Ofa Atu

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Bryanna Nichole Bergeman

October 31, 2014 · Denver, CO

“Thank God we have the ultimate promise-keeper in Him. Over and over again He promises us a place in His arms if we love Him. And Sione’s love for the Lord filled those around everyone he met. Romans 8 says that I AM CONVINCED that neither DEATH nor life nor Angels or DEMONS or any such darkness can separate us from the love of the Lord! Psalms 51 tells us that our sins are before us but He looks upon us with mercy and I strongly believe he held Sione with arms of mercy and embraced Him into His Kingdom! The joy Jesus must have to claim his child, my brother in Christ, back into His arms! In Psalms 18 HE tells us that through His wrath He moves mountains and valleys, and everything in His way to get to us when we cry out to Him. In His wrath of love He will do ANYTHING to get to us. He drew me from many waters because he loves me.”

“Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way where I am going.”

John 14:1-4

I’m going to Belize!

You heard me! My brother and I are going to Belize to teach High School students about the Lord this March.

“This mission focuses on bringing Christ to students in middle and high schools of villages and cities. The ministry includes using Theology of the Body to teach the students how to live out their faith, how to practice chastity and how to build each other up as the body of Christ while collaborating with SOLT (Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity) priests at Mt. Carmel High School in Benque.”

If you feel inclined to help us out, there are three things you can do for us:

1. PRAY! We are going to need a whole lot of prayers.
2. DONATE! Here is a link if you are feeling generous 😉 Just be sure to click on Belize mission in the dropdown box.
3. Message me any prayers requests you have that I can take with while I’m there.

Bless up!

Grabbing at Love

My sweet Maggie Himp and I spent our whole “friend day” delving into the reality of vocations, the fall, womanhood, etc. Her response to our heart-to-heart today is too good not to share:

“Isn’t it crazy that the first fall of woman was her failure to receive? Eve grabbed at the fruit and did not trust that goodness would come to her. And man’s first fall was that he did not provide. Adam did not provide the comfort, protection, and gentle hold his woman needed when she needed him. Our culture today seems to be echoing the same fall of our first parents. Men seem to be doing the receiving and women the providing.”

Make Me Your Hands

Lonely. Longing. Pushed aside. Unseen. Unnoticed. Used up. Dried out. Broken down. Wounded. Thirsty. Abandoned. Puffy eyes and scraped knees. I’ve been there. So empty.

One day in Prague, after I got waaay too much food for lunch, I prayed this little prayer. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to finish it by myself so I whispered to the Lord quietly: “Give me somebody to give the rest of this meal to. Let me be your hands today.” I looked up to see two hands reaching out for me the way my soul was reaching out to the Lord. Desperate. This woman looked at me like she has done this so many times she knew she was going to be turned away. I told her I didn’t have any change but that she could have the rest of my meal. Her eyes lit up and she reached out even further for my plate. My eyes left her eyes and fell upon her bandaged up and wounded hands. Bloody and beaten down. She cradled my plate over to the side of the road where she was sitting. I watched her try to cut up her food with the few fingers she had to spare and I couldn’t handle it. I grabbed a fork and a knife and sat next to her on the side of the road and began to cut up her food for her. In this moment I felt that I could finally breathe again. I received mercy by showing mercy. I had nothing to give from my own frail, human, shallow heart, but God in his abundance used my hands, took over my gaze and placed himself beside this woman on the side of the road in the middle of Prague. In that moment I was met with love even though I was the one attempting to love. I was introduced to the hardest beatitude to encounter: Matthew 5:7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. I was redeemed, healed, satisfied, inspired, made new, loved. St. Teresa of Avila reminded me on this trip of a radical mission she calls us to as Christ’s beloved and it goes like this:

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

Thank you, Jesus, for meeting us on the side of the road with mercy.

Surrender

I think we can all agree that surrendering to the Lord is one of the most challenging things we are called to do, but also the thing God calls us to do the most! We are called to surrender everything to him, right? Way easier said than done! The most monumental item I ever surrendered to the Lord was my life. He has called me to give that up to him everyday since and I thought I was doing a pretty good job at it until recently. I woke up yesterday with a whole check list of things to do one of them being: make time for the Lord in adoration. It was the last on my list because I wanted to get all the other little adult things out of the way so I could really focus in on Jesus and relax. Sounds reasonable doesn’t it? The longer the list got the more stressed out I was and the more worrisome my day looked. I got so overwhelmed I just ran to adoration and began praying about all the things I had to get done. I even told God I couldn’t rest until it was all finished!

A few deep breaths later, I pushed all the clutter out of my mind for a second and in that moment God made it very clear to me that productivity won’t give me rest, he will.

“Come to me all who are wearied and burdened and I will give you rest”-Matthew 11:28

Completing tasks and check lists won’t help me to relax, he will.

“He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me by still waters, he refreshes my soul” –Psalm 23:2-3

This is exactly the area of control in my life God was calling me to surrender.  So I ripped up my checklist and said to myself ‘today, I’m going to put off whatever it is I have to do. Tomorrow can suck but today doesn’t have to!’ I did things that brought strength and serenity to my soul instead. I read a book, went for a run, enjoyed the sunset, and watched Harry Potter with my best friend. The next day came around and what do you know… I’m still alive! Thanks Jesus.

Daddy’s little girl

               As I have been exploring the heart of God the Father, I’ve also come to know myself more as a daughter of Christ. I’m sure we have all heard that we are children of God, but what does that actually look like? Well, I think St. Therese says it best: Christ is “unable to resist being conquered by the trust of a little child”. Woah. When some of us think of a Father we think of the punisher, the stern one, the one who doesn’t suffer from emotional infections like women do. We don’t think of a Father who is convicted by our love, whose heart melts when we look at him or a Father who receives true joy by seeing us do the things we love. Sometimes we don’t see a Father who is “slow to anger and abounding in mercy”, we see someone with a hot temper and quick to correct us. Well, I am here to tell you that… you are Daddy’s little girl in the eyes of THE ultimate Father. Haven’t you always wanted to hear that? We all have a very sensitive, delicate, and profound ache to be loved by a man in our lives. One of my favorite things to do is meditate on Jesus’s encounters with His daughters in the New Testament. The way he consoles the woman at the well, the way he heals the woman who touches the hem of his cloak by one act of faith, the close relationship he had with Mary Magdalen… all these examples are demonstrations of the Father’s intimate, passionate love for his daughters. He has a very consoling and sensitive place in his heart for his little girls. I encourage all of you to pray to encounter God the Father, and approach Him as Daddy’s little girl.

The intensity of intimacy

I have so much to say regarding the topic of chastity, but right now I want to just scratch the surface. Just recently, I was fortunate enough to relearn a very hard lesson on the importance of saving ourselves for marriage.

I am a firm believer that we are never “too far gone” from Jesus or that we are denied the fullness of redemption if we have fallen short when it comes to chastity. I am also convinced that even if we abuse our freedom and sexuality that it is nothing that can’t be returned to us and made new. To say that there is a point of no return from God’s grace and that we are only available to God’s mercy and redemption if we don’t cross this certain line is failing to trust in the victory of the cross. How big and how great and how merciful is our God! He is way bigger than sex, everybody. To say we are denied from His mercy because of our deepest darkest sins, secrets, and screw-ups is saying that God is limited in His love and power. It is saying that what He did on the cross was limited to only petty mistakes. He is not limited- He is infinite and abundant. Let us be convinced of this.

With that being said, the Devil knows our weaknesses and waits like a “prowling lion” for us to let our guards down just for a second to snatch us. I prided myself on overcoming my past mistakes and distancing myself from the party scene. I prided myself on coming this far in my faith. I thought to myself “I can never see myself living that life again”. Well, if we don’t stay on guard and alert of the schemes and lies of the Evil one, he loves to repeat the past. He can’t come up with anything new! The only one capable of making us a “new creation” is Jesus. All the Devil can do is fill us with fear of the future or keep us stuck in our past. And stuck in my past is exactly where he placed me.

When I was at my most vulnerable and empty, I threw myself into the arms of another man when I should have thrown myself into the arms of Jesus. I know the pain of being used and I know that Jesus loves me—so why would I do this again?! I had to ask myself this question a million times and I guess the only answer I could come up with is this: my knowledge of the truth didn’t resolve this longing in my heart right away. Knowing and holding onto hope did not fulfill my emotional void immediately and I was seeking release and comfort in the midst of my pain. After I ended my relationship with a man I loved very much there was a distinct emptiness within me that stung every second of everyday. So what do I do? I tried to fill it with immediate pleasures instead of waiting on the Lord to empty me fully of this world only to abundantly fill me again with Him in due time.

I learned a few things through repeating my mistakes. One being that there are emotional, physical, spiritual, and mental consequences when we are intimate with others. Those consequences were designed not to be bad, but good! But we cannot avoid these consequences, especially when they involve falling into sin. These consequences are intense. They are personal, raw, and all-encompassing. There is a reason that Solomon tells us “not to stir up love before it pleases” not once but TWICE in Song of Songs. Solomon is trying to warn us that the intensity of intimacy will find us whether we abuse this gift of sexual intimacy or embrace it how it was originally designed with all it’s dignity and freedom.

I attempted to shut off my emotions and numb myself not only the pain of this world but to true, sacrificial love as well. One of my dear friends told me that it is more rewarding to be vulnerable than to be disconnected, and she was right. 1 Peter 4:8 says to love others “deeply” and intensely because “love covers a multitude of sins.” That right there sums up everything I have learned. There is a huge reward in all of this and that is the intense love of Jesus. His love is as stern as death and unquenchable (Song of Songs 8).

So the final lesson I learned and what I encourage you to do: embrace loneliness, embrace suffering, embrace emptiness, embrace weakness, and most of all, embrace intimacy with the Lord. Feel the emotions you feel. Depend on Jesus EVERY SECOND of the day. I will no longer run away from my pain or try to fill my void with anything but Jesus. I will EMBRACE. And I will wait on Him. When I am enduring suffering I am united to the cross so close to Jesus “I can almost touch him” and that my dear sisters is when we are the most fully alive.

I’m God’s favorite

Within the last week my world got flipped upside down. I had to lay down the man of my dreams at the foot of the cross whom I wholeheartedly loved. And of course, like your typical depressing break-up story, all my plans for the future melted right in front of my eyes and there was nothing I could do about it. It’s funny to me how I believed that I had everything I ever wanted. I would even venture to say that I thought I had everything I needed. I thought to myself “thanks God, I’m all capped out on your goodness so I am good to go.” I had a boyfriend who worshipped the ground that I walk on, who treated me like a Queen, and loved me the way that Christ loves the Church. What more could a girl possibly ask for? Well, that’s thing- I didn’t even know that God wanted not only to fulfill my happiness but He wants to give me that happiness abundantly. My little mind and heart had everything I wanted and through this heartbreak, my heart was expanded and stretched out for an even bigger capacity for love. God keeps on giving me more and more and more because I followed Him all the way to the cross and laid down not only my life but  the life of this amazing man that was mine only for a short time. The moment I placed him into the Lord’s hands and released my grip from this relationship I received the world. I know a lot of girls have probably heard this before: “I would take a bullet for you”, “you are the only girl I see”, “ you deserve the world”. I’ve at least heard these things from previous boyfriends which is good! But I just recently heard them from the love of my life- my sweet sweet Jesus. In Adoration, I was so overwhelmed by the grace flowing in my veins and the fact that God knows me so well and He knows my happiness better than I do. As I looked up at the Eucharist, I realized He simply wants to give me everything; I am the only girl he sees; he would take a bullet for me. He has taken a bullet for me! He literally laid down his life and loved me to the end and would do it again if that meant He got my attention. He jumps up and down every time I mention His name. His heart flutters a little bit when I step into adoration. He spoils me and absolutely adores me! I feel like Daddy’s little girl and who knew it would take something so painful to get here. That is the paradox of this Jesus I love so much.” To get to some of the most beautiful flowers you have to shed blood to hold them.” I am reaching towards this abundant garden of roses he is showering down on me even though I have to reach through the thorns to hold them.

My Cup Overflows -Psalms 23:5