I am a critical person, especially when physical pain rears its ugly head. I am also an appreciative person who savors the different flavors and fragrances that each of my friends and acquaintances bring to my life... but when I'm sick, I can be quietly and severely critical.

I come from a family of critical people -- good people --loving people -- kind people -- but opinionated and perfectionistic people, too. They've left scars on me... and I've left scars on them. I would hazard the guess that you, my reader, come from a similar background.

Today, during my Communion with Jesus, I sensed Him showing me something important I need to do.

I need to stop being critical!

I need to look beyond the things that irritate and exasperate me about my parents and family and neighbors and church family, and I need to start more earnestly and keenly appreciating them as God's handiwork -- as marvels and wonders and masterpieces.

I also need to finally come to grips with the fact that they are human .

Oh, I do this already... on days when I feel good, and when I'm mellow and feeling oh so benevolent. How very generous of me!

I need to sit down -- with pen and paper -- and list the many wonderful attributes of my parents, family, neighbors, friends, and church family.

I need to savor the glories and wonders of these precious gifts whom God has placed in my life.

I need to THANK GOD for each person, and for just exactly who they are, and accept them right where they are.

This is so much easier for me to do about my email friends than it is for me to do about my family.

Sometimes our harshest critics are our own family members. Most of the time the people who have caused us the greatest pain and anguish and lack of love are our own family.

For true peace to come to this troubled world, we need peace inside our own hearts.

For true peace to come to this troubled heart of mine, I need to stop criticizing and start appreciating those around me -- especially those who have hurt me most, those who have criticized me most. Not easy!! I need to see them through the loving gaze of Jesus.

My favorite saint is St. Therese of Lisieux. Like me, she was tempted to being (acting) irritated with people who did irritating or unloving things.

Do you know what she used to do to combat this fault in herself? She used to offer that most irritating person's virtues up to God as an act of praise and thanksgiving for His handiwork in that person!

I need to do this!

Of course God is pleased when we admire His handiwork! And everybody, and I do mean everybody has at least one virtue.

Please pray for me to be able to truly and sincerely appreciate those who have hurt me... and I will pray for you to be able to do the same. Let's bring joy to Abba's heart by learning to love with our whole hearts those who have hurt us!

Teach us to count our days aright, that we may gain wisdom of heart. Relent, O LORD! How long? Have pity on your servants! Fill us at daybreak with your love, that all our days we may sing for joy. Make us glad as many days as you humbled us, for as many years as we have seen trouble. Show your deeds to your servants, your glory to their children. May the favor of the Lord our God be ours. Prosper the work of our hands! Prosper the work of our hands!

Now that I am getting over the dreaded and infernal flu that held me in its iron grip over the past couple of weeks, I have been taking more pictures with my new digital camera. This (digital photography) is so much more fun than film photography for me at this time, because I get to see "instant" results. Also, it helps me hone my photo composition skills, etc. I look forward to learning more and more and MORE about photography. I just hope that my ankle and Achille's heel will heal in time for me to do some leaf peeping and picture taking this autumn.

Here is a picture I took of myself this week.

Psalms 86,3-6.9-10.

You are my God; pity me, Lord; to you I call all the day.
Gladden the soul of your servant; to you, Lord, I lift up my soul.
Lord, you are kind and forgiving, most loving to all who call on you.
LORD, hear my prayer; listen to my cry for help. All the nations you have made shall come to bow before you, Lord, and give honor to your name. For you are great and do wondrous deeds; and you alone are God.

In less than three months, barring a miraculous healing (which I do continue to pray for!), it will mark my 23rd anniversary of becoming ill with (and disabled and challenged by) an insidious, enigmatic illness called by a pathetic name: chronic fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome. Believe me, the name does NOT do the pain or the overwhelming, mind-numbing exhaustion justice at all!

I am descended from a long line of perfectionistic over-achievers. I have felt the back-crushing weight of high expectations placed on me by family members and other authority figures.

As far as personality types go, I am a chronic people-pleasing-peacemaker. If I were in the work place, I would no doubt be in middle management, suffering ulcers and nervous breakdowns.

It is my strong conviction and opinion (oh, and having an opinion is a whole 'nother topic that I could launch into a veritable hurricane of a diatribe about!) -- I digress. It is my strong conviction and opinion that even though God did not cause the evil of this illness, still He permits me to have it that great, wildly unimaginable good might come of it -- for me, for my family, for my children should I ever be blessed with any.

In short, I think that my having CFIDS is the Lord God's way of saying to me and to my family (and perhaps to some of my friends who suffer from similar tendencies) that THE BUCK STOPS HERE .

No more basing my self-worth on "doing" all those things that my grandparents and parents and aunts and uncles, teachers, et al. deemed critically important.

In the eyes of the world, I am an utter failure. It is impossible for me to do any of the things that The World thinks makes a person a "success".

In Adolf Hitler's way of thinking, I would be considered a "useless eater".

But, in the eyes of the Lord God, Maker of Heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen... I am precious and beloved. He has adopted me and taken me to His Heart and He has sung a million songs over me.

What mother among you, when her baby is weak and feeble and crying from illness, despises or disdains her child? Doesn't a mother all the more hold her infant to her heart? Isn't the child all the more precious, beloved, and dear to her because of its utter helplessness and dependence upon her? Of course it is!

And so it is with the Lord God, Who is the Maker of Mothers.

He knows better than anyone that all of the "good" things we do are as filthy rags.

He knows better than we do (oh! how we delude and fool ourselves by failing to remember this!) that we can do absolutely nothing apart from Him.

He knows better than we do when we need to rest and to just simply "be" , even when simply "being" is very, very painful.

When we are quiet and simply being, we can't drown out the noise of our pain and misery with being "busy".

When we are simply "being", we have to be quiet and stop clutching at "earning" our salvation by "our" works. We learn the meaning of salvation being a gift from God, an absolutely unmerited grace . It's really God's mercy (albeit a severe mercy, as C. S. Lewis put it) that He allows us to suffer, and that we find ourselves having to rest and be quiet and empty our hands of all the many un-necessary tasks and busy-nesses which we cling to foolishly as to a life rope.

Our Daddy will have us know that we are precious, beloved, and oh-so-dear to Him -- but not because of what we do , but rather because of what we are ... His adopted children.

It is very, very, VERY difficult for us Productivity-Obsessed Americans to get a handle on the fact that we are special to our Heavenly Father simply because He chooses to love us.

We have raised productivity to the level of a religion, a false god, an idol. Is it any wonder that we Americans suffer so much stress and so many physical ailments, so much lack of peace?

We need to learn how to be God's children. And being God's children means learning to be still and to know that He is God -- that He is our loving Daddy, and that He loves us ... just "because".

Humbling, isn't it? :)

Our Daddy loves us when we are sleeping!

Our Daddy loves us even when we aren't earning college degrees!

Our Daddy loves us even when we aren't making a six figure income!

Our Daddy loves us even when we don't do NECESSARY things, like washing dishes, cooking dinner, doing laundry, and cleaning the toilet!

Our Daddy loves us even when we are emotionally miserable and cranky and in general a great pain in the rear to the rest of our family and to humanity in general!

Our Daddy loves us when we are in pain - whether that pain be physical, emotional, or spiritual (or all three, as all go together)!

Our Daddy loves us when we are spinning out of control!

Our Daddy loves us when we turn to Him and say, "I need You, Daddy!"

Our Daddy loves us when everything we try to do right ends up all wrong!

Our Daddy loves us every day,every hour, every minute, every second, every nano-second!

In other words, our Daddy loves us ALL OF THE TIME!!! In other words, our Daddy loves us ALWAYS ... not just if, when, or because we are "doing" good things and "feeling" good feelings.

Today, know and fix in your heart and in your mind that the Lord God -- your Heavenly Daddy -- the Maker and Sustainer of Heaven and Earth -- loves YOU radically because just the fact that He choose to create you and give you life means that He loves you. He has chosen to love YOU. Don't argue with Him 'bout that! You'll just lose! Why prolong finding out how madly in love He is with you?!

Today, I warmly encourage you to give yourself permission to let God love you just for who you are, without casting stones at yourself for failing to be "productive". And I ask you to pray for me to be able to do the same.

Today, Tuesday, September 23rd, is the memorial of St. Pio of Pietrelcina. It was on this date in 1968 that Padre Pio entered eternal life. In June of 2002, Pope John Paul II canonized him.

The most famous Padre Pio quotation is a very good one. It is:

"I want to be only a poor Friar who prays. . .
Pray, hope and don't worry. Worry is useless.
God is merciful and will hear your prayer. . .
Prayer is the best weapon we have;
it is the key to God's heart.
You must speak to Jesus not only with your lips but with your heart.
In fact on certain occasions you should speak to Him only with your heart. . ."

~St. Pio of Pietrelcina

"Extend mercy toward others, so that there is no one in need whom we meet without helping. For what hope is there for us if God should withdraw his mercy from us?"

~St. Vincent de Paul

My mom was up here to visit from Florida recently and gave my dad and me an early Christmas present of a digital camera.

This weekend, I learned how to use the self-timer on the camera, and snapped this picture of my two "kids" (The Wild Celtic Kitties) and myself enjoying a cuddle on the couch.

From left to right: Kiki T. McFierceson, me (Christine), and Miss Maggie McGee.

Actually, it's a fair sight easier using the self-timer on a digital camera than it is photographing other people because there is rather a "lag" with a digital camera. For those of you who don't have one, please allow me to explain:

With a digital camera, when you are using the autofocus feature, you need to depress the shutter button half-way to get an exposure reading, and then you need to depress the shutter button completely to get the photo. I was at a large family get-together over the weekend and though I got a number of really good photos, I did get more than a few of relatives with their mouths wide open in speech (and also in the act of consuming birthday cake!).

Oh well. I will keep on practicing. :)

While I am on the topic of Chesterton, I will most happily apprise what few readers I have that it is now raining here in Central Wisconsin.

I suppose you are wondering what on earth that has to do with GKC? Well, I'll tell you! :)

I seem to remember reading in one of Chesterton's books (could it have been his autobiography?) or perhaps in the Joseph Pearce biography of GKC Wisdom and Innocence that Chesterton loved rain, and said it was "nature taking a noisy bath."

It has been so very dry here this summer, and the rain is a welcome relief to many. Somehow, everything just seems and even smells so much cleaner now that is raining.

Maybe I will listen to Michael W. Smith singing Let It Rain as I fall asleep tonight. . .

Let it rain!
Let it rain!
Open the floodgates of Heaven!
Let it rain!

Problem: You love to read the works of Gilbert Keith Chesterton, but you can't afford to buy every book written by such a prolific author.

Solution: You can download free e-texts of just about every GKC work there is (I think) at G.K. Chesterton's Works on the Web

There are a dizzying number of choices of GKC's works to choose from:

Non-Fiction Books
Fiction
Essays
Poems
Bibliographies
Quotes

And did I mention that they are all FREE ???!!!

You may dowload the e-texts in text or HTML or in zip files! YIPPEE!!

Go ye therefore and read some Fr. Brown mysteries! You'll be glad you did!