St. Teresa of Avila

At the beginning of 2011, I used Jen @ CD's Saint Name Generator to pick a "patron saint for the year", as it were. The Name Generator picked St. Teresa of Avila for me. This is what it had to say:

Patronage: Against Headaches; Against the Death of Parents; LaceMakers; People in Need of Grace; People in Religious Orders; People Ridiculed for Their Piety; Sick People

As I was sitting there reading it, I had a headache; I had recently found out my dad had cancer; I definitely felt in need of grace; I had felt like someone on a blog somewhere had made fun of me for trying to be kind; and I figured a headache counted as a sort of being sick, too. Clearly God picked her for me for a reason.

Only the thing is, I don't really know what that reason is.

There hasn't been a whole lot of follow-up to having picked her. I've asked her to pray for me this year, and I've asked for her prayers for my dad, and that's about it. I got a couple of her books from the library; Mansions gave me a little better appreciation for a couple things that aren't hugely relevant to my life, but I couldn't get into it enough to finish it, and I eventually just returned both books.

I'm posting this now because someone mentioned her recently, and the title grabbed me when I was scrolling through my list of possible blog posts (and none of the others did). Maybe the moral of the story is that sometimes you just don't what God's doing in your life; a lot of your stories are unfinished stories or stories that are taking place on a level we can't see.

Or, you know, maybe if I actually *remembered* to ask for her intercession more often, I'd be telling a more exciting story right now.