Family

Friday was a crummy day...mostly because our new bathtub in our new bathroom decided to become, not only a bath on the second floor, but also a shower on the first. Ahhh. It wouldn't be so very bad but our other shower went out of commission a year or so ago and, since we were making the other perfect and new, we didn't worry about it. Bad plan.

I woke up on Saturday morning in a dark place with one thought in my mind...I have no friends. None. I have nowhere to bathe my children and I have noone to call. I get that way sometimes. When I'm stressed about something I start a pretty quick downhill roll to hysteria. Before I could even take time to refute such a panic-inspired statement, I picked up the readings for the day.

John's Gospel:

Jesus said to his disciples:
"If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first.
If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own;
but because you do not belong to the world,
and I have chosen you out of the world,
the world hates you.

So, yes, I do get that. I'm so unattached to the world, sometimes I include the people around me. Why, then, can I not be so unattached to bathing? Sigh. After ranting a while, dh, in his great love and long-suffering, worked out a plan...the bath would be fixed by next week. Grateful that there was at least something in motion, we continued our plan for the day...Open House at the Franciscan Sisters, T.O.R, of the Penance of the Sorrowful Mother.  We had wanted to go to this for a few years but this is the year it worked out. Ahem.

We pulled up a little late but just in time to take a short tour and then head right to the outdoor May Crowning. What a beautiful day and what an amazing sight to see so many families, interspersed with the Sisters, walking through the pasture to crown Our Lady.

After the crowning, we had a few minutes to just walk around, eat some snow-cones and popcorn, and just be quiet and enjoy our family and God's creation. I am from the country and there is a very big part of me that relaxes a whole bunch when I'm in a place like this. It is quiet and it is still. Plenty of room to just listen.

The kids had a vocation talk with the Sisters and dh and I spent some time in the chapel listening to the adult/hs vocations talk (do you know why their cord has three knots? obedience, poverty and chastity!).

Vigil Mass ended the beautiful day. The priest was Fr. Boniface Hicks and the very first few lines of his homily explained and reminded that here, we are family. Ah, yes. Perhaps as the world sees, there are few friends and a family that, well, is sort of absent. As God sees though... that's a whole other thing entirely. Do not see as the world sees...

How grateful I am that God continues to give me reminders that, even when it seems lonely, He is always around me; in the Holy Spirit, but also in the good people that He put with me to walk this path. What a beautiful end to Fr. Boniface's homily...that like the moms and dads holding their sleeping children during Mass, when we enter the silence we should be at peace because it is God, holding us with a love that transcends any words.

We are blessed.