I Don't Know How To Stop

I feel whiny today. Yesterday, I cried.
Why, oh why, do I have to slow down?
I hate it. I want to stay busy.

Everyone who cares about me annoys me by trying to get me to stop. I want them to go away, since I'm too busy for them anyway.

My therapist said I need more breaks in my day to take care of myself.

My spiritual director said I need to keep doing Eucharistic Adoration for the next three months and then we'll re-evaluate whether I need to continue. I don't have to obey what he says, but I'm not seeking direction because I'm a genius at how to grow spiritually. My talents lie more in the realm of driving myself to the edge of psychosis and back. So, I agreed and I do what I agree to do. I realize that what I want isn't always what I need.

I don't want to slow down. It's almost as if I feel the world will come to an end if I do.

I used to play computer games non-stop at night, five and six hours at a time, to de-stress. But, that just charges adrenalin and provides escape. Plus, annoyingly, none of my advisers think this is healthy anymore or want me to continue. In fact, I have yet to find anyone in their right mind that thinks I should continue. Wow, I'd love to find one!

So, I have to do other things, like turn to God more. 

I'm pushing myself really hard. I've spoken before small audiences four times this week- four. And it terrifies me to do that. I'm also making a special effort to be more present and responsive to my boyfriend. I emotionally neglect him and autism is a reason. Especially when I'm overloaded, I want and actually need to shut down and go inside myself to hibernate from everything. However, it is but not an excuse to ignore him completely and in general, act like a jerk. I can't stop doing my best to give my best. He's sick this week too, so he needs more care.

Also, there is my overwhelmingly difficult Quickbooks class and the fact that I am preparing three books for printing and none of that is going as smoothly as I think it should. But mainly, the problem is that I don't want to let go of my control and give that over to God. I just don't.

I tell every autistic I know not to make big changes in their lives all at once or they will set themselves up for meltdown. Yet, I refuse to listen to what I know is true.

Why?

I SAY that I want to do the right thing, with all my heart, more than anything else. And my heart breaks that it's never enough. Yet, even though I feel that's true. I'm lying to myself. I don't know what the right thing is. I just want to push myself to feel important, valued, and redeemed. It's really all about me.

After receiving communion yesterday, I just prayed, and I said, "Jesus, I don't know how to stop. I don't know how to put limits on anything." I felt His presence clearly and a soft voice spoke in my heart, "My love needs no limits."

The infinite love God offers us doesn't push us to the brink of insanity. That sort of thing is MY forte, not His!

I need to go do my Eucharistic Adoration in about an hour. For my non-Catholic friends, it's basically spending an hour with God in a chapel. Tomorrow, at the end of my monthly day at the Carmelite Monastery, I meet before a council of officers and our spiritual adviser, to see if I will be permitted to enter formation. What do I need to do more than focus on de-stressing and making room for that unlimited love in my heart? Only my pride wants to save the world. Enough.

One Infinite Minute- Continual Conversion

Lent is a time of purification for me. I wondered at the start of it what that would mean for me this year. Last year, my year of conversion, was dramatic. I did not enter Lent and leave it the same person. The person I was died and I was reborn.

I'll never forget being baptized when I was a little girl. In a white robe, I wandered into a marble baptistry with the hazy light of a dove-shaped wall lamp above my head. The pastor put a white cloth over my face and immersed me backwards into the water. I was later told that I died with Christ and was reborn in Him. What does that really mean to a ten year old? Well, I was told that my soul was to be saved from that point forward. Eternal life was guaranteed. That was something to be happy about. Now, it was time to blow-dry my hair, put my dress back on and rejoin the beaming congregation of our large Baptist church.

Yet, we always have the option to go back to living our will, instead of God's will. God lives outside space and time in a place some philosophers call, "Kairos." He is infinite. But, OUR will is temporal. When we shut the door on God, he isn't exactly going to come and bust the door down. He can't. Free will is so important to Him that he never takes it away from us.

God has extended for us one infinite minute of His mercy and when we would rather follow our own human clock, doing things our way, sometimes our time is up. We missed it.

What do we do when we have willfully left God and want to come back? I know from being Baptist that many people publicly "recommit their lives to Christ." Yet, sometimes that experience can feel weak and lack the intensity of commitment that's really needed and desired.

It would have been really sad if I'd never been able to experience the conversion experience again, and just as powerfully. "Once saved, always saved," is true, in that infinite minute where God lives. But, we are allowed to step out of that realm where God lives. So, we can lose salvation and we do lose it. What happens to us when we turn our back on God? Well, my aunt said, even if we turn our back on God, He won't turn His back on us. And yet, I asked her, "What if I insist? Does he take away my free will?"

The Sinner's Prayer that Baptists and many other protestants use at their moment of being saved is so powerful and dear to a Christian's heart that there is no reason why that prayer could not be prayed around the clock to remind us of our commitment to Christ.. and that's why many Catholics and Orthodox do. We call it the “Jesus Prayer.”

Every Baptist knows it- "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner," or one of its longer variants that a person must believe fully at least once with all their heart to assure salvation.

Now, I get to experience that every single day. I get to remember and re-live what it is like to realize I'm a sinner and need God's mercy, desperately. Then, I get to realize He can be my Everything, that He is my Everything and I desire with all of me to give Him my all. Every Catholic mass is designed that way. It is an experiencing of that one infinite minute. That's why at each mass, we acknowledge our sins, followed by the Gloria. The sacrifice of the mass is a not just a re-experiencing of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross- It IS that one, holy infinite minute of experience.

This is also the whole beauty of confession. Any time I want, I can re-experience God's mercy. It isn't really happening over and over, although it may seem that way to me. It's happening once, outside of space and time. Our human minds don't automatically grasp and apply that, so we have sacraments.

Continual conversion means ONE conversion, happening over and over in our minds, yet only once in God's mind. I can't get enough of it, so I go to daily mass. And frequent confession.

That is why, for me, the essence of Catholicism is not repetition of sacrifice in an attempt to "earn" salvation.

Catholicism is a deeper, richer and fuller experience of Christ's salvation.