resurgence

It’s been 137 days since I posted my last blog.  137 days.  I can’t believe so much time has passed!  It didn’t take long for me to fall back into my familiar habits of procrastinating — all too easy to use the excuse of focusing on Advent and preparing for Christmas as a reason to let My Holiness Project fall down the rungs of the ladder of my priorities.  Travel plans, sickness, homeschooling my high schooler, taking another online graduate course, battling chronic headaches — all perfectly valid reasons for not devoting more time to this endeavor.  But I think maybe setting too high expectations for myself and not having any real accountability for my blog were the real disincentives.  After all, probably no one was even reading my words and so who would care if I didn’t post!  My internal voice of doubt was given more credence by indecision over what I should write about and that made it easier to put it off week-after-week, as I waited for another “significant date”—as in liturgical feast day or memorial of a Saint who was especially meaningful to me—to prompt my returning to this blog (I’m not even going to mention my homeschooling blog . . . ).  When such a date passed, well, I told myself I would just wait for the next one.  Sigh.  Surprisingly, I’ve spent much time in prayer over this effort; thinking, at some level, that surely God would eventually just power me up with supernatural energy and I would grab my laptop and type away with heavenly-inspired bursts of energy and insights about my personal journey.  But alas, God clearly has a different plan for me.  And different lessons He wants me to learn.  Maybe, the first is as simple as growing in humility.  Being willing to admit my failures and not let that paralyze me into inaction.  Prayer is so important for our growth in holiness; but at times, action must accompany prayer, too.  And if I feel that writing this blog is a God-given mission, then I must learn to prioritize it and not fear it.  “Be not afraid!”  That wonderful phrase with which Saint John Paul II (our designated “family saint”), inspired by the Holy Spirit, first exhorted the crowds on the day of his election as Pope.   I pray that I will continue to keep his words close to my heart as I write and share.  My original intention was to blog weekly for a total of 40 weeks.  But since a rough calculation reveals that about 20 weeks have passed since I posted my last blog, I will obviously have to regroup, and just pick up from here.