Satan has been trying to knock us down all week, and yet, this has been a most wonderful week yet! I know that seems crazy, but it's true. I've heard that the closer your relationship to Christ becomes the harder Satan tries to break it up. Well, this week he has tried all sorts of things to knock us down from our high, but has yet to succeed.
Our week has been jam packed with wonderful spiritual events beginning with my attending the Magnificat breakfast and my husband's Cursillo. We both felt a deepening of faith this weekend and affirmation of the path we've been taking. We stayed up Sunday night talking for hours about what God had put into our hearts during the weekend. It was so comforting to see that even though we weren't physically together that weekend that God had united us spiritually throughout the weekend in our thoughts and prayers.
Monday evening we were blessed, literally, to have one of our parish priests over for dinner after Mass. Dinner was followed by a blessing of our home and family. We stood in our prayer room listening to Father read the Word of God, and I was overcome with joy and happiness. As he prayed for the Holy Spirit to enter our home and hearts, I looked around the room at each of my kids and at my husband and prayed with him for my family as tears filled my eyes and a warmth filled my heart. It was a truly wonderful evening.
Tuesday night was my husband's return to Prairie Ronde for his Cursillo "follow-up". This was another very enlightening night for us. Again, I was so overwhelmed with joy as we stood next to one another singing God's praises and worshiping "Cursillo" style together for the first time. We finished the evening with dinner at the restaurant of our very first date. Even though the Cajun restaurant had become a Mexican restaurant and the atmosphere had changed drastically, I could still remember that first date perfectly. And as we sat in that booth together, I thought back over the past 17 years and again was overwhelmed with joy and happiness. We had changed so much since that first official date, but one thing still remained---I still felt my heart flutter when he looked across that table at me!
Wednesday night led us to the Family Missions Company for their send off of a family mission team to the Philipines. While at Cursillo, my husband had met a missionary from FMC. (Remember, I had read the book written by one of the founders and had just heard her testimony this past Saturday in person.) We felt that God was somehow calling us to check this place out. So, we called up a some friends and together made the one hour trek to FMC's retreat house. From the moment we arrived, I felt that same joy that had overcome me the past couple of nights. We shared a meal with the FMC families, listened to their testimonies, and joined in their praise and worship. And once again, the tears filled up my eyes and the warmth filled up my heart as I looked around the room at all of these Spirit-filled people God had led together on this stormy night.
So, where was Satan in all this Spirit-filled joy? He was hard at work each day trying to hinder our evening plans. He was causing all sorts of problems in our daily life---cooking issues in my kitchen Monday to keep us from Mass, work problems on Tuesday to keep us from Prairie Ronde, blowing out tires and sending tornadoes on Wednesday to keep us from FMC, and kid issues all week trying to make us doubt ourselves as parents! But with each "bump" in the road, we kept our cool and prayed for God's guidance and as always He confirmed our path and showed us the way.
It's often easier to just give up when obstacles are put in our way and think, "Oh, well, it wasn't meant to be." You have to really stop and pray about where these roadblocks are coming from. It is God trying to deter us from something that's not in His plan for us, or is it Satan trying to deter us from God's plan. If you take the time to pray about it, the Spirit will always guide you through it. I'm so grateful that we didn't miss out on any of our of joyful, Spirit-filled, and powerfully moving experiences this week.
No comments:
Post a Comment