Humility?

Thursday

I slept okay at the Quality Inn but it was very hard to get going.  Finally I got up for breakfast and then did a few knee exercises.  As I was shaving Shannon called from Toyota and I was able to rush over and get my phone paired with my truck.  I am in the waiting room at Shelor killing time and adding a few quotes from 22 Reasons: “First,  choice is the essence of love.  God let us choose because God loves us and wants us to choose to love Him back.”  Sounds easy enough but perhaps I have never really loved someone so if I don’t know how, how can I choose to love Him back.  “Instead of being bitter over the hardships we face, we must be thankful for all the blessings we enjoy.”  In my case, certainly I enjoyed many, many blessings: all the wonderful natural places I have visited, often again and again, becoming a writer with hundreds of publications even though a number of people questioned whether I would ever become a writer, living in my lovely hollow for over 20 years, many, many good times with Tracy, good friendships with a number of people, becoming a decent professor, now with 37 years of teaching.  I am not bitter right now, more anxious and wanting to make a connection with the Holy Spirit.  My lupus certainly is no fun but the hollow sale is very anxiety producing and if it does come off, then the move to Stroubles.  I thought I had retirement planned out and if I do sell the hollow for 165K, then I will surely have to keep working for at least 3 years.  And I will have almost no money to pay Tracy off right now, which I know is terribly unfair, but when Laura and David cut the price by 55K, that put me is such a bad spot.  “Ultimately we need God far more than we need explanations.”  I don’t think I am looking for explanations for my present problems but I really do need God.  All my accomplishments mean

Nothing if I remain without Faith and connection with the Holy Spirit.  I tried to pray a little this morning but my prayers seemed very superficial, very ineffectual.  I listened to the Kris Kristofferson song “Why Me Lord,” the version were he tells of his transformation in church, and it was clear that the Lord just chose to enlighten him at that moment; he wasn’t looking for such an experience.  It is a powerful story and song and I wish the Lord would allow me to have such an experience.  “Pride is a rock that is uneasily broken.”  “Nothing makes us more like Jesus than pure humility.  Nothing is as honored by God as true humility.”  I certainly have been humbled by my months of sickness and the whole situation with the hollow.  But pure humility seems to evade me.  Psalm 51:  “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”  I’m as broken in spirit as I’ve ever been and I do have a broken and contrite heart.  I understand fully all my sins and I am deeply sorry for them all.  But I can’t go back and change them, though I so much wish I could.   I have confessed them, and I am going to Mass, and I think I have repented for my sins.  How do I proceed?   I get a lot out of the church stuff and I get comfort from my porch prayers and songs but is that the right path?  Jen says I need more patience and I will try to do that but I get so anxious (not only from the real stresses mentioned above but from the chemo and the many meds I am taking, including the prednisone) it’s so hard not to want relief from all this anxiety (though the small doses of valium have helped calm me during the day and allowed me to sleep.  “It is only through setbacks, suffering, and sorrows that we really understand who we are, who we aren’t, and even more important, who He really is.”  “True heartbroken humility is like a magnet that attracts the God who is hopelessly in love with the hopeless.”