How to place or lift a security freeze on your credit report

A credit freeze restricts access to your credit report. If you suspect someone stole your personal information or identity, placing a credit freeze can help protect you from fraud.

What is a credit freeze?

When you place a security freeze, creditors cannot access your credit report. This will keep them from approving any new credit account in your name, whether it is fraudulent or legitimate. 

To let lenders and other companies access your credit files again to create new accounts, you will need to lift your credit freeze permanently or temporarily. 

Place or lift a credit freeze

Freeze or lift the freeze on your credit report for free by contacting each of the three major credit reporting agencies:

• Equifax or 1-888-378-4329
• Experian or 1-888-397-3742
• TransUnion or 1-833-806-1627
• Innovis or 1-866-712-4546 (Please monitor or freeze this credit reporting bureau as well as the big 3) While not one of the three major credit bureaus, Innovis also maintains credit information for many consumers. Consider freezing or monitoring your Innovis report as well.

You can submit your request online, by phone, or by mail. 

How long do freeze requests take?

Freeze requests:

• Online or by phone: agencies must freeze your credit report within one business day
• By mail: agencies must freeze your credit report within three business days

Unfreeze requests:

• Online or by phone: agencies must lift the freeze within one hour
• By mail: agencies must lift the freeze within three business days

This information was adapted from USA.gov. Visit USA.gov for the latest guidance on protecting your credit.

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”

— John 20:19

In our Community, we hold the Easter Vigil on Sunday morning instead of the evening before. All of us Sisters and our houseguests wake up long before dawn, shuffle sleepily into the Convent library and wait in darkness and complete silence as the chapel Sister lights the holy fire in the cast-iron stove in the fireplace. We listen to the words of the Service of Light, watch the lighting of the Paschal Candle and light our small candles from its flame. Then we process silently into the dark chapel, still barely awake.

As we take our seats, a Sister sings the Exsultet. We awaken slowly as we listen to the long, meditative readings of the Liturgy of the Word. We solemnly renew our baptismal vows, listen to the collect at the conclusion of the Renewal of Vows and then, somehow, every year, the sun rises right on cue as the celebrant says “Alleluia, Christ is risen,” and we shout, “The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!”

As the lights are flipped on, the organ music swells and the many candles are lit, I always love to look around the chapel at the radiance on every face. Exhausted countenances transform into smiles as bright as the sun, and we all experience a collective surge of jubilation. Even though we do this every year, the joy of Christ’s resurrection always feels brand new in this moment. Yesterday, we were in darkness and despair. Today, the sun has risen, and we are full of life and hope.

The world around us might seem to be full of chaos and fear, just as it did in the disciples’ time, but I always remember that we Christians are a people of hope. We know from Christ’s example that even in death, there is still hope because life is eternal. Even when all seems lost, it is never the end. The Lord has risen indeed. Alleluia. Alleluia.

Reflect: Where do you encounter the risen Lord in your life? What moments give you hope?

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

— Romans 8:1-4

When I was a Novice, I was talking to one of the Sisters in the hallway outside our chapel, asking a question about the schedule. It was Holy Saturday, and we were supposed to be in the Great Silence, but I thought that by whispering softly, I would not be breaking the silence. Just then, a senior Sister came whipping around the corner, her black habit flapping in the whirlwind of her indignant momentum, and stage-whispered with great intensity, “He is IN the TOMB!!!!”

Well, that shut us up. I was so mortified that I must have turned purple from head to toe. The other Sister put her finger to her lips, and I did not utter a peep for the rest of that day. As embarrassing as that was, it taught me a lesson about the Great Silence on Holy Saturday. He is in the tomb. We must bear that truth in mind all day.

Jesus’ flesh lies in the sealed darkness of the tomb, in silence. We keep silent with him. Paul’s letter to the Romans describes to us the importance of Jesus’ sacrifice and reminds us that when the flesh fails, we are sustained by the Spirit.

As Jesus lies in the tomb, his disciples start to lose heart. They have suffered the agony of watching him suffer and die, and even though he told them death would not be the end, they still wonder if his words are true. The hours of Holy Saturday tick away slowly as they are plunged further and further into despair. Is this the end?

Reflect: What is your usual observance of Holy SATURDAY? Is silence a part of it?

This Lenten Meditation can be found at Episcopal Relief and Development

They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

— John 19:40-42

In our Community, we do not eat meat on Fridays or Wednesdays because Jesus was betrayed by Judas on a Wednesday, then was crucified on Friday. Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are even stricter days of fasting in which we only eat plain bread, plain yogurt, some fruit and cheese. We also begin a deep silence, or Greater Silence, after the Maundy Thursday service until Easter morning. On Good Friday, we walk the outdoor Stations of the Cross with visitors, and we spend the entire day either worshiping in the chapel or in private meditation.

This combination of fasting and silence adds a profound depth to our experience of Jesus’ crucifixion. We usually have several guests staying with us during Holy Week, and even though we are in silence, our connections are strengthened. We all suffer together through the long, solemn hours of the day as we pray Lauds, Terce, the Good Friday Liturgy, Vespers and Compline together. At 3 p.m. on Good Friday, the house bell tolls 33 times for each year of Jesus’ life.

I often marvel at the fact that I used to avoid the services of Holy Week. Now, I embrace them. When I was younger, I couldn’t bear to think of Jesus’ suffering and death, but I have learned that walking through grief increases my gratitude for life and redemption.

Our eldest Sister is 89 years old, and she observes every fast and custom on Good Friday along with the rest of us. Whenever I get hungry and tired, I tell myself that if she can do it, so can I. It is all for Jesus.

Reflect: Which parts of the Holy Week observances deepen your experience? Are there any you would rather avoid?

This Lenten Meditation can be found at Episcopal Relief and Development

While they were eating, he took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it. He said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”

— Mark 14:22-25

Many churches these days observe MaundyTHURSDAY as a penitential event, but at our Convent, we observe it as a festal, joyful celebration of the institution of the Eucharist. White or gold vestments are worn, the Gloria in excelsis is sung after being omitted throughout Lent, and the music is exuberant. We usually have several guests staying with us for Holy Week, and some newcomers are a little taken aback by this. They are used to seeing a somber MaundyTHURSDAY service with no Gloria, simple music and red vestments.

A few years ago, we were urged by clergy friends to change our “old-fashioned Anglo Catholic” relic of a service to the more contemporary penitential one. We politely declined. For us, the festive spirit of MaundyTHURSDAY interrupts the austerity of Lent and places us in the Upper Room, where Jesus and his friends joyfully celebrate the Passover while still hoping that his predictions of death will not come true. It provides a stark comparison with the moment after we have all shared the feast, when the body and blood of Christ leave the chapel and go into the Altar of Repose. At this point, our festal celebration suddenly transitions to darkness as Jesus goes to pray at Gethsemane. We know he will be arrested there and sent to his death. Watching the altar being stripped of its festal trappings, we feel a sense of bewilderment and desolation. The candles are extinguished. Our brief moment of joy in the depths of Lent is gone. Gold vestments are replaced with red. We depart in silence.

The first time I experienced this service, I plunged into grief. I went back to my room and cried the same tears I have cried many times at funerals. Our liturgy had moved me to the point where I was truly feeling loss and desolation.

If clergy approach us in the future and suggest that we change our liturgy, we will once again politely decline.

Reflect: What parts of Holy Week are the most moving for you? What emotions do you experience?

This Lenten Meditation can be found at Episcopal Relief and Development

What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. Have you not read this scripture: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes?”

— Mark 12:9-11

If you read this parable of the vineyard through the lens of human psychology, it seems irrational. Why would a vineyard owner keep sending slaves to collect his profits after even one of them was killed? Why would he send his only son after so many slaves had been beaten and killed? Why did the vineyard owner not bring a band of soldiers and kill the wicked tenants?

The parable is not about human logic; rather, it reveals something about the nature of God. Jesus recounts how God’s chosen people repeatedly rejected a long line of prophets and ultimately even the Son of Man. A human vineyard owner would have acted swiftly after the first servant was killed, but God did not punish Israel after the first prophet was rejected. Instead, God sent many more prophets—including John the Baptist—and finally his only beloved Son. God’s perseverance in sending one prophet after another shows his patience with the Israelites. God knows all too well the stubbornness of humankind and keeps hoping they will finally understand. But Jesus, in the parable, explains that killing the son of the vineyard owner is the final rejection of his word. After he himself is killed, Jesus says, God will destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. In the ancient world, abandonment by God often doomed a people to being conquered by another nation. Taking Jesus’ message to the Gentiles would leave Israel vulnerable to its enemies. Less than 40 years later, during the First Jewish-Roman War, the temple would burn to the ground. Many Jewish people would be killed, captured to be enslaved or forced into exile. The war would rage on until the Romans triumphed at the Siege of Masada and eliminated the last of the Jewish rebellion.

This outcome brings up several difficult questions. How could a loving God exact such violent punishment on his chosen people? Why wouldn’t an all-knowing God find a method that was certain to enlighten the Israelites? Why would God allow this violent trajectory of history to play out? Believe it or not, we are all welcome to bring difficult questions like these to God in our prayer life. “God, help me understand” is always a welcome prayer. We may not receive definitive answers, but we often find helpful flashes of insight.

Reflect: Can you think of other difficult questions that this parable raises?

This Lenten Meditation can be found at Episcopal Relief and Development

Jesus said to them, “I will ask you one question; answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin? Answer me.” They argued with one another, “What should we say? If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ But shall we say, ‘Of human origin’?”—they were afraid of the crowd, for all regarded John as truly a prophet.

— Mark 11:29-32

I don’t know about you, but if I got angry and demolished the whole system of sacrifices and money-changing at the temple, I would not go back there ever again. But Jesus goes right back the next day. The elders challenge him, asking by what authority he was doing such things. Instead of saying “OK, guys, I’m really sorry. I lost my temper. I’ll pay for the things I destroyed,” he asks them a question that completely confounds them: “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” In their fear of further antagonizing the crowd, which regarded John as a prophet, the elders simply reply that they do not know. Jesus says, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.”

This is an extraordinary moment in which Jesus could have saved his own life by cooperating with the authorities. Instead, he continues on the path to suffering and death by further incriminating himself. As a good Jew, he knows full well that the punishment for claiming to be God is death. Most of us would let our self-preservation instincts kick in and do everything possible to stay alive, but Jesus knows that his death and resurrection will change the world.

Sometimes in my work, I visit with people who are terminally ill. We often pray together, and patients and their visitors ask me the hard questions. Why can’t God save my loved one? Why is this part of God’s plan? The only thing I can answer is “because death doesn’t mean the same thing to God that it means to us,” and this is true. In our earthly life, we try to stave off aging and death because both are too frightening for some of us to face. And yet we all age, and we all die. To God, death is a transition into another life.

My favorite part of the funeral liturgy is the preface, “For to your faithful people, O Lord, life is changed, not ended; and when our mortal body lies in death, there is prepared for us a dwelling place eternal in the heavens” (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 382). In Jesus’ resurrection, we see that God has power over death. He faces our greatest fear and overcomes it.

Reflect: What were you taught about death when you were growing up? How have your beliefs around death changed?

This Lenten Meditation can be found at Episcopal Relief and Development

On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see whether perhaps he would find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. He said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it.

— Mark 11:12-14

After the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Jesus and the twelve go out to Bethany. On their way back to Jerusalem the next day, Jesus becomes hungry and looks for figs on a tree but finds none. He tells the fig tree it will never bear fruit again, and the group journeys on.

When they reach the temple, Jesus becomes angry and drives out the people who were buying and selling there. This scene is particularly striking to me because it’s the only one, to my knowledge, where Jesus becomes truly angry. He has been frustrated in some instances, but this is the only time when he is so furious that his anger becomes physical. He overturns the tables of the moneychangers and the animal vendors and says: “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”

Whenever I try to determine if something is worthy of my righteous anger, I look to the person of Jesus. What angered him? What frustrated him? Of all the things that happen to him—the nails, the scourging, the mocking and the ridicule—the only thing that truly brings his wrath is when people are ripping off the poor. Jesus, as the incarnation of God, wants his house to be a place of holiness and prayer. He wants the poor to be lifted up and treated with compassion. Instead, the people in their human blindness have figured out how to turn the temple into the ancient world’s version of a tourist attraction.

Jesus is teaching us what is worthy of our anger and how we can use that anger to break down systems of injustice that take advantage of the poor. Because Mary and Joseph were poor, they had to exchange their limited funds with a moneychanger for temple currency to buy two small sacrificial doves to present their son at the temple. The usual sacrifice in these circumstances was a lamb, but the poor were permitted to purchase doves. Mary and Joseph were some of the poor people being exploited every day in God’s house.

After Jesus and his disciples leave the temple, they once again pass by the fig tree. The disciples are amazed that it has died and withered. The cursing of the fig tree symbolizes Jesus’ anger at his own people for practicing piety and collecting huge sums of money from believers and yet bearing none of the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. When religion becomes an empty moneymaking machine, it contributes to its own death.

Reflect: As we move into Holy Week, what are some issues that your faith calls you to engage? How can you bear the fruits of compassion in those situations?

This Lenten Meditation can be found at Episcopal Relief and Development

Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

— Mark 10:51-52

Jesus heals the blind in all four Gospels, and each story is deeply moving. Earlier in Mark, he heals a blind man by spitting and making mud. Here, Jesus simply says, “Your faith has made you well.” Mark’s telling of this story is so vivid that it is easy to put ourselves into the scene and hear the blind beggar calling out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” We can see the man spring up, throw off his cloak and rush to Jesus to be healed.

How strong this beggar’s faith must have been, that it brought about his healing. Jesus tells him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” What great faith he must have had to recognize who Jesus truly was, even without being able to see him. In the darkness of his blindness, the beggar could still see the light.

The healing of the blind, of course, also has a symbolic meaning. Jesus is trying to make the world see the truth, and even his disciples are blind to it. Sadly, humans in the past—and even today—are still blind to the full reality of God’s glory. The world is still choosing not to follow Jesus’ command to serve one another in love and to make the least of us the greatest.

This is one of the Gospel passages that inspired the Jesus Prayer, which is “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” It is meant to be repeated over and over, and it was first used by the Desert Mothers and Fathers in Egypt in the fourth century. When done consistently over time, it is a deep and powerful way to invite God’s mercy into our blindness. I highly recommend it.

Reflect: When have your eyes been opened on your spiritual journey?

This Lenten Meditation can be found at Episcopal Relief and Development

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” They replied, “We are able.”

— Mark 10:35-39a

At this point in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus and his disciples begin their journey to Jerusalem. On the way, Jesus tries once again to explain what is to come—his suffering, death and resurrection—but the disciples still don’t get it. They do not want to believe that their teacher and friend will endure such suffering.

Their denial is such that James and John come to him and ask if they can be the equivalent of a chief minister and lord chamberlain by sitting at his right and left hand in glory. Instead of being impressed by their wish to serve, Jesus scolds them. Clearly, they are envisioning a future that is the opposite of God’s plan.

Oh, how many times I’ve done that! When I joined the Convent, I prayed for God to use me in any capacity to build up the church and the religious life. I was grateful for the opportunity to live and serve in New York City in a ministry to the unhoused. Every day, I prayed fervently to do all I could for my Savior. At the end of every one of those prayers, I would always ask, “And please, God, whatever you do, please don’t let me ever be elected Sister Superior.”

And guess what God did? In 2018, the Superior told me I’d be coming back to the mother house from New York. I was heartbroken. I did not want to leave my ministry there, and I did not want to leave all my friends and colleagues. The community insisted, though, and I grudgingly came home. When I returned from New York that summer, various Sisters kept pulling me aside and whispering that they wanted to elect me Superior. That was why I had been told to return to Mendham.

I prayed, “OK, God, we talked about this. Remember? That is the one thing I cannot do. I am woefully unqualified! Surely these nuns will come to their senses if you intervene! Please Lord, take this cup from me.”

In spite of my pleas and my fervent attempts to keep my story on my track, I was elected Superior less than a year after I made my life profession to become a nun.

My prayer after the election was, “All right, God, if you’re going to force me to face my fears, you’ll have to run this community through me. I cannot do it, but I can be the instrument of your will for us.” This past December, I was re-elected to a second fiveyear term.

The disciples were focused on their own vision of Jesus reigning supreme on an earthly throne with a firm hierarchy of disciples in place. God’s plan was, as always, much better.

Reflect: When has God made you face your fears? How did you feel about God’s plan as opposed to your own?

This Lenten Meditation can be found at Episcopal Relief and Development