Day 15 (a little on the late side)

Sometimes you get really excited.

You get so very excited to talk about the source and summit of our Faith - the Eucharist - with your class of teens. Your mind is constantly boggled by its intensity and you're so excited because you are in a position to share that intensity with others... because no one else will tell them, you think to yourself. Pat yourself on the back, prepare for the wonder and awe of it all...

and then? Then Jesus laughs a bit and says:

"Oh, my dear and silly Bridget. You don't impart that wonder and awe and love. I do."

And this is so so so important for you to remember... so sometimes Jesus makes it impossible for you to take it into your own hands.

So, class yesterday found me with about 10% of a voice, incredibly tired lungs, and one of the most ear splitting migraines I've had in a while. All of those cool facts, golden nuggets of truth, and philosophical distinctions that are mere human attempts to better our understanding of the mysteries of Faith took a bit of a back seat while I administered medications, vomited, and curled up in the back corner of the large storage closet.

So, I didn't talk as much as I planned. But it was a solid reminder that I don't really do anything. I am not the origin of their faith, I cannot deepen the faith of these teens. Faith is a gift, faith is grace, and I cannot give that gift. I cannot dispense grace. Jesus gives them the greatest Gift of Himself... and does it all Himself.

So the Eucharist class, my favorite class of the year, was an opportunity for humility and trust. It found me with a head of rumpled curls (bobby pins are not friends to migraine enduring heads), a cardigan wrapped around my throat in an attempt to keep it warm and thereby keep some semblance of a voice, and an inability to construct intelligible sentences.

But it was still good. The Brother was our guest speaker, we played our trivia game as planned, and I think we all learned something. God is good, all the time.

Sometimes the only way God can get me to let go of things and let Him have them is through a very visceral, physical inability to hold on to anything at all. Then He takes those messy, painful, crazy, important, living, confused, confusing, wonderful, and terrible things and makes them good.

And I go, "ooooooh, yeah... You're God... I'm not."

But back to unwrapping the Greatest Gift...