How to blog????!!!!

Today is the 3rd Sunday of Lent...part of my lenten promise is to figure out how to manage this blog! I read my dear friend Rachel's blog and realize how lacking I am. We are humbled in many ways, many times, ALL the time.

My family and I returned home from Durango, CO. recently where we visited my dear friend (and personal Catholic Evangelizer) Jennifer, and her family. It was a beautiful, fun and reverent visit. To our dismay Jenn's husband, Steve, chose to for-go alcohol for lent...what was our gift to him upon arrival, but a bottle of extremely expensive (& very alcoholic) tequila. Bad choice #1! Jenn had supplied the guest house with a bottle of beautiful red wine...which I had decided to give up while visiting as she is 8+ mos. pregnant and would not be enjoying a glass with me. Bad choice #2-sort of! My lovely 7 yr. old daughter gave up sweets of any kind...yet we were to celebrate 2 birthdays at the Kallahers, cupcakes and dessert included. Bad choice #3! All in all, each of us broke our lenten promises, except for Jenn, at least once during the 3 1/2 days in Durango. Oh Heavenly Father, please forgive us our total weakness and lack of respect for the Passion of Christ and Christ's 40 days of fasting and temptations...for I could not make it even 20 days, if that!!

The Gospel today was refreshing after such a discouraging week of trying to follow in Christ's path. John 4:5-42; the story of Christ at Jacob's well with the Samaritan woman. What I love about this particular Gospel is that by asking the Samaritan woman to give him water I am reminded that we are all asked to respond to God. God is always asking us for something; our love for him. We are constantly asking God for His forgiveness and graces, yet I tend to forget that He is asking something of me too. He has given me the free will to answer, and whether I have had 5 husbands and living with yet another man, He still asks for my love...he does not demand this of me. How wonderful is our God that he has given us free will, for with free will we are able to love...without it we would simply be His robots. So today I asked for his forgiveness.

Like the Samaritan woman, I have, and still do, live a life of sin. No, I have not had 5 husbands, nor am I living with a man who is not my husband, but, truth be told, my life has probably been much more sin-filled than that of this unenlightened Samaritan woman. But, His light shone through her and the people of her town, who had previuosly shunned her, listened to her tale of the Son of God at the well and many were drawn to conversion...from the tale of a sinner. Hope?...yes there is hope for all of us sinners, even me, if we take to heart the Word of God. The fact that Jesus would ask a favor of a broken woman should give all of us sinners hope for eternal life. REPENT REPENT REPENT Lent is the perfect time to not only to repent, but to begin a life-long practice of adoration and repent.

In my mafnificat the evening hymn especially spoke to me:

I heard the voice of Jesus say,

"Come unto me and rest;

Lay down, thy weary one lay down

Thy head upon my breast."

I came to Jesus as I was,

So weary worn and sad;

I found in him a resting place,

and He has made me glad.

I heard the voice of Jesus say,

"Behold I freely give

The living water; thirsty one,

Stoop down and drink and live."

I came to Jesus and I drank

Of that life-giving stream;

My thirst was quenched, my soul revived,

And now I live in Him.

AMEN