The Test of Self

Recently, I started a site called Restless Press, an Australasian site with contributors from around Australasia and the Pacific.

Things in my life had been going great. I’d come back from a Catholic New Media Conference. Family life was good. My prayer life was going great, I was progressing well and was in a good place with God. It had been my ambition for some time, and over time God had led me to gain the skills and contacts to start such a project. And so it began.

The Spiritual Attacks

I was warned by my spiritual director of the “spiritual attacks” that would come from setting up a site such as Restless Press. A site that aims to evangelize and develop faith. At the time I thought, I’m prepared for that; everything is going well. And then along came the challenges.

I could handle the mishaps that happened. What I struggled with was the sudden heavy burden that I carried of myself. My own self reflection.

I was aware of all of my own faults. My hypocrisy and over confidence. I felt guilt and insecurity after every conversation. I was aware of way too much of how I seemed to others, my bad thoughts, and where I fell short.

I was constantly aware of having a restless spirit. A wandering way. A constant dissatisfaction, a far away dreamlike quality of creativity, love, aspiration and bringing things to fruition.

 Sometimes this is my crux. My weakness. I feel too self-interested and distracted; I try hard to remain “on task” but find myself back to the romance. I become aware of my every fault.

Other times it is my virtue. My ability to multi-task. To start and see something through to completion rather efficiently.

I endeavor to take on big projects. To try to live up to the plans that God has in store for me. Whatever that entails. To be a vessel of Jesus. To share the good and the truth to try and save others.

In a modern world, full of paradoxes, it often tumbles around inside me. What if I’m doing this to my own loss?

The Paradox of Self

I’m a full-time stay-at-home mum, who dabbles in “old fashioned childhoods” of closely-spaced babies, preschool games, baking and vegetable gardening, who actually secretly harbors a desire to be off changing the world by high-flying a large corporation.

I have ideas and creative works bursting inside me. Impatient to come out. But no time and a hundred excuses of why they can never burst forth.

Ironically, I start a site called Restless Press. In an effort to be an outlet to stem my restlessness. I offer it all to God, and He keeps it running for me. I feel it is all Him and none of me. It’s not too heavy on the family, I find time to fit it all in without burden or mistaken priorities. But it follows me still; it worsens inside me, perhaps an effort in the spiritual battle to throw me off.

I’m an introvert who loves alone time, but can’t help organizing social events and gatherings, and who increasingly craves people. Who needs to speak to people, but then spends hours overanalyzing what I should or shouldn’t have said afterwards.

I’m a writer who is asked to speak, speaking that terrifies me but I try all the same.

I’m impatient with my husband and my need to spend time with him, and I’m scared of missing my children’s growing moments; yet I am bored with it at the same time. I have moments of distraction and impatience. I worry I’m too hard and yet too soft at the same time.

I feel like I have so much potential that is locked away doing the more important job of mothering.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with my life, or if these things and ideas that I try to do are just things that are distractions from my real purpose.

These emotions create turmoil within me. I have everything in the world that I need or desire but I am not satisfied. I’m too changeable. Too temperamental. Too quick to forget all that I’m blessed with. Too fast to blame others and situations that don’t need fixing.

But at the end of the day, I’m not meant to find satisfaction in these things.

God Sends Judith

In prayer, God sends me Judith, the strong biblical widow, who through prayer and planning saved the Israelites and caused conversion:

“Let us give thanks to the Lord our God who, as he tested our ancestors, is now testing us. Remember how he treated Abraham, all the ordeals of Isaac and all that happened to Jacob. For as these ordeals were intended by him to search their hearts, so now this is not vengeance that God exacts against us, but a warning inflicted by the Lord on those who are near his heart.” (Judith 8:25-27 NJB)

Through each of my hard moments, I have an overwhelming need with all my soul to lay prostrate before God. I can’t get close enough for what I need. I can’t get answers or time or physicality enough for God. My whole being claws for Jesus. I weep. I cry out. Yet nothing is “wrong”. My insecurities send me running to God, seeking the sacrament of penance, more than ever before.

And that’s what life on earth is about. Continually trying to reach that ultimate satisfaction. That can’t be found here, because we weren’t made for earth, we were made for heaven.