September 24, 2025 // Wednesday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time
Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s Responsorial Psalm: Tobit 13:2-4, 7-8
Reflect on the Word //
There I sat in the driver's seat, as I drove our daughter to school. It was an ordinary Tuesday morning—and yet, the Lord’s gentle voice was as loud as it had ever been. Will you let Me show you your motherhood—as I created it to be? I shuddered at the thought on that Tuesday morning. Motherhood was hard for me. It was a role He chose me for, but I felt so frequently that I didn't fit the part.
As His question rested on my heart, I continued to drive. Would I allow Him into this place of identity that felt broken and abandoned? Forgotten and wrecked?
I'd spend the next year leaning into His Heart as He showed me the hard places of my heart: the wounds and hurts amidst my motherhood. He did not come to reveal my brokenness for the sake of showing it to me. He came to bring light, healing, and restoration to parts of my heart that had died in the darkness. Going to those places with Him was uncomfortable, raw, and painful. And yet, it was because He accompanied me into those places that I can look back now and see His healing and tender care for me.
In today's Responsorial Psalm from Tobit, we are invited to reflect on the seemingly contradictory human experience. The seasons of scourging that lead to mercy. The being cast down only to be brought back up.
Our Father does not point to our pain only to sit back, scoff at us, and let us figure it out on our own. Rather, He brings light to those raw yet hardened places of our hearts. He meets us in the depths of our difficulties and promises to turn those depths to heights. He reminds us that it is not our striving that leads to holiness, but His Holy Spirit that lives always within us and transforms us from the inside out.
So now we praise Him with full voice—knowing and trusting that He will take and transform all that is cast down into beauty and life.
Relate to the Lord // Pause in quiet prayer and listen for God’s voice. What does He want to say to your heart?
Shalini Blubaugh is a Minnesota transplant living in Coppell, Texas. She served with NET Ministries and went on to graduate with her J.D., though happily left all things law behind. Along with her roles as wife and mom, she now runs her own company, Pray. Train. Grow., as a Certified Fitness Trainer and Nutritional Therapy Practitioner. Her mission is to help Catholic women grow STRONG in mind, body, and heart through the integration of Faith, fitness and food.
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