Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace

Do you ever have those moments where, when you look back on them, you can't even remember what you were thinking at the time, in a good way? Like something or Someone else had taken you over for awhile to accomplish something amazing?

I had that on Saturday night. As I mentioned in the most recent quick takes, I went on a Youth retreat as a Lifeteen Core member with a bunch of grade 9-12s. Now, I think Lifeteen gets a bad rap sometimes; yes, sometimes parishes can do Lifeteen badly, and you end up splitting the Church, and teaching liturgical abuse to teens. But I really like it in my Parish. We have people across all age groups that attend our 6pm Sunday Mass, music that, while it isn't Gregorian Chant, is not "I'm Trading My Sorrows (Say What?)", and a bunch of really fantastic teenagers who are (hopefully) learning a bunch.

We had 35 people from 14-31 years old--the thirty-somethings being our Youth Minister and our Priest--bunk down at a camp over the weekend. We talked about St. Paul and his conversion experience. How he had to give a lot of things up. How neither the Jews, nor the Christians (at first anyways) wanted him. How, after he got literally knocked to the ground by God, he still had to make the same choice to follow Him the next day.

So I told them my story. Except, it wasn't really me doing the talking. I had next to nothing written down, but my talk was smooth and coherent, and they were all listening. It was the Holy Spirit. So now I'm praying that my story can help some of those kids not make the same choices I made. Choices like pre-marital sex at 16. Choices like choosing boys over friends. Choices like choosing partying over everything else, just to fill the emptiness. Choices like thinking that a human boy could fill the hole in my heart that only God can fill.

Those were my choices. I'm grateful and filled with joy to say that those are not the choices that I make now. I got "knocked down" by God when he used a radio ad to bring me to the Evangelical church, which He used to finally get me to see that He is so in love with me, that He just wants to be with me. But it was a struggle to go against my old ways, a struggle that I continue to do everyday. But still, those choices are part of who I was. Who I am. My heart is glad at the thought that they can be used to make someone else's path a bit straighter.

Romans 8:28 - "God works all things to the good for those who love Him, and who are called according to His purpose."

I pray that this is the good that came out of those things in my past.