We made the usual remarks to make ourselves feel better; “People with clean houses are neurotic or uptight".  One of my siblings actually said, “I have loftier things to think about than housework”. We weren't very good bohemians, secretly, we were ashamed. Some people were just born having it all together and we weren't them.

It wasn't easy living that way. Things were always lost. We always had undone chores hanging over our heads, having people over was a big undertaking so we did it at little as possible. And worst of all, there was no beauty.

Later, I saw so many parallels in the way I grew up and the person I had become; an embarrassing mess. Excuses were so much easier to make than progress toward an overwhelming goal. It seemed easier to hide what I was than to change. But I was tired of hiding. 

Would God give me the longing to be a better person and not the power to attain it? It didn't seem like him. Fortunately,  I was naive enough to ask God to change me, hoping beyond hope that it was possible. 

I look back and see that the impossible has been wrought in me. I'm very far from what I should be, but I'm not what I was. There is hope for the future; the transformation will one day be complete. Meanwhile, the journey, with all its struggles, disappointments, setbacks, and confusion is filled with a sense of wonder. What else is possible with me? As I grow older there is the temptation to say, good enough. I'm afraid of settling for good enough.  God is teaching me never to settle. It doesn't make for an easy life, but definitely a life worth living.

Joshua 1:3, 9

I used to believe my emotions.

Whatever emotion I was feeling at a time, I believed I was feeling it because it was reflecting the truth. I didn't know emotions lied. If a situation felt hopeless, it was because there was no hope. If I felt useless, It was because I was worthless. If God felt far away, it was because he was unreachable. If I felt he couldn't really love one such as me, it was because I was unlovable. I know better now, but sometimes I'm still caught off guard.

The battle with our emotions is interwoven so seamlessly in our daily lives that we forget that there is a battle. How we feel may seem like a small thing, but it's the small things that make up the whole pattern of a life. The emotions will pass, but what we did with them will not always. It takes courage to fight against our emotions. It's easier to wallow in them than to place ourselves in the realm of our higher selves. Will I do the right thing even if I don't feel like it? Is my faith strong enough to overcome what I'm feeling?

C.S. Lewis summed it up best when, speaking as the demon Screwtape to his nephew on how to trip us up, said, " Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys".

I came to realize I was a coward. I didn't like to do things that cost me. I thought that to be reduced to doing a thing because I had to do it was to live a defeated life. I see now that this is the stuff heroes are made of. I would like to be the hero of my story that I may please my Father, but without the daily battle, without the pain, and without the discipline—that isn't very realistic. Flannery O'Connor wrote, "What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think it is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross."

 My purse was stolen yesterday. After a brief tug-of-war the straps finally broke and the thief ran off with my purse. I yelled out to him to at least give me back my car keys. Surprisingly, he paused for a moment to look into the jumble of my purse, realized it would take much too long to find them and sped away. It sounds scary, but strangely it wasn't, very frustrating, yes.

I was in the Fashion District (a very loose term) in downtown L.A.. It consists of a multitude of little shops packed closely together that sell cheap unique, trendy clothing, fabrics and shoes. I go looking for that thing so unique nobody wants so it ends up in a trashy bin. Not having much money forced me to learn to be creative with other people's discards.

Later, we went to dinner and to buy some replacements for some of the items in my purse. Then we went to a get-together our daughter was having at her house for some of her friends (We were invited!). Everyone was very entertained by my story. I was able to repeat that all the guy took was just stuff-our lives are more than stuff. Only God can do that! He puts everything into perspective. He makes good things come out of bad.

I was again reminded we live in a broken world, (as Lewis puts it, “We live in enemy occupied territory”). It's all part of the war I'm engaged in. It is what I'm here for; to make it a better place and to bring those who have been taken hostage in.

This is only temporary.

Matthew 6:19,20                John 16:33

Octavio- talking to a bouncer at The Knitting Factory in Hollywood after a friend's concert recently. 

My husband, Octavio, has always had a way with people. One of the first things I noticed about him was that he seemed to know everybody. Walking down the corridor of the mall where we met, people would run out of the stores and call out to him, “Hi Octavio”, “How's it going Octavio?”. I thought, " Who is this guy?".  While we were out to dinner on one of our first dates I left the table for a brief moment. When I came back he had three of the surrounding tables engaged in conversation, (Angelenos were not known for talking to strangers).    “How does he do that?”.      

After we were married he would take the bus to work so I could have the use of our car. Soon after, he started bringing home his “bus” friends. Later, it was his work, then church friends. Now he brings home his Starbucks friends.

I admire that quality in him. There was a time I was saddened that I wasn't like him. I would try to force myself to be more extroverted, but just felt foolish. How could someone like me ever be useful? I have since learned to accept and even to love my bent. I realized that to do otherwise was to complain to God about how He had made me.

God seems to enjoy taking us beyond the limits of the imagination. All my jobs and my work at church have involved leading, motivating, and teaching people—I, the recluse-- the introvert. Had I gone by my strengths or by what would seem logical for me I would never have ended up doing the things I've done and am doing. Jesus told a crippled man to rise up and walk. It would seem cruel to ask someone to do the impossible, were it not that He meant to work the impossible in him.

Still, there are times when I grieve that I am not further along in my development than I am. I need to remind myself that God is not limited by my weaknesses, my circumstances, or my past in making me what He wants me to be . He can weave something beautiful out of the shreds of my mere humanity.

God always seems to be telling us not to behave as “mere men".  It is not to taunt us but to reveal to us the Possibilities.

My mind had been hurdling through meaningless space with nothing to hold on to. It was a horror to contemplate existence with no meaning. I was in torment. There was a constant fear that I was slipping into madness.

Then Soundness and Clarity came.

When I first encountered God, I recall telling Him, “ If you are there, you will have to hold on to me. I will not lie to myself, I need a real God or nothing at all.”

Only a few months into my encounter with God I was sitting in a theater in Hollywood watching Woody Allen's Interiors. The movie fueled the familiar torment of meaninglessness. I felt I was again fighting madness. I thought I had been fooling myself, this God thing hadn't been real. Out of nowhere, I suddenly knew I was under a kind of attack-- the raging stopped. I knew nothing yet about spiritual battles, dark forces, or the voice of God. Yet, there it was.

There was no denying His presence, it was palpable. I learned to expect to hear him answer when I called out to him.  I then became so sure of his goodness, when he seemingly hadn't answered, I knew to wait. I realized nothing or no one, not even my own weakness, could hinder His purpose for my life—God was with me.

C.S. Lewis said those who follow God are accused of being satisfied with too little. On the contrary, it is those who don't seek Him who are satisfied with mere stuff.

Am I being mystical? A sterile religion frightens me. It is a monstrosity, just as any walking dead thing would be. It would never have been enough.

I don't want to become so sophisticated that I forget what happened over two thousand years ago. God, in form of a man, walked the earth and created a bridge between heaven and earth.