Wednesday Fifteen Minute Freewrite

I have no particular agenda in my writing today. But that is the purpose of the freewrite: to just write every day for fifteen minutes and through that, you become a better writer. For me, I become a better processor of my feelings. There is something about this activity that really helps me process my life one day at a time. The fact that I do it here is because I have had this blog since 2004, and it is just what I do (I had another blog before this so that one might have started in 2004). 

This morning was the Two Standards Exercise. Yes, I am doing it AGAIN. I went through it right after my traumatic event (that I am doing very well with, by the way) because I was proofreading and editing my book, Exercises for Everyone. That was so providential. Then, I did it again when I was actually going through the Exercises for myself. Now I am going through it again because I was ahead in the Exercises for Everyone, and I wanted to get a feel for whether Moment by Moment would be a good fit for a current directee who has a hard time carving out time to pray. This is a lighter version. I also recommended the book as a possibility to Janie for a directee she has. I thought I should do it myself since I am ahead in the other one, and I need to recommend it from my experience. Actually, I didn't quite recommend it, I said it was an option for her until I was done doing my 18th Annotation adaptation. I had read through it while I was writing my manual, and I was not super impressed. It seemed to be watered down, but now that I have done it, I think it is BRILLIANT. It goes through the whole of the Exercises. Yes, they are curtailed, but I think "watered-down" is the wrong word for it. The gist of the Exercises is presented in a lovely manner. I would recommend it now. I will have to look at what I wrote in my book review of it last year and compare how I feel about it now. 

All that to say, it was SO GOOD to review the Two Standards and the Temptation in the wilderness. Pray as You go had this exact meditation on Sunday, and their Lenten devotional was also on it last Thursday. I just need to know that the enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy, and we need to treat him like a spoiled child, and we need to be firm with him, and he will give up his petulant acting (Spiritual Exercises 325). AMEN! Interestingly, one of my directees and I took authority against the enemy in a session last week, and miraculous things have happened since then. We DO have an enemy of our soul. I still think the thing that happened to me in December was from the PIT, and all my spiritual directors were the first to tell me so. I was still in the "maybe all the accusations were true" mode when they were very persistent in saying, "That is not the woman that I know. It is a lie." Each one, quite apart from one another (Carol does not know Cammie and Sister Joan and visa-versa, but I just found out that Sister Joan does know Cammie because they worked together in training) said that I needed to put my armor on, and this is what I am doing. I am also asking Jesus for help in all of this because he was tested by the devil just as we are. I don't want to sound like I see a demon under every bush, but the accusations were so outrageous with no basis in reality of what really happened.

So it has been good to meditate on this over and over again over the last couple of months. 

On another note, I notice that I get discouraged when just one person makes a negative comment about what I am doing. My Pilates I class loves my music. In my Pilates II, just one student (the most verbal) made a negative comment when I suggested the music that I was going to play saying that only one playlist has worked with our routine all term (and we have had 17 classes). So that was a bit discouraging. My desire to please everyone all the time came out. It was good to examine that during my Examen though, and I know it is a compulsion of mine to please. I have feet of clay, what can I say? Even at 60 years old, I still struggle with things like a 20 something telling me something negative. 

There is the timer. BYE! 

By the way: Here is my review of the book with an update:

https://carolhomeschool2.blogspot.com/2018/12/58-moment-by-moment-retreat-in-everyday.html