Last April, some people liked my posts on Facebook, and suggested that I start a blog. I prayed about it, and it occurred to me that the people I could reach out to with faith on a blog could be anywhere in the world. A friend agreed to help me with Weebly. So I took a step forward in faith, though part of me, scared, wanted to hang behind. I started my blog as my contribution to evangelization.
Dorothy Day, renowned American journalist, social activist, founder of "The Catholic Worker" and the Catholic Worker movement, strong advocate for the poor, and a devout Catholic convert, said once that to write is to act.
Writing is one of my ways of acting to faithfully love God and God's people.
Night after night, I take another step forward in faith, into my study. I sit in front of my computer and look at the empty screen, which waits for me to press the keys below it so it can light up, alive again. Some nights I feel so tired and drained that I have no ideas. Some nights my stats - the number of people who've checked out my blog each day - are so low that I want to quit.
When I want to give up, I say to myself "You don't know who reads your blog, who receives an insight that helps them, or inspires them, or gives them a moment's peace. Keep going."
Maybe that's stubbornness. Maybe that's God. Maybe that's God using my stubbornness.
Dorothy Day knew about that urge to quit. She spoke about writing, and her words can apply to anything we love and want to do, but we've lost enthusiasm, may have lost the courage to go on trying: "Writing is hard work. But if you want to become one, nothing will stop you."
I stopped writing for years. My time is valuable now; I don't know how much time I have left. I won't stop this time.
Night after night, I ask God the Holy Spirit to send me the words that will touch people's hearts and souls. I look at photos from different sites that I've downloaded. One will spark a tiny light. And the ideas and words begin, flaring from so deep inside me I could never find my way there alone. My tiny, almost-daily miracle has happened again.
To me it's a miracle that I don't quit writing my blog. It's a miracle that God sends me the words that set my heart, mind, and fingers on fire. I'm in His hands. It's up to Him to show me how my gift of writing is to be used. And if one soul is touched somewhere, I am content. If someone unexpectedly tells me "I got so much out of your blog today," I know it's God, shoring me up, telling me I am supposed to keep going.
As Mother Teresa says, "God has not called me to be successful. He called me to be faithful." God has not called us to be successful as the world defines success: money and power and fame. God defines success as faithful love. And when we place ourselves in His hands, and then step out to love faithfully, He uses us to produce little, daily miracles.
Loving faithfulness can literally save a life. My friend, who is a pediatric nurse, tells me that many times in the hospital she saw infants close to death, whom the Doctors said would never survive, suddenly begin to recover and thrive - because of the simple act of faithfully being held and loved, skin to skin, by a relative.
When you distribute food to the poor in a food pantry, or help a difficult relative, don't just do the work. Remember faithful, loving kindness. Dorothy Day the activist, who worked with and for the poor and the mentally ill, said "Charity is only as warm as those who distribute it." Loving kindness is what makes the difference and produces little miracles of people feeling loved, wanted, important, children of God.
Our greatest lack of faith occurs when we think that the little faithful acts of kindness that we do daily aren't very important. That the positive changes we make in our own lives, our daily acts of kindness to ourselves, only matter to us. That underestimates the power of God at work in us. The human race would have annihilated itself by now if human beings, sustained by God, hadn't woven a a living web of faithful, loving kindness that stretches from pole to pole, across the globe.
So don't give up. Whatever you do faithfully, with great love, is producing daily miracles. Trust yourself. Trust God!