Grin and Bear It

My mind has been reeling these days. The words of the Teresas fill my heart and soul. Sometimes I find myself with a great deal to say, but no way to dedicate time to sit and write. Sometimes I cannot find the words at all, but I sit in amazement at the stirrings I feel taking place in my soul, wondering where it might all lead.

I continue to make my way though Story of a Soul, but I am still in St. Therese's early day, and while interesting, it is not necessarily leaving me with a great deal to ponder.
Instead, I find my mind's eye is constantly returning to the idea of fields of flowers.

• I wonder - a flower cannot see itself.
•  Does it know if it is a rose or a flowering clover (a weed)?
• What if you think you are a rose or camellia, but you are just a plain ol' buttercup?

I guess the point is that the buttercup does not long to be a rose, but is content to be what it is. But it is so hard to know -  maybe that is not the point. We may never know if we are a rose, a bluebonnet, or a thistle - we must just be content to allow God to work in our lives as we are. 
I ran across this interesting article as I looked up the names of some flowering weeds. It talks a little about how even flowering weeds are beneficial to birds, bees, and butterflies. Destroying them because they are weeds may have an adverse effect on insect life. Even the weed can have its place. Comforting, no?

It can be so hard to know when to accept - what is the will of God - and when to fight. I mean, what if you are a rose, but you try to be a dandelion?
To put it in human terms - what if you are pursuing  a dream, and you find doors closed, but you still want to pursue that dream? Which one is The Will of God - the closed doors or the desire to continue?
I suppose that is what "discernment" is all about. But why does it have to be so difficult?

I have been trying very hard to put into practice that which I am learning. I have tried to offer all I am doing - especially that which I do not want to do - to God, for love of Him and for love of my family.

I mean - I really hate to cook. At the end of the day, after homeschooling and running errands and cleaning and stuff - the last thing I want to do is spend an hour creating a meal that will take my 5 men 10 minutes to plow through, then face the clean-up.
Even worse than that - the trip to the grocery store. A whole hour buying food that will only last a few days, and the cost - my Lord! The cost! Ugh.
I went to the grocery store yesterday, and I asked St. Therese to pray for me to not complain, at least not as much as I normally do. I went, returned home, and tried to smile at the kids the whole time we put groceries away. I even began preparing the evening meal after we had everything put away. It took a lot of prayer, I tell you! I was trying so hard to "grin and bear it".

Small things - ALL things - in love, for love.

St. Therese said - "I understood, too, there were many degrees of perfection and each soul was free to respond to the advances of Our Lord, to do little or much for Him, in a word, to choose among the sacrifices He was asking."

See? I do not have to choose to take on the grocery shopping as a sacrifice. There are many times it is simply my job, and I do it, albeit grudgingly. There are times I offer it as a sacrifice of Love for my family and to God.
Frankly, either way, the shopping gets done. It does not change that fact.
The difference is interior - the value it has. It can either have no value, a practical value, or it can be a proclamation of love to my family, and this be both practical and active - actively shaping my interior heart to be more ordered to show love. Love begets love. If I decide to withhold it, my work as a mother and teacher becomes exactly that - work. If I declare it to be a sacrifice, or better yet - an offering - it retains all the sameness of form but is in itself transformed into an act of the will, love that blooms and drops seeds that will (hopefully) become more acts of love.
(Even the case of stopping my train of thought in the middle of it getting going to admire the awesome Lego creation the three-year-old just made.)

Blessed Mother Teresa said:
"One thing Jesus asks of me: that I lean on him; that in him and only in him I put complete trust; that I surrender myself unreservedly. Even when all goes wrong and I feel as if I am a ship without a compass, I must give myself completely to him. I must not attempt to control God's action; I must not count the stages in the journey he would have me make. I must not desire a clear perception of my advance upon the road, must not know precisely where I am upon the way of holiness. I ask him to make a saint of me, yet I must leave to him the choices of the saintliness itself and still more the means which lead to it." (Total Surrender, "Our Response".

I must leave to Him the choice of where I am a rose or a dandelion. I must leave it to Him if holiness is to come to me in the form of fame, fortune, and success or if my path to holiness consists of small things, small acts of obedience that no one sees or appreciates or even cares about.

This is a hard lesson.