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The Greatest Enemy - A Divided Heart...
"The greatest enemy of any vocation is a divided heart. Yet, how many parents have a "whole heart?" Or to put it another way, how many parents are wholeheartedly occupied with and concerned about fulfilling this vocation of theirs, as it should be filled - by serving God through it? If they were so concerned, then problem children, problem youth, and marital problems would almost vanish and, as the parents grew in holiness - which is love - these problems would vanish indeed. What do I mean by a divided heart?...I simply mean trying to straddle what cannot be straddled..."
Catherine de Hueck Doherty in "Dear Parents: A Gift of Love For Families", Madonna House Publications, Combermere Ontario, Canada, 1997, p2
posted by Holly at 10:40 PM
1 Comments:
A divided heart -
- the husband too busy with work to pay attention to his family...
-the teenager too concerned with her friends to attend to her siblings...
-the mother too wrapped up in her volunteer work, her outside employment , her housework, to care for the family...
We could say that our vocation as mother is a call to life and love - and that this is best lived out in presence and personal interaction with those in our family. "Presence" and "personal attentiveness" are the signs of a focused heart.
How many times are we thinking about everything else? Our pet projects? Our housework? Our problems? And all the while, the children and our husbands remain unattended and left to their own devices?
Where our hearts are, there too are our thoughts. What are we thinking about every day - our husband and children or many many many other things? This question is the key to our self-examination.
Regina Doman, author of "Angel in the Waters", recently experienced the tragedy of the death of a small child. When I read her words during the eulogy at her son's funeral, she said something which struck me strongly - she said that no matter how many times her children came to her, interrupted her, or seemingly pestered her while she worked at her computer, she had vowed to always stop her computer work and attend to them.
And now, with the early and tragic death of her little boy, she could look back with no regrets because her heart had remained focused primarily on her active presence and personal attentiveness to the children. She had not neglected him. He had known her love and presence. There were no regrets.
Our children grow so fast and leave too soon. Our husbands grow as persons and want and need their companion. Let us remove from our lives the unnecessary - the superfluous activity and desire - and focus whole-heartedly on meeting the needs of our family in a service of personal love.
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