Tuesday, June 12, 2018

One of Those Days

  It is still a mystery to me that after so many years on this planet, and I mean soooo many years on this planet in this Catholic faith of mine that I still constantly struggle with being a nice person. It is just a constant fight within myself when I am discussing things with God to not be grumbling about all the things wrong in my life. 
  A few weeks ago I tried a new routine when leaving the house of praising God for the new day, the fact I had a car to drive to work instead of walking, bumming a ride or whatever, and a job to go to and a wonderful family.  It worked for about three days then I started out of the driveway worrying about one of my kids and right there it set off the worry chain instead of the praise chain I was trying to work on. Rats!
  It is also amazing to me how quickly I digress from 'awe and wonder' to 'hey, watch out you nimrod you almost hit me' mentality in my car.  And I am afraid at work it happens with frequent regularity too. I begin the day with Mass and thanking God for my life, praying for my family and then immediately run into a complaining person outside between the church and my office and it changes my day completely even if I try to shake it off and return to the praise.
  Why does that happen?
   People! It's other people!! It's all their fault! It there weren't other people around I would be more perfect!
  Okay, that truly is NOT the answer either. So it must be because we are not in heaven yet. We are born into this natural world where sin was chosen over perfection and we are all struggling to keep working on the perfection while constantly being bombarded to sin.  Yet we have the choice to sin or not, so we can't get off blaming Adam and Eve.  We all have been given the choice to choose good or evil. Sometimes we unknowingly choose evil because it may be disguised by something we think is good. Sometimes we knowingly choose sin because it looks really good and later really regret our choice.
  But then we are also given the opportunity to repent and say we are sorry.  We are also given opportunities to learn more about God and our faith through the Church so we don't get tricked into choosing the wrong thing. That is where grace and fortitude come in. Those gifts of the Holy Spirit we receive at Baptism and confirm in Confirmation.
 So while it is a struggle every single day, we are called as Christians to work the struggle! It ain't heaven yet!  We are called to be good and choose good and work towards perfection. It is just built into us. But we have a lot fighting against so we must be strong. We must get in our cars and smile and wave and try not to let anger ruin our day.  Because God loves us and we cannot feel His love for us if we are angry all the time!