Limitations

Hello all. Oh how I hope you are all well and are finding some good cheer in your day!

  This Lent, part of my plan for a Lenten practice was to spend time in prayer to explore who I am in Christ and to also  really look at what my limitations are.  Real and perceived.  So far I'm, let's say, behind.  But, good grief folks, if there was ever a time to look at and analyze your limitations?! I think it's now!  I've rebooted my efforts at the extra prayer and journaling time.  It's quite likely you all experience the same spinning around of thoughts when a situation is stressful as I do.  So when you find yourself metaphorically wringing your hands about the state of the world, stop.  Stop right there.  Think about what your limitations are.  The physical limitations are so new and different. No meetings, event, Mass etc. Hitting our mental limitations is exhausting.

Take these limitations (perhaps list them, draw them, note them somehow) with you into prayer and just see what God has to show you.  This will most likely take awhile.  Maybe days or weeks.  Apparently most of us have the time now. 

I have praised Him now for years for the beauty that has been born out of my limitations.  I could write so much about how my life has been limited in the past years and I have not only encountered God in those limitations, I have found freedom to be who He has created me to be.  

I have hoped to grow to sell my photos and art, but there feels like blocks to do that.  That is part of the limitations that I thought I would be exploring this Lent.  Maybe that's still it.  I don't know, but I think there is great fruit and beauty that can come out of  the situation our beautiful world is in right now.  And I'm convinced that one place to find it, is in these limitations that have been put upon us.

I've mentioned the Out of the Ordinary Podcast before.  This episode was on limitations and you may enjoy it.  Their recent podcast is about the current state of the world and the fear that is gripping many people.

Tomorrow, Thursday, is the Feast of St. Joseph and the Church has asked us to pray for his intercession for our world.  Please pray the Rosary too.  I know it's a Catholic prayer practice, but it is certainly not limited to Catholics to pray it!! Our mother Mary is the mother to all of us and she wants to pray for us. 

This link takes you to a how to pray the rosary page and a novena that starts tomorrow the 19th.

A novena is a nine day prayer.  The reason a nine day prayer is a practice of the Church is because of the nine days the Apostles waited for the Holy Spirit.  When I learned that years ago when I first joined the Church, I thought that was so neat!  Also, growing up Lutheran, praying the Rosary wasn't a practice I knew.  But, the prayers of the Rosary are to pray with the Mysteries of the life of Christ.  So each set of prayers is to meditate on an aspect of Jesus' life.  That was another thing that I thought was amazing and I had no idea about when I joined the Catholic Church.

I hope you consider joining in with this Novena!  It will be a beautiful time of so many in the world praying together. And please know that if you don't start on the same day, by all means still join in!  If you miss a day, pray the next day!  It's not a formula, it's a gift to be part of it.

Praying with all of you, 

~Jill

(the photos were taken last week down at our little pond)