Meant for Me

First off - I need prayers and positive energy and virtual hugs. This round of chemo has left me laying at death's doorstep. I am so very chemo sick, puffed up from the extra steroids I received, and I know it will pass, but my energy (emotional and physical) is zapped; I have nothing left. Hopefully hydration, rest, and your strength will get me through this phase. What a vicious vicious treatment.  

On a more positive note - 
I subscribe to a daily e-mail from the Henri Nouwen Society. Nouwen was a Catholic priest and poet, who died in 1996. Nouwen believed that what is most personal is most universal; he wrote, “By giving words to these intimate experiences I can make my life available to others.” 

It seems that every day this week the thoughts I've received have been meant for me. Yesterday, while thinking about a future - can you believe that - I thought about next week, next month, and I haven't done that in 5 months - I thought about who I will be, who I want to become, what I want to do. And then Nick's electric picture of me (see Breaking News post) helped me see me, and I realized I am evolving, but the essence of me won't change. Then this thought came in Thursday's mail, and I read it as if the somewhere or someone is the Me of the Past, comparing the Me of the Past to the Evolving Me.

 

Be Yourself

Often we want to be somewhere other than where we are, or even to be someone other than who we are. We tend to compare ourselves constantly with others and wonder why we are not as rich, as intelligent, as simple, as generous, or as saintly as they are. Such comparisons make us feel guilty, ashamed, or jealous. It is very important to realize that our vocation is hidden in where we are and who we are. We are unique human beings, each with a call to realize in life what nobody else can, and to realize it in the concrete context of the here and now.

We will never find our vocations by trying to figure out whether we are better or worse than others. We are good enough to do what we are called to do. Be yourself!

On Sunday I read: 

The Spiritual Work of Gratitude

To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives-the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections-that requires hard spiritual work. Still, we are only truly grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has brought us to the present moment. As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift of God to be grateful for.

Let's not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see in it the guiding hand of a loving God.