Speak to Me Sunday: To Strive

Once upon during a Lent not so long ago ... 

I was not happy with myself.

This was how I was feeling as I sat in silent prayer while waiting for Mass to begin.

I couldn't come up with one single, glaring reason for feeling this way other than noticing a pattern of lost opportunities.

Lost opportunities to be better: a better wife, mother, steward, friend, writer, example.
Lost opportunities to be more: more kind, generous, spiritual, patient, charitable.
Lost opportunities when better or more required too much effort, so it was just easier not to.

No wonder I wasn't happy with myself. God was calling me to holiness, and holiness wasn't even on my radar.

Or was it? Could these feeling of dissatisfaction and restlessness be God's way of pulling me back? I thought of John Paul II who said that the call to holiness was not only a state, but a task; that we are not so much called to attain perfection, as to strive for perfection.

Strive. I pondered that word for a few minutes.

I once read that in our walk of faith, one either goes forward or one goes backward, but one does not stand still.

This, then, was what God was telling me: I can't be better or do more unless I strive to be better or do more; that unless there is the task, nothing is accomplished. This is not to say that strive is synonymous with success, but that the attempt is better than nothing at all.