Not Always A Downer

I was rereading the blog posts I have written so far and I noticed something. My entire blog is a horrible depressing downer!! That's sad because that is not who I am. I am serious when I have to be but the vision God set for me is to work with children. Working with children means being optimistic and enthusiastic is a requite for the job. I just really wanted to explain what really pushed me towards the vision at hand.

Death has been an old friend in my live for as long as I can remember and I have never been scared of him. I may not fear him taking me but I don't take it to kindly when he takes someone I care about. He's also the easiest way to explain how I feel about these things because I have felt his presence so many times.

Most of the time when people die, especially young people, we who are left behind feel helpless and lost. [I remember once when a friend's car was hit by an oncoming vehicle and it was the other driver fault. She was a recent graduate from high school with her whole life going for her.] We feel so out of control and lost. We tend to zone out a lot and drift off into space which essentially is just wondering around our minds and heart without purpose. [When she died people where shocked. Teens didn't know how to handle what they were feeling. It was mid August but they all found themselves flocking to the same place, a place of safety predictability. This place was giving them a sort of familial comfort. They flocked to the Catholic high school they had attended with her.]

These teens were emotionally lost and scared. One of their own had died. They did now understand the why, all they knew was that they were being pulled to the school. Do you understand the why? They were hurting, they were in an intense amount of spiritual and emotional pain. It was a Catholic school so they had theology everyday inside those walls. Everyday they were taught of Jesus's love for them and for Laura [their fallen friend]. Whether they realized it or not something had happened and instead of taking a destructive approach and abusing themselves or choosing to turn their backs on the world they had a need to be closer to the God who created them. They didn't want to be alone then, they wanted to be as close to God as they could, since they went to school 5 days a week and church only 1 day a week that made school the place to reach him.

That is my vision. That is what I hope to achieve. I don't care if people remember exaclty why they feel this drawing feeling to Christ and the church but I want them to have that feeling, especially in times where they are lost and wondering. All I am hoping for is that when they feel that way they begin to feel this feeling, this desire for God pulling them there to help them seek refuge in those times. I believe if we start by teaching the children of God's unending love and compassion for them at an early age its possible to make a significant impact in theier lifes. They then have a better chance of not turning to a desturtive path and if they do they know that God will except they back with open arms.

Laura and her brother William circa 2002

Something Missing

Continuation from last time...

His death was different. I never want to be one of those people who get all weeping and upset when someone they didn't knew or barley knew. Usually I am good at not being one of those people. This time though, it cut deeper then I expected.
   Suddenly I felt horrified when I received the news. It was like a large chunk of my heart was ripped out. I didn't understand, I would have classified him as a casual acquaints. I was so confused as to why this was so deeply upsetting to me.
   I asked God why his death was hitting me so hard. God gave me an answer. I was baptized with him! I entered into my spiritual journey, my relationship with God with him by my side. We continued on that relationship together all our lives. We were bonded together as brother and sister in Christ on February 7 1988 but we were bonded even closer spiritually because we started the journey together. Now my spiritual partner was gone from this life where I was.
   It was and sometimes still is hard to have lost the person I started and shared my relationship with God with but over time I realized some other things. I know he is not gone, He lives in those who carry on his memory but also he is with God now. Now my spiritual partner in Christ is actually up there with Christ! Instead of having a deep hole of mourning for his loss; I should think of how since he is actually with God it can only make our spiritual connection with God that we received at baptism stronger.

Some things are game changers

I was born and raised in the Roman Catholic Church. My parents rushed my baptism so my grandfather could see it before he went into the hospital for experimental surgery to remove cancer in his throat and vocal cords the next day. My grandfather's desire to see me become a member of God's family before he underwent a procedure he might not have survived always meant a lot to me. I've always seen that day as one that was very special to my life.
  But I was not the only baby baptized in that ceremony that day. A little boy who was just over a month old was being baptized with me. We ended up going to the same elementary school and being in the grade. He was the most popular boy in the whole school. He was not one of those popular boys who was popular but they was not very nice to unpopular kids. No, he lived the Christian ideals. When I say he was popular I mean that everybody was his friends and everyone liked him because he was genuinely nice to them. We also had faith formation together. We ended up having all our sacraments together.
  I remember a few days after we received the sacrament of confirmation (it's where we are considered adults in the church because the Holy Spirit comes down upon us and we are to go out and evangelize the Word) him pulling me aside to talk to me. He asked me if I felt any different since confirmation.
  Honestly, at first I thought he was just fooling around but then I realized he was serious. He told me how he had felt different since that night, how he felt the Holy Spirit inside of him. I was happy for him. Then he shared a secret with me. He told me if he continued to feel like this then maybe he should become a priest.
  He never became a priest. In gave into all the fun and temptation that comes along with high school. Maybe he was mistaken about his calling or maybe he felt that he had sinned and strayed to far to be able to come back, no one will ever know. His thinking about becoming a priest was a secret I kept to his grave. Yes, his grave. He died less then a month after turning 25 years old and you guessed it, another drug overdose.

To Be Continued...

Shaping a Vision

I used to complain that my world was small. I complained about this when my high school sweetheart’s new fiancée started college at the same school I was attending. I complained about this when the boy in college I had a crush on was friends with a guy from his last school that I had a restraining order against. Small words just happen sometimes.

I had a good friend named Nikki growing up. We drifted a bit apart in middle school but we had the same freshman lunch in high school. I remember her introducing me to a cute boy in that lunch who was on her afternoon bus. He became one of my best friends for the next few years.

Nikki died two years ago this month. She was only two days older than me so she would only be 26 years old and her son is three years old now. She died of a drug overdose. I remember Nikki doing drugs for years before that. I was friends with her partner too. He and another friend of ours, shared a locker in high school.

Nikki’s wake was hard because of him. Sure it was hard to see her like that. And her mom and her little brother who was taller than me now that we were “grown up” but it was her partner. He didn’t hug me, he collapsed on me. Suddenly I was holding TJ up. I could hear him crying and through the tears he was trying to tell me how he had tried so hard to help here and keep her clean and away from those people. He told me how much he loved her. I had never had a doubt that he loved her and I still don’t doubt it. He was blaming himself for her actions and that was so sad. He was suffering and just in so much pain. It was obvious that he had cleaned up his act since high school and had been trying to be the best partner and father he could. It felt like he was hanging on to me for an eternity. Her family, TJ and their baby did not deserve this pain.

What went wrong? What happened? Maybe there was nothing TJ could do. Maybe by the time she and TJ found each other it was already too late for her. Maybe in Nikki’s case it was a matter of something needing to reach her at more fundamental of an age. We can’t really be certain. But we can know we can try again with a new generation, right?