La Niña de Tus Ojos, The Apple of Your Eye

Prepostulancy has officially begun!  Nerves have subsided for the most part. For those discerning religious life, the nerves I talked about in this previous post do go away! Thank God...because they give you so much stress! That being said, in all honesty, I'm still nervous...but about teaching, not being a prepostulant. I'm sure when the kids come in next week (yes, they start school next week), things will get back to normal.

Anyway, I've only been here a few days and every now and then it hits me, usually when I'm turning my key to open the Sisters' house: "oh my gosh, I actually live here". It just feels unreal. I know that I've said this a million times now, but I still can't believe I'm here. A year ago, I would barely have imagined living as a prepostulant in Georgia with the Daughters of Charity. The Sisters here are wonderful, the community is wonderful, their ministries and spirituality are wonderful - it's exactly what I was looking for and more. God is so good.


When I think of His goodness, I am reminded of a memory that every morning at the hogar (orphanage) where I worked in Bolivia, we would blast music through the speakers to wake up the girls. Sometimes it would be the soundtrack of High School Musical, sometimes Hannah Montana (luckily, I left before it became Justin Beiber), and sometimes a mixed CD of Jesus Adrian Romero, a Mexican Christian singer, and Daniel Calveti, a Venezuelan Christian singer.

When I got nostalgic, I would listen to their music again - to pretend I was back in the hogar or in our rural church at Mass. But now that years have past, I listen to them to connect with my own current spiritual life...combining my present spirituality with my missionary one. One of my favorite songs is "La Niña de Tus Ojos" by Daniel Calveti and illustrates perfectly the merging of my Bolivian past with the current spiritual status I find myself in now.

"Niña de tus ojos", literally translated as "the girl of your eyes", is actually an expression in Spanish. The English equivalent is "the apple of your eye" (which may make even less sense linguistically than 'the girl of your eyes'!) Anyway, the song speaks of God's love for each one of us, how each one of us are the apple of His eye.

The chorus says (see how much more beautiful it is in Spanish?):

Y me diste nombre (and you gave me a name)
yo soy tu niña (I am the apple)
la niña de tus ojos (the apple of your eye)
porque me amaste a mi (because you loved me)

and then, my favorite part of the song....

te amo más que a mi vida (I love you more than my life)
te amo más que a mi vida (I love you more than my life)
te amo más que a mi vida (I love you more than my life)

Don't forget you are the niña of God's ojos....or the apple of His eye. He loves you even more than you could ever imagine.And what He has planned out for you is even more wonderful than you could ever imagine. I know because I am constantly amazed by Him and His love...