God, I Cannot Keep Chasing You

About to head to Adoration soon to place myself at the foot of Christ's earthly throne and ask His help and advice.

I really need Him to uplift me and sustain my soul right now and I want Him to take care of me and to console and comfort me because of my weakness and because I don't really know what to do.  The heart is a fragile thing, and when it breaks, only God can heal it.  None of us are immune to real life (I mean that...none of us), and those particularly in touch with their feminine sides are going to the pangs of disappointment from a guy.  Maybe once, maybe twice or more, but it seems to happen to everyone and it hurts, but God is strong and He knows what He's doing.

My emotions are very unstable and no particular emotion seems to last for too long, but when I experience an emotion, I really experience it with all the intensity and passion one can imagine.  People have often described me as passionate.  But I am like a desert sandstorm in the sense that after the experience, I can go back to nothing.  I ended my first and only rlationship ever a few months ago and this week has been particularly hard because for some reason, it's on my mind again. 

I feel like I have been begging and praying that God give me some superwoman power to avoid feeling this vulnerable and from having the desire to "go back there."  But no, I have to struggle this out like any other woman does. 

Because of my state (SSA and gender problems), God doesn't want anyone else to share my love with anyone else.  He wants to have me all to Himself and wants me to be in love with Him alone, but why won't He pursue me so much that my mind doesn't drift from Him?  Any woman wants her man to pursue her, so why won't God pursue me and why does He leave me wanting to be wanted?  Lord, hear my prayer and heal me...

Satan keeps crawling into my mind telling me how I lost such a great man and won't let me remember all the problems and difficulties he and I had.  He keeps telling me to lament and to pity myself and shows me images in my mind of him being with someone else and happy with that other person while the thought of me sickens him to no end.  I just want God to block those thoughts, I don't want to experience human emotion because it's too hard for me.  I don't want to have feelings or be attracted to anyone anymore nor do I want to deal with temptation in the world because it makes me hate being Catholic knowing that I'm giving up all that (even though what I'm gaining is infinitely greater, but I can't experience it to know).  If this is how Catholicism has to be experienced, then I resent being baptized into this religion because I can't have temporal happiness either way.  At least the Catholic way promises eternal happiness, but who can really contemplate eternity? 

I still am in love, although I hate it because I can't have what I want.  With him I would have a family, someone who cares about me, protection and safety from those who hate me and wish harm to me, companionship, encouragement (sometimes...ha), but I would be confined to Hell and have no access to Grace.  Without Him, I can technically receive Sacraments and do good works and fast and give alms and have it amount to something, but I have to deal with a whole life time of being scared and always wondering what-if, and watching everyone around me have that which I do not have, I hate feeling left out, but then I could technically go to Heaven (or have a shot at it).  This isn't fun and I hate the agony. 

Satan sadistically likes the challenge I give him because I'm always on the brink, on that edge and threshold between Hell and Holiness and it would please him immensely for me to die having just barely breached the threshold so he can laugh in my face and tell me how everything I did was for nothing because I'm his now.  I wish God would pull me so far into the realm of holiness and fill me with so much Grace that it would take lots of hard work for me to even get to the threshold.  Satan won't do the same with the side of evil because if I were so far gone in that realm, I wouldn't be fun for him.  Why torture me if he already has me?

This is one of those times where I sit and wonder what the heck my Guardian Angel is doing...  Hello patron saints??  St. Christopher, St. Dominic, St. Patrick of Ireland, St. Maria Goretti, St. Anthony of Padua, do you all not see what I"m going through??????  Can I have one prayer on my behalf please?  An Our FAther?  Something, unless you guys don't care either. 

All it would take is for God to just alter my feelings just ever so slightly, show Himself to me, and I swear, I would not have any attachment to worldly things. 

While others are strong enough for sanctification through trials and tribulations, I am positive that my sanctification should be lived out in me not having to deal with any of that because I get easily discouraged and start to second guess all this.

Off to Adoration....begging my dear readership to say a prayer for me (Jesse, I know you got this part covered).

Btw, got through the Feast of St. Valentine, Martyr, unscathed and safely....because I actually observed it as the feast day of a Saint whose intercession I begged, and not some secular hearts and candy holiday which has no relation whatsoever.

The Dire Importance of Having Catholic Friends

"And if thy right eye scandalize thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee. For it is expedient for thee that one of thy members should perish, rather than that thy whole body be cast into hell.  And if thy right hand scandalize thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is expedient for thee that one of thy members should perish, rather than that thy whole body be cast into hell." 

--Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew V, 29, 30

Difficult topic today that came upon my heart during, and walking home from calculus this morning:  What kinds of social lives should Roman Catholics have and cultivate, and which should they avoid? 

This passage from the Holy Gospel speaks of occasions of sin (there are near, remote, voluntary, and involuntary) which are the "wickedness and snares of the devil" from which we invoke St. Michael the Archangel to protect us.  They inspire vice, weaken the Theological Virtue of Charity, can lead to indifference, and ultimately, to the eternal flames...

(Un)fortunately, the Church tells us that people (friends, family, etc.) can be those scandalous means by which satan leads us away from glory and down that way that leadeth to destruction (Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew VII, 13). 

Consider the following Proverbs of the Holy Ghost through of the Holy Prophet Solomon:

"Be not a friend to an angry man, and do not walk with a furious man:  Lest perhaps thou learn his ways, and take scandal to thy soul."  (XXII, 24, 25)

"He that walketh with the wise, shall be wise: a friend of fools shall become like to them."  (XIII, 20)

Our friends have influence on us.  If our friends are full of vice and unrepentant, we can become the same.  Do our friends accept the teachings of the Church, are they living pious and devout lives, and are they encouraging us to do the same?  Are we returning the favor?

"Better are the wounds of a friend, than the deceitful kisses of an enemy."  (XXVII, 6)

This is an interesting one.  Friends should be practicing the Spiritual Work of Mercy called Admonishing the Sinner (confronting friends about their sins) especially with each other, and should be able to do so without fear of offending.  Will non-Catholics (or the impious in general) be very concerned with this? 

And so on and so forth (please spend some time in the Book of Proverbs, it's very good).

So what should our friendships be like?  Ask yourself these questions...

• Do most of our conversations and interactions center around Roman Catholicism?
• Are my friends seeking the Lord and the intercession of the Blessed Mother and the Saints through prayer?
• Do we pray together frequently if posssible?
• Are we offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass together if possible?
• Does this person have or is this person persuing a spiritual/interior life with the Lord?
• Do I feel like I grow in Christ with this person, or does His Name hardly ever come up?
• Does this person have great reverence for the Sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist?

And other questions of this sort.

Here's the problem, I and many of people who want to be faithful to the Church but who do not really have any sense of community in terms of a parish seem to have all these friends to whom religion (especially Roman Catholicism) is irrelevant, offensive, old-school, controlling, and FALSE and these comprise the majority of my friends.  OR, most of the "Christian" friends we have are very devout Protestants or Eastern Orthodox, but not devout Roman Catholics.  I'd even go so far as to say that the more traditional Protestants (and some of the evangelical types) and most definitely the Eastern Orthodox are very devout people and good friends sojourning to make it to Heaven (please pray for their conversion, Our Lady of Hope, convert us!).  But these people are not in the Church, Noe's Ark, the Barque of Peter, the Fold under the Good Shepherd.  How do we deal with these ones who are good friends, but who do not understand our doctrines?  Any thoughts?

What about the other "good friends" who aren't believers period and are even further from the Kingdom (at least externally)?  I would even say that these friends are some of the best I have and do offer me Christ when I'm hurting or down, even as unbelievers, and I really enjoy being with them.  Surely we cannot have ONLY Catholic friends because then we become like the SSPX, Charismatics and other fad groups, and refuse to spread the Gospel because we're stuck in our own little world.  I would definitely say that MOST of our friends should be very devout Roman Catholics. 

I often feel like it is my duty and burden to keep being friends with the godless because I feel like they'll never come into contact with the Faith if I abandon them, but at the same time I feel like they can be occasions of sin for me, hopefully not near occasions.  These friendships have gotten me through so much (I can't emphasize this point enough)!  But these friendships go nowhere spiritually, or maybe I'm just not being patient enough.

The Lord clearly has spoken on this, but please pray that I have the courage to either sojourn alone (meaning at a distance from these ungodly friends) or that God send me strong Christians to surround myself with. 

Losing friends is very hard for me, especially when I am the one who has to break it off (I don't think I have ever done that before). 

I know what to do, just not how to do it...