Big Things

The Tea Party is over; my son has received Confirmation and First Holy Communion; my daughter has turned 4. My in-laws went home. Laundry is cycling, left-overs are aplenty, and I'm trying to figure out how to dive back in to blogging about what has transpired in my life over the last month.

Well, here's how. I'll write about the experience of one naru hodo moment that happened a few weeks back. One morning early on in the Tea Party planning process a thought came into my mind with an entirely new level of understanding. The thought was this: I am made for big things. Let me clarify this, and quickly. As a child, I had an occasional teacher who would tell me something of this sort. As an adult I've also had a particular priest tell me this in confession a couple of times. But I could never receive it or even think about it because of how my mind translated "big things." Hearing "big" I thought "prestigious, important: especially more prestigious and more important than things done by 'normal' people." But on this morning when this thought came to me, I understood the truth of it. I am made for big, unwieldy, ambitious, challenging, hard things. Yes. It was like seeing pieces of a puzzle show their picture for the first time.

The challenging part of organizing this Tea Party for me was that I was accountable to no one else and nothing else besides the desire in my heart. I could have done the same work as a member of a committee who had had these tasks delegated to me, and it would not have been anywhere near the same. It would not have required the same self-giving. Most of the jobs I've done have consisted largely of repetitious manual tasks. Some have also required writing and communication skills. But for the most part, at best these have provided me with an avenue to live comfortably in my mind, and at worst they have fed my pride. This work I've just finished has been a lot like parenting, so it forced me out of my mind (hmm, that has a ring to it) and has provided ample opportunity for mortification. Except it was on a super-intense, compact, public level.

But something has become very evident to me from this experience of undertaking a big thing. Jesus tells us in the gospel that "whoever loses his life for my sake will find it" (Mt. 10:39). This is true. I've experienced it. There were many instances in which I had do things ("had to" because it was required by my heart's desire, and for no other reason) that caused me some pretty intense mortification. Phone calls, pleas for help made to people I don't know at all or don't know well, trying to sound eloquent in public interviews .... these but topped the mortification list. But I find now that it is so much easier for me to obey the Lord's command to be myself. It's a bit mysterious in a way, but Jesus' promise really does ring true. I have myself in a way I did not before. I have myself in a way that makes self-giving extremely attractive. I've said this dozens of times over the last weeks, but this really has been like childbirth. Even though there is something very painful about it, there is something far more marvelous, far more transformative, that draws me to say I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

But another key here is that I am not necessarily talking about, or foreswearing, another Tea Party (that's for a different post). I'm talking about the same kind of big work. Even though I'm talking about the desires of my heart, I know it is far more than just my choosing. I can't create a desire like this one in my heart. I don't make myself. But I have no doubt there is One who makes me.