Blessed are they...

Today the Gospel reading is about the Beattitudes, which, for as long as I can remember, is my favorite Bible reading. It's all about the poor and the marginalized and the underdogs and the people who try and try but never get anywhere and the hungry and the lonely and the brokenhearted. And Jesus is all, Hey, take care, man, 'cause it'll be okay. Promise.

I mentioned I've been having trouble with my boss, and no, that hasn't gone away. If anything, she's taken it to new levels in the past week, and it was literally making me sick. I've tried acting like it was nothing, and I've talked to the program director who helped me to laugh about it, and I've tried to be strong in the face of her bullying--and all of that is well and good, but when it comes down to it, I'm wasting so much energy focusing on this woman that I don't have enough left over to focus properly on my kids.

So I prayed. I prayed, please let me get past this, because this problem is not really a big deal when compared to what so many others are facing. So please let my worry over this just slide away so that I can put my energies toward more productive areas. And I could hear this person crying not too far from me, heavy tears straight from the soul. We were the only two left in the church. And I prayed for that person because whatever had brought those tears to that person was far bigger than what I was stressed out about. When I got up to leave I realized that I knew this person. He was in RCIA last year, but not in my group. He would show up to the classes drunk, because he can't stop, and I don't know what brought him to this but I do know that he has a great heart and that he was shining with peace the night he was baptized because he felt like he belonged when he was blessing others with holy water--he didn't miss a single person. We said hello and he remembered my name, which surprised me, and I stood with him for a few minutes because that was something I could do. He didn't stop crying, but he did smile when we said goodbye.

One of my girls is thrilled this week because she didn't quit chorus. We had been talking about it over the past week. She was going to quit because she was too afraid to sing alone in front of people, even just in front of the rest of the chorus. But she obviously wanted to be in chorus because she signed up to begin with, so we talked about fear, and we talked about the steps to overcoming fear, and how she should not quit something she wanted just because she was afraid. Wednesday night, while we were talking to another friend about going to class, she quoted my advice to him and then grinned at me. Thursday night was chorus and she came in Friday afternoon and squealed, "I did it!!" And it's a small victory, but it's an important one, because her life is falling apart around her, but this is something good that she's in control of, that she belongs to, that she can own. And she did it.

And maybe I don't have many tangible things that I can point to say, look what I've done here, but I do a lot, and I put my heart into it. So here, this is the good that I do. I spend time with people and make them smile, and I have a whole group of teens who come to tutoring or theatre or art, or just come in to talk because they're important to me and I let them know it. And I'm affirming myself with this today because I don't want to spend anymore time worrying about people I will never please. I want to spend my time on people I can serve, in whatever small way.

This is a really sappy entry, isn't it?