Light, Joy, and Distractions

We got to light candles in mass today!!! It was super exciting. I felt like a little kid again. I think I've been to a mass where we lit candles like twice before ever, and it was forever ago. One may have even been an entire candlelit mass... Anywho. I was super excited. My sister looked at me like I was crazy cuz I had this stupid grin on my face :)

I didn't take a picture during mass, so I took a picture of a random candle and drew a flame on it for you :)

First, a lesson I wanna take away from that particular experience. Finding joy in the little things. It doesn't make sense that lighting a candle would make me so happy, but it happened :) partially cuz it was out of the ordinary.

Another example of finding joy in the little things happened last night. I was working (I'm a cashier), and this family came through buying birthday party supplies. I started talking to the older girl, who's turning 9 in a week or two. And then the younger sister, turning 5 in March, started telling me her life's story :) the older sister was obviously feeling like her younger sister was embarrassing her, but she was just so cute!! The younger one said she was gonna have cake at her party, so I acted all excited and asked if I could come. She's like yeah, go ask your mom!!! Right as they were leaving, she gave me some feathers she had found on the floor. I put them next to my register to "keep them safe" :) oh my goodness, she made my day. Little kids are just the greatest.

Anywho. Back to mass :)

In the homily, the priest talked about "worldviews." Now, I didn't really follow most of what he said, but it made me think of "being in the world, but not of the world." On the way to mass, I had been thinking of all the things I need to go buy for this or that or the other thing, what clothing sales might be going on, is there anything I need to run into work to buy, etc. But then I reminded myself, it's Sunday. I'm not going shopping today. I have next Saturday off, I can go then.

A post I read recently on All Our Lemmony Things talked about how we are a distracted people. You just gotta go check what that Facebook notification is about, or watch that TV in the corner of the waiting room even though it's muted. There's so many things flying around, and it makes it hard to focus on Christ. It makes it hard to pray (I have that problem). It's hard to be "in the world, but not of the world." But, especially on Sundays, we need to make a special effort to remove ourselves from those distractions. Don't pull up Facebook. Turn your back to the TV. Shut off the radio. Turn off your phone, if you need to. Focus first on Christ, and second on the very real people around you. They're more important than your Facebook friends.

<3 Marie-Rose