For four decades of lessons.

This past Saturday, post-consult with God, I gave notice at church that this shall be my last school year teaching Catechism. I felt it was time to pass the torch. My decision, although not an easy one, was guilt-free. A sure sign that it was the right one.

I could have not stuck it out all these years without the understanding of my home team. Ray, Lauren, and Danny, I am most grateful to you, not only for being so accepting of my commitment, but for volunteering your time as well. It’s been a family labor of love for sure.

I am also grateful to our CCD Director, Leyla Mazpule, and to our parish pastor, Father Lopez, for allowing me to share my faith with the kids, and for their continued support during my years of service at Sts. Peter & Paul Catholic Church.

The weekly classes did not come without challenges, of course. They did, also, come with many blessings. Throughout the years, I taught many kids whose kids, in turn, became my students. Living through that circle of life was one of those blessings. As was seeing many of them return to CCD to volunteer their time, making it possible for us to share and grow in our faith journey together. And those I’ve encountered years later and told me that something I said in class made a difference in their lives (somehow)? Well, that’s been icing on the cake.

But, among the many blessings, more importantly are the lessons they’ve taught ME. Lessons that raise my teaching bar week after week. Like the fact that judging a book by its cover is a total waste of time, as my first-day-of-class preconceptions of them typically were torn to pieces by class number two. That patience is a virtue and it should come in the form of injection. And that what I know is not as important to them as how much I care.

I will miss it. I will miss them.

As my “catechist” calling draws to an end, I look forward to wherever God’s path of service leads me next.

Meanwhile, for this most gracious opportunity, invaluable experience, and four decades worth of lessons from my students, today and always, Lord, I am thankful.

What are you thankful for today?

Until next Thursday’s post…si Dios quiere.

“Let all that you do be done in Love.”
-1 Corinthians 16:14

“The reality is that the Lord never calls the qualified; He qualifies the called.”
-H.T. Blackaby

“We email, Facebook, tweet and text with people who are going to spend eternity in either heaven or hell. Our lives are too short to waste on mere temporal conversations when massive eternal realities hang in the balance. Just as you and I have no guarantee that we will live through the day, the people around us are not guaranteed tomorrow either. So let’s be intentional about sewing the threads of the gospel into the fabric of our conversations every day, knowing that it will not always be easy, yet believing that eternity will always be worth it.”
-D. Platt

“Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love.”
-Therese de Lisieux

It’s been quite a ride and an honor.

For everything and everyone.

It’s Thankful Thursday and it’s Thanksgiving Day. Enough said.

Wishing all of us a blessed day accompanied by those we love…present in body and spirit.

Until next Thursday’s post…si Dios quiere.

“Since God is with us, and our loved ones are with Him – then they’re not very far away.”

For each new morning with its light,
for rest and shelter of the night,
for health and food, for love and friends,
for everything Thy goodness sends.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”
– G.K. Chesterton

For the roof over our heads.

My family was displaced a couple of times in the course of exile. Both for political and economic reasons. At one point, at the age of six, I remember sitting on the floor of an airport in a foreign European city not knowing where to go or what would come next. We had fled from a suffocating communist island to catch our breath in a socialist nation. All part of a plan to eventually reach a free country some years later, where we knew we would have to start from scratch yet again.

This is why global circumstances, like the displacement of people world over, overwhelm me with gratitude, because my kids are blessed to have a roof over their heads. And also with compassion, no doubt, regardless of my political stance on the issues, because I know how grueling and exhausting a process it is.

But being an immigrant is not for the faint of heart. It took my parents faith, vision, sacrifice, hard work, and patience in the process (extraordinary patience), to establish a home in Spain and finally in the USA, and bounce us back on our feet each and every time.

Sometimes, there are no winners or losers, just a lot of heartbreak, sweat, and tears. And unfortunately much division. This week a Facebook friend posted a question to her religious friends: “If Jesus was walking the Earth today would He be at a Trump rally or walking with the caravan?”

What kind of question is that, I thought. Jesus is everywhere! I pray He gives us all guidance.

Meanwhile, for the roof my parents always sought to put over our heads, today and always, I am eternally grateful.

What are you thankful for today?

Until next Thursday’s post…si Dios quiere.

“I do not think we know our own strength
until we have seen how strong love makes us.”

“The fish,
Even in the fisherman’s net,
Still carries,
The smell of the sea.”
-M.Barghouti 

For angels. Some show up at the right place and the right time to help us in some way, and then disappear never to be seen again. Some, we can’t see, but we feel guiding us and protecting us.

These divine messengers watch over us day in day out. I like the thought of that. What an incredibly thoughtful and merciful idea that was, Lord. Thank You!

What are you thankful for today?

Until next Thursday’s post…si Dios quiere.

“When our mortal eyes close on this world for the last time, our angels open our spiritual eyes and escort us personally before the face of God.”
-E. E. Freeman

“The unlikeliest people harbor halos beneath their hats.”
-Anonymous

“These things I wish for you; someone to love, some work to do, a bit o’ sun, a bit o’ cheer and, a Guardian Angel always near.”
-Irish Blessing

For inconveniences.

This morning, I woke up to a wheel-less car. The craft of stealth-like individuals quick at work last night, almost NASCAR pit road-style. Ugh!