Category: Come See Me Talk

Saying Goodbye to the Person You Don’t Want to Be

It’s resolution season, but I want to talk about something deeper and more difficult. Resolutions are good. Less sugar, more sunlight, regular bedtime . . . some of these small changes can bring out a happier, more energetic, more you person, one you hadn’t fully understood was hiding inside. If you’ve resolved to start flossing, your dentist thanks you. Run with it.

But what if the thing you are struggling to let go of is tied to your very identity?

New Year’s resolutions don’t involve identity changes, I hope. If you have said to yourself, “I am a person who binges on junk food, and my very self would be annihilated if I were to limit that behavior to Sundays and solemnities, for that bag of Reese’s cups (the large ones loaded with peanut butter, like the Good Lord intended, not those pathetic minis) are who I am, and I should cease to be the person God created me to be if I didn’t help myself to the snack bowl every hour on the hour . . .” If you have said that to yourself, then I guess you have a situation on your hands, don’t you?

But usually resolutions are more about polishing and refining, bringing into the limelight the person you have already determined is the better you.

What if the change you are struggling with involves an aspect of yourself that feels essential to who you are? What if you examine your life, and discover your besetting sin, the thing that makes you most miserable, the thing you sometimes confess but usually rationalize, what if you discover that you love that sin because you view it as part of your very self?

To let go of that sin would be to lose your life, you fear.

That’s harder.

It takes precision surgery to be able to say, “I could still be meticulous and conscientious without being a slave to obsessive anxiety.” Or “I could still be passionate and spontaneous without following my every whim with no regard for what gets lost in the frenzy.” Or “I could still be a firm, authoritative, responsible parent without losing my temper when my children misbehave.”

My only message here is: It’s okay to free yourself from the part of “you” that is destroying your relationships and making you miserable. It’s okay to say goodbye, as many times as it takes, to that aspect of yourself that isn’t about your God-given calling, but in fact is overshadowing and dragging that calling down.

It’s a process. You didn’t get into this jumbled-up identity overnight. Even when you firmly resolve, “I am going to hold onto my talents and passions and spiritual gifts, but I am no longer going to let the vice I’ve been sheltering keep hogging up this space in my soul,” even then, the vice is so strongly planted that it will take years of persistent weeding (or a miraculous healing) to root it out.

So my new year’s wish for you is that, if you have been mistakenly embracing one of your faults as if it were integral to your self, that you’d muster the courage to bid it good riddance. Show it to the door. And when it comes back again and again, insisting it belongs in your heart and you can’t survive without it, kindly tell it you’ve had enough and it needs to move on.

***

In light of that pep-talk:

(a) If you are a Catholic writer, media personality, or social media conversationalist of any type, amateur or pro, and

(b) if the fault you’ve been confusing for your very identity as a communicator and evangelist is the “charism of being a jerk”, but,

(c) you don’t want to be bitter and angry and obnoxious anymore, then,

(d) please consider joining me and a number of others for a small, free, online retreat-conference being hosted later this month.

It won’t fix you overnight. You’ll probably discover that some of the people in attendance, people like you who don’t want to be nasty online Catholics anymore, but also have no intention of abandoning their passion for communicating the truth and engaging in rousing, high-spirited discussions on controversial topics . . . you’ll probably discover some of your fellow retreatants are people you passionately despise.

And that’s rough, because we’ll be providing opportunities to overcome your bitterness and reconcile with those wrong-headed dunderpuffs who had the nerve to show face at your life-changing retreat.

If you’re feeling brave, please join us.

File:Wilsons Promontory National Park (AU), Big Drift -- 2019 -- 1683.jpg
Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons / “Wilsons Promontory National Park (AU), Big Drift — 2019 — 1683” / CC BY-SA 4.0

Fun Stuff: Intro to Evangelization & Discipleship Webinar, Live with Me! Tues. 6/30 @1pm EST

Book launches this spring have a NASA-like quality: There is a plan in place, and there are a thousand reasons the plan might or might not unroll on the intended date.

Still, the webinar whiz at Our Sunday Visitor? She isn’t dependent on symptoms and exposures and whether the printing press is able to open safely this week.  She makes a living just zoom-zooming away.  Therefore, barring an asteroid hitting my garage-library or some other very high-bar-even-for-2020 level of disruption, my Live On the Internet part of the book launch will be this coming Tuesday, June 30th, at 1pm Eastern.

I asked a few fans (translation: Facebook friends, some of whom like what I write and the rest are probably just being nice to me) what I should put into my presentation, and here’s what they said:

  • What are the top 3-5 things we should know from the book?
  • What was your first experience evangelizing?
  • How do you know when to speak and when to shut up?
  • How do you keep from centering on yourself instead of Jesus?
  • How would you bring the Good News to someone who is disgusted with the criminal actions of Catholics, especially clergy?

We’ve got about thirty minutes set aside for the event, so I’ll hit those topics in my prepared remarks, and then if there’s time left over we’ll do open Q&A.  I have no idea whether the event will be captioned (probably not, and we all know how auto-caption does anyway), but I’ll post a transcript* immediately after, look for it here.

Warning about the top 3-5 things: I have nothing new to say.  I’m going to be hitting the same top 3-5 talking points that have been the contents of Divine Revelation over the past 5,000 years.  On the one hand, that’s making you go, “blah blah blah love God, pray, fast, behave yourself, blah blah blah,” and on the other hand? I kinda need that talk, and there’s evidence other people do too.

So maybe you don’t need a shot in the arm in that direction, but maybe you know someone who does.  Maybe you just need to be reminded that doing the basic things Christians do matters and makes a difference in people’s lives.

If so, you or they can come to my talk.  It’s free.

–> Also it will be a highly entertaining event, because unlike the entire rest of the planet I have not been doing internet video communication non-stop all spring.  So that’s gonna be big.  Bonus: You can see my scrapwood bookshelf, and if the camera gets pointed wrong, you can see the garage that is still very garage-like despite my calling it “the library” now.  We are hoping the camera doesn’t get pointed at the pile of junk I pulled off the shelves to make them look less disturbing.  You might or might not see cats.  No promises on that.

So that’s gonna be awesome.  Don’t judge me for my incomplete Hardy Boys collection, just send me the ones I haven’t read yet, thanks.

Register Here

How to get the book: It appears that the Kindle Edition is already available for sale! Amazon is telling me I can buy it with 1-click, so that’s pretty nice? FYI if you get the e-book and read it this weekend, come Tuesday a couple stories I tell will be ones that are not in the book.  I’m not actually going to read from the book or anything, because you can read a preview on Amazon if you want to find out what my book-writing is like.

As soon as I get word paperbacks are shipping, I’ll let you know.

The How-to Book of Evangelization: Everything You Need to Know But No One Ever Taught You by [Jennifer Fitz]

Cover art of The How-to Book of Evangelization: Everything You Need to Know But No One Ever Taught You, courtesy of Amazon.com and Our Sunday Visitor.

*Transcript of my prepared comments will be ready to post immediately.  Yes, I’ll be sticking to them religiously, ahem, because it is so, so, so very easy to say something dumb if you ad-lib on these topics.  If there is time for Q&A, what I’ll do for a text version is take the questions that came in and make a blog post or so fleshing out my quick answers and clearing up any confusion I created.  You’ll be dependent on whatever the tech team can bring you as far as a transcript of my bumbling attempts to answer questions on the fly.

Cat Photos & Other Reputable Pursuits

A kitten found us, which means we can finally use the internet properly.

I persist, of course, in my incorrigible habit of crowding perfectly good bandwidth with religion, public policy, and other punditry.  My hope is that by wielding the cat as a feline shield, the internet police will be stymied in their efforts to purify the web of non-cat bloggers.

Like the Internet Except in 3-D

1. My screen porch.  YouTube viewing has plummeted now that we have our hyperactive dancing cat.

2. Midlands Homeschool Convention.  Of interest to southeasterners.  Huge regional event, piles of top notch speakers, and also me.  Catholic writers guild will have a table, and there’ll be a rocking “Look at the Book” display of Catholic textbooks & materials from all the major players, hosted by Catholic homeschoolers in SC.  Also free stuff and some drawings for prizes. The teepee in the corner, dear parents, is for your children.  You sit on the chairs.  July 24-26.

3. Catholic Writers Conference. Following week up in Chicago, smart people will be turning out at the writers’ wonderland that is the combination Catholic Writers Conference & Catholic Marketing Network’s trade show.  This is the place where all the publishers and vendors of Catholic trinkets (games, art, music, etc) turn out so the Catholic book & gift shops can stock up for the season.  Most interesting bit is seeing what famous internet Catholics look like when rendered in 3-D.

(I will be rendered in 2D for that one.  Visit the Liguori booth if you go, and you can see my book.  The me-traveling-to-Chicago part is not quite back on the program.)

Since last I wrote, Patheos has been fixing things, which means you have to go here to get the July archives.

June still copies and pastes nicely:

 

Enjoy!

Update: What is wrong with people?

The answer to, “How’s it going, Jen?” remains, “Pretty well, thanks!”  I resurrected the Nine Annoying Things Novena over at the blorg last week, and the pray-ers did well.  Hence today’s story:

So I go see Dr. Maybe yesterday, and they did the dreaded Six Minute Walk.  And here is the very, very, What is wrong with people? situation: I did almost as well as predicted.

Seriously?  Is this really all they expect out of pleasantly-plump 40-somethings?  You’re kidding me.

You do the walk with a pulse oximeter, which means you can cheat and watch your heart rate.  This is handy if you are the kind of person who knows at about what heart rate the gasping kicks in (see archives below for the secret), and thus you can maximize your distance by walking right at that special speed where you’re coughing a bit and your head feels like you just tossed back two glasses of champagne on an empty stomach, but hey, you aren’t going to faint, and even though death feels like the perfect next step, you can do it for six minutes.  Or at least, you can do it that long if a stern nurse in pink scrubs gives you a face like she’ll spank you if you quit early.

It appears the pulmonologists aren’t big believers in pedestrian transportation.

***

Anyhow, I like the new guy, whose brain jumps around so much I finally pulled out a notebook and made a list of all the tests and appointments he was rattling off, because I had a feeling one or two might get lost in the shuffle if no one wrote them down, stat.

Ruled out again this morning — for good, this time? — pulmonary embolisms.  Sent away three vials of blood — I’m not sure he’s quite to the point of looking for tropical diseases (I’ve never been to the tropics), but he’s almost there.  More interesting tests coming along soon, looking for weird variants on regular asthma and exercise-induced asthma, and also he’s going to see if he can get my heart rate up high enough (on a treadmill, not with those evil chemicals) that the O2 levels drop, or something else interesting happens that gives us a clue.

We’re having real problems with finding clues.  The trouble we’re having is that I’m dreadfully healthy for someone who’s sucking wind and coughing while ambling at grocery-store pace, minus the cart.

***

Blorging over the past couple weeks, for those who don’t subscribe:

May 7, 2014 Religion is about Reality – and so is the Black Mass  In which someone in the combox accuses me of “shooting off my mouth”.  What exactly is a blog for, if not that?

May 6, 2014 It’s Not Friendship if it Can’t Withstand Disagreement Because I have the coolest friends.  Yes I do.

May 5, 2014 What I Write, Why I Write, How I Write . . . #mywritingprocess  This is the truth, but I’m going to reveal more details at CWG later this month.

May 5, 2014 Tell Me About Your Favorite Homeschooling Conference @CatholicMom.com  Listen, if you know about a good homeschooling conference, go over the link in this post and leave a comment.  I can’t believe no one did this, even after I bumped the CMom post to two different conference-hosts that I knew about.  Sheesh.

May 5, 2014 Inside the Glamorous World of Religion Blogging – Parody for the 5th Blorgiversary, featuring a video of me making everyone else seem as glamorous as Jen Fulwiler.

May 3, 2014 Guns in Church: The Divide Boils Down to Subsidiarity – I don’t much write about gun stuff.  But when the Archbishop of Gunlandia does something to tick off all his redneck parishioners, someone has to get out some catechism quotes, right?  FYI – post includes a link to my A/C article where I say there, concisely, what I’ve said here, verbosely: This is a topic on which Catholics of good will can disagree, and catechists need to leave their agendas at home.

May 2, 2014 Pomp without Vanity: A True Story from a Parish Photo Directory – My kid is as cool as Fr. Longenecker, and much, much prettier.

May 1, 2014 Fun Stuff: Beautification Claws From the Case Files of DragonEye, PI – Free short story. Catholic dragon.

May 1, 2014 Tried and True Ways to Eliminate People With Disabilities #BADD2014 – Review of what I blogged for BADD here last year.  Because it’s still true.  Quit trying to kill the people who bother you.

April 30, 2014 Something Fun: Armored Combat League World Championship May 1 – 3 – Because I have the coolest friends.  Have I mentioned that?

April 30, 2014 Just Say No to Needy Busybodies

April 29, 2014 Heart Rate Training for Fitness in Chronic Illness – This is actually a useful post.  It’s how I managed to nearly pass the 6-minute walk, despite being seriously seriously not well.  And if I’d taken the walk two days earlier, I would’ve aced it out of sheer racing-preparation common sense.

April 29, 2014 Mid-Easter Evangelization: Time for an Egg Hunt! – Link to my column at NE, which got picked up as a reprint by at least one parish bulletin.  I can die happy now.  I have succeeded as a Catholic writer.

April 28, 2014 Trusting God When Life Isn’t Easy – Link to Pauline Media’s brand new, free, digital magazine.  I wrote one of the articles in it.

April 28, 2014 Midlands Homeschool Convention – Last Day for Discounted Registration – Your one and only chance to see me speak in 2014.  Turn out.  It’s going to be cool.

April 28, 2014 Classroom Management for Catechists – Spanish Edition for Fall 2014 – I do a happy dance.

April 26, 2014 Why is Obedience a Virtue?

April 25, 2014 Real Life Prayer Gardening  A picture of the dog who keeps my prayer life going.  And my garden.

April 24, 2014 A Deadly Faith – Gospel Reflection @CatholicMom.com – I had forgotten all about writing this, but then I read it, and it was really good.  Surprisingly good.  Follow this to get the link to the CMom piece, and yes pastors, you may run it as a reprint in your bulletin next time Holy Week comes around.  Or whenever.

April 23, 2014 Divine Mercy Sunday – What’s it all about??  – Relevant every day at 3pm.  Or other times you have 7 minutes to spare and your prayer life needs a little something.

Click to read my blog at Patheos

More Radio – 9AM Oct. 31 – Sirius Catholic Channel

Me, talking to Gus Lloyd about the whole Halloween thing, 9AM tomorrow on the Catholic Channel. At least that’s the plan.  His guy saw the book review over at Patheos.  I’d better bone up on the invisible things problem.

If it goes well, and I get my house clean too, I’ll have something to say for Small Success Thursday.

Retreating Not Deserting, Episode 1

Click here to see what I’m going to be doing in February: Retreat Flyer 2014 (You’ll remember this post here, that inspired my proposal when the organizer wrote looking for a speaker.  We’re doing that, but not for catechesis.  Sort of a pre-Lent warm-up.)

***

So I googled Our Lady Star of the Sea, and confessions start at 3:30.  So I’m thinking at 3:15 I should just send all the ladies to go get in line?  Yes?

Meanwhile, the e-mail with a copy of the flyer reminded me that I’d better quick turn my notes into something presentable. And I need to know: How do I get the text for the divine office for that day . . . before the day?  Long before the day?  Because I’m not sure folks are going to have their iBreviaries along, which is my method. Printed matter might be wanted.  Printed matter requires lead time.

Also: If we’re going to be praying midday prayer (ha! I think we might be!), what’s the protocol in these situations concerning the invitatory?  I think it’s a safe assumption that for most present, it will be their first hour of the day.  But we’re working with the theory that at least some in the room will have already said morning prayer before they arrive.  Do we arm wrestle?  How does this work?

And hey – Anyone got an especially nice one-page, largish print, “I haven’t been to confession in 23 years, what do I do??” examination of conscience and how-to tutorial?  Public domain / Creative Commons, yes?  Yes?  It’s going in the packet. Your name in lights if you produce the goods.