Peace

It's easy to forget the simple things in life, and how much joy they can bring us. We get so caught up all the time with everything we deem "important", and the good stuff can be so easily overlooked.

I finally made my way back to the Church I normally attend tonight, 5 PM Mass. I'd been making my weekly pilgrimage, due to physical constraints, at a different place, but this week I made the effort to find my way "home".

The Mass that I've so come to love is ministered by a group called "Life Teen", and while I'm well past my teenage years, I don't think that joy needs to know your age in order to find you.

Life Teen, in many ways, brought me back once before. After what I witnessed and experienced, first-hand, on 9.11.01, I was, for the first time, very angry with God. Right or wrong, my faith had been tested, and I'd given in to that anger and allowed it to cause me to turn my back on my Religion. In my heart, no God that I'd come to love, worship and honor, would have ever allowed what took place that day. And off I went. To funerals, Memorial services, one after the other, saying goodbye to friends and business associates, some of whom were never actually found and identified. And with each Mass, I drew further and further away from my heart.

I think it's very appropriate that, a few years later, it took the love and faith of a group of teenagers to show me just how juvenile my reaction had been. My anger got the best of me, and I allowed it to bury a faith that had been solid and strong for so many years. Yet this group of fresh faces, beautiful voices and loving souls took hold of my heart, and brought me back from the bad place I'd gone. A faith that I'd rejected, I now seemed unworthy of.

But, as I said, these kids showed me the way back. They led me out, and proved to me that God's will is not for us to question, but to accept as for our own good. Their song, their enthusiasm, their genuine love for each other, as well as everyone around them was the call that I needed to hear.

I've made my peace now. I've done what was necessary to come back into the Fold, and it's an awesome feeling. They welcomed me back, probably very unaware of the effect they've had on my life.

I'm just glad they did. And I'm grateful. It was so very good to see and hear them again.