Trust in God and in his timing.

Trust can be an incredibly hard thing to do. Trusting involves putting your guard down and letting another person into your life. While it is hard enough to trust a single person, imagine trusting someone that you cannot physically see. Someone that a lot of people hate; someone that a lot of people want you to hate too. Someone who a lot of people don't even believe is real. Trusting that person can be a challenge. I'm talking about trusting God. 

That's a debbie downer way of looking at it in my opinion. Unfortunately, It's the way many within society see it. 

I get frequently told I'm ridiculously optimistic, so I tend to look at things in a different way. Here's how it works in my head... Imagine trusting someone who taught you how to live your life to the fullest and who genuinely wants you to live your life to the fullest ( John 10:10)  Imagine trusting someone who let their beloved son die, so that you could live. (John 3:16)  Imagine trusting someone who is constantly there for you, even when everyone else has walked out. (Deuteronomy 31:6)

That sounds like an easy person to trust. 

The hardest thing to do is trust in God when things aren't going so well for you. It is so easy to get discouraged then. Trusting in God was something I always struggled with. When things were going well, I was a-okay with The Big Guy. I would pray to him daily and brag about him all the time. However, when things starting getting tough, I lost my trust in Him. I hid and became a coward. In those moments I have never felt more alone. I couldn't understand why God would let bad things happen to me or those I loved. 

I still don't think I have an answer for why bad things happen, and I'm okay with that. I'm not God. I'm not perfect. I don't know everything, and I'm not meant to. I do know that I trust in God and the timing for everything he does. Even if at the moment it seems like the worst thing is happening at the worst possible time, I trust and believe that God is 100% in control and knows what he's doing. Even if I don't have a freaking clue. 

Sometimes it's better to just stop for a second, take a deep breath, and tell The Big Guy its all in his hands. In that moment, stop over-thinking, stop feeling guilty, confused, hurt, and alone. Get up and keep going. Because if Jesus could do it, so can you. 

Phil 4: 6-7 

Pray without ceasing.

Prayer is potentially the easiest, and at the same time, most challenging thing to do daily. No matter where I turn to seek guidance in my faith life, one thing is always consistently repeated...In order to grow close to God, you have to maintain a consistent prayer life. You must be persistent in prayer. 

Jesus asked us to pray, every Sunday at mass, we learn the benefits of prayer, so why do we struggle with it so much? Quite frankly, I suck at being consistent with my prayers. I tend to have times in my life where I will ask the Big Guy what's crackin' every day, and then other times in my life where the only time I pay him any mind is before my meal when I pray Grace, or at mass on Sunday. There is something very wrong with this picture.

I think Mother Teresa was a genius. A while ago, I read some writings she had on prayer. The way she spoke about prayer was immensely powerful. I encourage you to look up some of your writings, specifically her book "No Greater Love", in my opinion is phenomenal. 
I really like one quote within the book. Mother Teresa writes, "Perfect prayer does not consist in many words, but in the fervor of the desire which raises the heart to Jesus." I think sometimes I forget that I don't have to have a long and elaborate prayer to God. Prayer is essentially just a chit chat with God. It can be as short or as long as we like. God is just happy to have us there. 

Another important thing I constantly forget is that sometimes you don't even have to say anything at all. Silence can be a form of prayer. Sometimes we just need to shut up, and listen to God. He will tell us what we need to hear. 


I guess the point I'm making is that prayer shouldn't be hard and scary. We should love to pray, everyday. 

Philippians 4: 6-7 

It's your heart that beats inside our chests.

I was struggling to determine what I should write about first, when one of my favorite songs came on and sparked my attention. The song is titled "Deuces Las Cruces" by Memphis May Fire. A majority of you have most likely never heard the song, so here it is for your listening pleasure.

Fair warning, for most reading this you will be shocked by what your ears are about to hear. This genre of music is typically too intense for most people. I happen to love it. What is most impressive about this song are the lyrics. The part that stuck out the most to me was this...

" It's your heart that beats inside our chests. We'll do our part, and you'll do the rest. We'll go where you need us to be. We'll plant the seed."

I'll let you get into my mind for a moment. I over think everything. Sometimes I spend hours of my day analyzing just a single sentence, or perhaps in this case, a set of song lyrics. The line "It's your heart that beats inside our chests" was one of those analyzing moments for me. It's his heart that beats inside my chest? What?! Mind blown. What a phenomenal lyric. I spent most of yesterday realizing exactly what it means. I so easily forget that my body, my hands, my feet, my mind, all of me, is not my own. It's God's. He placed me on Earth for a purpose, I couldn't tell you in the slightest what my purpose is, but I know it's there. 


After I stopped spazzing over that song lyric, I moved to the rest. "We'll do our part, and you'll do the rest. We'll go where you need us to be. " You know that purpose I mentioned earlier, well it gets even more intense! Yes, we are all placed on Earth for a purpose, but not only that, we all take part of something much bigger. Do you realize that without you it can never be complete? It's like spending days working on a puzzle only to realize that the last piece is missing. The puzzle will never be complete. It will never feel whole. You will never feel satisfied. We all take part in something so much bigger than us. We all have a calling. You know what I'm talking about, that feeling, that tugging, pulling you to do something that sometimes you just don't want to do. Sometimes we have to just shut up and do it. Don't stress over it too much though, because all we have to do is put forth our best effort to complete our part and God covers the rest, because he is the bomb diggity. He is complete perfection.

And finally, the last line, " We will plant the seed." This is something I heard all the time while I was at school and it took me awhile to genuinely understand it. Planting the seed refers to sparking a small fire in someone's heart for their faith. Think about planting a seed for a tree, obviously a seed starts out incredibly small and unless it is provided with the proper resources it will never grow. However, when a seed is given what it needs - water, sunlight, etc it has the potential to grow into a powerful and beautiful tree. Here is a real life example. My freshman year of college my friend, Katie, invited me to join her bible study. That invitation was a planted seed. With the help of a lot of other faithful people, prayers and  proper resources I have been able to grow into the devout woman I am today. Anyways, what struck me about this line is that we are only called to plant seeds. We are not heros, we are not saviors, and thats okay because we're not meant to be. God is the hero, the savior. He saves souls, not us. I forget that a lot.   I have to consistently remind myself that I'm not a superhero. Anything good you see in me is because of  God.


Philippians 4: 6-7

An unconditional love.

My name is Katty.

I am a 21 year of old, proud Catholic from Chicago. I love laughing, puppies, puddle jumping, and most importantly, I love God. I recently graduated from a University and have stumbled back home to my fairly lukewarm parish. While at school, I was a part of the Catholic community there, and it became my home, my comfort zone. Coming back to my Chicago parish now, I feel out of place and a bit lost. This blog is my saving grace. My hope is that by devoting myself to an online blog I will be able to keep motivating myself in my faith while I search for a strong, faith-filled community here in Chicago. In this blog I will be posting anything and everything relating to faith. Questions, answers, predicaments, praises, thanks you's, prayers, you name it, and it will probably end up in here. The title of my blog "An unconditional love", was the best way I could possibly think to describe God. God loves each of us with a passionate, unrestricted, on the verge of being absolutely insane love. I  could write about it for days, but seeing this is my first post, I will stop myself there. Thank you for taking the time to read what I have to say, and if you have an suggestions for improvements I'm always willing to listen. Thanks. :) 

Philippians 4: 6-7