Category: advent

Be kind to yourself…

On By runnergirl02In advent, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Does getting new socks count? I got some comfy cozy new socks because I really like the brand. I didn’t really need socks so I guess I’m going to count this.

Today we did the annual Jingle Bell Run in our town. Fresno, Ca has a lane that is pretty popular, it’s called Christmas Tree Lane. It’s in an older neighborhood with million dollar homes and really old, tall, beautiful pine trees. They drape lights on the trees and practically every house on the lane gets decked out. Local high schools have provide murals that are displayed and home owners put up their own decorations as well. You can find all of Santa’s reindeer along the lane as well. The run is a 5K and today I felt really good. Before the run my husband and I ran six miles in our neighborhood so we ran a total of 9 miles today and I felt good! It’s so nice to be running without hurting again. I just have to remind myself not to get too excited and push too hard or I might find myself back where I was, miserable and in pain.

I love to run and since the half we always run was cancelled this year because of wild fire smoke, we have signed up for a different half on January 6th. It’s on a route we train on almost every weekend so I think it will be okay. I’m feeling strong, which also keeps me sticking to eating healthy. Well today we did go to a rib place and had at least one side that wasn’t the greatest but for the most part we stuck to the plan.

Well, for a fun run today with our daughter, for a fun horse drawn carriage ride in the afternoon, for love, life, and family…I Give Thanks!

KOR

Here’s a picture of a house on the lane from this morning and a couple of the lane in the evening :-)!!

Hold the door open for someone…

On By runnergirl02In advent, Biblical ReflectionsLeave a comment

Well, this one was easy as I almost always hold the door open for students when they come into class, so task accomplished.  My poor husband though, who I met for lunch, couldn’t seem to get anyone to walk through any door he tried to hold open!  Poor guy.

This topic got me thinking actually about how holding the door open for people is more than just the literal act of holding open a door.  We can all “hold the door open” for people in lots of different ways.  We can take a meal to someone.  We can spend time visiting someone who might be lonely.  We can give a young person some much needed encouragement or sound advice that they might not be able to get at home due to circumstances quite often out of their control.  We can do so many things to “hold the door open.”

Today’s reading was about Isaiah and his prophecy of Jesus.  The gospel was about Jesus telling the disciples basically, hey, I’m THE GUY, THE ONE, remember yesterday when I was wondering what exactly Andrew and Simon saw that made them leave immediately?  Today Jesus said this:

“Blessed are the eyes that see what you see.
For I say to you,
many prophets and kings desired to see what you see,
but did not see it,
and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.”

I believe the bible is a living book.  It speaks to us wherever we are.  It’s God’s way of communicating with us, among others, every time I open it I learn something or hear something I never quite heard before.  God meets us in His word where we are. Today Jesus told me, it’s ME, I AM the one you are looking for, don’t be like the people who refuse to hear the good news, be like a little child.  To do that, Father says you have to be open minded, open to all the possibilities a relationship with Jesus brings.

The Advent reflection today introduced me to a cool website called, wearesaltandlight.org.  My husband and I met with a friend over the summer about trying to do something for the youth at our church to give them the opportunity to go out and practice their faith in a concrete way.  I am of the mind though that kids need models and so if they see their parents and other church members practicing their faith in concrete ways they will follow suit.  We talked about creating a database that contained the different gifts of parishioners so that we could match them up with people in our parish who are in need of concrete help in addition to prayer.  Nick Vujicic from Life Without Limbs, says we are God’s hands and feet.  If you don’t know who he is, google him, and then you will know why this is amazing.  We want our daughter to live her life with intention.  To have a purpose and a goal and so I think we need to model that for her so she knows what that looks like and how it is to live with intention under God’s direction.  Sometimes she’ll ask me what I think she should do when she grows up and I always ask her what she thinks God is asking her to be.  She thinks so far maybe a vet or a nun.  I want grandchildren so I’m hoping for vet, ha ha.  She has a love for animals and she has a love for people.  She has a very sweet heart.  I like that about her.  She is a good example for me.  It was good to come across this website because now it has made me want to spend some time over the break looking through it and really making a plan for this next year and living that plan intentionally.

I feel happiest when I am helping others.  I think most people do in general but I know for some people it feels more like a chore.  I just know that I really have enjoyed having our little troop work on service projects this year instead of some of the other “lessons” we are supposed to be doing.

The other cool reminder I got today, going back to something I mentioned yesterday about migrants and refugees, was that Jesus, Mary and Joseph were refugees.  They had to flee to Egypt to escape Herod.  I never thought of that before. The challenge question today was to think about Mary and Joseph, particularly Joseph and how he must have felt at having to leave his home, frankly for political reasons.  We see that with many many migrants and refugees.  I imagine Jesus is very close to them as He understands what it is to be a refugee.

I am constantly amazed at how God made one person who could understand so many many many different facets of human life.  Jesus was born but also adopted.  He was a refugee.  He was poor.  He worked. He had friends.  He was persecuted and mocked.  He was constantly questioned by the Pharisee, a way to check his intelligence, I suppose.  He suffered the loss of a good friend.  He despaired.  I think we’d be hard pressed to find any situation that we find ourselves in that Jesus didn’t also live through.  Amazing.  Our pastor says that the number one most important thing in our lives is to get to know Jesus, to call him friend.  Today I was listening to a podcast and the woman preacher asked if we were dating Jesus or married to Jesus, because you treat those two situations differently, one is total commitment, the other lukewarm.

Well, lots to think about today.  I didn’t even write about St. John Damascene, who had to flee his country because of religious persecution.  I’m really glad a friend suggested I try out the holidailies because its given me a goal to be intentional about.  Thank you friend!

Today for finding out about wearesaltandlight.org, for being reminded about all the ways Jesus knows me, for my husband holding my door open, for Advent, for good strong run this morning, for the roasted chicken I am making for dinner, and for the beautiful view of the snow on the mountains…I Give Thanks!

KOR

It’s hard to see kind of but here’s a picture of our snow capped mountains. A great sight here in my Ca Valley…

Buy a friend or a colleague a coffee..

On By runnergirl02In advent, running, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Hmmm…well, this one was hard and I had to do a work around to accomplish it.  I sent a digital Starbucks gift card to a good friend, who recently has had some sad times.  I could not stop to get her a coffee or favorite drink because there isn’t a whole lot of time in the morning before I have to be at school and when I leave my home.  I have to make sure my little gal has lunch, my husband and I have our lunches and we have to drop her at my parents so they can take her to school before we head in for work.  So I consider what I did a cheat but at least she can pick out a favorite drink for herself or her son at a time that is best for her.

While we were reading the daily mass readings on our way in this AM, my husband and I came across Share the Journey, https://www.sharejourney.org/meet-your-neighbors/, here’s the link if you want to check it out.  Anyway, it’s about migrants, refugees, I guess this is a hot button issue for some people, sorry if that’s you.  It’s common sense to me, but maybe I’m not that common.  We have two big commandments we are supposed to follow, if you are a Christian, the first is to love God, basically meaning to surrender our life to him daily and the second is to love our neighbor as ourselves.  It’s kinda hard to accomplish the second of these commandments when we are building walls and other such non-sense.  I know, I know, the country needs to be secure and maybe walls have their place here and there, maybe it’s not even the wall I object to but the way migrants and refugees are characterized.  It’s disheartening.  So on that Share the Journey link you will find stories about refugees and how they ended up here in America.  They are worth reading through.

I can’t find anywhere in the bible where Jesus said to love our neighbors only if they look like us or act like us or vote like us.  I can’t find it anywhere in the bible that we should regard those with opinions different than ours as somehow less enlightened or less intelligent or bigots or hateful people.  I’ve looked and instead I’ve found stories about the Good Samaritan and the one we read today about the Centurion who asked Jesus for help.  Can you imagine?  A Roman soldier asking some guy, who could have been anyone really, to cure his servant.  What did he see in him?  Last Friday’s reading was about Andrew and Simon and how they dropped everything to follow Jesus.  Phew, everything.  What did they see in this guy?  I would have liked to have been there to feel it, because I can’t imagine what they felt was anything really different than how I felt when God called me, except, of course, they could see Him.  Boggles my mind.  Things like that and Paul, gosh, Paul, total transformation, willing to die for someone he never met in person.

The retreat question from this digital retreat:

https://www.crs.org/resource-center/holy-family-refugee-family-digital-advent-retreat

How are we willing to make room in our lives for the sufferings and joys of others, how do we do it and how could we do it better?

Upon examination of my own life I could definitely do better.  I think I’m good at being there for friends and family when something sad has happened.  I make a point to attend funerals for my friends when they have lost parents.  I make a point to attend funerals for good friends from church.  I could do better in the after math of loss.  I could stay in better contact and check-in more often.  Sadly, the speed at which life travels isn’t always conducive to this.  I could make the time, if I really stopped to think about it and plan my day with the right priorities.

Joys are easy I think, who isn’t happy for the announcement of a wedding, a baby, a job promotion, or some other little thing, kid gets into a certain college or someone buys a new house.  I guess maybe that’s harder to do if you let jealousy take over.  I wasn’t always genuinely happy for people when good things happened to them but it was because I saw their “success” through the lens of my “failure”.

Some joys are hard.  Baby showers are still hard for me, as an infertile woman, barring a miracle, past child bearing age.  I’m happy for the new parents.  I just don’t want to sit in a room full of women chattering about their birthing experiences.  Women who give birth sometimes have the habit of looking down on women who don’t.  I don’t think they mean it that way.  I once had to listen to a friend complain or maybe she wasn’t but go on and on and on about how she couldn’t breast feed her baby.  Another about how her birth plan didn’t go right, she had to have a cesarean.  Both times I wanted to bolt, one was over email and so I did bolt, just stopped reading.  It was painful to me and it felt like cruel and unnecessary information to share with a barren woman.  I know it wasn’t meant that way, and I know it was information shared because I was a friend but it didn’t stop me from wishing sometimes people would take into consideration my hurts and feelings in this particular area. Again, just my lens.  So I have an issue with joy in this department. I have planned several baby showers for my siblings, well three and with the exception of one, two of them were couples showers so my husband could be there with me.  I even sang at two of them.  We had a baby shower for our little gal but it was clearly an adoption shower and as there was no pregnant mom there for other ladies to give advice to I quite enjoyed it!

I’m not sure this particular pain is supposed to be healed because being able to connect with the deep sadness and at times despair of infertility allows me to connect with people in their grief.  Don’t get me wrong I have prayed for God to ease this pain but he hasn’t and so I must need it for something.  Paul says, His grace is sufficient.  It’s going to have to be for me too.

Bottom line is I can do better in both areas.  I’m glad for the question so I could think about how.

Well I have to go, the rest of my afternoon is super crazy, piano lessons, picking my husband up, dinner somewhere in there, homework, house stuff and start again tomorrow.  Monday’s are kind of hectic.

I am thankful today though for a chance to learn more about Share the Journey, super thankful for my work schedule, it’s mostly a half day schedule that allows me to pick my little gal up from school and be home in the afternoon, Trader Joe’s, I stopped there today to pick up some raw sunflower seeds for the granola I’m making tonight.  I will also be thankful today for joy and pain, because they are both powerful enough to bring people together….for all these things…I Give Thanks!

KOR

Here’s the digital card I sent to my friend. I liked the cute bear!

Let someone go before you in line…

On By runnergirl02In advent, Biblical ReflectionsLeave a comment

Well, I kinda cheated on this one. I let my husband go before me when we were in line for communion but because of the way we enter and leave the pews, you kind of have to let the people to the right of you in front of you. So, as we were leaving church, I made sure to let an older man out of the church door before me. I wasn’t sure I was going to have another opportunity to let anyone else in front of me in a line as I wasn’t sure we were shopping today. We did go shopping today after all but wouldn’t you know it? There was NO line!

After church on Sunday my family comes to our house for brunch. Sometimes we have breakfast stuff, sometimes lunch stuff. Today we had Chili Verde, which wasn’t actually very Verde-ish but still good, eggs, fried potatoes, oh and my mom’s homemade pinto beans, yum! Toast! There was also toast! Sometimes it’s just my parents and my brother or sister but today everyone was here. I really enjoy seeing my family. All of their children are our God-Children, we are lucky that way:-)

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. The homily at church was about being watchful. The homily on-line, that I like to listen to was about asking the question, How do we want to be remembered? The gist of the idea being if you know where you want to end up you can develop a plan to get there.

We will light our Advent candle in just a bit and we got our Christmas tree today. I also enjoy both of those traditions this time of year. We bless our wreath with the following prayer and every night we light the candle for that week.

The usual song is O Come Emmanuel…we are waiting. Strangely, we are waiting for both the end and the beginning. Kinda weird I guess.

Lord our God,
we praise you for your Son, Jesus Christ:
he is Emmanuel, the hope of the peoples,
he is the wisdom that teaches and guides us,
he is the Savior of every nation.
Lord God,
let your blessing come upon us
as we light the candles of this wreath.
May the wreath and its light
be a sign of Christ’s promise to bring us salvation.
May he come quickly and not delay.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
R/. Amen.

I liked the verse from O Come Emmanuel we sang tonight. It would definitely be good if division could cease.

Come, O Come, Emmanuel”:

O come, desire of nations, bind
in one the hearts of humankind;
bid ev’ry sad division cease
and be thyself our Prince of peace.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
shall come to thee, O Israel.

Looking forward to decorating our tree and trying to enjoy the moments I find myself in, though truth be told I’ve been on the Grinchie side the last few hours. It always seems Sunday nights find me with more to do than I would actually care to do, add holiday stuff on top of that and, well…deep breath and try to come back to the moment instead of worrying about tomorrow. It will get here soon enough, with God’s blessing.

So today, for the First Sunday of Advent, Family breakfast, Christmas trees, light and waiting…I Give Thanks!

KOR

Here’s a before shot of our Christmas Tree and our Advent Wreath…