Today, be aware.

God’s Life floods your heart.

It’s always Raining Grace.

“Do the thing and you will have the power” (Ralph Waldo Emerson). It’s a quote I try to live by. I believe we all have incredible resources. The Master of the universe has decided to take up residence within us. If that weren’t enough, “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). We are swimming in grace! As a longtime spiritual director and a chaplain for all faiths, I’ve witnessed firsthand the workings of grace. It rains abundantly. (Sometimes I wear a waterproof parka and can’t feel a drop. But divine grace awaits my awakening to it.)

Hopefully, some of my reflections will encourage you to access more and more the grace God offers. If you’d like entries sent to your inbox, click here. May something you read help you remember what you’ve always known and live the truth in your heart.

Be Aware of the Power Within You.
Through Grace, You Can Live on Purpose.
And It’s Always Raining Grace.

| ​Mind the Rocks and the Sky |

My husband and I often walk on a path where blue skies peek at us through the branches of gorgeous trees. Unfortunately, our trail is also laden with stumbling blocks called rocks. I’ve had to learn to mind both the rocks and the sky.

If I gaze too long at the sky and its lovely ever-shifting light, my foot will find the rock I didn’t see. Almost certainly, I’ll fall on my face or skin my hands protecting it. But if I don’t look up now and then and appreciate the changing view, I’ll miss the adventure altogether. If I don’t do some gazing, brief but appreciative, I’ll tire from walking very soon.

On the path of life, we need a balanced view. We need to mind where we are going and not trip up because of inattention. Having goals matching our talents and contributing to the world is good. But sometimes, we allow ourselves to be so busy, so hurried, that looking up is next to impossible. Simplifying life to the extent we can, and slowing down to the degree we can, makes the journey part of the fun. Feeling driven to get to the end of the path ensures that the destination won’t be enough when we get there. We’ll find our trail joins another and another. Endless walking. It seems our victorious destinations are but a mirage.

May we ask for the grace to mind both the rocks and the sky.

Today, be aware.
God’s Life floods your heart.
It’s always Raining Grace.

Books by Sally

Recently, it seemed my peace was surgically removed. Because of years of the repetitive motion of typing as a teacher and writer, I had an operation to cushion my thumb joint. I experienced the loss of the use of my dominant hand, pain, swelling, difficulty sleeping, and a host of other slings and arrows. But what stressed me was that the morning of the surgery, I received from a publisher an email I felt needed immediate attention. There I was, bandaged up, not in my right mind, and unable to respond as I wanted. Peace? I would have wrung my hands, but the cast made it impossible. Instead, I reminded myself of what I’ve learned through experience—when I think something is “bad,” it’s often a gift concealed to be revealed only when looking back.

I vividly remember the seeming tragedy of needing to go back to work but then finding I loved my new job. Then there were the two family moves I dreaded. The first allowed me to meet people who became essential to my life. The second allowed my children to make life choices that had amazing results.

Flip the Cloth

If we look at events from our limited human angle, we may see what looks like the backside of a cross-stitch embroidery with random knots and a chaos of threads going every which way. Let’s ask for the grace to flip the cloth, to see God’s point of view, and to co-create the colorful, meaningful, exquisite pattern of our lives. The surgery was only a few weeks ago, and maybe it’s too early for me to fully unpack God’s recent gift, but when I do, I trust gratitude will fill my heart as I see that my difficult time completed a Divine design.

Today, be aware.
God’s Life floods your heart.
It’s always Raining Grace.

Books by Sally

During my action-packed, responsibility-laden teaching days, sleeping wasn’t always easy. Praying and relaxing my muscles usually helped me drift off at night, but one night I was drifting nowhere. I was stuck firmly—exactly where I’d been all day—awake. It didn’t help that my husband started lightly, politely snoring approximately four minutes after our heads hit our respective pillows. My eyes were closed, but my mind remained wide open to thought after thought, worry after worry. How could I help a student who was grieving the loss of his father? Should I change the schedule of talks for the retreat? Was Friday’s lesson plan the most engaging way to introduce a new topic for discussion? Lying there, tense and tossing, I didn’t know my shift was over—that God takes the night shift!

The “day shift/night shift prayer” is a prayer of trust that I heard about through the greatvine, word of mouth. For many of us, our to-do list at day’s end has as many items untouched as it has tasks crossed off. But just because there’s work to be done doesn’t mean it’s today’s work. This prayer’s pithy metaphor makes the process of letting go more natural and effective. Ask God for the grace to pray it well, to mean the words and say them with a faith-filled heart. The language below is mine. I’ve adapted the prayer to fit my needs and encourage you to do the same.

I hope and pray, fellow traveler, that you’ll rely on God to take each night shift of your life. He never sleeps and never quits loving, treasuring, and caring for you. If you have a little one, you can help your child get into the habit of turning things over to God at bedtime by reading Night of Mysterious Blessings as you tuck them in at night.

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Books by Sally

|I Struggled to Give My Son a Faith I Didn’t Have|

I flew out of bed at the sound of Brian’s chilling screams. My five-year-old sometimes had bad dreams, but this was different. The air in his room seemed charged with danger and dread.

“It’s okay, honey.” I sat on Brian’s bed and patted his hands. “I’m right here. It’s just a nightmare.” I tried to assure both of us.

Brian’s body remained rigid with terror. I flicked on the overhead light, kissed his cheek,  and carried him to the rocker. Brian was inconsolable.

It occurred to me that I should pray. In fact, I should pray out loud. But what if I prayed, and God did nothing? Brian was just learning about God. I needed to protect his young faith against the slings and arrows of outrageous life. Sometimes God’s “mysterious ways” made me doubt his providence altogether. “It’s okay, honey. Really. Shhhh,” I hushed in motherly tones. But Brian’s fear was building, not abating.

“Sweetheart,” I said in desperation, “let’s talk to God about this.”

“Dear God,” I began.

Between the words “Dear” and “God,” Brian’s little body went limp with peace. My prayer wasn’t compelling, memorable, or well-spoken—a lackluster string of words—but it didn’t matter. The moment, the meeting, belonged to my son and God. My prayer trailed off with a final “Amen.”

As I rocked my peaceful child, I realized I’d had a wake-up call. Not Brian’s terrified screams in the middle of the night, but a wake-up call concerning my lack of faith. After all, I’d been afraid to pray out loud with my son. I’d had so little trust that God would come through. Also, it seemed I was interpreting the struggles in my life as some sign of abandonment. When God’s answers weren’t what I’d hoped for, I felt He hadn’t answered at all.

Brian stretched, repositioned himself in my arms, and laid his head back on my shoulder. The warmth of his body comforted me.

I knew I had so much spiritual growing to do. I remembered the man in Scripture who asked Jesus to heal his son, telling Jesus, “I do believe. Help my unbelief“ (Mark 9:24 KJV). I could identify! If doubts are part of being human, if they are natural, I needed the supernatural. I needed God’s grace. I knew faith was a gift God longed to give.

Brian interrupted my thoughts, sitting upright in my lap. His eyes wide with wonder, his little voice solemn with awe, Brian whispered, “Mommy, how did He get here so quick?”

Today, be aware.
God’s Life floods your heart.
It’s always Raining Grace.

Most of us struggle to be authentic. If we don’t win the battle to be ourselves, our self will never have a chance to be. No one else can take over the privilege and challenge of our self-expression.

I believe the glorious freedom of authenticity lies in realizing our lives are not about us. If we are not the central focus of our lives, the burden of proof—of proving we are worthy—falls off our shoulders. Liberation is ours.

In my youth, I was a people pleaser. The source of the problem was not self-adulation, but a sense of not being good enough to live up to self-imposed ego demands. If others were pleased with me, I felt worthy. Like the chameleon, the people pleaser needs to adapt to the environment, to the surrounding people. They please others at the expense of maintaining the unique identity that is their gift.

People Pleasing Kills Creativity. For an artist, people pleasing is deadly. When I was a pleaser, I couldn’t freely write, pour out my heart, find my voice and let it be heard. To do any of those things was to risk rejection, to have people not pleased with me. Writing this blog entry and posting it would have been impossible.

But I can have the pluck to be me and write freely if I realize I’m just not all that important. Let’s face it, in 60 years I’ll be dead. (I chose that number because old habits die hard. I knew you’d think I was relatively young—which seems to please a lot of people.)

If the point is not to prove myself as a writer, if the point is you, my audience, and what I can contribute to your thought life, or your life in general, if you are my focus, then I’m free. The point is, I am not the point, the be-all, the end-all of writing, or of living. My life is not about me!

As ego diminishes, courage increases. As concern for others becomes larger, my need to be larger than life (larger than I am) becomes smaller.

This insight is nothing new. Long before the internet made it possible to be humiliated instantaneously on the world stage, to be undone in the time it takes to press tweet, post, or send, this idea was floated. Some 2,000 years ago, it was written, “Love casts out fear.” When I reach out to others in love, whether it be on a keyboard or around someone’s dining room table, I am without fear.

Well, maybe not without it. Perhaps just less dominated by it. I’m human, and it’s human to want to be loved. The prayer of St. Francis says it well: “Let me not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love.”

In the final analysis, we’re all “perfectly imperfect.” We do our best. And we’re dependent on the grace of God, which, thank God, rains abundantly.

My prayer for you–today, be aware.
God’s Life floods your heart.
It’s always Raining Grace.

I’d just received a contract to publish my early reader, The Night of Mysterious Blessings. I was emailing Deb Haggerty, the Publisher and Editor in Chief of Elk Lake Publishing, the dream company soon to make my book available. Deb was warm and welcoming—still, I sat, phrasing and rephrasing, feeling like a nervous child wanting to please my first-grade teacher—no, actually, I felt as if I were emailing—God.

I’d taken far too much time to craft a simple communication, ensuring every word counted. At some point, I’d written the sentence, “I’ll work hard to assure you that you made the right choice.” I saw the dreaded, often-unnecessary word that. I changed the wording. “I’ll work hard to assure you know you made the right choice.” SEND.

The words I’d typed burned a hole in the brain. “Assure you know”? Ensure. Ensure. ENSURE! My thoughts sounded like a commercial for a nutritional drink. The context made the error ironic—someday, funny. But not that day. I assured myself, “Deb probably won’t notice!” “SHE’S AN EDITOR!” my inner critic yelled, ensuring I wouldn’t easily forget my mistake.

What could I learn from what had happened? As my 1st-grade teacher said, I should “check my work.” Or was the moral of the story haste makes waste—early to bed, early to rise—I’d been burning the midnight oil. Those weren’t new insights! I wasn’t certain of the lesson, but by God’s grace, I put the mistake behind me and felt peace.

For years, I taught the spirituality of St. Ignatius, so in the evenings, I always try to find time to do an “Examen,” asking myself what thoughts and feelings motivated my actions and reactions that day. During the Examen, God’s wisdom shines light on my spiritual progress or lack thereof. When growth is needed, I end the process envisioning doing better in future situations similar to the one I’m considering.

I went outside to commune with the sky, the trees, and the God who made them. A Scripture verse came to mind: “For they loved human praise more than the praise of God.” When was the last time I’d had a moment’s panic, worried about what God thought of me? Through whose eyes was I looking at myself after I made my error? Not the eyes of infinite, absolute Love, eyes which always brought acceptance of my humanity. I write stories for God and his children—when ego inches in, so does stress. Wasn’t it God who entrusted me with writing The Night of Mysterious Blessings in the first place?

My perspective expanded exponentially. “God, I’ll work hard to ensure you know you made the right choice—and—I’ll check my work.”