Faith

This category is about faith, God, prayer, Christianity, religion, growing closer to God, my journey as a Catholic, mercy, love, peace, and Jesus.

Baby Jesus and Barbie: the Nativity

lpatangan

I always wanted a Barbie Dream House. My best friend had one, and we spent countless hours making Barbie prance around the plastic mansion, flitting from one perfectly appointed room into the next.  Barbie’s life was glamorous and posh, and the makers at Mattel made sure she wanted for nothing. When I begged for my parents to buy me a Dream House, they lamely suggested I make my own, as if I were some sort of Christmas elf who could magically build a two-story manor with its own elevator and swimming pool. Besides, even if I had the skills and resources to do miniature carpentry with leftover cardboard boxes, I didn’t want to be a working elf. I was Barbie’s protégé. I wanted life to be petal pink and easy.

It turns out that life isn’t pink and easy for most of us. It’s messy, more like the stable in which the Savior of mankind was born. We may not be sleeping in beds of straw, yet life can be just as uncomfortable as we try to navigate a world that has become increasingly callous and desensitized to the needs of others. While not surrounded by the hot, sticky breath of farm animals, the familiarity of constant demands breathing down our necks leaves us exhausted and empty. We may not be as materially impoverished as Jesus at his birth, yet the spiritual poverty of a world that focuses on getting more, doing more, owning and achieving more has left many of us longing for a sense of peace and purpose.

During the holidays, we are surrounded by abundance. Still, it’s easy to feel a scarcity underneath all of the glitter and getting. Did we buy enough? Did we get something for everyone on our list? Will we have time to make cookies? Are the three themed Christmas trees in our home clever enough to make little Johnny’s childhood perfect so he doesn’t end up in therapy? There are countless ways to feel like we won’t have enough time, money, or sanity to get through the demands of this extravagant season. Paradoxically, the humility of the Nativity scenes displayed in our homes, yards, and churches is a reminder that the birth of Jesus gave us everything we will ever need.

Christmas is not meaningful for the lavish indulgence of materialism that retailers commercialize, but for the humility of recognizing our need for a Savior. Jesus came to live among us. God becoming man to save us from sin is a transformative and pivotal moment for humanity. In the simplicity of the Nativity, there is a great deal being said. God dwells among us. Awe and astonishment aren’t under our Christmas trees but lying peacefully on top of a bed of hay.  Even well-meaning themes of generosity, family, and tradition pale in comparison to the importance of the incarnation. The Nativity scene offers a reprieve from excess and busyness. It’s a reminder that we can experience the nearness of Jesus by creating a manger for him in our own hearts — a space of inexhaustible joy, hope that will not disappoint, and a source of consolation for the sorrows of this world. Read more →

In the Middle – So Much Love

lpatangan

It was only a matter of weeks after our beloved family dog passed away at age 15 that I was researching lab rescues with the tenacity of a bloodhound on a hunt. My husband thought it was too soon and reminded me of the countless times I pledged I would never get another dog.

I didn’t want to want a dog. I didn’t want their hair that floated and coated every possible surface, or to operate as a reluctant doorman for an indecisive canine who couldn’t decide whether he wanted to be inside or out. Mostly, I wanted to avoid the crushing heartache of grief from losing a dog’s loyal and unyielding love when the inevitability of death came.

Yet the emptiness that filled my hairless house and my aching heart made these objections seem trivial. Within weeks, I adopted a three-year-old yellow lab from Labrador Retriever Rescue of Florida. He had been abandoned at a house in a rural county and was undergoing treatment for heartworms. He was mellow and acted older than his years. We called him Mack because he seemed rugged and manly like the Marlboro man, if he had been a truck driver instead of a nicotine-addicted cowboy peddling cigarettes from a horse. Besides, at 94 pounds, our new dog bore a certain likeness to a Mack truck.

During our first few months together, Mack wouldn’t go in the backyard alone, so I often sat outside with him for long stretches of time. He didn’t feel well because he was still recovering from heartworm treatment, so mostly we just sat together in that empty space of contemplation.  I often found myself looking over at where we had buried our beloved family dog and wondered if Mack was also thinking about someone he loved and lost.

It felt as if we were starting in the middle; in that tenuous space where we think we should know more than we do about ourselves and each other. His formative years were shaped by someone else. There are gaps and details of his previous life that remain a mystery.  It didn’t bother me to think that maybe he missed his other family. I miss having young children and the raucous black dog that fit so perfectly amid our pack. I didn’t need him to be the family dog or the best dog ever; life already blessed me with that. When we found out Mack needed knee surgery and has hip dysplasia, I didn’t lament his imperfections. My body had already shown me its share of its own. Read more →

Lost and Found

lpatangan

My earliest memory of Easter has nothing to do with chocolate bunnies or pastel church dresses with flowers and frills. It is about being lost. While the details are as fuzzy as a newly hatched chick, I was at an Easter egg hunt when I realized that although countless people surrounded me, I was utterly alone. I didn’t recognize anyone.

Not yet a master of catastrophizing, I wasn’t worried about being stolen or living on the streets with other vagrant preschoolers. Instead, I felt completely paralyzed – frozen in a moment of desolation that knew no spring.

While that was my earliest memory of feeling lost, there have been many others. Each time, I remember feeling as rotten as that one egg that no one at an egg hunt can find until its stench is so strong that you begin wondering if maybe there’s a dead body lying somewhere behind the azaleas.  Only, I’m the dead body. Or, in this case, the smelly egg.

Of course, we all want to focus on our great dye jobs or the flawless shell that hides these moments of desolation. But eventually, most of us encounter seasons or circumstances that can make life feel like a daily penance. The atonement of broken promises, strained relationships, disease, and death can feel both unfair and unbearable. Without faith, and sometimes even with it, it’s easy to feel lost.

The world moves fast, often without regard to who or what gets destroyed on its tornado-like path. Despite constant digital communications, meaningful relationships feel rare, and although we see an infinite number of images daily, most of us still feel unseen.  It seems like even the savviest navigator could get lost in a world such as this. Read more →

Losing Time is the Best Way to Bloom

lpatangan

I love to work in the yard. It makes me feel like the actor Edward Norton in the 1996 legal thriller, Primal Fear, even though that had nothing to do with gardening. Norton’s character, “Aaron/Roy” appears to have multiple personality disorder. As such, his attorney, actor Richard Gere, uses this diagnosis as Aaron/Roy’s defense in his murder trial.

You see, Aaron/Roy would “lose time,” and not remember important things such as whether or not he killed someone. I’m leaving a lot out because who can really remember 1996? The movie had a shocking and brilliant ending that fooled both Richard Gere and me.

Anyway, working in the yard doesn’t make me feel like a manipulative, sociopathic murderer with extra personalities but it is a way that I lose time. What’s remarkable about the lost time is that by forgetting so much of the outside world I somehow regain a truer sense of self.

In fact, over the years my viewpoint on plants has diverged into that of a whole new person.  I used to think plants were boring. My mom was always buying them and I couldn’t understand why if she wanted something colorful and pretty, she didn’t just purchase new lipstick. After all, why buy a flower when you can be the flower, so to speak?

It was a small kalanchoe from the grocery store that changed everything for me. It was a darling little plant with deep glossy scalloped leaves and clusters of tiny yellow flowers that were so perky I couldn’t help but want to protect it. Weeks turned into months and months into years and almost two decades later I still have that pretty plant. I have rooted it and multiplied it the way Jesus did when he miraculously multiplied the fishes and loaves, only I had to use dirt for my miracle. I potted clippings and gifted them to friends. Along the way, I became so knowledgeable about plants that I walk around Ace Hardware reciting the names of each flower I pass. I include fast facts about them that I have memorized over years of perusing those rectangular plastic inserts that list plant care instructions. Of course, I don’t do this out loud because that seems like something Edward Norton’s character would do and I hope to never need a lawyer, even one as handsome as Richard Gere.

Still, there’s something primal about gardening. It strips away all of the striving and securing; achieving and acquiring; materialism and mattering; that consumes so many of us. Those pursuits grow feelings of unworthiness, doubt, and insecurity. Even the lowly and despised weed has no time for such foolishness. There’s no pretension in the dirt — only promise. Everything is stripped down to necessity and what’s left is remarkably beautiful.

Perhaps it’s the deciduous plants, which after the long winter months sit like undressed skeletons waiting to be covered in the glory of new life that most inspire me.  To someone such as my former rather-buy-a-lipstick-self, it’s easy to see these plants for what they lack – the ways in which they too aren’t good enough. Yet watching the slow sprout of these perennials unlikely reemergence reminds me that even after seasons of desolation, loneliness, betrayal, and neglect which are a primal part of our human experience, we too can bloom again.

We don’t need to feel shamed by our vulnerability during these seasons of austerity. If we allow it, our emptiness exposes a different kind of beauty. It makes others want to care for us — not because we are incapable or weak but because God’s mercy is primal too. It motivates us to do the hard work of love so someone else can grow in its light.

In gardening and in life, this growth doesn’t happen on our timeline. While the world has taught us to want instant and now, meaningful change is often subtle and slow. The truly beautiful things in life aren’t manufactured. They exist in their own time defying expectations, demands, and worldly limitations, which are both too finicky and finite. Watching this transformation in nature is like witnessing the miracle that’s waiting to unfold in all of us. Only, we need less dirt and sunshine and more love and compassion to obtain our new life.

Gardening allows us to get to the root of what matters most. It reminds us of what we need to keep and what we need to shed. It shows us the places that need to die in order for something better to grow in its place. The miracle of so much clarity coming out of the dirt is perhaps its own kind of twisty Hollywood ending.  Only in this version, you get to bloom.

Hi all~ Happy Spring! Whether you like to garden or not, most of us can relate to what it’s like to experience seasons of desolation. With God, these times make us stronger and more beautiful. I try to remember that when I feel like an exposed stick poking up from the earth with no idea how I can possibly become anything else. Have faith. The becoming is the best part. ~ Love, Lara

P.S. — These are my hydrangeas from last summer. I have a serious addiction and last time I counted I had over 40 hydrangeas! (Not counting the one I bought last week!) 

P.S.S. — I would love to see your garden pics!

 

Rise to the Occasion

lpatangan

Hi ~ I thought I would send this a little early as I hope it will be a good reflection for Holy Week. I haven’t had the best Lent. It’s felt a lot like wanting to run but not having the endurance I need. So many stops and starts and even meanderings into driveways to pet random cats that it’s easy to feel like quitting. But one of the things I love about God’s mercy is that it allows us to start again, wherever we find ourselves. So that’s where I am this Holy Week — laying down my failures and preparing my heart for his rising that redeems us all. So if you are like me and huffing and puffing to the finish line ~ keep going. It’s never too late. love~Lara

Sitting on the couch one afternoon, I asked God what his will was for my life. Trying to answer such an important question sometimes feels as amorphous as wondering what life will be like in another millennium or what ice cream flavor best describes my personality. It’s both too big and too maddening to solve.

Besides, I was recovering from a stomach virus and feeling particularly puny so the only answer that kept going through my head to the weighty question of what God’s will was for my life was merely to lie down. It hardly seemed like a directive from God. Even a self-help guru would perhaps find the suggestion counterproductive. After all, we are Americans. We stand up. We work. We get it done. Lying down is not a solid life plan for anyone other than a cat.

Yet when I think of the glory of Jesus’s resurrection, I realize it was only by laying down his life that his miraculous rising was possible. While seemingly paradoxical, I think this is true for us too. By laying down resentment, expectations, estrangement, disappointment, ego, and envy we make life better for ourselves and others. The triumph of Easter was only possible because of the surrender that preceded it.

Since infancy when we balled our tiny hands into fists, it seems like our instinct has always been to hold tight. Conversely, surrender is a radical act of love, none more so than Jesus dying on the cross for our salvation. For many of us, surrender sounds wobbly and weak. Or gazing at the crucifix, it just seems painful. So, I get the great reluctance that surrender invokes. Yet the plain truth is we can’t rise without first laying down what we were never meant to carry. There is so much in life that we hold on to that entombs us. The more we lay down our hurts, put to rest both big and petty grievances, and surrender our whims for God’s Holy Will, the closer we are to our own rising. Read more →

Hope: It Means so Much More

lpatangan

When I was little, I thought the best gifts came in big boxes. If they were both taller and wider than me then I knew with certainty there was a great gift inside. Once I discovered shiny trinkets, I felt quite the opposite. It was tiny boxes that magnified the glimmer of something costly and precious that I most coveted.  Nowadays, I just buy my own gifts and I am not very particular about the shape or size of the box. I give them to my husband to wrap so he has an inkling of what he bought me, giving him special instructions to put any clothes in a gift bag in case I happen to need to wear them before Christmas.

I don’t pretend that any of this is romantic or that the Three Wise Men would be impressed with my self-giving. It just seems like a practical solution to the pressures of gift-giving. And, there’s so much pressure. So much of gift-giving feels transactional. Christmas lists have been replaced with links that specify everything from size to color. We ask people what they want so they won’t be disappointed or so we don’t waste money on something that would otherwise end up in the top shelf of the hall closet. Just as often, we give money as a gift because we’ve been conditioned that it’s the one-size-fits-all solution to the woes of the world.

We look to material things to convey the genuineness of our love and affection, and inevitably they feel inadequate. Perhaps that’s what the Grinch realized when he said, “Maybe Christmas doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas…means a little bit more.”  Yet it isn’t a little green man that I think about at Christmas no matter how wonderful it is that he converted from greed and grumpiness. It’s a baby in the manger. Read more →

Change your Tune: Better Self-Care

Jeannette Townsend

Hi all ~ Fall seems to be a particularly busy time of year for most of us so I thought this might be a good reminder to take some time to rest in God’s mercy (and also give you a reason to avoid hosting a dinner party!) Love and prayers to you all ~ Lara

I took piano lessons as I kid until the instructor told my mom she was wasting her money. The only thing he taught me to play was “Old McDonald Had a Farm,” which no one thinks is impressive no matter how passionately I play it for them. As such, I don’t claim to know much about music – other than I like it.

At home, I often ask “Alexa,” to play music for me. Alexa is the virtual assistant who likes to pretend she can’t hear me when I give her a command. She’s also a spy for the federal government who is convinced that me talking to my cat is some kind of secret code. Anyway, one day I was picking up around the house and I asked Alexa to play classical music. (When you play classical music in a dirty house the mess doesn’t feel as ordinary and since my family makes extraordinary messes it’s fitting background music.)

A few songs in, I heard a strange caterwauling sound, like two stray cats mating despite having a terrible time. I asked my husband where the peculiar sound was coming from and after a few minutes of concerted listening to these intermittent moans we realized that the sound was coming from Alexa. (We don’t have a cat named Alexa, so I am referring to the virtual assistant.)

It turns out, when I asked Alexa to play classical music, she picked a genre of music known as Classical Erotica. I was horrified. I briefly imagined the embarrassment of having people over for dinner with erotic music for ambiance. I added this to my long list of why I should avoid cooking.

But the whole thing made me wonder what else is seeping into our consciousness. What messages chosen by technology, the media, promoters, and influencers impact us in ways that if they were better examined actually contradict our values? What do we read, watch, or listen to that seems positive but is infiltrated with lies that are counter to what we know of God’s word?

One such message that comes to mind is the self-care movement that society uses to market everything from cosmetics to Caribbean vacations. On the surface there isn’t anything wrong with things that make us feel better. If God didn’t want us to rest, he would not have given us the Sabbath and commanded us to keep it. He wouldn’t have poured out his mercy to soothe the ache of hardships. Jesus wouldn’t have died for our sins if he was indifferent to how much it hurts us and others. He wouldn’t have shown us so many examples of compassion if he didn’t value the need for its respite.

Embracing these things, embracing Him, is the highest form of self-care we can experience. Immersing ourselves in His word, asking for his forgiveness, accepting his mercy, spending time in prayer, and emulating his gentle and generous Spirit offers a sustaining renewal that we can’t get from worldly things.

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Fly: An Easter People

lpatangan

Hi all~

As we go into the Easter Triduum I wanted to share this post with you. Holy Week reminds me so much of life. The coexistence of hardship, sacrifice, and sorrow with the joy of our faith, redemption, and forgiveness.

How can both things be true? How can life be so maddeningly hard, painful, and desolate and yet still be such a gift of grace with its merciful laughter, love, and promise? Jesus’ death is so sad and yet opens the door to a glory like no other. It’s really fantastic. 

So whatever season of life you find yourself in or however many seasons of life you are experiencing simultaneously, may you take this Easter Sunday to feel nothing but unparallel joy. Alleluia is your song, sweet friend. And, blessedly, it’s mine too. ~ love, Lara

P.S. — I just received an email from my publisher, Our Sunday Visitor,  that they are running a special on my book, Simple Mercies, until Friday. The book is $5 which is just about as cheap as dirt (unless you buy fancy potting soil kind of dirt. Then it’s even more of a bargain!)

Maybe pick some up for Divine Mercy Sunday gifts, book club, or heck, everyone you know!  Here’s their message and link: Get these books for only $5 each through Friday when you use promo code FIVE23 at checkout. Get free shipping (in the continental United States) when you spend $20 or more!

Fly: An Easter People

Sometimes I feel like a tiny bird with an injured leg from an encounter with the claws of a crazed cat.  I know how lucky I am to be here and how much worse things could be; yet, still, I carry a limp from my wounds that sometimes keep me tethered to the ground.  (I might start telling people that when they ask me how I am doing.)

Life is so messy and most of us try terribly hard to tidy what we can.  In its constancy, life can feel like a marathon, and like the tiny bird, we merely hop along.  One of my favorite quotes is from Saint John Paul II who said: “We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.”  It conveys such unparallel joy – a skyward ascent of heavenly praise.  It hardly makes me think of hopping.

Indeed, we are an Easter people and we are meant to rise.  Lent is a time to unload the burden of sin we carry.  It’s a time to shed the miscellaneous and the excess.  It is a time to reconnect to God by disconnecting from our distractions.  Sometimes the Lenten experience feels empowering like a strenuous workout or the purging of an overstuffed closet.  Other times, it just feels hard.  All the emptying, sacrificing, and sustaining from a 40-day reflection can feel too austere for a hallelujah song.  No sweet little bird chirps that indicate winter’s hibernation is over.  Just a half-hearted hop, hop.  Yet Easter is coming – not just at the end of this Lenten season.  Also, at the end of our lives.  In between, in the thicket of life’s doing and undoing, we rise.  Amidst the momentary affliction of life’s messiness, we remain upright.  “Arise, for it is your task, and we are with you; be strong and do it,” (Ezra 10:4).  Even when it’s hard or feels impossible — when there is not enough money, not enough time, not enough of your poor tired soul to go around — be strong and rise.

Jesus did the impossible.  He did the miraculous.  He transformed death.  The finality of it was made infinite.  Hallelujah is our song.  It may not always feel like it, but our time on earth is nothing but a rising.  We are enduring people.  Our suffering does not define us. Our injuries do not bind us.  Challenges, adversity, and wounds cannot stop our ascent.  “Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise,” (Micah 7:8).  We are the Easter people.  It’s not just Christ’s resurrection we have to celebrate, it is the possibility of our own.  Easter isn’t just a day culminating the end of Lent.  It’s an everyday.  The shedding of our burdens, the surrendering of suffering at the foot of his cross, and the unification of our souls to his, is what makes our rising possible.  It’s what helps us to remember that even in our brokenness, we are an Easter people and we still have wings to fly.

Hallelujah. 

Ugly Tree, Happy Memory: Birth of Redemption

lpatangan
Hi all ~
If you’ve experienced suffering (and who hasn’t) then maybe you already know how God can transform it into something beautiful. It took me a while to figure this out but now it shines bright like 1,000 twinkling lights on a puny tree in things that I know — really know.
May you know it too. And, rejoice!
Merry Christmas! ~ Love, Lara
In high school, I remember driving to the Christmas tree lot with my mom. It was close to Christmas so by the time we arrived the only trees left looked like they belonged on the Island of Misfit Toys — assuming the island’s castoffs were conifers instead of spotted stuffed elephants, a wannabe dentist elf named Hermey, and a choo-choo train with square wheels. These trees were lopsided and skinny with dehydrated needles that fell off if you brushed against them.  Even in the dark with the blurring glare coming from street traffic and the strings of lights snaking their way from the mouths of fluorescent orange extension cords, you could tell the trees were ugly.

So, of course, my mom bought one.

And, I know Charlie Brown’s sparse Christmas tree with a single red bulb ornament evokes a certain sort of nostalgia that reminds us of the true meaning of Christmas. But I was a teenager. I hadn’t lived long enough to acknowledge there is beauty in the broken. I still saw the world as two-dimensional. Black and white. Good or evil. Generous or selfish. Happy or sad. All of the color that exists between things just felt chaotic and confusing.

I had yet to reconcile how Jesus could be born a King in the midst of smelly farm animals or why he would love a bunch of sinners or give us free will to decide whether to love him back or why he would choose forgiveness over justice.  Basically, I didn’t understand redemption, neither the ugly Christmas trees nor my own.

Over the years, I’ve experienced the way our sufferings — those unwelcome feelings of loneliness, loss, rejection, and disappointment can be transformed into something beautiful. I’ve seen how we become strong in our weakness; compassionate in our sorrow; and how hard times soften us. All of life’s brokenness that we don’t want, don’t deserve, and didn’t ask for, has a way of making us more whole when we let God’s love and mercy transform our suffering. We celebrate Jesus’s birth at Christmas and it is new and shiny and hopeful. But he didn’t come here to be shiny. He came to save. The reason we celebrate his life is that ultimately, he redeems ours with his death.

That’s heavy stuff to ponder when we can easily focus on stacks of presents, twinkling lights, or perfectly decorated Christmas trees.  But I tell you it’s the best part of Christmas – this realization that redemption is continuously available to us. This knowing that with God there’s a place for misfits and that no matter what we’ve done or how far we’ve strayed, God isn’t going to isolate us on some snowy island. He’s going to embrace us with the warmth of his love. Transformation that adds color and dimension to the pieces of our hearts which have become flat and jaded is possible. This is the redemption that is born on Christmas Day and that is available to us throughout the year.

This is the redemption that I couldn’t recognize as a teenager but that I see all these years later when I think of my mom as a single parent taking me to pick out a tree. On the car ride home, we laughed about the mostly dead evergreen we just bought. We decorated it and with its gaping holes and spindly leaves, it stood as a lopsided witness to that year’s Christmas.  All these years later it still stands in my memory – an ugly tree; a happy memory.  In between, the birth of redemption.

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True Gratitude Can’t be Captured in a Glossy Catalog

lpatangan

Happy Almost Thanksgiving! 

If you are in frantic, freak-out mode, please know that’s how I feel every night when I have to cook dinner! And, yet somehow we all eat.

Below is my most recent post in The Florida Times-Union. It’s all about sturdy gratitude – the kind that’s imperfect and the kind we tend to need most because life can often be more freak out than fine china.

Enjoy this holiday and the many blessings in your life. And, know that I count you among mine. ~ Love, Lara

On Thanksgiving, it’s easy to wonder why the picture of your holiday sometimes looks like a dysfunctional diorama instead of a page out of the Pottery Barn catalog. The mute, lifeless images of a burning hearth, spice-scented candles, tables set with garlands of leaves, vases of burnt-colored flowers, and origami-shaped napkins folded into gold leaf-embossed rings set an impossible standard.

Sometimes I wonder if they look so perfect because there aren’t actually people in those images.

As the annual host of my family’s Thanksgiving, I send a group text the Sunday night before the big holiday and ask everyone what they are bringing. We push two picnic tables together in the backyard and set up another folding table with mismatched chairs. Because I’m fancy and I read my mom’s discarded issues of Southern Living magazine, I cover the tables with tablecloths and do my best to make some kind of centerpiece out of what I can find in the yard or lanterns that I keep in the garage. I buy paper plates with harvest designs along with complementing cutesy paper napkins and I congratulate myself on my hosting skills.

And, I’m grateful.

It’s not that I can’t appreciate all of the fineries. It’s just that one of the things I’m most grateful for is that I’ve learned to accept imperfection and even see the strength in it. The way it shines despite being more Goodwill than good china.

It’s easy to think of gratitude as only the best things in life — the pretty pictures and perfect settings. The prestigious titles, gifted children, and magazine-perfect houses – any of the colorful accolades or achievements that we can fan like prize turkeys are easily recognized as blessings. But genuine abiding gratitude, the kind that sustains us through loss, disappointment, and failure isn’t showy so much as it is sturdy. It’s the kind of gratitude we cultivate by noticing the way big things appear small like the simplicity of a goodnight kiss or how the hungry feel after a hot meal no matter how mediocre it tastes. It’s the gratitude the grieving feels to have loved so deeply; the appreciation the lonely have for the person who for a moment made them feel seen, or the relief a young person experiences when they feel accepted.

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