I can't for the life of me keep up with my own standards. I do a good job in standards of dress and behavior; I'm not wearing mini skirts and bustiers and going out on the town every night. But the little things are where the struggle is. I have a hard time with gentle speech, patience, and refraining from judging others. I also have a hard time being consistent in prayer, Mass attendance, and have miserably failed at my goal of saying the Rosary. My sins are often sins of omission: what I'm NOT doing, as opposed to what I am doing. I am terrible at getting my hands dirty for the Lord. I remain awfully self-concerned.
In a nutshell, I'm human. But that's not an excuse, it's a reason to remember the power of the Lord in my life, and His power against the attacks from you know who. Truly, this is an invisible fight, and to non-believers it doesn't even make sense. On my own, it's totally unwinnable. With the grace of God, I can win it for Him.
It's funny; I started out with the intention of writing another rant post. I hadn't even figured out the subject of my rant, since I had more than a few niggling annoyances bouncing around in my head today. And it has just occurred to me as I type- if we just go about doing what are asked to do on a daily basis, God will supply us with little golden nugget opportunities to do His work. I very much felt that way at my job today; every hour or so I felt like this or that could only be the work of God. Not every day blesses us with so many nuggets as were produced for me today, but they are there if we have the senses open to detect them.
Seeing them helped me to recognize that God wants me at my job right now, even if I don't want to be there. I still hope to be a homemaker one day, and I sincerely hope that He wants me to come home as well. But I must accept the possibility that, thanks to a broken society, it may not happen and God will put me where I am needed instead. In a Judeo-Christian nation, I might have a better chance of coming home. Our nation is not. I don't care how many people insist upon it. Whatever our country was when it was founded, it is not so at this time.
Anyway, God is there when we are failing. I think I probably beat myself up over my failings more than He would. Who knows. What I do know is that this struggle is going to be there, and it is going to be difficult. I will continue to fail in the little battles, but I pray that God will lead me in winning the war, which is the salvation of my soul.
I hope that my little influence at my job can help save someone's soul. I am a piss-poor evangelizer. I take comfort in St. Francis' instruction to "preach the gospel; when necessary, use words." I talk my way into more paper bags than out of them, let's just say. Foot-in-mouth disease is another affliction I carry. So I wake up every day and do what I do. And hope that God can do something with it, and that I am doing what He wants, even in the little things.
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