WEEK ONE:

"There may be times when we appear to be wasting our precious life and burying our talents. Our lives are utterly wasted if we use only the light of reason. Our life has no meaning unless we look at Christ in his poverty. Today when everything is questioned and changed, let us go back to Nazareth. Jesus had come to redeem the world-- to teach us that love of His Father. How strange that He should spend thirty years just doing nothing, wasting His time! Not giving a chance to his personality or to his gifts, for we know that at the age of twelve, He silenced the learned priests of the Temple, who knew so much and so well. But when his parents found him, He went down to Nazareth and was subject to them."

-- Mother Teresa, quoted in Prayertimes with Mother Teresa, by Eileen Egan and Kathleen Egan, O.S.B. (NY: Image Books, 1989)

Being an adult can be weary work. Often, obedience to a higher authority is required, be it the government, our parents, our job security, even rules of personal hygiene. Make a list this week of your daily, weekly, monthly and even annual "submissions." Meditate over this list, then, and play around with categorizing the tasks. (For example, fun vs. drudgery, religious vs. secular, things you do well vs. things you do not do well, and so on.)

Journaling Questions:
How might these categories shift with the new baby?
Whose expectations cause such shifts?
Does this affect your submission to God as Lord and Savior?

Bible Verses for Additional Meditation:
Psalm 40                     John 13:1-17

Prayer:
Lord, lift my eyes and help me see Your hands offering to me Your divine Help. Remind me that I have never been truly alone, that you are always by my side. Where I have submitted myself to You unknowingly, where I have deliberately rejected Your help, where I have yearned for Your help but been unable to ask, have mercy on me and restore to me the grace of Your wisdom. Give me the humility to discern your will for my life. Amen.