So lovely here...

The weather here is glorious. I just took our dogs out because a tree hit our fence in the back, and I cannot just open the back door as I so often do. As I sat for a moment out front, I thought how glad I am that my husband and I are aging. Growing old together is sweet stuff. I have a personal history of being very high maintanence. I think my husband would agree that I have melted into him and acquired some amount of his ideal, low-maintanence approach to life, especially things material. The house we are "building" up in Cumming is coming along. Jerry snapped this photo yesterday and sent it to me via email.

I would love to just write and write, because my heart is so full of delight. I really need to go organize some things for our week...okay, maybe just a little...the homily today at Mass was all about love being in every little thing. Because of the many good things said, I felt deeply how much our Lord loves us. I often feel so inadequate in my love for Him, so distracted and prone to fault. This holy, Vietnamese father expressed so simply that it is really not so much about our love for Him, which will consistently fail to be adequate. If we are so proud to think we love God well, we often lie to ourselves and to Him, who is perfect in His Love. I am not doing the homily justice, but it is something to which I have given alot of thought, since I was 33 when I made my first Confession and Eucharist.

Possibly unlike some "cradle Catholics," I am acutely aware of how bad life can be with so little access to sanctifying grace. As I heard Christopher West put it, a person gets used to "eating from the garbage dump" and garbage begins to taste good. This, of course, is a deception, and is the spiritual poverty for which so many Americans have fallen. When we signed the contract on the Cumming house in July, I begged our Lord and His Mother to help keep my natural inclination to comfort and luxury in check. Funny thing, marriage -- what grace flows from this Sacrament. My prayer is answered in my husband and his good common sense. All's I have to do is listen. Lord, help us hear your words of life: "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind..."