January 2020

     I am a cradle Catholic who was very involved in my faith life and faith formation through college.  I met my wife Michelle while I was doing music at Tulane’s Catholic Student Center during medical school and our faith was a huge part of what brought us together.  I started residency eleven months into our marriage and we also had our first child.  Life got busy.  I spent seven years in training when my time was not my own and we had two more children as well.  I did not realize the subtle fade I went through spiritually as I was not making time for God beyond going to mass on Sundays and sporadic prayer time.  I was good about turning to God when I was having a rough time but it was always on my own terms and not really taking the time to listen quietly.  Years passed and life only got busier.  While we stayed active in the parish and continued our regular practices, I was still living from the perspective of telling God, “I’ve got this.”
 
     In 2018, I took a challenge from Father Tim to start going to the adoration chapel daily.  It was as if God knew I needed to recenter.  Michelle and I also did the Alpha course around the same time.  Through my time in adoration and taking the Alpha journey with Michelle, God really transformed my heart.  I became aware of how I was trying to do it all on my own without God.  I thought I was able to balance marriage, family, and career on my own.  However, I was missing my true anchoring point in a deeper sense.  I had put up walls to keep my head above water, but that was not the life that Christ was calling me to and that was not the man I was called to be as a husband, father, and physician. 
 
      What started as five or ten minutes once a day quickly grew to longer visits to adoration and often times going twice a day.  I was pulled back time and again by the awesome opportunity to surrender all the weight I was trying to carry on my own and lay it down to Jesus.  God spoke very quietly but powerfully in revealing His real presence there and I felt an emptiness on days when I did not make it.  Before, it was very rare that I felt like God was speaking to me but the more I am quiet the more I hear.  Through that quiet, I was convicted while reading and praying on Ephesians 5:25 that my one priority and my one vocation in this world is to love my wife as Christ loves the church.   This allowed me to put down my ego and my pride and realize that I can do nothing without Christ as my rock and my center.  It has transformed how I interact in the world and I truly try and see each moment as an opportunity to be present to God.  I strive to see each meeting, each activity, and any time I can spend with Michelle or our now six children as an incredible chance to encounter God in the everyday.  One of the other unexpected outcomes of going to adoration has been that our children see that I make the time to go daily and they have asked about it and have started to go along as well some days.  It has also fostered regular prayer for Michelle and me.  Often times we will take the opportunity to go to the chapel together before going out to dinner when we have a date night. 
 
     I have grown a lot since starting to go to adoration.  I have come to know Jesus through spending time with Him in adoration, and I truly know his limitless love because it is reflected through my wife’s eyes. It is an unbelievable feeling to know that I am loved fully in spite all of my faults and weaknesses.  Day to day, it is easy to get caught up in life and just go through the motions, but we have a loving father who stands on the other side of the door always waiting for us to show up and knock.  I have never felt more free since being able to surrender everything I thought I had to carry and just rely on Him.