Obstacles

As I’m sure was the case for many of our readers, this was our family’s weekend to take down Christmas decorations and restore the house to some semblance of order and cleanliness. In addition to taking down the tree (sniff, sniff) and packing away the decorations, we also urged our children to find a home for their new toys, tidy up their rooms, and decide if there was anything that needed to be given away or thrown away. In the midst of all of the rearranging, my husband made the comment that he was ready to get rid of the rug that has been sitting in our living room for the past 3+ years. It has never really matched the furniture or the style of the room, but we had nowhere else to put it and as so often happens in life, inertia has taken over and we have grudgingly let it occupy a huge part of our home for way too long. Until today. We moved the coffee table, rolled up the carpet, and decided to sell or give it away as soon as possible. Wow, that was easy! The living room already feels much more open, and we can imagine the possibilities for designing a more functional space in a way that we couldn’t do when the rug was there. What took us so long?

I think that our spiritual lives can often be much like the above scenario. There is something glaringly obvious standing in the way of spiritual progress, but we are hesitant to change because of fear, a lack of creativity, or just plain laziness. Or at least this is true in my case – I shouldn’t speak for anyone other than myself. The amazing thing is that the big obstacles are often quite easy to avoid or remove. The flesh might be weak, but when it comes down to it, removing obstacles does not always involve Herculean efforts. Is the computer getting in the way of that prayer time I committed to mid-afternoon? Why don’t I just turn off the computer for 30 minutes every afternoon? Do I keep forgetting to go to Confession on Saturday afternoons because I don’t have it written down in my planner? Why don’t I just go ahead and schedule it in red pen right now, removing the obstacle of forgetfulness? These resolutions are not terribly complicated, yet they could yield tremendous fruit.

I acknowledge that there are many parts of our lives that are complicated, and in these areas change can be more difficult. Long-time habits and patterns of behavior can be very challenging to break, and we may struggle against them for our entire lives. But not all obstacles fall into this category, and like the rug that is now rolled up in my front hallway, we should do our best to get rid of them so that we can move forward with our lives.

God bless all of you on this Monday morning! Mary, Mother of Perpetual Help, pray for us!