Christ, Coffee, and Cornfields

 Awhile back, my mom and I went to a workshop on charisms. Many people are unfamiliar with that term, so I'll explain! Charisms are basically gifts that God has given you that help you to serve Him and others in the best, most efficient way possible. When exercising your charisms, it gives you energy and happiness! That's the short version.  I've been thinking about life quite a bit lately. As a young adult, I haven't quite figured out where I am supposed to be headed. The topic of charisms popped into my head today and kinda stuck. Here's my thought:  God gave us gifts for a reason. If we recognize those gifts and follow them, our life will be headed in the direction God planned for it to go.  I'll give an example. Personally, I know one of my charisms is writing. It's a gift that God gave to me and I love love love to do it! I love writing just to write or to get my thoughts out. I really love to help, encourage, and guide people through my writing.

  It is really rare that I have the opportunity to actually write my thoughts down as soon as they pop into my head. It's after one in the morning and I don't feel like sleeping, so God decided to use that as incentive to write! My revelation is actually quite hard for me to come to grips with because I have to realize all of my failings and how sinful I am. Here goes...   College sucks. I'm just gonna throw that out there right now. It is definitely not my thing, insofar as belonging there. I don't feel God's presence, which is ironic since the Catholic Church created the university system. I will admit some good has come from it (like going to Daily Mass twice a week at the Cathedral!) but for the most part, it's a hell hole. I've been feeling rather depressed and at odds with God and my mom lately, none of which are holy. So what am I still in school for? Good question....Anyway, I'm getting off track.   I used to be a super smiley happy person wh

  Soooooo when I started brainstorming about what to write for this post I was in the middle of a pretty rotten day and my post was essentially going to be a pity party for me. I was super tired, got up late, felt like nothing was quite right all day and finally tonight I was at a gathering of friends where I was not feeling accepted at all. It was sort of the last straw, and I was like, "God, what's the deal here? Why are these people not liking me when I've tried so hard for so long to be accepted by them?" It was rough. On my way home, I realized something that in the back of my mind I knew was the problem.   I didn't give God my life through prayer today.   Recently, I created a solid prayer life and my world has drastically changed since then. Whenever I don't pray, my whole day is off and I feel like everybody is against me. That's what the deal was today. I hadn't really prayed hard core the last couple days, just meal prayers and bedtime pr

  I was picking basil in the garden today and I started thinking about the movie "The Incredibles" for some unknown reason. Here is what I came up with.    "The Incredibles" is a great movie that has many parallels to regular family life.    Bob and Helen have their own unique love story and are faithful to each other through thick and thin, but they do have spats every once in a while. Their kids are generally well behaved, but they each have their own insecurities and problems and they fight with each other just like normal siblings do. They work, go to school, and eat supper together. As much as they feel like they aren't, the Parrs are a fairly normal family.   Every family has their own secrets. The Parrs are superheros. That's a pretty big secret, but it is a secret all the same. One family might have crazy relatives in an asylum, another might struggle financially. It doesn't matter what the secret is, every family has at least one. The point

  "Dear Future Husband" by Meghan Trainor is one of the stupidest songs I have ever heard. It's basically telling guys they have to become gentlemen for the woman they love in order to get married to her when in fact they must be gentlemen in all aspects of life to all people before even considering marriage. Also, it tells women that they can demand anything of their man and it will be done. No. Marriage is a two way street, demanding sacrifice on both sides. Besides, a person cannot have 'conditions' going into marriage because that, according to Canon Law, negates the marriage. "If you want to be my one and only..." sends women the message that you can hold your man to a standard and leave him if he doesn't meet it. Once again, no. Marriage doesn't work like that.   The last thing is that she offers 'favors' like kisses and such to her man in exchange for holding the door open and other gestures that a normal person should do without

    I have been blessed (or cursed?) with the ability to vividly recall many of my dreams, even years after dreaming them. Sometimes they are the good, exciting dreams, but most often they tend to be my nightmares. My most recent nightmare happened this weekend and involved me getting mortally injured and the intense need to say goodbye to my family. The thing is, I never died. I kept going to different places to find different family members, all the while dying, but never actually passing away. The same night I had another dream. A murderer was after me, and I was dying in that one, too. This time, the murderer killed someone else and I managed to get away, but still dying. Needless to say, I woke up having cried in my sleep and having gotten no rest that night.   I watched an episode of my favorite TV show last night, and at the very end, one of my top 3 favorite characters in the show died. His wife had just given birth to their first child and he was on his way to tell their fam

 Holy Week can be a very difficult week for modern Catholics. There's a lot of fasting involved, which is a custom most people are not familiar with. As a general rule, Holy Week is a period of intense prayer and meditation of the coming of our Lord's Passion. It also is a time of recommended fasting in addition to what we gave up or took on for Lent. This is especially true on Good Friday. On this day, Jesus died and we are asked by the Church to commemorate it by fasting from meat all day and only having one full meal and two smaller meals. As a human, this is hard. As a member of modern society, it's very hard.  I went to a frozen yogurt place with my youth group this past Wednesday. As a devoted Catholic, I chose to abstain from purchasing anything, seeing as it was Holy Week. I was the only one. This isn't to say that everyone else is a bad Catholic, they aren't. It's just that most people don't recognize the importance of what we celebrate this week.

 I think the hardest thing to be in the 21st century is Catholic, especially a Catholic woman. We've got all these different ideas of what the world tells us to be that are the opposite of what we're called by God to be. This goes for modesty, passions, pastimes, and even our personalities.  Our very womanhood gets called into question every day and we must choose if we want to be how God made us as beautiful creations in His image or to put on society's mask. It's a decision we must make every day, and it can be very difficult sometimes. I struggle with it as much as the next woman, but then I remember that I'm nobody if I'm not myself. God made me in His image and I am fearfully and wonderfully made. No amount of makeup or clothing will change my quirkiness so I don't even bother trying anymore.  The thing is, the people who God wants in my life accept my faults along with everything else that I am. That's the way it should be. Does that mean I'