Discipline

For my thirty-seventh birthday (today), I asked my family for the gift of being left completely alone for 24 hours. With the house to myself, I woke at 3am and read and smoked tobacco. Then I lifted weights for an hour. Now I'm eating a little and then I'll write pretty much until bedtime, about 7pm.

Years ago, in my early twenties, I went with a very heavy heart to an adoration chapel. After a long silence, one word surfaced in my turbulent mind and stayed with me until I uttered it as a prayer: "Discipline." I asked for it. When I looked up, the little disk at the center of the monstrance wasn't just white, but looked to be white hot. The whole room rippled with the visible waves you see in the air around a very hot blaze. But while there was every appearance of furious heat, I didn't feel any.

Discipline might be the farthest thing from my nature. I still don't fully have the virtue (my dependence on the "little sacrament, tobacca" is an obvious example). But I was struck this morning that, given total freedom, I've found myself "falling" not FROM all discipline, but INTO at least some.

And thank God for that. My heart is still very heavy, and in fact heavier than ever before. Discipline might be a saving grace in more ways than one.