GrowHoly.com

“A person of character regards everyone in the world as a brother or sister and looks upon their work as his or her own. The selfish person regards everyone as rungs of a ladder to be used for his or her own advancement. Such a person knows only “my” work and “my” possessions.”

10 bridesmaids went to a wedding. All had lamps. All fell asleep. Just 5 of them had remembered to bring the oil with them.

We always fail. We always fall asleep. We are weak and tiny. So what is the oil that makes the difference between people who are ready for the bridesman, and those who cannot light their lamps any more?

Is it prayer? Is it Love? Humility? Sharing?

What is this oil we should have a lot of in our lives?

“Are you surprised that many people lose the grace of God, lose their faith or turn against the Church? Among the many causes there will always be one main cause and that is, that they have long since given up prayer.”

It is so easy to stop praying. Just one while, one weak moment can destroy weeks of “hard work”. It’s so easy to lose your chastity – and here I mean it really in the widest sense of word – after you’ve stayed clear of sin for ages.

So easy to fall.

Yet not necessary. Just keep going. I was also told that to be holy, it doesn’t mean that you never ever fail, but all the saints have learned from their faults and failures – and they always got up again!

So it is with me today. I have prayed in the morning, I might have kept what I resolved for today, but then towards the end of the day, I did something wrong, or I just was too tired or too selfish, or too hungry – and I simply did what was wrong.

For me, it’s difficult to not sin. For me, it’s difficult to stay with God all the time. For me, it’s extraordinary difficult to be perfect. 100%.

That’s why I need somebody to come and clean me up, somebody who will say, it’s ok, I will help you. And that Somebody is Jesus who comes every day with His love and supports me in my efforts, however small and poor they might be.

Lord, although I fail to do what I should so often, I can feel that you are here with me and that you do care about these little things of me. I know that you love me, and all I can do now is to open up myself for your loving presence and let you do miracles in my life.

If I ever do anything good, it’s gonna be your work, since you created me, you gave me every single hair I have – and you keep on supporting and growing me.

Please, never ever let me forget to pray. Thanks.

“As you have dedicated your self to the service of God, why do you still compare your life to the life of others, complaining about the inferiority of various circumstances of your life? Why do you regret serving God because of some losses which you suffer?”

Yesterday was looking to me a bit unsuccessful. A bad day, you might say. It all started when I forgot my mobile phone at home. So I went to the office, switched on my computer and when I wanted to call somebody – I realised that the phone was left at home. Well, I had to go back all the way home, pick it up and come back to the office.

However, I found one positive thing about my loss of memory – I could drop something to the post on my way back, and save some time. And as I knew that at our local post office, there is a grocery shop just besides it, I decided to treat myself and get me a chocolate or something.

But that day was different. I had been suffering from that “chocolate addiction” for ages, and I always take it as a failure when I eat too much of it. And I do. Really a lot.

But that day was different. Something happened and I simply didn’t go to the shop and I didn’t buy anything. Coming back to the office, I realised what the whole little trip was all about – it was meant to prove to myself that I can win, that it is possible.

Lord, every loss, every failure is for some reason. You know. You have invited me to live, and I couldn’t refuse. Now you bring me through life; and I can see my life unfolding like a flower in the morning – with all the gifts from you.

Yet still, evening will make the flower go down, and close its head. In the same way some of my gifts may wither – my beauty, health, strength, even my thinking and the common sense… But the life you gave me will never wither and I will always feel it as the Breath, the Moment, the Look, the Word: “I am who I am.”

It is as it is. And you know.

“If you were determined to practice one virtue every year, and if you would practice it every day, very soon you would achieve quite an improvement.”

Just one virtue at a time. And yet I always jump and try to do everything at once – and end up being even lower than at the beginning…

I have a friend, she’s pregnant and she had some bad results recently, about a certain probability that her child might have the Dawnson syndrome. Terrible. I will never understand what it means and how it feels for her… But I emailed her this:

“Katy, I cannot do anything else than just smile, because smiling is the only thing you can do now, knowing that everything has been looked after.”

And God does look after everything. There is no problem, when you look back, that would not have been solved in time. So why to worry?

But I understand that the pain can be tough and discouraging sometimes. And our failures as well. If I am trying to improve on some of the virtues – and fail so often – should I be disappointed and discouraged?

No, let’s start again. Let’s get up and go today. Right now. What can I improve now? What can I change today? What one virtue will I focus on this year?

“You are trembling with fear, you stumble and fall, you meet with difficulties, misunderstandings, criticisms, disgrace, even a sentence of death. Why do you forget the Gospel? Our Lord Jesus Christ suffered everything. But, if you continue to follow Him, you will have your Easter too.”

It’s funny that this thought fell on the day when we celebrate Christ’s birthday in the evening. Here I can see the whole road from His birth through all the temptations and hassles up to the cross… And the Resurrection. So the celebration of Christmas is not only about the birth of Jesus. It’s about the birth of a person/God, who will win later on at Easter. It’s about Hope.

Like every day when I wake up with hope that in the evening I will have done something good, that I will have won over myself, that I will have spent a day with God and eventually got closer to Him. The other thing is the reality I usually meet in the evenings… Anyway, I want to go through all this. And I believe that with His help, one day I will be able to say that I’ve won.

These days I want to focus on humility – how not to show everyone how great I am. And I also would like to go against the main stream of typical Christmas in my country – lots of food, overeating and that’s it. Because it’s not. There is much more to Christmas and I would like to get it.

Lord, please, give me everything I can receive, give me as much as I can carry.

“Do not be discourage by failures. If you are seeking to do the will of God and meet with failure, that failure may be in God’s eyes success, for that is the way God wants it. Look at the example of Jesus on the Cross.”

Ok, but how many failures will God accept? I have failed so many times, and promised not to do the same mistake again. Because I feel that these failures weren’t just failures of weakness or simply inability to do something; they were direct acts against what I knew was right to do at those times.

And afterwards, when I came back to God and realised what I had done, that I made a resolution not to sin again. And to “learn from these experiences”… But I never did, I haven’t changed anything, when another similar situation came up, I made the same mistake, I sinned again. So can I still speak about a failure here? Is it not rough breaking of God’s rules and acting against His Love?

And can I still win over myself and do I dare even say that I will try to improve myself and not to repeat the same mistake?

Lord, can you accept me even if I always disappoint You again and again? Do you still believe in me? Do you still trust me when I say that I will get better? Please, help me do so, because on my own, I will stay a loser forever.

A typical reply to ‘How are you?’ in Africa is ‘I am well if you are well.’ Isn’t it a completely different philosophy from ours? We usually say: ‘I am well, thanks.’ or ‘Not too bad.’ Sometimes followed by the polite necessity ‘And you?’

But who does really care how you are? Who is really interested in how you feel, what you’ve been thinking about, how is life for you? Maybe your partner, parents and a few real friends.

So the reply ‘I am well if you are well’ moves us somewhere further – maybe you don’t care how I really am, but I am interested in how you are and you need to realise and feel how you are – and please, let me know so that I can share your feeling.

And there is another dimension to it – Africans tend to be more social as a community than ourselves. We are very individualistic, ‘If I am well, everything is ok‘. But they tend to depend on each other more – I won’t be happy unless you are happy as well.

From this point of view, let’s look at success. There is no sense in being successful if people around you are not successful as well. However, what I feel is happening in our days is, that I am somehow happy when others fail so that my success can stand out more. So somehow I am trying to make others unhappy or unsuccessful so that I can succeed easier.

But let’s think of our friends and all people around us as a community and that, eventually, if any of them is sick or unhappy, we all have somehow failed.

So from now on, I want to succeed only if people around me succeed and if they are happy. As success these days is understood more in those ‘hard data’ – money, career, performance…

When you get sick, you obtain a completely different outlook on life and suddenly you feel ashamed for the values you’ve had before. You don’t care about money any more, and your position at work has no meaning to you, either. You feel like you have been mad and senselessly running around to meet stupid deadlines.

When you are sick, everything pauses and you have time to look at life with different eyes, with different values – suddenly you see that there’s much more to it – even when you are just lying in bed all the time – and you realise the importance of relationships, purity, God…

Then, success is nothing and you don’t care any more. All you want, is peace and love.

So let’s all be well, let’s look at life from a different angle – we don’t have to get sick, but let’s live with values as if we were. What is success that we are chasing every day, forgetting about our health, family, God?

Let’s be well all together, not just myself and my family, but I am well if you are well.

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Get to the very bottom so that I can bounce and get back to normal, or even higher than before. Is this sinusoide of failures and successes in life something we were designed for?

This week I came accross Ecclesiastes:

For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate,
A time for war, and a time for peace.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

So what is the meaning of our time? What is the purpose of our development, of our growth? Why are we here, why should we strive for somehting higher? Why do we need to fail thousand times before we are able to succeed once? Where are we in all this and will we be rewarded even despite all these failures?

Also, was thinking, looking at my friends and successful people I know, that success maybe comes with persistance. It’s all about doing certain things every day – pray every day, blog every day, study every day, eat and sleep well every day, exercise every day, love every day… And I can do these, I can organise my time and my activities so that every day I will follow those little things so that I will grow. But what if there is one day I stop? What if there is one short while I am lazy or doubtful, or simply forget about the reason for all this – and then I break? What will happen then? Will I fall back down where I am now?

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Hi there, sorry for not coming here for so long – I wasn’t busy at all, I was just lazy and failed again…

Now fully determined to start again – maybe from scratch. Was it worth?

Again and again. Is there a cure to this?

Why did I do that? Why didn’t I do the other thing? Sorry again. And again. Is there an end to my failures? Sugar, this should really end up soon. No excuse – I have made my commitment on this blog, and before myself (and God) so I will get up and go!

God, please, forgive me and let me be again fully present at your presence. Now.

Thanks!

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