This goal fell right on its face the moment I returned from my Texas road trip in late May.  Joining a job pool with students looking for summer work, I was in a disadvantage.  No business wanted to touch me and my two- to three-month window to work.  I wasn’t willing to humble myself more to take an ordinary retail job.  Right here, my faults stare right back at me.

Ideally, I wanted to work in the parish.  This future priest needs to know how a parish works.  But my childhood parish is too poor to hire me.  The nearby parish needed diocesan approval and the diocese didn’t have any funds to help me.  I should’ve just volunteered at the parish at the beginning.

My elementary classmate, Father James Kuroly, said that maybe God was telling me to relax “because you’ll be busy for the rest of your life.”

So I turned to helping at the house.  I drove my mother around in her giant Buick.  I treasure those moments with her because she would dispense her treasury of wisdom.  The rough traffic in Boston must have toughened me up for New York.  It wasn’t so bad driving around Queens and Brooklyn again.  But I will never EVER drive in Manhattan, not even for a million bucks.  I know my limits.

Twice, my mother would have me help with yard work.  Sometimes, it was pulling up weeds.  Twice, I had to trim the tallest parts of her climbing vines and the cherry tree.  These things grow fast.  Many times, I worried that I would break my neck trying to pull down the highest parts.

My next focus was to organize and shred my sister Liza’s old mail.  Like me, Liza is a pack rat.  The mail had stacked up in places.  It was even climbing up the stairs.  I spent most of June taking down the piles.  The stairs were cleaned up.  I organized all important documents in folders.  I even set up my station next to the shredder.

I was proud to go up and down the stairs without worrying about mail.  Then on July 27, I saw this:

Arrrgh.  Sometimes, a brother’s task is never finish.

I relaxed by working on my blog, reading books and watching movies with Liza.  (I already wrote a few movie reflections for the blog.)  Maintaining Spanish skills, I finished watching the “Destinos” episodes and reading a book that my professor had suggested at the end of the semester.  Every other day, I would read an article from “Nuestra Voz,” the Spanish Catholic newspaper for the Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens.  The articles were simple enough for my language proficiency.

Maybe God was teaching me to invest in building relationships inside and outside my family instead of focusing on money.  That investment is always worth it because we are destined to be together in community with each other and with God.

Next goal for review: Looking for Divine Mercy.