I grew up in a small community church, very Protestant, very anti-catholic. I remember asking Jesus into my heart at 6 years old. By the grace of God he made my heart is home. For the next 40 years I wandered in a vast desert of do-it-yourself Christianity. I studied the Bible intensely for 20 of those years. Studied the ancient Hebrew, the Canaanite pictographs, Semitic culture, idioms, etc...trying to grasp who Jesus was and what he was truly teaching his followers. 

One day I stumbled into a Catholic Church, I was praying, doing my own thing as usual, and suddenly the church started filling up with people. People from all walks of life. At the end of the service, people formed a line to receive communion, but this form of communion was a little different than I was used to. There was a single cup and when I saw a rich, snobby old woman drinking directly after a bum off the streets of Portland, I thought to myself "This is what it's all about!"

So after 40 years of hunger and thirst searching for the promised land in a desert of DIY Christianity, I found what Christianity was really all about in the Eucharist. Sharing Jesus Christ with others. Actually becoming his body, it was all so clear. 
What's even more amazing is that through the Eucharist I have learned more in the last 18 months about who God is, who I am in Christ, who I am as the figure of Christ in my marriage, then I had ever learned in 20+ years of Bible study. The difference is like owning the book verses knowing the author. 

Amen.

It is a poignant and humbling realization that my love for the    Eucharist was born out of my daughter’s love. Many years ago, when she was a teenager, she was invited by a good and holy friend to start going to the local chapel for Adoration once a week. This became a regular event, and while I grew more and more curious (never having been to Adoration myself), I didn’t feel like I could intrude on this special time she spent with her friend. 

Life threw us some curve balls in the following years, and it was in those days, when she had lost her Adoration buddy, and I had more of a need for God than ever in my life, that I discovered the blessing of attending regular Adoration. Though my daughter didn’t know it (and not the first time in our homeschooling journey), she had many things to teach me by her quiet example: that when you enter for Adoration, you get down on both knees and bow, that you can read a spiritual book, or pray a rosary, or just sit in silence. It was not easy for me at first. Our world (and Satan) like to keep me busy, preoccupied with my to-do lists, and hurrying to check that next (but never last) thing off of my to do list. As a type-A, worker-bee personality, sitting still for an hour challenged my warped self-image that to be “worthy” I had to be accomplishing things. Adoration totally challenged my perception of the person I had allowed myself to become. 

But God was asking me to become something new, and it was the time I spent in Adoration that allowed that change to happen.  Over the years, Adoration certainly became an avenue to more peace and stillness. Sometimes, I even felt guilty that I was leaving my husband and some of the kids at home. Slowly, though, it  became the place where I was at home with my Father, His Son, and the Holy Spirit. I could speak to God and just be. As time went on, I didn’t always need something “to do” while I was there. I have brought some very heavy heart issues to Him…and He has been silent. I’ve been tempted to stay home thinking it doesn’t  matter if I am there, especially if I don’t “get something out of it.” But I keep coming back. He brings me back. There have been  moments when I have heard those whispers that feel like they come from Him, giving me a word of strength, a message of hope, or the balm of peace in my soul. I’ve gotten over the expectation that I’m going to have a profound or somehow mystical experience at  Adoration. In the end, I know that it isn’t about ME, it’s about HIM. My God is there, with His Son, who teaches me so much about how to love and how to just be with Him. As I look at the face of His Son in the monstrance, teaching me so much by his own poverty and humility there, I am reminded of my own child, who first taught me the gift of Adoration, and I am truly grateful! 

 “Insights that God has Whispered to Me Related to the Eucharist”

• Looking through my mind’s eye upon the cross at a morning Mass I saw the crucified Christ infinitely shredding flake-like wafers to be consumed to become Christ in the world.
• The words “Consume Peace” came to me in a dream in which I was receiving the Eucharist. 
• A prayer I sometimes offer as I receive the Eucharist:  “May that which is You, Lord, become and grow in me, and that which is not – not.”
• Eucharistic Adoration: The silence has been grounding.  I am not easily silenced. And I need silence to hear the Good Lord speak. If I can just get out of the way and let Him work!  
•  Thank God for God.

An Adoration-Inspired Prayer
Father, turn my passions to the service of your love. 
Help me to surrender my temptations and my fear. 
Make my will, what you will Lord Jesus, Father, Holy Spirit.
Strip Satan’s scales from my eyes so that I may see your righteous path and have the wisdom to follow you my Lord, my shepherd.

Pray Jesus that I may discipline my strength to Be
“Patiently” focused upon You. Turn me towards you. Hold me. Lead me. Guide me.
You made me, if it pleases you, may you prune away my dead branches, so I may mature in your sight. Be my Father, the truest source of my life, source of the Good Fruit. May I 
please you and work your will.

Plant your seed in my heart so that I may know you and love you. 
Unseal my mind to do your will. Do not let me be distracted.  
Strip me of my fears, so I may truly be yours, my Father, Lord  Jesus, Holy Spirit.  
May the fruit of my passions be born for the sake of your Heavenly Kingdom. 
Father I put my life in your hands.