The Day After (Women of Grace)

I managed to make it to Mass today, and then I came home and did a little around the house. It seemed a blessing to have these familiar chores. They brought me back to the quiet of my life and the rhythm of our family. It seems like a microcosm of the liturgical calendar which takes us to high points in the journey of faith, and also returns us to the ordinary days of Ordinary Time.

The time at EWTN was a great joy. None of my worries materialized. I had a voice, no laryngitis. I wasn't ill. I made my connecting flights. I wasn't perfect during the taping (tough to know when to keep speaking and when Johnnette needs to go to break, etc), but the Holy Spirit was there.

Mother Angelica has talked often about the Child Jesus, and I think that I was sensing that childlike faith...the joy of being a child in Christ. During Sharon's taping (another guest whose show I was able to watch prior to my own), I was struck by all the pain she has been through, and then, I considered my own journey, one of little pain - mostly joy. Joy pressed down, shaken together, and running over. Joy filled me in those few fleeting moments before my turn. And I let the joy flow. Like a child.

Before Sharon's taping, Johnnette had us pray the Prayer to St. Michael. I quietly prayed in the wings. Shortly after that, they prepared for their cue, and I remained in prayer quietly - in the shadows behind the cameras. I felt peace come over me. A quiet of such completeness that nothing else remained. While I had not felt disquiet prior to that, I still was encountering and perceiving everything through the earthly senses. Discovery. Newness. Curiosity. They came and hit my senses, and they remained in that surface place. Even the minor worries (making flights, getting my clothes unwrinkled) were there only in surface ways and not really disturbing...

But this quiet went beyond all, and I wanted it to stay. But it didn't. It came and went in probably thirty seconds. And then the joy came flooding.

Johnnette asked me questions about writing and evangelization. She asked for an example of something I might blog about, and I retold the story of the ugly daffodils. And I knew that the Holy Spirit had dug down into my soul and retrieved the right gift from the many He has given, lifting it out and leaving a trail of joy behind Him.

And I was overcome again with the sense that others were interceding for me in high places...

I must go and I think I probably have forgotten some very important things. If they come to me, I may return through the week and share them. I would ask that you now pray that I can avoid the trap of reliving the what I said, what she said, how it was said, how it might be received... and all of that. God knows what must be done, and I need to turn things to Him with thanksgiving now. Just as there are traps for us as we go into these moments of evangelization, there are traps on the other side. I'm seeing that it is not to go numbly through the adventure of New Evangelization, but neither is it a time to give ourselves over to the voices in our head that seek to clutter it up rather than let Our Lord reign.

Thank you to all who prayed for me. I ask for you to remember me in December as I travel to the Journey Home and share the full story of my journey home to the Catholic Church.

Blessings,

Denise