Month: May 2022

Your Times Are In My Hand

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PRAYER OF ST. BRENDAN

Help me to journey beyond the familiar

and into the unknown.

Give me the faith to leave old ways

and break fresh ground with You.

Christ of the mysteries, I trust You

to be stronger than each storm within me.

I will trust in the darkness and know

that my times, even now, are in Your hand.

Tune my spirit to the music of heaven,

and somehow, make my obedience count for You.   ~  St Brendan

          A day after the words, The end is nigh, a new world/life awaits you mysteriously appeared on my screen and then disappeared, I came across the above prayer from St Brendan, the monk’s words piercing my heart gently with its sweetness.

journey beyond the familiar

and into the unknown

          At the sight of those words, a tiny nightingale began to sing a strange, new song outside the door of my heart. Nonetheless, even as my heart harkened hesitantly to its melody, an invisible Hand withheld the lyrics from my understanding. No other word beyond this was given to me.

Give me the faith to leave old ways

and break fresh ground with You.

            In the days since, I have been listening in to the winds as they too sing an unknown hymn amongst the trees, the wind~wraithes turning over a secret among themselves. Is it to do with my job, I wonder? Is it time to leave for something better? And with that my heart goes two ways: one in tremulous glee of unknown joys ahead, while the other retreats into the shadows of familiarity, impossibly favouring unhappy folds long known, over the uncertainty of a new life elsewhere. What if I exchange hell for hell? After 23 years of being chained to unhappiness, I am fearful of leaving and starting over even if I long so much to find joy in my work in the few years I have left before I retire.

I will trust in the darkness

          A resolve comes to life within me. I will trust in the darkness of not knowing what lies ahead, if joy lives in wait there, whether in this place or somewhere else all new to me. The God I know got me through the past year; I know He can do anything He wills, move any rock or mountain in my way, level the most impossible of paths. It is in Him that I will place my trust, my lord of Miracles. Why even this past week, I have been seeing a version of myself which I haven’t before. Facing challenges better, making wiser decisions, still afraid and still given to bouts of worry, but much less so for both. If I dare say it – I am almost like an Easter version of who I once was! All because I’m trying my best to tuck my mountains into His heart and to hold His hand tight.

          What do I do as I await the signs to unfurl their truths in the skies of my spirit? I wonder and ponder as I scan the familiar path within my sight. In clear answer, the word from Heaven comes,

Tune your spirit to the notes of heaven,

And live out your days in obedience to Me,

For your times are truly, truly in My hand.

The End is Nigh

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          This morning, stopping by the late Nancy Shuman’s The Breadbox Letters for a quick nibble at my favourite blogs indexed there, a heading jumped out at me from out of nowhere.

The end is nigh.

A new life / world awaits you.

Then without warning, the page was suddenly refreshed and just like that, those words disappeared. I went blog by blog, searching for them but to no avail. They were gone.

          I sat back and turned things over in my heart. Just minutes earlier, I had prayed my morning prayers at my altar. Since we recite the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary on Thursdays, for some years now, I’ve called my Thursdays, Illumination Thursday, a day when I pray for the strength to see my soul and all its sins as God sees it and for the strength and will to repent and start anew.

          Thursdays have also become my Miracle Thursday, when I pray and ask God for every miracle possible.

          I had asked for both the illumination and the miracles today, for myself, my loved ones and for the world. God knows how much we all need both. Even at this point in time, with the many Covid restrictions being lifted bit by bit and life smoothening out once more, something in my heart urges me to still seek miracles. Not from the usual lack of gratitude do I sense that this normal life we are returning to is missing something. It could be the terrible war in Ukraine or Covid or the vaccine mandates or even all three that have changed us all in some way or another. But I cannot ignore this feeling that even if the life that is opening its doors to allow us back in seems much like the one we knew before, something, somewhere has changed.

          The windchimes outside my living room sliding doors chime in a sudden urgency, as if to signal the angels’ agreement with the gentle swirling in my heart.

The end is nigh. A new life / world awaits you.

          Two years of suffering is bound to change anyone. With a new boss having assumed the mantle of leadership, life at work is already different, yet without the sweetness of hope and joy, all the old the ruts and tangles remain. Still deep in my studies and discovering and learning so much, I too am no longer the same. Yet, none of this explains why the waiting world we are returning to has lost a bit of its flavour.

The end is nigh. A new life / world awaits you.

          Unless it means that we have not arrived yet at the lands promised to us on this earth.

          But that the appointed time is coming.

          And it is close.