Mis Angelitos

Bahamas...

Sometimes God answers prayers instantly and at other times it can take many years… Last cruise I prayed that He would send me someone to spend my vacation with since I felt like a lot of the girls I was meeting seemed to have "finding a spouse" as a priority and didn't care about making female friendships… I went into adoration thinking that I would have to spend seven days on my own and said a prayer for a friend and as I exited the prayer room I bumped into two beautiful girls. They laughed in unison and asked me if I wanted to hang out with them! Praise God! They made the cruise experience so much better and this time as I nurtured a broken heart they again came to my rescue. The story of my life is that I seem to fall for men that don’t feel the same way about me, it’s difficult for me to open my heart and when I do it’s like I open the gates so wide that I forget to use caution. During a walk alongside the shore I shared this with Father and he gave me some good pointers so hopefully next time I decide to let someone in I will use reason in addition to my heart... 

Freedom of the Seas

 I prayed a whole year for a man that I thought God wanted just for me and foolishly went on this year’s cruise in hope of meeting him again and when I realized that this man was not on the cruise it was more than anything an injury to my pride. That first day of the trip all I wanted to do was to sink into a pit of self-pity and as I struggled in an empty cabin thinking of falling apart or putting on a happy face my beautiful friends came to my door – and to my rescue. They prayed over me and gave me a beautiful crucifix to keep with me during the duration of the cruise… They are my cruise angels who God used to help repair the sadness and disappointment in me; among hugs, kisses, laughter and a lot of dancing they helped me heal in a healthy way.

Puerto Rico

The thing that makes love so beautiful is also the thing that causes so much pain. It’s a matter of choice - of the will, to choose to love someone and for that someone to choose to love you back is an experience that we all hope will happen to us, yet- because it’s so precise and so specific (in matters of romance) finding it requires quite the journey and only the brave- those who continue the quest through hurt, falls and rejection- will find it. I felt foolish, for loving a man – but in prayer God revealed to me that in my life I have done pretty dumb things and loving a man is not one of those! While talking to other friends on the cruise I realized that we all have done pretty ridiculous things in the name of love and I admire their courage and romanticism- though we all have learned great lessons from those mistakes… 

On the plane ride I was reading Orthodoxy by Chesterton and he “viewed this world as a sort of cosmic shipwreck. A person in search of meaning resembles a sailor who awakens from a deep sleep and discovers treasure strewn about, relics from a civilization he can barely remember. One by one he picks up the relics—gold coins, a compass, fine clothing—and tries to discern their meaning. Fallen humanity is in such a state. Good things on earth—the natural world, beauty, love, joy—still bear traces of their original purpose, but amnesia mars the image of God in us.

Mis Angelitos...

For Chesterton, and also for me, the riddles of God proved more satisfying than the answers proposed without God. I too came to believe in the good things of this world—first revealed to me in music, romantic love, and nature—as relics of a wreck, and as bright clues into the nature of a reality shrouded in darkness. God had answered Job’s questions with more questions, as if to say the truths of existence lie far beyond the range of our comprehension. We are left with remnants of God’s original design and the freedom, always the freedom, to cast our lots with such a God, or against him.” We are free to love who our heart claims and when it is reciprocated it’s magic like fragments left behind from paradise...