A lesson from St. Mary on dealing with anger.

On Sunday, Mora Sorial came and spoke at my church's young women's meeting and shared a contemplation on a biblical passage involving our Mother the Theotokos St. Mary.  I also happened to be reading a book on anger, and it struck me that St. Mary dealt with the situation described exactly how the author of the book instructs us to deal with anger.

And when He was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast.  When they had finished the days, as they returned, the Boy Jesus lingered behind in Jerusalem.  And Joseph and His mother did not know it; but supposing Him to have been in the company, they went a day's journey, and sought Him among their relatives and acquaintances.  So when they did not find Him, they returned to Jerusalem, seeking Him.  Now so it was that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions.  And all who heard Him were astonished at His understanding and answers.  So when they saw Him, they were amazed; and His mother said to Him, "Son, why have You done this to us?  Look, Your father and I have sought you anxiously."  And He said to them, "Why did you seek Me?  Did you not know that I must be about My Father's business?"  But they did not understand the statement which He spoke to them.  Then He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them, but His mother kept all these thing in her heart.
(Luke 2:42-51)

Let's take a look at what happened to St. Mary here.  They were returning home from the feast and thought He was with them.  They traveled an ENTIRE day's journey and realized He wasn't with them, so they had to go back, wasting yet another day.  After missing her Son for THREE DAYS, she finds Him and asks Him, "Son, why have You done this to us?  Look, Your father and I have sought you anxiously."

She was missing her Son for three days.  And what does she do?  She does not hide her feelings, but neither does she condemn Him or spank Him or rage at Him.  Rather than assuming He was careless, irresponsible, immature, and ultimately wrong, she communicates and seeks clarity, giving Him the opportunity to respond.  She interacts so utterly respectfully with her TWELVE YEAR OLD SON.

In The Other Side of Love: Handling Anger in a Godly Way, Gary Chapman explains that anger is not inherently sinful.  There are many instances in the Bible where God is angry with His people or other nations, because He is loving, and therefore desires justice.  Our impulse to anger is also guided by justice.  We see an injustice, and anger motivates us to fix it.  But because we are not entirely God-centered, sometimes our anger is self-centered, and instead we become angry (or the whole host of other emotions that come with it: upset, disappointed, resentful, etc.) at a perceived injustice, when in reality the other person really had done nothing morally wrong.  Therefore, to make sure our anger is valid, we must first be honest with ourselves as well as the other person and acknowledge that we are angry ( "I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed." "I'm not angry, I just expect more." "I'm not angry, I just wish I had a better son."), and seek further information to make sure our anger is valid.

That is what St. Mary did.  She acknowledged her anger and was honest with Him about it, but instead of jumping to conclusions automatically, sought to understand the situation better and asked Him "Son, why have You done this to us?"  We must then analyze our options, to see if there is any constructive and loving way of dealing with the situation.  We don't have more of the story, but: "His mother kept all these thing in her heart."  She actively tried to understand, she actively tried to figure out the best way to deal with the situation.

Our mother is the perfect example of how to deal with anger-inducing situations in a godly way. :-)

Happy Feast of the Assumption of our Blessed Virgin Mother St. Mary!

How I became a boss at dropping quotes from books.

People think that just because my father is a genius and an avid reader, it means I have the natural ability to plow through books and immediately internalize everything they say.  They're wrong.  I once hated reading too, and I don't believe reading comes easily to anyone.  But it comes easily to me now, and here is how.

The best advice I've ever gotten on reading is something my brother once told me, "Never turn the page until you completely understand everything written on it.  Don't even go on to the next paragraph until you can summarize what the one before it was saying."  Something else Tony taught me is that you have to be constantly relating what you are reading to yourself and to things you've learned in the past or from other places.

Those two points, 1) making sure you understand before you go on, and 2) connecting it to yourself and things you already know, are the reasons why I am able to naturally remember so many quotes and passages that I read.  Those are also the main two mechanisms by which we form memories in general, whether reading a book, having a conversation, or observing a scene around us.

This is also the best study strategy I've ever had.  When I am studying for a class, I usually only have to look at the material once, because when I spend time studying it, it becomes ingrained in my mind.  Although it is time consuming, it is immensely helpful for my philosophy degree, which includes a lot of dense reading.  I've also naturally become a much faster reader, and much better at picking up and remembering things.

I really don't read that much.  When I'm dropping quotes in a discussion, it is usually from the same few books.  And I don't do it by sitting there and memorizing quotes all day.  I just make sure I get absolutely everything out of the book before I move on to another one.

People ask me for books suggestions all the time, and sometimes they are disappointed.  I tell them a book is amazing, and later they come telling me it wasn't as good as they expected it to be.  I bet they don't read like I do.  Something I remind myself of is that this person whose book I'm reading is infinitely smarter than me, and if they thought these words were worth it and I don't, then there is something wrong with me and in how I'm understanding it.

If you say, "I'm just not a reader," you're an idiot.  Stop complaining.  And don't turn the page until you understand everything on it.  It will be painful at first, but soon, young jedi, you will become great.

A great post by a blogger I love on the concept of deliberate practice: http://calnewport.com/blog/2011/11/11/if-youre-busy-youre-doing-something-wrong-the-surprisingly-relaxed-lives-of-elite-achievers/

Words that have changed me: Words for the Christians.

I recently returned from a retreat with the theme of lukewarmness in the Christian life.  Basically, it was all about how to stop being a hypocrite, how to stop being lazy, how to stop being "good enough" and actually pursue a genuine and whole-hearted relationship with God and consequently, every other person in life.

Something I heard many years back, probably when I was in middle school, rang in my ears the entire 3 days of the retreat, and those words have still not left me.  I was visiting my sisters who were living in DC at the time, and I attended a weekday liturgy at St. Mark's church.  Fr. Anthony Messeh gave the sermon.  I don't remember anything else he was talking about, though I was utterly confused that a sermon could be less than 2 hours long--let alone 20 minutes long--but I remember one line, "If there is any day in your life that you do not grow even a little bit closer to God, that day was wasted."

At this point the skeptics might ask, "But how do you know whether you grew closer to God that day or not?"  Well, think about how you grow closer to any human being.  It's when you feel you know them more, when you spend time with them, have a meaningful conversation with them, when you have a genuine appreciation/love for them, when you actually felt like you pleased them, etc.  It is hard to describe "growing closer" but if you've ever done it before, you'll intuitively know.  But if you're looking for some way to start measuring, it's probably best to start with the question of whether I at least found Him worth any of my time that day or not.

Something Fr. Abraham Wassef (Fr. Abe) said on the retreat was that God asks for a tithe, not just of our money, but of everything.  So 10% of our day would be 2 hours and 24 minutes.  Damn.  When have I EVER voluntarily given God 10% of my day?  Then I consider, well, what if during that 10% of the day I am actually only truly focusing 10% of that time, so 10% of 10% amounts to about 15 minutes worth of purely focusing on God.  When have I ever even done THAT?

If there is any day in your life that you do not grow even a little bit closer to God, that day was wasted.

Those words have pestered me over the years, always as a smack in the face with reality, reminding me what the point of all of this really is.  All of my grand plans for the future, most of the 7,517 days of my past, melt into a wasteland of half-assed-Christian-ness.  I can't keep doing this.  None of us can keep doing this.  As William Wallace in the movie Braveheart said, "Every man dies, but not every man really lives."

If there is any day in your life that you do not grow even a little bit closer to God, that day was wasted.

Words that have changed me: Words for the anxious.

Ever since I was a child, my brother took me under his wing, loved me, and showered me with his wisdom.  I know that God uses him as an instrument through which He speaks to me, and so to this day, anything he says goes straight to my heart and becomes engraved in my memory.

About two months ago, I went to him for advice.  I was worrying and crying for days on end about a problem a friend of mine was having.  And Tony said something true to me: "Only worry about the things that you can control."

Anxiousness and worry are things with which I have always struggled.  I have a talent of being able to see and plan things far into the future, but I may also abuse that talent.  I can easily get lost in worrying about the future and creating imagined anxiety for myself, completely losing focus on the here and now, the tangible moment which I can control.  But reflecting on that thought, the very things that I can control, I realized that I have much less control over things than I ever imagined.  And I realized why my life wasn't changing: because I wasn't changing those very things that I do have control over.

I thought I was being a good friend.  I thought I was being holy by letting my friend's problem dominate all my prayers and thoughts.  But I was wrong.  In fact, my many prayers exposed my doubt that God would answer them.  My many worries exposed my vanity and hypocrisy, preferring to consume my mind with the problems of others over which I have no control, rather than looking inward and consuming myself with fixing my many shortcomings.

As Tony explained to me, I should simply give her my opinion, pray for her, hand over the issue to God, and leave it at that.  I could not help her beyond that point, and if I cannot control her decisions nor control the world, why should I worry about it so much?  By worrying about something over which I have no control, I was neglecting so many other things that I do control.

Those words have PROFOUNDLY changed my thoughts and actions.  Every time I find myself ruminating over the past, the future, something, or someone, those words ring in my ears:  "Only worry about the things that you can control,"  and I quickly remember something productive I could be doing and focus my attention on that.  In this way, my worry becomes useful.  My worry can be a useful motivation, and can be turned into actions, rather than acting as a retarding force simply leading to paralysis.

Limiting one's concerns to what one can control also safeguards against a certain type of self-deception.  A few months ago I read a book entitled I Told Me So: Self-deception and the Christian Life.  In it the author explains that a self-deception tactic we may frequently employ is recasting our feelings of anger or hurt toward someone as "concern" for them:

Concern is a convenient disguise for anger, since "concern" for someone is a perfectly legitimate sentiment, and it seems to justify many of the behaviors one would expect from someone who's just plain hurt and mad. ... We're not angry with them, we just feel sorry for them. 

And so we go on, expressing our criticism and cynicism of them in our prayers, and gossiping about them to others, but that's okay, because we're doing it for their own good, we are concerned, we're being such Good Samaritans by spreading news of their problems or how they've wronged us.  BUT if one only worries about that which she can control, she has no need for these sort of thoughts of concern for others, and saves herself from this sort of deception.

The quality of not worrying and simply doing one's part and leaving the rest to God is something I greatly admire about the Virgin Mother.  There are so many instances in her life when she could have worried and argued with God, refused to do His will because she didn't understand, but instead, she simply obeyed God and allowed Him to manage her life as deemed fit.  And look at what she did for the world.

And so, I pass these words of truth along to you, and I hope you will use them when you are tempted to waste your energy worrying.  Only worry about the things that you can control.

Would I marry him?

As I approach "dating age," I'm observing and figuring out what I'd want in a potential husband, and I've come up with two weed out questions:

1. Is he the man I want my sons to grow up to be?
2. Is he the man I want my daughters to have as their definition of a man?

If the answer to either one of them is "no" then he is automatically off the potentials list (not that I have one...).

Why are these questions absolutely essential and important to me?

- They don't let my insecurities get in the way.
"But he's so charming..."
"But he likes me so much...I'll never meet a guy that likes me so much...."
"But he's so smart..."
"But he's so...so...muscular... *faints*"
"He said I look pretty.  He must therefore be the only man in the world who is physically attracted to me."
"Doctor? My mom might approve."
"Doctor AND deacon?  Mom approves."

No matter what is making me attracted to him right now, which may very likely be due to some insecurity of mine, they force me to think about what really matters.

They also force me out of the illusion that I can look at him for his potential.  "Oh he would be perfect, if only he were a little more mature, if only he had this, but that will change, I'm sure I can help him change."  As my father of confession wisely told me, "Nobody changes.  I know that from experience."  It forces me to say to myself, "No Martha, stop evading the question.  Is he NOW the man you want your sons to grow up to be?"

-They keep me objective.
He might be entertaining, he might be romantic, he might be a great friend, but will he be a good father?  Can we work together as a team?  It's easy to be short sighted and think marriage is all about me, what's most compatible with me, will be make me happy, but in reality the bulk of your married years are spent just raising kids together.

-They help me tap into my gut feelings about a person.
I just intuitively know the answer to these questions when I am considering a guy.  Rather than wasting my time trying to rationalize good and bad, if something is "off" about him, these questions will hit the nail on the head.

-They serve as a lens/frame/filter for any other qualities I'd want to put on my list of potential-husband qualities.
Puts my head in the right place first before adding superfluous qualities.

-THEY ARE TRUE.
My sons will grow up to be who he is.  My daughters will have him as the model against which they judge every other man, as well as how they feel men should perceive and treat them as women.

I think these questions are ingenious and that everyone should use them when thinking about her future husband or his future wife.  You know you'll thank me later.

What are your thoughts?  Please tell me so I don't feel like a loser!

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I wish I knew what I was thinking

A strange and perhaps interesting post I saved but never completed from about two years ago. I wonder where I was going with it.

"Pride"

Proud people can't stand humble people, and they certainly can't stand other proud people, but humble people find proud people to be rather amusing, and they certainly have a jolly old time with other humble people.

But the thing is, proud people have some sort of morbid attraction to other proud people, because they feed oh so well into each others' pride, and so they willingly enslave themselves to one anothers' addictions to themselves, each of them thinking they are fooling the other into being used by them but in reality they are fooling themselves and by their foolishness letting the other fool them as well, getting stuck in a love-hate relationship with them.

Then the humble people are still living life wonderfully and having enlightening conversations, willingly freeing one another and sharing with one another the truth in life, and flourishing in a love-love relationship.

And the only time the proud people get along is when they are sharing their frustration over the humble people, wishing they would just shut the hell up and stop enjoying life so much. But the irony of the situation is that the proud people are thinking about how humble they themselves must be to willingly be miserable, and thinking the humble people are actually the proud people who don't care about anyone but themselves.

But the humble people aren't thinking about any of that, they aren't thinking about how proud the other people are nor how humble they themselves are, because it's just part of their nature, and what the proud people are doing is rightly unnatural, in having to consciously evaluate how proud/humble they are/others are. But because they don't talk about these things, the proud people actually think what they are doing is totally natural because you can only talk about things you actually know something about. But the irony of this situation now is that the humble people don't talk about it because they know so much about it that they've graduated from the level of merely talking about it to actually doing it and incorporating it in everything they do in life. And it's not that they are oblivious to the pride of the actual proud people, but they aren’t offended at it the way the proud people are offended at the humility of the humble people which they perceive to actually be pride. The humble people, on the other hand, are aware of their own pride, and when they see the really prideful people, they just say to themselves, “Poor guy, he has the same disease I have and isn’t even aware of it.” You see the humble people and the proud people aren’t that much different, in fact they only differ in their awareness of the situation. The humble people attain their humility