type of prayer because I have such an active, vivid imagination. The prayer took probably 30-40 minutes and God and I hit it off in the last 10. We were chilling and whateves for the beginning but then it hit me. Sean the Jesuit scholastic leading the meditation led us to conversation with Christ. 

Look at Him. What does He say?

Crazy, but it's what I heard: "My daughter...(long pause)...I'm sorry" Yeah, you got it right, He apologized. In that moment, I felt absolute peace. It's as if that is precisely what I had been waiting for for the past 8 months. 

Walk up to God and ask "where are we going now?"

My vivid imagination: small pools of tears formed in Jesus' eyes when I asked Him this. His response besides the tears was so true to our current relationship--"really? you want to go with me?" God had realized I had distanced myself from Him, it was like we were in a fight and I was giving Him the silent treatment and now that I was engaging our relationship, He met me with surprise. 

Yes, I want to go with you. I'm scared and I don't totally trust you, but I want us to go together again. I'm tired of ignoring you and I'm tired of pretending to everyone like our relationship is just fine. Let's go. Slowly. Together. Hand in hand encountering all of this.