Decisions, Decisions: The Fork in the Road

About four months ago, I was faced with a very tough decision.  I’ve felt very called for about a year to serve in ministry after college.  In March, I was offered the chance to go back to one of my favorite youth summer camps to serve for the second time with a ministry called Life Teen.  At the same time, an offer was opening up for me to invest more of my talents into serving with a Catholic ministry at Ohio State, Saint Paul’s Outreach (SPO).  Both opportunities were incredible.  “What a good problem to have”, I thought.  But also, what a difficult decision I had to make.

I struggled with making a choice for about a week, believing that one was the route God wanted me to take and the other wasn’t.  I was so passionate about both organizations.  I’m grateful for Life Teen because it provided a welcome mat for coming back to the Catholic Church and fertile soil for seeds to be planted.  I’m grateful for SPO because it has provided water for those seeds to grew, develop, and become firmly rooted in the Lord.

After some intense prayer, I knew with confidence that the Lord was actually giving me a choice.  He wasn’t opening two doors and just hoping I’d pick the one He wanted.  God actually gave me the chance to choose which path I wanted to take and made it abundantly clear that He would bless me regardless of which one I choose.  Why?  Because I was making the decision with a desire to do His will.

Every day of our lives is filled with these types of choices, though they’re not always of the same magnitude and sometimes the choice isn’t between two good paths.  It’s one of the things about life that can’t be changed.  As a risk-avoiding individual, much of my time is spent over-thinking all the different options I can choose from, convinced that I can’t afford to make a wrong choice.  This was my fear when I realized I had to make a decision between Life Teen and SPO.

You know the saying: When one door closes, another door opens.  While this may be true – God certainly does want to open doors of opportunity in our lives – I don’t think it’s always the best approach to living a Christian life.  As I mentioned, I’m the type who hates making bad decisions and I’m usually willing to wait until the next door opens before making a move.  But what happens if I pass up a door God was hoping I would take because I was too afraid of the risks?  Even worse, what if I’m actually crippled by the fear of straying from God’s plan because I so strongly desire to follow Him?  Choices do present themselves in our lives, but rarely does God tell us exactly which way to go, and He loves us too much to force our hand.  These choices require us to move and sometimes that means moving before we see an open door.

Free will can be a funny thing.  God has given us the freedom to make our own choices.  We don’t have to follow Him.  But again, this also means we have to make decisions on our own.  He will guide us if we let Him, but at the end of the day, it’s still our decision.  God can’t move a parked car.   You can take that next promotion or you can leave your job and start a new career.  You can live in your hometown all your life or you can move thousands of miles away from friends and family.  None of these is an inherently wrong decision.  If we’re making it prudently, we should be able to choose one way over the other with confidence.

Yes, God has a will for our lives.  He didn’t just create us and then leave us to figure things out on our own.  But God’s first desire for us is simple. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37).

God has a plan for our life-long vocations – holy matrimony, priesthood, religious life, and single life.  But ultimately these vocations actually pale in comparison to God’s desire for us to know Him, love Him, and follow Him.  The first question isn’t whether a man becomes a husband or priest.  The first question isn’t whether a woman becomes a wife or a religious sister.  These are very important decisions in our lives, don’t get me wrong, but they aren’t the most important.  What God cares about the most is that we discern His will faithfully and with Him in mind.  If we do that, the decisions come easier.

The more faithfully we follow the Lord in our daily lives, the more likely it is that He will actually open more doors for us.  Opportunities tend to present themselves when God’s sons and daughters show a commitment to our Heavenly Father.  Many of those who have mentored me in my faith journey over the years are men and women who are highly talented and could have easily chosen to pursue a “typical” career path, but instead made a difficult decision to follow the Lord in faith and use their talents to build God’s Kingdom through full-time ministry.  God likely would have blessed their work regardless of which direction they went, but they made the difficult choice and stepped out in faith to where they felt God was calling them.

It’s true that when God opens one door, He will open another.  But that door doesn’t always open up immediately and sometimes He will open more than one door at a time.  It’s not that He’s trying to confuse us or test our faith.  Rather, it’s one of the many ways He shows us how much love He has for us.  He wants us to have opportunities and He wants us to have a say in our lives.  We can have confidence knowing that if we truly desire what God wants for us, He will either show us the way or gently steer us back in the right direction. 

Let us walk as a people who desire to please God by our actions and through our words.  May we make decisions with our hearts oriented toward Him and carry them out with courage and confidence, always seeking His voice and being bold enough to listen and to follow. 

It's Going to Be a Great Day

“It’s going to be a great day.”

This has been my motto every day for the past month or so now.  It all started one morning when I strolled downstairs to the breakfast table at Antioch (the house I live in with Saint Paul’s Outreach at Ohio State).  It’s not easy to wake up at 6 AM most days of the week and feel joyful doing it, but this particular day was different.  My heart was singing a song of joy and gratitude.  My SPO brothers immediately broke out in grins and eyerolls that screamed, “Here we go again.  Cory’s being goofy.”

This same attitude continued for the remainder of the week.  By the next Monday, I didn’t feel the same joy that made it easy to be optimistic about the day before it even started.  Regardless, I put on a smile and said, “It’s going to be a great day.”

Shortly after, I helped lead a Life Teen retreat with a parish I routinely serve at during the school year.  Before any teens had arrived, everything that could go wrong did go wrong.  There was distress and heartbreak.  My natural response after offering whatever assistance I could was to remind the youth minister, Maggie, that it was going to be a great weekend and this wouldn’t change that. 

The next week, waking up joyful was nearly impossible.  I was tired, stressed, and overwhelmed with schoolwork and other responsibilities.  As I rolled out of bed, I caught myself thinking, “This day is going to be awful.” Immediately after, I corrected myself.  “It’s going to be a great day,” I said. 

I share this story because God has blessed me tremendously the past month and taught me an important lesson that I think all Christians can learn from – the lesson of choosing joy whether you feel like it or not. 

Christian joy is powerful because it is both an incredible outward witness to those we encounter each day and an anchor for our disposition towards Christ.  Yes, joy is an emotion and emotions are fleeting.  However, an authentic encounter with Jesus should spurn in our hearts a gratitude for who He is and all He has done for us.  In this sense, joy becomes a decision reflecting praise for how the Lord has worked in our lives.  Joy for the Lord is a contagious joy.

When I make the conscious decision each morning to say, “It’s going to be a great day,” this doesn’t imply that I feel good about the day; rather, it’s an outward projection of my faithfulness to Christ and my decision to be grateful regardless of the trials I may face that day. 

Sirach 2:1-2 says, “My child, when you come to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for trials.  Be sincere of heart and steadfast, and do not be impetuous in times of adversity.”

This is the heart of our decision to live joyfully each day.  God promises us that we will face hardship.  Some days are more difficult than others, but we are called to remain steadfast – that is, to stand firm – in our resolution to follow Christ, especially when things do become challenging.  We show God our level of commitment to Him by how we respond to adversity. 

Another important lesson I've learned recently is the influence our first decision each day has on the outcome of our day as a whole.  If, as disciples, our first thought each morning is one of pessimism and disdain, odds are the rest of our day will be affected by this initial thought.  It makes the meaning of "waking up on the wrong side of the bed" a reality for us. 

I understand not everyone is a morning person and by no means am I implying that a single negative thought means someone is in the wrong.  I do, however, think it is something to be consciously aware of as we go throughout our day.  Ask yourself periodically: Is my heart oriented towards Christ or am I giving too much power to the desires of the flesh which are contrary to those of God's (Galatians 5:17)?

I leave you with a few lyrics from a song written by a good friend of mine that reflects a heart oriented toward God in good times and in bad:

            "Waking up singing that song on the radio,

            Never gonna stop singing praise to the Father who,

            Gave His only Son so that I could be made new.

            Never gonna stop, never gonna stop.

            Jumping up and down with the joy that's inside of me,

            Singing this song, a love for eternity,

            How could I ever deny what's a part of me?

            Never gonna stop."

Choosing joy every morning is rarely the easy thing to do, but Christ conquered death and gave us the freedom to rise above the temptation to be bitter and have a negative outlook on life.  He desires for us to choose Him even when the inclinations of our flesh would rather we focus on ourselves. 

Remember, it's going to be a great day.   

Forgive and Forget: Leaving Habitual Sin in the Rearview Mirror

One of my favorite things to do is go on long road trips. Over the course of the past year, I’ve made two trips from my hometown of Sandusky, OH to Life Teen’s Camp Covecrest in Tiger, GA. It’s a little over 600 miles and takes 10 or 11 hours. During all of my trips, I’ve had the great pleasure of traveling with a good friend I met at the beginning of my first journey to Georgia. Despite being “stuck” in a car together for 10+ hours on a handful of occasions, we loved every minute. It’s an opportunity to talk about life, have a few laughs, and prepare for arrival at a new destination. Whether we’re driving from Ohio to Georgia or back to Ohio, we always agree on one principle: We want to get there as fast as possible. It’s not that we don’t enjoy each other’s company – we definitely do – but we anticipate the final destination and want to minimize the time between the start and end. We’re focused on the road ahead.

The Christian faith walk is similar to a long road trip in many ways. There’s a starting point, a road ahead, and a final destination. At the micro level, our lives with Christ have many new starting points representing each time we’re convicted to grow in a particular virtue or area of our lives. The road ahead represents the challenges and obstacles we will face along the way, the grace God gives us on the journey, and energy required to transport us from point A to point B. Finally, we arrive at the destination. However, the destination does not signify an ending point. Rather, it’s a moment of reflection that reminds us what can be accomplished with God and reason to begin a new journey.

Of course, this is a very simplified and optimistic view of the Christian walk. We all know it is much more difficult than getting into a car and driving somewhere. Sometimes, our car breaks down and we don’t go anywhere. Other times, we may decide the destination requires too much sacrifice on our part and turn around. Even worse, we often focus too much on what’s holding us back from a deeper relationship Christ. We keep our eyes fixed in the rear view mirror, especially the sins we’ve committed that seem to creep back into our lives, in hopes of keeping those things behind us. While this seems well-intention, there’s a worry about focusing on the past: we miss the present.

Sometimes, I think I’m the biggest sinner that has ever existed. I get frustrated with struggling with the same sins over and over again. I run to confession every time I commit a sin in hopes that this time I’ll receive some miraculous grace and instantly become a saint. When I don’t run to confession, I buy into the lies that God somehow doesn’t love me because I “disappointed” Him. Eventually, someone comes in at the perfect time and reminds me of a simple truth I often forget: God forgives every sin I commit the moment I feel remorse for having committed it. Yes, Reconciliation is a great sacrament and is absolutely necessary for Catholics, but unless an individual is in a state of mortal sin, going every time a person so much as has a negative thought about another person isn’t essential and can sometimes even be a poor habit. The opposite of not desiring forgiveness is being overly scrupulous.

In my experience, scrupulosity is often a result of being unable to forgive myself for doing the inevitable. I desire to be a saint, but I’m nowhere near perfect and neither were they. We’re humans with emotions and passions which sometimes get the best of us. The most important thing after asking God for forgiveness is forgiving ourselves. After all, He has already forgiven us. Shouldn’t we offer the same kindness to ourselves?

I believe the evil one likes to use our desire for holiness against us. Especially for Christians who are very passionate about their faith and relationship with Jesus, we can sometimes fall into a trap of believing that by focusing on not committing a certain sin, we can avoid it and achieve holiness. This is especially bad when it comes to sins we continually fall victim to. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried so hard to avoid being prideful that I back myself right into being prideful….about not being prideful. Pretty ridiculous, isn’t it? I focus my attention in the rearview mirror on all the times I’ve let my pride get in the way and try so hard not to let it happen again that I don’t see the brick wall I’m about to drive into. This is exactly what the evil one wants. He wants us to be so laser-focused on being perfect that we actually become blinded to all the imperfections in our lives. I’ll be the first to admit, I have countless weaknesses keeping me from growing closer to Jesus, but I focus 80% of my attention on 20% of my sins and ignore all the rest. Even then, I’m so focused on NOT SINNING that I miss the point: Jesus loves me and desires the same in return.

You see, the point of Christianity isn’t to avoid sinning. The point of Christianity is a relationship with Jesus Christ and inviting others into that relationship. The heart of the issue with a habitual sin isn’t the sin itself, but the trigger – what’s really at the heart of the matter. In order to truly free ourselves of these routine sins, conversion is required. Conversion transforms our hearts to further mimic God’s heart in our day to day lives. Jesus is our example of God’s heart. Prayer is absolutely essential for this conversion to take place. If pinpoint focus on avoiding sin is Satan’s strategy to influence our decisions, prayer is God’s blueprint to understanding his heart and transforming ours to be more like His.

Every day is a battle for the truth Jesus Christ offers. We cannot hope to win the battle – and certainly not the war – if we do not arm ourselves with this truth. We’re hopeless to live holiness and avoid sin if we’re defenseless in battle. In the series Band of Brothers, Lieutenant Winters is a steadfast example of a courageous leader in battle, but his leadership would suffer if he only focused on the pain of yesterday and all the men lost in war. Those things matter, but Winters cannot allow them to define his outlook on today. The same is true when we slip up. It’s important because it keeps us humble, but we’re hopeless if we let sin define who we are as sons and daughters of God.

Praying for you as you pray for me.

Cory