"There's no hope without love. There's no love without His grace. So many hungry souls without smiles on their faces. Distant hearts in familiar places. Now there's One who's come to take the emptiness we share, so let us live in this Kingdom.
So let love be repeated, so unchanging, freely given, always needed - love repeated. And let Christ be received in our hearts, in our homes, in our streets, and in our lives - loved repeated.
Yo, when I think about true love it's always repeated. Even the strongest man in the whole world he needs it. From Pope Benedict to the soldiers in Iraq, from the athlete to the shack to the child on his momma's back. It's like wind to the sailboat, gas to the car, energy to the runner who dares to go far. Each one, reach one there's so much to do and if I stop I drop and God's love will continue.
Now there's one who's come to take the emptiness we share so let us live in His Kingdom.
So let love be repeated, so unchanging, freely given, always needed - love repeated. And let Christ be received in our hearts, in our homes, in our streets, in our lives - Love Repeated."
~"Love Repeated" Jon Niven and Fr. Norm Fisher - CHWC Theme Song 2009
Love repeated - Theme of CHWC 2009 and boy did that hit home for me. For this whole year so far love has been hard. No that's a lie - for a really really long time (as long as I can remember) love has been a difficult thing. Which is kinda crazy and I am confused by as I love love! I love giving love! I love TO love. I WANT to be loved. I CAN'T seem to accept and receive love comfortably. In my family - we are not the touchy feely type. We don't hug, we rarely show any forms of affection for each other. We are not a family that says "I love you" when we hang up the phone or when we leave. In my 28 years of life - I can count on 1 hand the number of times I've heard "I love you" said to me from my parents. I've never heard it from my brother. When my grandfather on my dad's side got sick I told him I loved him out loud for the first time. We occasionally say it now. I know my family loves me. My parents write it on my bday cards and Christmas cards. My dad will end a text to me now with "luv u." But I secretly long to hear I LOVE YOU, all three words strung together at once, from a parent (especially my mom) and my brother. The more I look into myself and my life - I think this is the catalyst to my bad decision makings in my early twenties when it came to boys. I so badly wanted to feel loved and have affection (did I mention we're not a huggie/touchy feely family?) that I turned a blind eye to the reality of my relationships. I was 20 dating a man who was 30. His wife just left him for her ex who just got released from jail (WHAT WAS I THINKING?!!!) I was young, I was smitten, I soooo badly wanted to be married already! So we started hanging out, which turned into much more very quickly. Boy was I dumb looking back on that - I was like a prize - I was taken advantage of. We were "together" for 3 years. He cheated on me with his best friends wife - OUCH. To this day he won't admitt that he was actually cheating on me when I broke up with him. You'll be happy to know - he's still with her today. Yay for them (can you hear the sarcasm in my tone?) Anyways, this led me into not wanting to care anymore when it came to boys. I didn't trust either. I am still struggling with trust. I put up HUGE walls with boys now too. I give very little of my heart away. It's hard for me to be vulnerable and to open up. I think this is one reason why I love YM and teens. I can be vulnerable with them - open up - share my life stories and how God works in my life - and not worry about being hurt by them in the end. But if I'm vulnerable with a guy I like - he will in the end break my heart right? (that's how I think now.) So I am trying not to fall into this trap. I fall into this trap with God a lot. I tell Him what I think He WANTS to hear. I pray like I think He WANTS me to pray. So at CHWC Boston this year - I decided I needed to change all that thinking. If I really truly wanted to learn to love me and let others love me for me... I first had to let God love me and know me. Each night at program CHWC had a section called Real Life. Questions flashed across the screen for the intro. Questions like: Who's the REAL you? What masks are you hiding behind? If you took them off would your friends like you? Would you like you? Who knows the REAL you? These questions struck a huge chord in me. I found myself Monday night with tears running down my cheeks as I sat in program and watched this intro. That night I prayed to God to help me be me - the real Kathleen Megan Deasy. Be careful what you pray for - cause BAM... He sure broke me down that week for me to see the real me... Broken. Each day I had an internal battle of all the thoughts going through my head and wanting to work on that - but also wanting to stuff everything and focus only on the work at hand. On Thursday night I had a complete major breakdown - or what I like to call - a come apart. I had been holding back tears all day. Little ones here and there would come out. But I had to be the in control person on Thursday cause my Director was struggling herself. So Thursday night comes amd it's been a long and stressful day with it's ups and downs - a legit emotional roller coaster ride. I was sitting in the office chatting with Cory and my cell rings and it's Brenna. Out of nowhere I hear her voice and i begin to sob. And sob is an understatement friends. I ended up on the floor of my room in fetal position hyperventilating with snot just running out of my nose - uncontrollably crying. I couldn't talk, I could barely breath... just sobbing. For a good 90 minutes or so. Jon P came to check on me... I remember him standing in my doorway. I was a jerk and didn't even really acknowledge him (sorry Jon). He sent me a sweet text tho - saying he was headed to bed, that he loves me, praying for me and if I needed him to come get him - if not he'd chat with me in the AM. (thanks Jon! that meant a lot!) Anyways - Brenna just sat on the other end of the phone and told me to just let it out and it was ok. I don't even know if I really even told her anything that was going on... just cried and cried. I don't think I could have done that with anyone other than Brenna. That was my bottom. I woke up on Friday AM surprisingly feeling a little lighter and less weight of the world on my shoulders. I had cried myself to sleep and while praying after I got off the phone with Bren - I remember yelling at God and being really really angry with Him. It was the beginning of being real with Him. I remember praying that I was so angry that He had me go through this major surgery and He left me. He left me to feel worse off now than before the surgery. He left me and I felt so alone. I had lost my best friend of excess weight to hide behind and now He had gone away too. But Friday AM at closing Mass - God spoke to me through the theme song (which I had heard every night that week.) The words to that song felt like Jesus singing directly to me. Telling me that He loves me - but if I'm not willing to accept that, believe that and see that - then there's no hope. That I'm surrounded by His love - but I need to be open to it to see it. He's with me - He's never left me. I've just been blind to it. He's here to take my emptiness away. I need to receive the love that is being repeated TO ME - freely given TO ME. I had to open my heart and let Him in. So I did. I prayed at Mass that my heart was His. And honestly - it hasn't been super easy since then - but much easier than I had thought. God's definitely making me do a lot of work. He's challenging me to deepen my prayer life. He's put me in many situations that I have had to completely rely on Him. But I'm trusting - and if I can fully trust Jesus then I can't go wrong right? So step one is to receive Christ's love fully. Now we're beginning the receiving other's love fully too... I think that one's gonna be much harder...
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