Jodi

Spiritual Cardio, Part 2

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

Blogger’s Note: This is the latest in a collection of daily posts outlining my journey to the Sacred Heart over the past year or more. See an overview and links to past posts here.

My departure from home to the Engels was bittersweet, of course. I was sad but resigned to going solo and making the most of my time alone with God. Even as I drove, I prayed for the ability to forgive my family, for Jodi (and Emma) to forgive my anger and hurtful words, and for God to have mercy on us all.

I arrived after dark, opened things up and turned on the lights, then turned Bruno and Dusty loose in the house together. Immediately they began tearing around the house, wagging, snarling, rolling, and wrestling. I began streaming the Friday night blues programming from Jazz88 and opened the windows to the lake breezes and nightly noises, then cracked a beer. I sat, watching the dogs, listening to the blues, nursing a beer, and feeling calm but discontented. Continue reading →

Spiritual Cardio, Part 1

/ J. Thorp / 2 Comments

Blogger’s Note: This is the latest in a collection of daily posts outlining my journey to the Sacred Heart over the past year or more. See an overview and links to past posts here.

The weekend after my conversation with my spiritual director, we were house- and dog-sitting for our extended family, the Engels, while they headed to Virginia for their eldest’s Seton Home Study School graduation. They live on Maple Lake, so taking care of their black lab, Dusty, is like a mini-vacation for us (and an absolute blast for Bruno).

I couldn’t wait to get there with the family, to wake to the sound of loons on the lake and the peace that pervades that house, and to enjoy some down time with my family. I had it all planned out—we would head over after our Poland reunion Friday night and stay to have supper with the Engel clan when they returned home on Memorial Day evening (their idea). So I was dismayed when, earlier in the week, Jodi began to express that she would rather go later and get some work done around the house. Continue reading →

Journey to the Heart: A Timeline

/ J. Thorp / 5 Comments

One of the obstacles to sharing this roundabout path to the Sacred Heart with you is that in many cases it is only visible in retrospect. The sequence is hazy at this point, even to me. So I’m going to start with a timeline, which will hopefully serve as an outline for the sequence of posts to come. Though I may not write them chronologically, we ought to be able to plug them into the timeline in the end.

Part of the reason for doing this exercise at all is that every so often someone hears me say something like, “God has me here for a reason,”  “God told me such-and such,” or “God is leading me toward X,” and asks me what that means. God doesn’t speak to me audibly, but He opens some doors—in my heart, in others, and in the world—and closes others. This timeline and sequence will hopefully show what I mean.

We begin nearly two years ago… Continue reading →

Urgent Conversion

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

Sometimes when Jodi and I rise early in the morning to reflect on the daily Scripture readings and pray together, I fail to check the calendar for special feasts. Instead I go straight for the daily missal and read the regular readings for the day, only to open our emailed gospel reflection to learn that it’s the Feast of Such-and-such, with a special gospel reading.

That is what happened on Thursday morning, with the happy result that it caused me to focus on the call to urgency and action in our conversion.

Continue reading →