I was really pissed off this past week because someone told others that we did something but we did not. It was like a slap in the face to hear this news. When I heard about this I couldn’t sleep that night; I replayed everything in my head over and over. I held onto that anger for a week.

Then on Sunday, I went to mass by myself because my son was out of town and my daughter watched it online because she likes the homilies/sermons from our former pastor in Minnesota. I was still wound-up tight about the allegation from earlier in the week and so when I saw that we had a visiting priest, my expectations were very low. At some point during the mass, the priest talks to us (it’s like a break between the rituals), I like referring to that part as the homily but it is also referred to as a sermon. The visiting priest started the homily with a story about a boy. {Side note: this is a paraphrased version and I did the best I could to remember the important parts of the homily}. This boy went to the local toy store and bought a model of a ship so that he could build it. Because he lived on a farm, there were irrigation lines that ran like small rivers so he placed his ship on the water line and ran along side of the ship until he could no longer keep up. The next time he went to the toy store, he saw his ship in the store window. He told the toy shop owner that it was his ship and he could check the bottom of the ship because he carved his name there. The shop owner told the boy that someone had found the ship and sold it to him and so he is now selling the ship. Even though the boy insisted that it was his boat, the only option left was to buy the ship back, so he did. He treasured the ship even more the second time around.

Don’t we all empathize for this poor kid? The happy ending was only that the kid treasured his ship even more the second time. I wished something awesome happened for the kid; I wasn’t quite satisfied with that ending. Then the priest equated the story to God creating all of us like the ship. We go off on the water and live life experiencing good and bad things. When we come to the end of our life, Jesus is there to buy us back so that we can go back to Heaven, where we would be treasured even more by God because we came back to him after our time away. In the priest’s analogy, Jesus doesn’t use money to buy us back, he sacrificed his life for us as his payment to get us back to God. Whoa, I didn’t see that analogy coming and I certainly didn’t expect to be totally fine with the kid buying the ship back either.

The homily didn’t stop there. The priest went on to say that we could offer up our suffering to God/Jesus like we offer up prayers. What? I had never heard of that. Why would we tell the big guy that we are suffering when he’s already got a lot going on? The priest’s example had to do with him getting his blood drawn when he was in the hospital. He hates needles, he hates shots, he hates everything about the process but it was necessary for him to have a needle stuck in him in order to move onto the next steps. So he told us he decided to “offer up” his suffering for this blood withdrawal to God in honor of three people who he was mad at or was having trouble with. Before the nurse stuck the needle in arm, he silently said the names of these three people and offered up his suffering for them. The nurse put the needle in the priest’s arm and he felt unusual pain because the nurse missed the vein. So the nurse tried again and missed the vein again. The priest realized that these three people must have really needed his prayers because he was suffering a lot for them. Finally this nurse got another, more experienced nurse and the blood withdrawal was a success. Third time was the charm! I ate that homily up - hook, line and sinker. I related because I totally look for signs from God when I’m suffering. Three blood withdrawal attempts for three people is a definite sign that God was listening to what he was offering.

I was very grateful for my hour in church that day. I don’t usually go to church because I expect to leave with something; I go to give thanks for all that I receive on the daily. After mass, I quickly recorded, using the video feature on my phone, the story of the boy with the ship for my family. I’m going to send the video to them as a thoughtful pinch because I think it is a powerful comparison to our faith. In time, after I digest the second part of the homily more throughly, I think I can pass the needle story onto my family as well. I believe the timing of this visiting priest wasn’t a coincidence; I needed to hear these two messages at that exact moment in my life.

And even though the homily wasn’t a direct message of how I should handle the pissed off feelings I have had this past week, it reminded me that those people need my prayers more now than they did before. So I prayed for them while I was already praying for those I love. It’s very hard to pray for people who wrong us or who are our enemies but it is the right thing to do. And today, as I marched in a “Marade” (Martin Luther King Jr. + parade = Marade), I saw posters with my favorite quote:

That was a pinch from MLK Jr. reminding me that I already have a lot to carry, I don’t have the room on my shoulders to hate. It’s much lighter for me to love. Thanks MLK Jr.

Pinches,

Barb