Because the Saints Said So: Find a Friend (St. Thomas Aquinas)

Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious. (St. Thomas Aquinas)

"Even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious." Isn't that the truth? What is your agreeable, tedious pursuit? That aspect of life that is rich with worth, a source of joy, yet as days pass there is an element of the mundane. For me, it is motherhood and writing. Both endeavors are reservoirs of goodness in my life, but, boy oh boy, can they become tedious. The nitty gritty becomes a nuisance. The repetitive details become boring. The depth to which I must dig to find my motivation becomes deeper.

With friends, though, what a difference there can be.

Friendship is indeed a source of great pleasure. Genuine friendship is life-giving. It builds up. It highlights and enhances your strengths, while meeting you in your weaknesses. Friendship finds common ground in the agreeable, yet tedious bits of life. Besides that, friendship is just plain fun! It offers laughter, smiles, mutually loved activities. Friends are shoulders for leaning, hands for holding, minds for collaborating. "Iron sharpens iron; one man sharpens another" (Proverbs 27:17).

I don't think I need to expound on this much further. It rings too true for us all to require a lot of explanation. I'll only add, say thank you to a friend today. Or two, or three. Love them, and be grateful.

Seven Years Ago

Seven years ago on this day, I went to dinner with my sister, our mutual best friends, and the husband of one of those friends. We ate at one of our favorite restaurants, Good Company, in Appleton, WI. The hostess seated us around a large circular table in the front section of the first floor of the large, two-story restaurant. Later that evening we would attend a concert at a local church. Our conversations probably ran through a gamut of topics. I don't know. I only remember one.

I told them about a coworker who lately was offering frequent smiles and inquiries into how my day was faring. Occasionally he invited me to join a group of peers for lunch. Sometimes the flirtation was clear but more often he left the impression of straightforward, genuine friendliness. After encountering him each workday, I usually wondered two things: was I assuming too much about his interest and, if not, then why the hell was he interested in me? I'd sit in my chair behind the reception desk, running reports, handling mail, and finding ways to pass the slower hours. He'd walk by to reach our adjacent show room, on his way to fix whatever technical issue had cropped up on one of the machines. Eye contact, smile, small talk or a joke, then the day rolled along.

I consistently turned down the invitations to lunch. I kept the small talk brief. I silently questioned why this guy bothered to talk to me. My skepticism was not because I was clueless - which might have been excusable considering my lack of adult dating experience - but because I was afraid. Oh, how I was afraid. All the seeds for that fear were planted in earlier years, having nothing to do with this man and everything to do with me.

At dinner that night, as we waited for our entrees to arrive, my closest friends listened to me talk about this man. Eventually, one of them interrupted me with a single demand: the next time he invited me to lunch, I had to say yes. I laughed and she asserted the demand more vehemently while the others added their support. They did not relent until I agreed.

I spent the rest of that Saturday evening negotiating with the fears in my head. I spent the remainder of the weekend debating whether or not I hoped my coworker would invite me to lunch just one more time. The following Tuesday I shared a meal with my husband for the first time.

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.

Joseph Campbell



A couple months after that first lunch date.

And 6 1/2 years later.

Shoulders

"Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up, as indeed you do." (1 Thessalonians 5:11)

Oh what would I do without friends? Shoulders to hug, shoulders to lean on, shoulders to laugh on, shoulders to cry on. I am feeling utterly grateful for them today. There is an aspect of loneliness to the situation I'm dealing with right now that could overwhelm me if I allow it. It could obscure the reality that I am not alone, that I am well loved.

Friends are God's greeting cards; His notes of well-wishes and encouragement, intended to give you a smile, a sigh of relief and a bit of confidence that all will come right.

Side by Side

If you're hoping for a detailed summary of the March for Life excursion, please don't be too disappointed. Certainly, there are plenty of details I could share and anecdotes I could tell, but those are not what is on my mind. I do promise to post some pictures from the journey and event, just not in this particular post.

What is filling my head and heart for the time being is grateful amazement. The goodness of God, His generous heart, continues to catch me off guard. This trip to the March for Life reunited me with some traveling companions of my youth. The experience of partnering with them once more for a faith-based event brought about an eyes-wide-open perception of God's goodness toward me. My teenage years were filled with normal, average teenage experiences for the most part, but they were interwoven with the out of the ordinary as well. The out of the ordinary came in the form of numerous travels, retreats, conferences and gatherings with my fellow Catholic teenagers from the Diocese of Marquette, MI. While I've always known that these contributed a great deal to my formation, I have still managed to underestimate their effects.

For one reason or another, it hit me this past week how much I owe to the Lord for placing me amongst the people and providing for me the experiences of my youth. I grew up with my very own "cloud of witnesses" running with me on every side. What courage was gained from the relationships forged by faith! What might have been different if that faith hadn't been rooted, nurtured and solidified at such a young age! In the last week, as I was plopped into a scene so closely resembling my past, the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to the beauty of my friends.

Beauty.... The joy it effected thankfully had an outlet in the laughter and prayer we were continuously engaged in for the last five days. I ought to give those friends credit for that aspect of my life, too. Learning to laugh, to simply tumble about in humor and enjoyment of each other, came through this group of friends. Then to have these friendships not be merely a memory but a blessing that continues to braid itself into my life with all the other things I am caught up in as an adult, for that I am grateful, to say the least.

"My cup runneth over..." I kept thinking of the Kingdom of God parables that liken the kingdom to a buried treasure or a perfect pearl. Worth everything, priceless, abundant, beautiful; the kingdom of God includes the people in it.

I Don't Get It

What about me screams, "Confide your secrets in me!" Seriously, are there giant flashing letters adhered to my back or do I emit an aura of invitation for this kind of thing? Not that I don't enjoy seeing my friends happy, or hearing their news; not that I don't appreciate their confidence in me when they are struggling through something or their wish to include me in their happiness. But really, it's starting to get ridiculous. Starting? No, I think it got ridiculous a while ago. I love you but I did not sign up for this role!!!!!!! Maybe I should just stop being friends with guys. I am so tired of being the supportive, encouraging, trust-her-with-your-secrets friend.

Ugh. I know this is about the furthest from the attitude of true friendship as I can get.

Fr. Mike Chenier

Time to attempt this. I know my words will fall short of capturing all that Mike's ordination meant to everyone there, and especially all that it meant to him.

On Friday afternoon, Jessica, Amy and I took our seats at St. Peter's Cathedral in Marquette, Michigan for the ordination to the priesthood of Mike Chenier and Ben Haase. We arrived early enough to sit near the front. Approximately a thousand people attended the Ordination Mass. With the cathedral seating around seven hundred, the walls were layered with the additional hundreds of men and women in attendance. In the minutes prior to the great, dignified procession, after the prelude music and before the magnificent choir began singing, I felt the same anticipation and eager joy that hangs in the air at the start of a wedding. We were so like the family and friends awaiting the entrance of the wedding party and the bride. I thought how fitting that atmosphere was, for something much like a wedding would occur. Mike would be conformed to Christ, the Bridegroom, and the Church would be his bride. He would commit himself to serve, to honor and to support the Church after the pattern of Christ's own sacrificial love. As the Mass began, the only way to describe the presence of that huge congregation is thunderous. In our fervent responses during the penitential rite, in our heartfelt songs reverberating between the pillars of the cathedral, and in our applause when Mike and Ben were presented to Bishop Sample for the Sacrament of Holy Orders, the thousand of us made our joy and thankfulness known.

Every bit of the Mass was beautiful in the truest sense of beauty. My first tears came with the first reading. The passage from Jeremiah, Chapter One spoke of God's holy plans for his servant Jeremiah, plans made even before Jeremiah was created. God stops Jeremiah's objections of youth and meager ability, assuring him that he will be able to do all that God calls him to do. A familiar passage, surely, but fresh to my ears as I considered Mike. Youth was never his obstacle, as far as I knew him. Youth was his gift. Out of his childhood years with faithful parents, his teenage years of searching and finding and enjoying life, and his young adulthood marked by missionary service, college and seminary - from this youth came the willingness and joy for the call of Christ upon his life. I have loved Mike from the time we were thirteen, my brother and friend in the Lord. As I think of our friendship - how it began, how it grew, how it changed - I smile over how fitting it is that the gifts and strengths in Mike that blessed me in our years of knowing each other will be, over time, the means for Christ to bless so many others through Mike, the priest. If I am to choose one aspect of this, it must be his generosity in love. The love Mike has always offered has been marked by an eagerness to share life. Whenever Mike loved something, if he found joy or beauty or blessing in it, he had to share it. A song, a book, a scenic sight, a passage of Scripture - if Mike loved it , it had to be shared. I cannot succinctly summarize the occasions I was blessed by this. When I attended Mass on Sunday, celebrated by Fr. Mike, he confirmed in my mind and heart this impression he has made on me with his generous spirit and the goodness he finds in living for Christ. He spoke of finding something you love so much that you cannot stand not to share it, not to bless others by it, not to live for it and be willing to die for it.

Returning to the Ordination Mass, another notable aspect of the joy I had in attending was in seeing the lasting fruit of our years among the youth groups in the Diocese of Marquette. I saw faces on Friday that I have rarely seen, if at all, in the last seven or eight years. Faces of faith and friendship that became so dear to me as God was forming me into a woman of Chrsit. Each of their lives is a testament to the formation we received as teenagers, and Mike's ordination to the priesthood is a pinnacle among them.

The beauty I witnessed on Friday, and again as I attended Sunday Mass with Fr. Mike as celebrant, was due to a very simple truth. There were many contributing factors to name and describe, but at the heart of it is this: here was a man doing God's will in a precise, committed, humble but confident manner. Here was a man living the life to which God called him, the life that the Lord planned and knew even before Mike was born. There, in that, is happiness.

WE BUY BOOKS!

Let me share a fond memory of days gone by...

Jessica, Claire and I drive away from campus one spring evening. Across the bridge into West Virgina, over the hills into Pennsylvania, and into the land of shopping known as Robinson Township. It's a mysterious place, this so-called Robinson Township. No homes. Just places to spend money. Impossible to find on Mapquest. A veritable vortex of American capitalism. For us college gals residing in the old steel city of Steubenville, Ohio, it is a haven of civilized commerce. And a mere 40 minute drive from the dorm to the Barnes & Noble front door! But on this particular evening we ventured beyond Barnes & Noble, beyond the disconcertingly named Quaker Steak & Lube (great wings!), to a little strip mall. What do we see in the window of one of the strip mall's tenants? "WE BUY BOOKS." Bright florescent lights make the declaration, to which we reply, "So do we!" Oh it was a happy day, the day we discovered that warm, well stocked, low priced oasis: Half Price Books. Our lives would never be the same, nor would our book shelves.

Flash forward to Spring 2009, Appleton, WI. Rolling down Casaloma Drive one Saturday morning, my eye catches a sign to my right. I squeal (really, I squealed) and accelerate, eager to get home and share the news with Jessica. "We're getting a Half Price Books!" The thrill! The joy! The potential! The new book shelves I'll need to purchase!

I finally made my first visit to the new store last night. It was everything I remembered our beloved Robinson store to be. Honestly, I think my heart grew a size or two when I walked through the door. 9 books, 2 dvds and 1 cd later, all at half price of course, I felt I'd just spent an hour with a long lost, very dear friend.

Tiring of Well-Worn Ways

"When we tire of well-worn ways, we seek for new. This restless craving in the souls of men spurs them to climb, and to seek the mountain view." (Ella Wheeler Wilcox)

There is a restless uncertainty stirred up in me that I cannot leave unexamined. Six years ago, I graduated from college and moved here to Appleton with my sister, Jessica and one of our closest friends, Amy. The three of us excitely began this new stage of life. I had finished my Theology degree and was determined to start my career; Jess just returned from a year of missionary work in Jamaica and had a nursing job lined up at a hospital here; Amy was moving away from her family and hometown for the first time, with plans to enter college. Everything was new. The potential of the unknown surrounded us on all sides. I am happy to say that in all the ups and downs, the plans that succeeded and the plans that failed, we savored the experience together.

Truth be told, none of my original after-college plans withstood the test of time. I do not work at a Catholic parish or at a retreat center or for a diocese. I am not married. I don't even live on my own. When I graduated and set out to find work as a director of religious education or youth minister, I had no intention of writing a novel within the next few years, and I had no intention of being an adminstrative assistant for the forseeable future. My intentions were specific, and they were wrong. The Lord closed every door I tried to open. He reminded me again and again how even during my studies, I knew in my heart that I was not called to be a DRE or youth minister. I pursued the logical choice because that was far less frightening than not having something specific to pursue. As He closed those doors and I wrestled with discouragement, the ideas began to come. I began to write. I praise Him now for preventing my stubborn, unenlightened plans.

Recalling God's display in these years of His wisdom's superiority over mine, I am left wondering when God will turn me in a new direction again. I question myself, "Where is He leading me now? Does He desire for me to settle in here or am I settling for less than what He has for me?"

Last night, Jess, Amy and I completed an ongoing tradition that began when we moved to Appleton together. It wasn't anything deep or significant to the outsider, but it was a tradition very closely tied to the stage of life we began together six years ago. The emotional effect that its end had on me was a surprise. I thought about those six years, about what has and has not happened, and how all that is now looks so very different from all that was then. Amy has moved back to our home area but is living on her own and establishing a life there. Jess is happier in her job and with herself than she has been since leaving Jamaica. And I... well, I am still writing. My relationship with my family has altered and deepened in ways I didn't expect, and the Lord has stretched and molded me via my life at my parish. The close of our tradition last night has me asking if I shouldn't be so settled here. I certainly long for more, for new. I wait for publication and further writing opportunities. I wait for falling in love and marriage. I wait for adventures and friendships that have not crossed my path yet. But waiting and trusting in God's plans doesn't automatically imply inaction. While my heart will only find true rest in Him, I cannot believe that there are not other aspects to the restlessness. For it is in pursuing the desires of the heart, in taking chances and moving at the behest of the Holy Spirit, that I may draw nearer to my Lord. I don't want to merely wait! I want to engage and pursue and try! I do wish I better understood how.