the Visitation, my slacking in zeal, and the giant bag of cat food in my car

I opened the back of my car to retrieve the lawn chair I was hoping to sit on for the next two hours at my son's baseball game. But the chair, to my surprise, was not there. In it's place, however, was a giant bag of cat food.

And I considered dragging the bag of cat food to the field, and sitting on it.

Because that is where I am at right now.

Limping to finish the line, is what I call it.

Library fees are due, or children don't graduate.

Transcript fees pending.

Final exams.

The familiar "your child needs to hand this in or she will fail" e mail.

Last minute projects.

So many deadlines.

Each one with the threat of no graduating.

And with only two weeks left, a note in a backpack of my little one, requesting more pencils.

Now?

More pencils?

Good grief, Lord, to what end??

I woke up with such a headache that I sent everyone off with no lunch, and will be hitting the grocery store and running my own meals on wheels service in about an hour.

I am even skipping Mass.

I sent a friend a rain check for coffee this morning--I am just too busy, I told her.

And then I opened my Magnificat, and gosh dang it, but why does the Lord always have to speak to me when I don't want Him to!

"Do not grow lack in zeal, be fervent in spirit....exercise in hospitality."

And to boot...it is the Feast Day of the Visitation. Only the BEST feast day ever, because as I have shared with this friend who I cancelled on, "when I pray this mystery of the Visitation, I pretend we are Elizabeth and Mary!"

(She made me promise to never share that with anyone.)

But I do this, not because we are so holy, but because this friend of mine--she brings me Jesus when I most need Him.

But she does so, always by way of Mary.

When I was truly at my lowest this year, she showed up.

She visited.

But it was not just a simple visit.

It was a visitation.

The Magnificat says "a visitation is an encounter that carries within it a meaning that is exceptional."

This describes my friend on that dark and frightening day.

She came to my side. And she brought me a painting of Mary that she knew I adored.

She has slipped me little treasures over the year...a mug with Our Lady, a Scriptural Rosary, a shared prayer.

We have prayed the rosary together, just the two of us on our knees, for our children.

She is gentle and humble, and she encourages me to hold on to what is good.

I texted her moments ago that I was slacking in zeal.

She shared that this morning, she was most definitely not feeling like Mary...but more like Elizabeth.

We are both feeling old.

The end of the school year will do that to a mother.

I am still not making it to our coffee date, but rest assured, the errands and the delivered lunches and the various things on my list today will all be done with zeal; all for the glory of God, and all in great hope.

If Mary could travel all the way to see Elizabeth while in her first trimester, I can certainly get through these last weeks of school, fervent in spirit. How great is our God, that He gives me a friend, who like Mary, points me to Jesus; who leaves me His Word, forever alive and always moving me.

Blessed is she who believes....and who has a bag of cat food to sit on when she forgets her chair.