Today at mass our pastor Father John gave his homily, if  I’m honest I don’t really remember most of the homily, probably because I thought it would be about the transfiguration, which was the Gospel today, but that wasn’t his focus.  I thought we’d get a homily about how we can all change.  Instead, as part of his homily, I heard, “Everything is a Gift from God.  Everything.”  That phrase caught my attention because just the other day I was listening to Alistar Begg, he’s a pastor whose sermons we listen to, almost daily.  He’s not Catholic, in fact, I’m pretty sure he thinks Catholicism is bunk but you know it’s fine by me, we all have our flaws, Ha!

Seriously, Alistar was giving a sermon this week where he was talking about just being grateful for waking up in the morning and looking out the window and seeing a blue sky.  It was the same message I heard today from Father John.

When bad things happen its hard to see things as gifts.  We had a sad accident happen this weekend.  As we were returning home from work Friday we drove into our garage like we always do but we didn’t see our neighbors cat.  Sadly, after all was said and done, it didn’t turn out well.  Laina and I cried ourselves to sleep.  I encouraged her to paint a picture of  him the next day so she could have a memory and we printed out a nice picture we had taken of him a few months earlier.  We wrote a card asking for forgiveness from our neighbor and took it over the next day.  The wife is very sweet and very forgiving.  I don’t know that I would be that forgiving but it wasn’t her cat.  It was the childhood cat of her husband, who we actually haven’t seen since Friday night so I’m not real sure he’s quite ready to forgive us and I can’t say I blame him.

I was so upset at one point I told my husband he had ruined our entire weekend.  Totally unfair and untrue.  I prayed that morning that our neighbors would forgive us and then I called my mom, who else would I call?  I cried and told her what happened and as moms often do she helped put it all in perspective for me and I felt better after I talked to her.  Funny how at 47 years old I still want to have my mom make it all ok.

Anyway, such a sad start to our weekend but when I heard Father John this morning it forced me to look at the weekend as a whole and realize that lots of good things happened too.  The weather was amazing, beautiful blue sky for miles, warm, not too hot.  I went to a bridal shower for my cousin.  Very happy for him.  I guess I went to the bridal shower of his fiance but I’ve considered her my cousin for a long time already, such as it is.  We had a fun St. Patrick’s Day breakfast with our family and friends.  We ate corned beef and cabbage or tri-tip and potatoes, if you preferred, with Irish Soda Bread and other yummy side dishes here and there.  We ended our weekend by taking a drive down Sky Harbor Road.  If you live in our valley then you know that one of the very best things is our foothills in the spring.  Absolutely incredible any spring but with so much rain this year it is a total feast for the eyes!  Sky Harbor Road winds around one of our local lakes and leads up to a hiking trail.  It was just spectacular, so beautiful, I didn’t want to leave.  The amazing thing is it is only like 25 minutes from our house, if that, I love where we live in CA.  We can be at any of a number of amazing places in less than an hour and if we want to see the ocean, its’ just a little over a two hour drive.  If we want to be in a big city we are less than 3 or 4 hours away, depending on if we go south or north.  We almost never want to be in a big city.  I don’t think I will ever get my daughter to go back to San Francisco, she was not impressed when we went in January.

I’m off track.  My point was behind all these wonderful things was an ache in my heart for the pain we caused our neighbor and it hasn’t gone away.  I’m old enough to know it will lessen over time but I’m also old enough to know it will never go away.  I hope they forgive us.  They are nice people and it would be nice to get to know them better.  It was a reminder that we should know them better, that whole Love Your Neighbors thing.   It was a reminder that things aren’t permanent and in the matter of less than a second, everything can be changed.

Everything is a gift from God.  Beautiful things are gifts from God and sad and painful things are gifts from God too.  They both are designed to remind us that we are His.  Forgiveness is His greatest gift.  We can’t earn that, we can only accept that we have it.  It’s called Grace.  We can’t force others to forgive us when we’ve wronged them.  We can only ask for it, the important part there is we need to ask.  The second most important part is to forgive ourselves. We are useless when we wallow in self-pity.  We can not “Glorify God by Our Life” when we wallow in self.

We are His creation and He calls out to us, sometimes the call is painful and heart crushing but sometimes, like this afternoon the call is beautiful and heart filling.

I’ve seen deep sadness and brokenness in my own life turned to joy immeasurable, you’d think I’d learned this lesson by now.  Obviously not.  God’s mercies are never ending and His faithfulness is always true.  Our names are carved into the palm of His hands, carved. I am overwhelmed by this truth.

What a crazy weekend.  Lows and highs.

For everything God sends to me good and bad…I Give Thanks!

KOR

Here’s a picture of our foothills.  They are amazing.