To Iowa, With Love

A song can take you back to a place. Like James Taylor and I'm Goin' to Carolina in my Mind. Or Sweet Home, Alabama by Lynyrd Skynyrd.

My husband put on some music by James Taylor this afternoon, and I listened as I washed dishes and baked bread. And I realized that I was thinking about Iowa - even as I listened to Mr. Taylor sing about Carolina.

Iowa is my sweet home.

Others pray for dear ones when they come to mind. I find myself praying for an entire state of dear ones. Every Iowan seems like a relative to me. It's been like that since I moved away - in 1991.

I don't suppose I will ever live there again, but Iowa is in my blood. And when my thoughts turn toward my home state, I always say a prayer. God, bless the dear ones who call Iowa home. If it is possible, let me be an instrument of conversion for this state.

Do you have a home sweet home? A state that calls to you? If you can pray for friends and family, you can certainly pray for an entire state of people. Ask God to bless your dear home. That city, state, or country that has a special place in your heart.

To Iowa, With Love

What Catholics Know

I spent my entire childhood in rural Iowa. For that matter, I lived a great deal of my adult life there as well. Both of my grandfathers were farmers, as were their fathers, and so on.

I probably heard the term work ethic many times before I actually knew what it meant. In my family, you worked hard, you worked together as a family unit, and you were proud of what you accomplished.

As Catholic Christians, we have a strong work ethic. We know how important it is to give our yes to God. To accept the work the Lord has given to us. To work in tandem with grace.

We also know how to pick up our crosses. Cradle Catholics know how to do this. They have journeyed through many Lenten seasons. Their mothers would nurse them through illness and mend them after injury, always reminding them to offer it up. Offer to God all that you must endure, offer it for another, offer it as reparation, offer it in love.

It is only speculation, but I suspect that Catholics weather tough times better than most. I would bet that they have a resiliency that is stronger than almost any other group.

I remember hearing a sad story when I was Baptist. One Sunday, a family in the church went for a Sunday afternoon outing. That evening, they drove back to St. Louis, to attend Sunday evening services. They were involved in a terrible accident. The wife and all the children were killed. Only the husband survived.

Immediately, I wondered about that husband. How could he go on? How would he have the strength to bear such a terrible burden? Some time later, that father took his own life. He simply didn't see how he could carry on.

After I became Catholic, I started to notice a particular strength in Catholics. They seemed to have a better handle on suffering. They had a plan. An approach. They seemed to know what they must do when trials come - they seemed able to draw from a deep well of divine strength.

In short, they knew what to do when they encountered the cross. They got on their knees and prayed for sufficient grace. And then they picked up that cross and started moving forward. Even when they faced tragedy as terrible as the Baptist father in the story above.

I cannot say that I am there yet. I am very much like an elementary student in this school of suffering. But I trust. . .

Jesus, I trust in You.

Help me to remember what I have seen. Give me the wisdom to get on my knees and pray. And give me the strength to pick up my cross and start moving forward - no matter how heavy the cross may be.

What Catholics Know

Once Upon a Time, When I Was Wesleyan

At five, I didn’t realize how much life imitates falling dominoes or how one seemingly insignificant event calls into being the next and the next. I’d yet to memorize the verse that says all things work together for the good of those who serve the Lord. But I knew there was a God. In fact, I knew God existed before I was fully aware of my own existence.

That’s how it is when Dad’s a preacher.

By the age of five, God is at the core of all things. You have doubts about the tooth fairy and Santa Claus. But the Great I Am simply is.

At five, it doesn’t seem strange that Dad’s a preacher. Having a farmer or a trucker for a dad sounds weird. But having a preacher for a dad is normal. He has a church. People come to hear him speak. Mom is the church pianist. And you sit on the front row and behave until the benediction. You go to every potluck dinner, where everyone calls you by name and helps you fill your plate with whatever your heart desires.

When I was eight or nine, I invited Jesus to come into my heart. It was the normal progression in the evangelical and fundamentalist denominations. First, you teach a child. Then, the child chooses for herself.

From that point forward, I not only knew God was real, I knew that the Lord Jesus Christ was living in my heart. And I absolutely fell in love with Him. It was the beginning of my love affair with Our Lord; it set the stage for receiving the Eucharist - though that would not come for a very long time. Indeed, I learned to love deeply, and decades later, when I understood what I was receiving in Holy Communion as a Catholic, I almost couldn't bear it. It was too wonderful, so intimate, to have this one I loved take the form of something I could receive within me - literally and spiritually.

The summer of my ninth birthday came to a close, and my sister and I prepared to start a new school year.

In December of that school year, my parents got a phone call that my grandfather had fallen into a grain bin on the family farm and the local fire department was at that moment shoveling corn onto the frozen ground in an effort to find his body. The recovery team believed he had climbed to the top of the bin with a wrench in hand in order to break through the frozen layer of ice that sometimes forms on the grain during Iowa winters. He’d done this task many times through the years, but this time something went wrong, and he fell into the bin and suffocated. When he didn’t show up for the evening meal, grandma went looking for him. She had her suspicions when she realized the bin’s drier wasn’t working. A wrench had jammed up the gears. Grandpa’s wrench. The one he’d used to break through the crust of ice just before losing his balance. The wrench had made its way to the bottom of the bin and become lodged in the drier. My dad left the ministry soon after that terrible night, and we moved to the farm to help grandma.

I now had a farmer for a dad.

And that’s how things would have stayed if not for a couple of local Presbyterian churches who happened to be without a pastor. But that is another story for another day. It is enough to say that my first love for Jesus began when I was just a child - when I was Wesleyan. Even then, He was preparing me to come all the way home, to recognize Him in the Eucharist and to crave this Bread of Life with my whole heart and soul. Indeed, all things do work together for the good of those who are called.

Once Upon a Time, When I Was Wesleyan