The Empty Cup

Lessons for me do not always get through my hard head easily. When I was in my late 20's it occurred to me that when some issue continued to repeat itself fairly rapidly in a short period of time, it's time to stop and listen. It's a lesson. One that God knows I need to get right now. Not always open to learning new things, they take some time.

Why we are here after nearly nine years and not back in my cozy parish in TX with friends, I don't know. Back in TX we had friends that cared, and shared their lives with us and I practically lived at the Church all the time teaching, volunteering, I was a Eucharistic minister, in the Mom's Bible study every Tuesday morning.

Here I am Lord, now what? I ask, no answer.

Tonight one of our daughters and I attended an event at our parish here. I don't fit in. I watch as all the other adults have their friends, they mingle between each other. My daughter has no friends, but she is happy singing along and enjoying the music. This town is very cliquey and this parish is incredibly cliquish. Surely I am grumpy and stone-faced, which is doesn't help, but it is the unhappiness that I feel here.

At present, the lesson is presentation and desire for me.....I think. I messed up with the pastor here for taking the girls out of the school and homeschooling them for the past nearly 8 years, I have been told. I screwed up in several of my encounters with him during the parish council, and other times.

I am not a patient lady, no I'm not. I am passionate, but not patient.

So, tonight, as I watch all the happy people dancing, singing, clapping hands, talking and laughing, I sat and watched. The guest, Righteous B, he calls himself, recently recovered from a stroke and wanted thank everyone for their prayers of healing for him, told us a story.

As he laid in the hospital, he realized that his cup, that was full up of all the things he wanted, became empty. "I suddenly realized that this stroke was a game-changer, that I had nothing to offer anyone, my family, God." Then, slowly, God began to fill his cup with what God wanted Righteous B to have. Because when your cup is so full of the things that YOU want in it, you leave out God and have no room for Him in your life. Righteous B commented that he "wants his cup to be empty more, so that he can allow God to fill it with the things that will make him stronger, more dependent on God."

As I listened to him talk, I realized that nothing will change here but me. Things will remain the way they are and I will not be able to be happy until my cup is filled with the things that God wants me to have, not what I want...or think I need. I need to empty my cup of the desires of my heart, to heed God's way. Be more patient, and allow God to take over. I think God wants me to sit back and just observe. He doesn't want me to be involved in the parish or the new Catholic High school like I wanted to. Just sit back and patiently do nothing...at all.

Why Lord? Why?