vocation – Glimpses of Joy

Some thoughts on overdoing it, jealousy, and the grace of having things stripped away

Memory is a grace we must ask for. It is very easy to forget, especially when we are well fed (cf. Dt 6:10-12, 8:11-14) – Pope Francis (pulled from the Magnificat 3/6/24)

At the end of January and into early February, I was riding a total high of endorphins. I had worked my way slowly and carefully back into running and was finding time to get out for 3 mile runs twice a week. It felt amazing. I eased into 4 miles and still felt awesome. I was still doing a lower body strength workout one day, and would do abs after the runs, and was soaking in all the joy of feeling strong and being able to do this thing I loved after so long. Then, I got Joe sleeping through the night and after two nights of uninterrupted sleep, I was out for a run and thought, hey, I want to run a half marathon! I should mention, I had also gotten onto Strava, so I had this social media/dopamine component – when I completed a run I could post it and get “kudos” from friends and family – a feedback loop that made me want to run more and faster and longer, to achieve more goals and feel even more awesome.

All of this had the very slight feel of being an idol in my life, but was easy to dismiss because it gave me so much joy, it was a fun flow activity, my unicorn space, that spilled over into my vocation as a mom and helped me be a more patient, loving mom. So, I thought I needed it. I deserved it!

Fast forward to the end of Week 1 of my Half Marathon Training Plan, and I found myself hobbling to finish my 7 mile run, waddling for the rest of day, barely able to walk. The jump in mileage, frequency, and intensity from one week to the next was too much for this 7 month postpartum body to handle and I had strained my groin and adductor tendon as my pelvis had slipped out of alignment.

I was pretty devastated. It was a crash after such a high, and until I could see a PT and figure out what was wrong, I was stuck, waiting and resting it, not really knowing what “it” was. I started hating Strava. Ugly feelings of jealousy flared up and as I was spiraling I realized how much ego had been wrapped up in this activity. It had been a source of joy, yes, but did I need it? No.

In this time of feeling stuck and waiting, Lent started. At the 8am Ash Wednesday Mass, with Chris, Joe, and John, I suddenly realized that daily Mass was available to me in a very easy way. Without a workout plan to think about and look forward to, I found myself open to going with Chris, and even without Chris, after dropping off the girls at school. I went, and I went again, and I’ve kept going. I saw the gift God had dropped into my lap, and the grace of hungering for Him, for Him to nourish and sustain me in my disappointment. It’s a brief, sweet window of a few weeks where Joe is still fairly quiet and immobile and happy before his morning nap, and John is pretty good too. I’ve found myself soaking up gratitude for this unexpected grace, and for the words I’ve been resting in – of being His beloved. It’s a time of waiting for our family, also, and I’ve moved from restless anxiety about that, to holding an image of waiting as floating, supported by God’s love and mercy, just floating and waiting.

I saw the physical therapist yesterday, so my pelvis is back in alignment now, for which I am very grateful. I can start doing strength exercises, stretching, and swimming again. And I’m so happy. I’ll get back to running eventually. But now that I feel well fed, in less pain, I don’t want to forget. The grace of the desert, the grace of waiting. The grace of having my ego stripped away, and feeling a new level of hunger for and dependence on God. My tendency towards comparison and jealousy, and, instead, the hundredfold that Jesus wants to provide for me.

And a blog post came out of it! Who knew? Prompted by my friend Annie’s suggestion to write it down. ☺️

this looks so bleak now but I snapped it halfway through a run and I was loving it. There’s a Great Blue Heron in the water.

turn it into love

Every kind of work can become prayer.

– St. Josemaria Escriva

One of my spiritual practices now is offering up the work I do as prayer. File this one under Things I Love Now That I’m Catholic But Had No Idea About Before. (Confession, saints, Natural Family Planning, relics, and feast days are just a few others in that category). I’m still learning about this practice, but as a way of understanding work and prayer, it has formed a new way for me to relate to God. Similar to the monastic bell idea, and this is kind of a part two to that post. After Evange was born, I was added to a Facebook group of moms in the campus ministry organization I worked for. I remember different threads popping up around the question – As a mom with a newborn, I can’t find space have a quiet time anymore. What do your prayer lives look like with babies? At the same time, I joined a Catholic mom Facebook group focused on Advent reflections. Through that (and this blog that I’d been following for a while because she’s also a convert, and loves Anne of Green Gables and Harry Potter – the best!) I started to see that Catholics seemed to have an understanding of prayer that extended beyond the “quiet time” in a very helpful way for a sleep deprived new mom.

I’m a big fangirl of this lady, and she wrote a reflection that stuck with me. She was talking about this idea of offering up the small, every day tasks. That we have the choice to whine or complain about the little things that just need to get done, every day – feeding our bodies and others’, cleaning up after feeding those bodies, cleaning the mess of non-toilet trained others – or, we can offer up those tasks as prayers. From what I gather (again, baby Catholic here) there are formal prayers, like the Morning Offering, to offer up the day ahead, all the work, prayers, joys, and sufferings, that will come, to Jesus, for however He wants to use them. But I think you can also just pray throughout the day. When I hit the end of my energy or patience, I try to quickly, mentally, pray – Help me do this well, as a prayer for ___. (Quick side note – I usually like to pray for the pregnant women in my life, but right now there are SO MANY I can’t keep track of them all. We’re definitely not in the Bay Area anymore).

I don’t know if that’s really what offering it up is, but that’s what I do. This understanding of prayer is also deeply linked to a Catholic understanding of suffering – that we can link our suffering to Jesus’s. I think I first heard about this in relation to labor pains – that women would ask for prayer requests before labor, and offer those intentions up. Zelie’s due date was Good Friday and I was excited about the idea of being in labor on that day – Dang! I’ll be suffering as Jesus is dying! How cool is that?? But then I had to ask Chris, “So, how does offering up someone or something in prayer work, exactly? Do I have to keep them in mind while I’m in labor? Cuz that is not happening.” And he said no, I can pray before labor, to offer up my suffering as a prayer, for whatever. And I was like, ok cool. But she was born four days early. And I got an epidural because I didn’t want another 50 hour labor. So, obviously not ready for Good Friday levels of suffering over here. But everything can become prayer, and that’s something I wish I had known sooner and want to keep leaning into.

Turn it into love, my friend. Turn it into love.

-Blythe Fike

the glimpses

There was a day back in December when I got out of the apartment for a run (in sunshine, hallelujah!) and as I was running along the walking path toward campus, I saw a woman with a basket. She was off the path a ways, standing at the edge of a field that was filled with yellow flowers when we moved here in July, but now is brown. I had just registered that the field had died and never looked at it again, really. But she was standing there with a basket, picking what I now saw were thistles. Still brown and dead, but she had noticed them for some reason, and her attention turned mine. I kept running but on my way back, when I passed that spot again, I decided to take a closer look. They were definitely dead. Pointy thistles on the end of dry, pointy stalks. But they were pretty, in a way, and there were small, brittle flowers among them. And I was struck mostly that I had never seen them before in all my times walking/jogging past. So I copied the basket lady and broke off several stalks, walking the rest of the way home.

It was a strange, reflective moment, where I was very aware that I had done something I hadn’t planned to do (step off the path, stop my run, bring home dead flowers) and I was super elated by it. Like, weirdly so. Chris had taken the girls somewhere so I had the apartment to myself for a few minutes, and I spent the time carefully arranging the thistles in a glass. And it was so great. And they were just dead flowers.

***

I think I’m entering a season of collecting things like this. Not always dead thistles, sometimes a line from a poem, a writing by a saint, or an old photograph from a thrift store. Things or words that set my soul humming. It only now occurs to me that this quiet, small activity fits well with winter. I’ve been turning inward as the days have shortened, the leaves have let go and fallen, and the bitter cold is now setting in. I am watching the sun rise and set each day now, and it has set me to paying attention to more of the little things that fill that time in between.

This quote by Henri Nouwen that I found in this book is something I keep returning to, lately. “My deepest vocation is to be a witness to the glimpses of God I have been allowed to catch.” Seeing these things I’m collecting as glimpses – of God, of beauty, of joy – and savoring them. I’m wondering how to be a witness to them. And how being a witness can be my vocation, within my other vocations (wife, mother). It’s all wrapped up in the question I continue to have: What do I do as a stay at home mom? But I think this sort of vocational lens is more helpful to me. It’s not fully formed and I’m still figuring it out, but I know I want to keep catching those glimpses.