Jesus and His tender love...

I have this picture in my preschool classroom. Today, I am that little girl whose face is being held by Jesus. Won't that be awesome someday, to see Him and have Him greet me like that. I have been meditating on His tender love for me and I feel it the most when I am sitting with Him in Adoration.

There I am in the front row, me lookin at Him, Him lookin at me. Doesn't that alone make a person flippin happy to be Catholic!!!! I mean seriously. Jesus is present. Sitting in front of me. And I know it is true, because since I have started going to Adoration five times a week for an hour, now almost an hour and a half, my life is changing. It has changed my heart.

I have a place to go, like St. Faustina, to throw myself in front of Him, well, maybe not throw, but I do often kneel as close as I can get to the monstrance, and I can cry, and I can let loose. I can tell Jesus everything. All my hurts, all my desires. And I can feel Him looking at me tenderly. Lovingly. Adoration changed me.

One of the things that has changed is my level of gossip. I used to get on the phone and just gab about everything, because that is how I always worked things out. With any girlfriend who would listen. And sometimes that was okay, we could help each other, pray together, have each other's backs. But for the most part, it was a slander session. One ball of ugly slices of the tongue. Not good. Not helpful.

Our priest, Fr. Jack did a lot of homilies on gossip, forgiveness, pride, envy and the like. Sometimes I would be sitting in the front row thinking, "Oh, my goodness, he is talking about me in front of everyone". Worse were the times when I sat there thinking, "OOOOOh, I wonder who he's talking about now. What did they do?" And spending the rest of my time trying to figure out who the homily was for.

Eventually I learned, "Duh, it's for you, ya dummy. And anyone else the Holy Spirit is trying to reach through Fr. Jack." So then, I started asking for the smarts to know what pertained to my life, and as I sat listening intently and trying to discern what I was supposed to learn, I forgot about looking around and guessing, and condemning others. And I started looking at my own self. What I needed to change in my own life. More importantly, what did God want me to change in my life?

What I found out was this: He wanted me to stop telling every Gladys and Harriet every little thing about my gossipy struggles with others, and go directly to Him.

And not to pat myself on the back or anything, but I have gotten quite good at it. Verizon misses my long phone conversations, but I sure don't. I have a free, direct line to my Savior, and He always listens and then gently, tenderly, shows me what I need to do to make things better. Sometimes by me just sitting in front of Him, but also sometimes by what I read when I am sitting with Him. Sometimes I sit with Him and just go off somewhere. And when I come out of it, I have a solution to my situation.

And then I smile at Him, and He smiles at me.

Tenderly.