Waiting for Patience

I've been pretty under the weather since last Wednesday ... everyone around here's been coming down with this terrible cold, and I had it too.  Spent some time in bed, lots actually, tons of soup, lots of temperature taking, and some good rounds with my old neti-pot, one of the strangest things ever, but boy does it work!  I highly recommend! Anyway, the readings at Daily Mass lately have been about Jonah - Father's been calling him a bit of a drama queen, well, King really.  He is being called to preach to the people of Nineveh (modern day Iraq).  They should repent, turn from their evil ways, and follow the God of all gods.  However, he's a little - well, shall we say - perturbed at God for this.  He refuses to do it and gets on a boat with some other guys, ends up in a terrible storm, and they throw him over (well, he went willingly actually).  He's then in the belly of the whale, and eventually goes into Nineveh like he was asked in the first pla...

I've always wanted to be a youth minister, and I knew that the job required a lot of time, work, and ability.  I saw in my own youth minister (AP) that it was draining on his family, caused him even to adopt a young woman in our youth group when she had absolutely nowhere else to go.  Her mother didn't really want her and her grandmother decided (1 year after this girl got out of the hospital for an eating disorder) that she was going to get back together with her husband who sexually abused her granddaughter.  So, yeah - drastically changed his life and the life of his wife and two daughters (one who they adopted from an abusive parent situations 10 years earlier). Even knowing all that, and I'm a little naive, but not really - I didn't think it was going to be this hard! Or that there would be so many times when I really didn't know what to do.  Even more than that - knew what should be done, but couldn't do it because 'we're the Church and we can...

"God can live without you ... He just doesn't want to" (based on Col. 1:22) -Mark Hart, aka The Bible Geek If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me. ~ Jeremiah 29:13 "My morning prayer summed up: 'O god, Give me the strength to not tell people what I really think of them today. Amen.' And we're off!" -Lino Rulli "The parable of the Good Samaritan is not only about being kind to strangers but about accepting love from those you have written off." -Fr. James Martin, SJ "The devil loves complacency." -Mark Hart