The Catholic Writers Guild

My name is Chris Lenart and I have lived in Naperville, Illinois for the last eight years. Due to breathing issues at birth, I have Cerebral Palsy and am nonverbal. I live on my own with aides coming in and helping me several times a day. I am a blogger, a YouTuber, a disability advocate, an author, and a public speaker. If you want to know more about me, just visit www.disabilityawareness.us. You will also get to know more about me each month as I share blogs here. So let’s get started on today’s topic.

Do you know God? I mean do you really know God? Perhaps you are saying, “Yes, I grew up Catholic and go to Mass every Sunday.” Maybe you even go every day. That is awesome, but to know God, there is more than going to church. To know God, is to have a friend. To keep a friendship strong, you have to get to know each other and hang out together. If you become best friends, you want to talk every single day. If you have a bad day or a good day, you want to tell your friend about what happened. God wants to be that friend with you very much, but we don’t allow Him to be our best friend. We often tell ourselves that God is too busy for us or that we don’t hear Him talking. God is never too busy because He is everywhere. He does talk to us, but we make our lives noisy by scheduling a lot of things in the day. We have to take our kids to school, to sports, help with homework, not to mention our work, email, texts,
and on and on. We tell ourselves when the kids are out of the house, we will have more time to do important things for us. That never happens because kids are living at home longer or you become a grandparent. If you become a grandparent, watch out, your life will never slow down.

What should we do? The beauty of God is that He is everywhere. We can talk to Him in the shower, in the car, while we work out, or while fixing dinner. Dinner? What is that? We have to find time to pray because our future depends on our relationship with God, so it is no laughing matter. We often tell ourselves that God knows us really well so we have nothing to fear, but Jesus tells us that the gate is narrow. We cannot assume that we will go to heaven when we die.

Sometimes we feel like we are all alone, but we are not. God is beside us always. I feel so lonely sometimes that I fall into sin. I know it is wrong but I can’t help it. I pray for God to help me through the hard times and try to be more faithful to Him. Remember to keep putting God in the center of your life. Just talk to God as a friend and don’t worry about what you say because He knows everything about you. I really find that to be comforting because when I have a bad day, he already knows what happened. He knows what is bothering you, so let Him into your heart and be your best friend.

Mark Andrews

Mark Andrews is a husband, a father, lector, singer, and Knights of Columbus member. Mark's novel The Joy of the Lord is a historical fiction about the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary. It is available at Amazon in both paperback and Kindle.