Discipleship

I scheduled this blog entry to post today around the time that I will give my witness on the women’s retreat (see my post from yesterday) that I am helping to facilitate at our church this weekend. My witness is about “Discipleship,” what it means to me and my faith journey. I ask that if you read this around noon (CST) and you are the praying kind, to please say a little prayer for me that my words will touch the hearts and minds of those participating in our “CRHP” retreat this weekend. My witness will likely be about 40 – 45 minutes long and I am both excited and somewhat nervous about sharing it with those on “making” the retreat.

Thank you for your support, encouragement, thoughts and prayers during the time that I have been in formation preparing to”give” this CRHP Women’s Retreat. I will leave you with an excerpt from my witness, specifically the conclusion that I will read as we send the women forth to return to their lives, their vocations and their families hopefully feeling spiritually refreshed and renewed from their retreat experiences this weekend. Mine is the last witness that they will hear on the retreat, so I hope and pray that it inspires them to look at and reflect on discipleship in their own lives today and in the days to come.

In the end, I think that so much of what defines our happiness in life is how we choose to spend our time. I still have a long way to go with this, but I realize that to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ, I need to focus more on being there for and sharing my faith with my family, friends, neighbors and fellow parishioners and less on making plans, being a perfectionist, multi-tasking and concerning myself with whether or not events and experiences “live up” to my expectations. It’s easier said than done, but I consider myself a work in progress.

I will leave you with another of my favorite quotes and then one of my favorite songs, one that reminds me of our baby girl Molly and of the importance of time in our lives, especially in light of the fact that we truly never know which day could be our last with our loved ones on this Earth.

So first, the quote:

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.” ~ Gilda Radner

And now the song (here are the lyrics, if you want to follow along while you listen — Note: It will be played at the end of my witness for the participants and other teams member to hear. If you want to listen to it, you can here it on the embedded YouTube video at the bottom of this page, titled “Time with Molly”):

Is it the Autumn leaves that change,
or the snow that floats from the sky.
What is time?
Is it the air we breathe,
or the wings that teach a newborn bird to fly.
Who can tell?
I don’t know.
Will we change?
Will we grow?
What is time?
Is it eternity in Heaven,
or just a hope for peace on Earth.
Where’s the time?
Gone, in the blink of an eye.
But with every blink a birth.
We live, we learn, we love, in time.
We give, we yearn, we grow, in time.
Time for change.
It’s time to care.
It’s not too late, don’t despair.