Dear Liz, Your despondency is a waste of energy.\u00a0 If Christ were in your place, would he complain, or would he get to work?\u00a0 Ok, so you had your heart set on school A, but you didn\u2019t get accepted and so you have had to come to school B, which you only applied to because your parents wanted you to.\u00a0 You suspected that it was too small, too isolated, and too boring, and your orientation week has corroborated your suspicions.\u00a0 So now you sit in front of your window and gaze longingly into the sky as if you were cooped up in prison.\u00a0 What a waste.\u00a0 You are acting like a spoiled child.\u00a0 Does God not know how much you wanted to go to school A?\u00a0 Does he not know what you think of school B?\u00a0 Of course he does.\u00a0 So, if you\u2019re stuck there (which it seems you are, at least for this year), he must have a plan.\u00a0 Your job is to discover it.\u00a0 Somehow, you\u2019ve got a mission to accomplish this year, and you won\u2019t get it done by staring out the window. In a curious way, your situation reminds me of today\u2019s saint.\u00a0 Elizabeth Bichier grew up amid the horrors of the French Revolution.\u00a0 Her family remained faithful to the Church, in spite of the violent persecutions that swarmed all around them, so she was given a solid education and a strong foundation in the faith.\u00a0 Her father died when she was 19, and she had to defend her family\u2019s property against government attempts at confiscation, which she did admirably.\u00a0 She and her mother took up residence in western France, and she intensified her efforts to care for poor children and to instruct them in that faith that the Revolution had flouted.\u00a0 Her own exemplary behavior was bolstered by a private vow of perpetual chastity, and she began to recruit friends and relations to aid her charitable efforts.\u00a0 Soon she joined forces with a young priest, later known as St Andrew Fournet, who shared her concern for reconstructing the ravaged French Church.\u00a0 She contemplated entering a cloistered convent to better dedicate herself to the Lord, but St Andrew explained that her work was in the world, which had been overgrown with vice and ignorance. Under his guidance, she formed a religious order dedicated to the crucial task of spiritual gardening.\u00a0 By the time she died, nuns and priests associated with the \u201cGood Sister,\u201d as they called her, inhabited 60 convents throughout France and northern Spain. So you see, my good niece, happiness isn\u2019t so much a matter of getting what we want as it is finding out and doing what God wants.\u00a0 Count on my prayers. Love, Uncle Eddy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear Liz, Your despondency is a waste of energy.\u00a0 If Christ were in your place, would he complain, or would he get to work?\u00a0 Ok, so you had your heart […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":359,"featured_media":145992,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[3719],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-142208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncle-eddy"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"","pp_force_visibility":null,"pp_subpost_visibility":null,"pp_inherited_force_visibility":null,"pp_inherited_subpost_visibility":null,"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n