Something ordinary and so Amazing!

"Understand this well: there is something holy, something divine hidden in the most ordinary situations,
and it is up to each one of you to discover it."
- St. Josemaria Escriva

So the other day I said something about us having a different clock than God sometimes and today that was true sort of. I was going to wake up to go to morning mass at 7am and mass at 7:30am in the Abbey, but I didn't wake up until 6:45. Yes, I could have made it probably, but I wouldn't have been chill and mentally ready for morning prayer, so I decided I would just go to mass. I got ready and walked over with my friend Beverley to the church to find an amazing change of plans. Today's schedule was pushed back a half hour because it is a feast day so morning prayer was at 7:30 and mass was at 8! That means I got to go to both this morning!

Of course morning prayer and mass were great, but then I left the church and started walking to the dining hall on campus and an older couple who was in mass was walking that direction too. I walk really fast sometimes, and they moved to the one side of the sidewalk, but as I got up to them, I slowed down and said 'Hello' and asked how their day was going and such and we started having an actual conversation about if I am a student here, what I am studying, etc. I learned that they are from about 100 miles north of Detroit, but they are snow birds and just got down here for the winter and live in Brooksville and come to Leo a couple times while they are here to get oranges and go to the church. Now remember, I am from Wisconsin, so it was cool to hear that they are from up North and are snow birds because my grandparents do that too and are coming down next week! I found out that they know a Franciscan sister in Milwaukee, which is where I was born and I grew up around there. 

So where am I going with all of this you may ask. A couple of ways.

It's a NEW YEAR!

"Right here right now
Under the stars
I promise you my heart
Cause it starts tonight!"-TobyMac

I would like to start off by saying HAPPY NEW YEAR! I get more excited about this new year than the January 1st new year every year. With a new year here, that means Advent is here! Advent is a time for us to prepare ourselves for Christ's coming. Although I think we should be doing this everyday, Advent is a time in the church where things are changing and we can focus more on preparing our hearts for God.

This morning I went to morning prayer and mass with the monks at the Abbey and it was really great. Everyday we have the opportunity to participate in mass and receive the Eucharist and I think that mass helps us prepare ourselves and our hearts immediately. 

"I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you, taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you natural hearts." - Ezekiel 36:26

This summer when I started going to daily mass more frequently, I found that my heart was changing constantly and growing more open. I think when we make that decision to be open to God, he gives us this new heart, as stated in Ezekiel. Everyday that I went to mass, God was showing me something new and greater and I was opening my heart up to even more possibilities. 

The song "Tonight" by TobyMac has some great lyrics for right now. It starts tonight, promise God your heart and open yourself up. I am going to go a step farther and say it start right now. No better time than the present right? Spend some time with Jesus, even 5 minutes, and see what he is saying to you.

Oh and something else I have learned is to be patient because I am pretty sure that we have a different clock than God does sometimes.

Peace and Love,

Erica Jean

Way Beyond Myself!

"There’s so much more than meets the eye
Or what’s going on inside
I believe in something way beyond myself
Like the wind that moves the leaves
Lord, You bring me to my knees
I believe in something way beyond myself.."

<3 Newsboys

This year, I have really allowed myself to open my heart more to what God wants instead of what I want and just follow him wherever he takes me. Some people have a hard time trusting that whatever happens in my life is up to God..

I was driving in the car today to go get tea with a couple of friends and this song came on and it kept saying "I believe in something way beyond myself.." and that stuck in my head until I got to the tea lounge. God puts things in my life, opportunities, windows, doors, people that I may not see right away. As I continue to open myself up to what God wants, He shows me things more clearly, but it's all Him, never me. I love this song because it says the win that moves the leaves because something so simple that you may not think about even is God working in our lives.

"I’ve been thinking it’s about time
To win the war that fights against all the lies invading my mind
You have brought me to my senses
Even though You built this world to shake
You still love me in a personal way
So I think it’s time to leave my doubt behind.."

In my life lately, I have really had to trust God with what is happening because I have no idea what's going on with a lot of things right now, but I've learned that if I leave my doubt behind, He makes things happen if it's in His will for me.

Sometimes we can be too stubborn to go with what God wants and I know that I used to be like that, then I opened myself up and it was a whole new world of opportunity and it was full of God's love and caring hand. I had never experienced God like that before and now that I have there is no way I would want to go back.

Be open to what God wants for you because His plan is always better!

Side note that has nothing to do with this blog other than it happened while I was writing it:

I am in Panera and my feet were cold so I put my toes on the white box on my power cord that was really warm...Thanks God for that hot idea. 

Peace and Love,

Erica Jean Boehm

Keep ministering...to yourself too!

“One would be wise to see themselves not merely as a channel, but a reservoir. For a channel simply transmits something from one place to another, without retaining a drop for itself. While a reservoir first, fills itself up, and then, without losing any of what it has, waters the fields it is meant to water." - St. Bernard

Being in ministry, sometimes you get so involved in being there for the teens and your peers that you forget to minister to yourself and continue to fill yourself up. Being a peer minister at my church all through high school was great, and I was lucky enough to have a youth minister who knew that we needed to be filled as well so she gave us opportunities for that. Now that I am in college, I always remember to take time to spend with the Lord no matter what. A month ago I went on a young adult retreat to have time to retreat from the world and it was really great, but now a month later, I realize everyday I have that and you don't have to go on retreat to get filled. Everyday when I take time out for personal prayer or even going to Mass, I am filling myself up so I can better minister to people everyday. It's great knowing that God is always there waiting.

As I am writing this, the song "Taking You With Me" by Relient K came on and these lyrics really stuck out.

"So I'm taking you with me
Anywhere that I
Could ever wanna be
For the rest of my life
I want you there with me
And if there ever comes a time
When I should have to leave
I hope you know that I
I'm taking you with me"

I think about moving on in life, which I have been facing a lot lately. I am going to South Dakota for the whole summer to be in ministry and I know that I will need and want God with me along the way. I think about the small things though too that are actually really BIG.

Until the Whole World Hears

"I want to be Your hands and feet, I want to live a life that leads, To see You set the captive free
Until the whole world hears
And I pray the day will see More of You and less of me
Lord, I want my life to be The song You sing" 

<3 Casting Crowns

The word "whole" has been coming up in my prayer life a lot lately, in different ways, but so great. One of the things that I have been getting out of Lectio is "whole heart". As I contemplated this in prayer, I found that God puts me into different situations and encounter different things in order for my love for God and other to grow stronger. I look at is as even though I may face hardships along the way, his plan is to ultimately build my heart up stronger to serve Him and not tear me down.

"With Every NO, God has a bigger YES!"

Another way that I have run into "whole" in prayer is tonight when I was praying Lectio and came across the words "whole law" in Matt 22:34-40. Right before those words, it says to Love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. In order to fully serve God and His people, I think that it's necessary to love God with everything you have.


I am chaperoning a retreat tomorrow and it's a homeless retreat. Yes, I said Homeless...

The Best Thing

"It's been a year
Filled with problems
But now you're here
Almost as if to solve them
And I can't live in a world without you now"

 <3 Relient K-"The Best Thing"

So today I have realized (not that I haven't before) that not only does having God around make life easier, the people he puts in my life make living everyday easier. God has put some pretty phenomenal people in my life (Yes, that's YOU) and always when I need them. They keep me laughing when times get tough or let me cry when I need to be sad or just make jokes with me because I do stupid things...a lot of the time. Between family, sorority sisters, friends, peer ministers, SLPMs, and just people who call me awesome on a daily basis, God has my back and so do they, so thank you to all of you who make life easier to live happily.

Peace and Love,

Erica Jean

Hey Grandma, I miss you...

"Missing someone gets easier every day because even though it's one day further from the last time you saw each other, it's one day closer to the next time you will."  ~Author Unknown

The last few weeks have been so awesome and God has been putting great things in my life. First he gave me the opportunity to go to South Dakota for three months this summer to help run camps and stuff with my aunt's order (she's a nun!) and then he sent me to run a retreat last weekend where they needed just one more peer to make a ten person team in order to run things properly and God opened my eyes once again to an opportunity to serve him by pushing me to apply for a 9 month mission trip. Since all this has been happening though, I start to miss things in my past, mostly my grandma.

If you don't know about my grandma, I will give you the short version. She was living with me since like 7th grade or so and she passed away at the end of my freshman year of high school and she means the world to me and inspires me with more than just my faith and I love her a lot and miss her more than I could ever explain.

Back to missing her...When great things happen in my life, I tend to miss her more than on a regular day when I am just BEing. Everyday I think about her for some reason, but when greater things come up, it hurts a little more that she isn't here because she isn't physically here to see me grow up and experience things such as my confirmation, graduation, a trip to Europe, talking to a youth group, going to Ecuador, planning whole retreats, and now, going to South Dakota to spend a summer with her daughter serving the Lord through helping with youth camps for girls.

This quote I chose today really describes our current relationship I guess you could say...

I talk to her when I am in adoration with the Lord, and I know that I am getting closer everyday to being with her in Heaven, it's just hard because I miss her so much and she isn't physically here to experience these things with me. 

I think it's hard to because I want EVERYONE to meet her. She changed my life and I want others to experience her love for everything and her musical talent and just everything she gave to me, but they can't except for what I tell them.

I don't only miss her when great things happen, I miss her when things get hard too because she's someone I could talk to and get help from always and she was always there telling me what I was doing wrong or what not in order to make myself better, so when I am feeling the way I have the last couple weeks and a lot more the last couple of days, I don't have her to help me and guide me in talking to people about what I want to say. 

God's ultimately got my back though and

It's what God wants!

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.”
-Douglas Adams

It's been awhile since I have written anything so I apologize. It's been crazy! I went on a young adult retreat a couple of weekends ago though and it was PHENOMENAL! It was pretty much exactly what I have needed for so long. The retreat was really short (from 6pm Saturday to 2pm Sunday I think), but it was filled with so much nourishment! I learned different ways to pray that I never experienced before, and prayed ways that I have before but it was completely different. The point of the retreat was to give us practical things to leave the retreat with that we can continue to use everyday on our own, not just in a retreat setting. My favorite thing that I learned was Lectio Divina. I have never experienced that the way that I did that weekend. The way it was explained was awesome and it made so much sense. I opened myself up to what God was trying to tell me through the readings and what came out of it was really great and God spoke to me and things have been falling into place now.

For those who don't know what Lectio Divina is, it is composed of 4 main parts and is a form of prayer. There is Lectio which is reading or listening to the reading, Meditatio, which is meditating on what you have read, Oratio, which is praying about it, and Contemplatio, which is contemplation which I see as just BEing.

Back to life..