Story by Hope

My daughter asked if I would like her to submit another contribution to the blog. I was a blubbering basket case when I finished reading it. She is dyslexic, so I did add some missing words and fixed some misspelled ones so you could enjoy it more.


This is a story of a lost girl. She can’t tell what’s right or what’s wrong, what to do, what not to do. She was at the end of her rope. She tried everything she could think of, and nothing worked. She did not feel loved, she had no motivation, and she was broken. She laid in bed thinking about all this trying to be happy, trying to be good, trying to not have self pity. All she could do was cry and wish she could get away.


Something happened that night. Something special. A light started glowing on her messy floor. She thought she was going insane, so she rubbed her eyes. The light only got brighter and turned in a hole. She looked at the hole in her floor and with nothing to loose she jump in. She hoped she would leave her self hatred, her depression, her loss of hope. She hoped when she jumped in that hole she would be free.

When she jumped in the hole, her hair flew in her face and everything was spinning. Around her was light and dark purple stripes like a candy cane. She looked at her skin and it was glowing and sparkling. Suddenly, everything got slow and she started seeing all her most painful moments flash before her eyes. Was she dead? Is this the way to heaven? She could not answer these questions in her mind. All she could do was cry. She saw her friends lie and betray her. She saw her family making her feel worthless. She saw herself looking in the mirror with hatred. She saw she was used, and abused. She was trembling trying to calm herself, but her emotions were too strong. Finally, the flashbacks stopped.

She opened her eyes. She didn’t even realize her eyes were closed. She was on a beach. The sand was shining in the sun. The ocean was the most beautiful shade of blue she had ever seen. The palm tree right beside the beach were perfectly green. She wondered how she got to this place. When she looked down, she was wearing a dress that was white, sparkling, and beautiful. Her skin was completely clear of any imperfections. Her hair smelled of coconut and the ocean. She felt happier than she had felt in her whole life. She did not know how she could feel such joy after feeling so much pain. She walked down the beach taking in the perfection, wondering if she could stay here forever. She walked over to the ocean and felt the wave flow onto her feet. The water was not too cold, but not too warm. She spun around with joy and felt herself laugh a real laugh. She hadn’t done that for so long, it felt alien to her. The feeling she felt in her heart was unexplainable. An older man started walking towards her. He was wearing white, and his hair was touching his shoulders. It had a slight curl. He had a small beard. He had deep smile lines. He was smiling. He walked up to her and told her, “My little princess, this is what I wanted for you.” Tears started slowly streaming down his face. “I never wanted you to get hurt.” She realized then she wasn’t alone. “You must be brave. Keep going. One day we will be together.” He slowly started to fade away but she knew he was still with her. He was always with her. As everything started to fade away, she realized her scars made her unique. She was beautiful. She did not need other people’s love. She was much stronger than she would ever know. She was so incredibly loved. She would still feel pain but that was ok because without pain there would not be happiness. Without pain, she could not get to perfection. The pain brings her closer to Him.

Stronger Through Suffering

My daughter, "Hope," was asked to give a talk to a group of girls. She suffered so much from such depression her freshman year of high school that much of her hair actually fell out. It was gut wrenching to watch my daughter go through this sad time and the only thing I could do was hold her. I felt so useless and not in control. I felt angry that people were not nice to her. She now tells me that she is glad that she went through this, even though she would never want to do it again. She says it made her strong and ready to face life. It was a speech, so please excuse the grammar mistakes. Here she is:

Ok, so I just want to start of by saying if you know me, you know that before any story I tell I have to have a kind of pre-story and a disclaimer. So I want to say I don’t want any pity or anything like that. My life is great, and also I don’t want make it seem like suffering isn’t difficult. So like most people, for middle school and beginning of high school, I really struggled with being happy. During freshman year, I got into a extremely toxic friendship and it really broke all my confidence. It got to the point I was crying almost every night. Luckily, I got out of that relationship, but then my other friend and I started fighting a lot and that friendship got very toxic. I felt so alone and I honestly had so much self pity. I had been told different things about suffering, like to give it up for other people, but I didn’t understand why would you give up your suffering just for someone else’s suffering? That didn’t make sense to me. I got invited to a bible study type thing and we talked about suffering. It changed my whole life and I hope I can help other people deal with it too. The guy who led it explained that suffering is to set us free from our idols. Suffering makes room, and then God fills that space so that His life in us becomes our identity. Suffering makes space and God fills that space if we place our trust in Him. John of the Cross says, God’s immense blessings can only fit in a heart that is empty. Jesus said to St. Angela of Foligno: “If you make yourself a capacity, I will make Myself a torrent.” Well, suffering is the most effective instrument God uses to make space so that He can fill that space with Himself. Suffering flushes or cleanses us from all the things we have become attached to that are not God, so we can be filled by God. And the more and faster you want to be filled by God, the more and faster He may allow suffering – if you have a heart with great love and much courage. So if you are suffering and if you are experiencing loss, it is because God is emptying you in order to fill you. Trust Him and say Yes to Him. I know it may sound a little weird and crazy but once I learned this and remembered it, suffering became so much easier. Also I realize with those friendships I was relying on other people to make me happy which wasn’t fair to them or to me. Now I can say I am the happiest I have ever been.

Postpartum Depression

I want to share just a few thoughts on depression after pregnancy. Some of you may be experiencing, or have older daughters who are experiencing, this strange feeling. There are so many new feelings that come in after the birth of a baby- excitement, fear, anxiety, exhaustion to name a few. You don’t normally think of depression being a thing after having a beautiful child.
The first time I heard of postpartum depression was after the birth of my first child. I don’t know if you remember, but Marie Osmond gave her babysitter the Visa and then drove away. I thought it strange. What was she thinking to leave her children and runaway? Then after my third child, a boy, I felt it. Postpartum depression is more common with the birth of a boy. I had no energy, and I was inexplicably sad. I went to a doctor even and he was no help. All of my tests came back normal. When you are in the midst of depression, you can’t even think straight. It is a very confusing time. Now when I look back, I can see that it was postpartum depression.
When your baby is inside of you, he is gathering everything he needs to survive from your body, especially your Omegas. This depletion combined with the hormone drop and lack of sleep can lead to depression. I suggest Cod Liver Oil, Bergamot or Lavender essential oils, and keep taking your pregnancy vitamins. Get out in the fresh air and sunshine. And if it is really bad, I have heard of doctors giving a progesterone shot to help the hormones. Keep up with your prayer life and tell Jesus about your feelings. I am a huge advocate of breastfeeding for as long as possible. Breastfeeding will help keep you from having a huge, sudden hormone shift. There are also lots of scientific things that happen when you keep your baby close to you. Keep talking to your friends and husband. Let them know that you need help right now. Now is not the time to be Superwoman! Put your cape away for now, and rely on the help of your friends, family and most of all your God.
I want to add that I just read an article about Princess Diana and her postpartum depression.
https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/princess-diana-dealt-with-postpartum-depression.html/

God is Awesome, Life is Short, and This Isn't Home

I have followed Stevie Swift for a while now. I think you would really enjoy her. Lots of uplifting thoughts. I think her free book, Capturing Thoughts, would be great to print and have on hand to remind your child to breath and put things in perspective.
stevieswift.com

The Sources of Sorrow

Depression is widespread today. Depression is extremely misunderstood. Depression can be caused by suffering, pain and sorrow. Let’s recall the difference between evil and suffering. Evil is the absence of a good which should be present, in other words something is missing that should be there. Blindness is a physical evil since the person is missing sight. Vice is a moral evil since the person is missing virtue – the good actions and habits that result in happiness. Suffering is not evil. Suffering is a felt response to something perceived as evil. The purpose of suffering is to alert us that something needs to change.
People always mix up suffering and evil, probably because suffering always indicates the presence of some evil. If we suffer, it’s either because we accurately perceive some present evil, or because we mistakenly think something’s evil when it isn’t – and that very mistake on our part is itself a failure in our judgment. Suffering doesn’t happen without evil. But the correspondence between evil and suffering shouldn’t lead to confusion. Only evil is evil.
Suffering can be good. It can be the right response to a perceived evil (causing you to take your hand out of the fire); and it can motive change in our behavior from vice to virtue. Like changing from a life of greed to generosity.
We must distinguish between pain which begins in the body and sorrow which finds its origin in the soul. Sorrow can cause us to ask the big questions in life and then seek for answers. Sorrow can also motivate us to make a change in the way we live. If we suffer the sorrow of loneliness, we may make the changes to have deep friendships. Sorrow may also help us appreciate happiness even more.
Suffering in the form of pain or sorrow is meant to alert us to a problem and motivate us toward change and ultimately to achieve the purpose of our life - union with God. Suffering can awaken the soul from indifference and sloth, causing it to take our relationship with God more seriously. Suffering can also prevent us from becoming distracted on our journey toward union with God because when we become distracted, as we often do in the summer, then we lose the depth of relationship we had with God when we are in our normal routines, and this lose of relationship results in sorrow. Finally, suffering can empty us of all the addictions and disordered attachments we will not let go of on our own that block us from being filled by God.
Suffering is not evil. Evil is evil. Evil is the problem – whether physical, psychological, or spiritual. Evil is the thing to eliminate at all costs – not suffering.
We eliminate evil by rectifying the absence of the good that ought to be there; not the numbing of the response that motivates positive change.
God allows evil out of respect for our freedom and interdependence, and because He can use evil as an opportunity for good. God gives us the gift of human suffering as a perfection of our nature, and as a motive for heroically moving beyond the weaknesses and defects of our condition: “the more one sorrows on account of a certain thing, the more one strives to shake off sorrow, provided there is a hope of shaking it off.” We are not motivated to change until the pain or sorrow outweighs the pleasure or the comfort.
However, suffering in the form of sorrow, just like any other good or any other passion, can also become disordered. It can be counter-productive. It can inhibit, instead of inciting, the process of making things better. Such is the case with “excessive sorrow, which consumes the soul: for such sorrow paralyzes the soul, and hinders it from shunning evil...” There is the danger of a suffering that cripples the will rather than empowering it – and this is depression.
It’s not necessarily immoral or imprudent to use drugs to help with depression, but before we get to that we need to appreciate the character of depression as a natural response to significant pain and sorrow. Depression shouldn’t just be dismissed as a kind of senseless short in the cerebral circuit. If there’s no sign of a body problem, depression alerts us to the presence of a deeper problem, a problem our sorrow is urging us to find and address.
Depression has a cause. One should look for the cause, identify and seek to remedy it. The immediate cause of depression is sorrow. Sorrow as the felt response to a perceived evil – something is wrong or missing in my life that causes sorrow. The first step is to ask: what is the cause of my sorrow? in general there are four causes of sorrow: first sorrow is caused by the loss of some good we need to be happy such as health, a relationship, achievement, profession, or work just to name a few. Second, sorrow comes from looking at a broken world – broken people, broken families, broken Government, environment, ect; third, we experience sorrow because people are broken, beginning with myself. The reality or nature of a person is that we need virtue to be happy and when virtue is lacking we have vice that makes us vicious and sorrowful and finally depressed. Finally, we were made for union with God and we are not perfectly united with Him yet and that is a cause of sorrow and longing.
How can we remedy sorrow and thus depression? Identify and rectify what was broken or missing. However, if that which is broken or missing cannot be changed, there is still a way forward; unite your suffering to Christ for your own perfecting and to help him save others. This provides the greatest meaning, purpose and power to your suffering and enables you to do the greatest good.

Mike Scherschligt prays a meditative rosary every day. He calls us to be Apostles of the Rosary.
https://schooloffaith.com/daily-devotions

Revelation

I had a bit of a revelation this morning during my prayer time. I am a lot like the Israelites and Moses. The reading is Numbers 11: 4b-15. It starts out, “The children of Israel lamented…” They are not just lamenting in a kind of sad depressed way; they are complaining too. They are tired of Manna and want some meat. I have always pictured Manna as a kind of light bread/shaved coconut type food. I thought it sounded pretty good. I had never heard of the description which is, “Manna was like coriander seed and had the color of resin. When they had gone about and gathered it up, the people would grind it between millstones or pound it in a mortar, then cook it in a pot and make it into loaves, which tasted like cakes made with oil.” That seems like a lot of work to me. Not the flaky, light ready to eat snack that I was thinking. The Israelites complain, instead of being thankful that they have some sort of food. They lament instead of asking politely if Moses could ask God for some diversity to the menu. How many times have I complained about gifts that I don’t feel quite measure up to what I wanted? My children are such gifts, but in my mind sometimes their life doesn’t quite measure up to what I think it should be. Obviously, the problem is not with my child or God, but with me and my lack of appreciation.

Then Moses goes to God and complains about the people complaining. He takes on the burden of the people instead of giving the burden to God. “Was it I who conceived all these people? Or was it I who gave them birth, that you tell me to carry them at my bosom, like a foster father carrying the infant, to the land you have promised under oath to their fathers? Where can I get meat to give all this people? I cannot carry all this people by myself, for they are too heavy for me.” But God provided the Manna, Moses didn’t. So it seems that Moses is turning to himself, putting the burden on himself to provide, when it is God who will provide for us. How often have I cried to God in a similar way? Has God ever asked me to carry these burdens by myself?

Today, I thank God for all His many blessings. I thank Him for my family and my children. I thank Him for creating us. I thank Him for the gift of my Faith. I ask him to help me with all my burdens of the day. I ask Him especially to help me carry these burdens that give me a heavy heart.

Four step plan for suffering

My dear friend, Father Steve Sotiroff, recently gave a meditation about suffering. He offered a plan to help with suffering. We all have suffering in our lives. Suffering can come from what you do not choose, do not want, and cannot change. I thought it appropriate for this blog because we can have suffering in our own bodies and we can suffer for someone else. We suffer because our children are suffering. Fr. Steve’s plan is to identify, name, accept and offer.

Father Steve’s first step is to identify the particular suffering. So I would say that a particular suffering that I have is my daughter’s depression. I suffer from all the stuff that goes into and comes from that depression in her life.

Next, he has us name the particular suffering. This is a common step in many programs. When you name something, you have control over it. So the particular suffering I am identifying is that she does not realize or believe that she is loved by God. She is such a beautiful and lovable person, but her depression makes her blind to this fact. It makes me sad that she does not believe that she is loved by Him.
Then, I accept this suffering. I accept that I cannot change her thoughts. Of course, I am always offering things like, “God must love us so much that He made this sunset for us tonight.” or “God gave you the prettiest smile.” I don’t just accept the situation and do nothing about it. But I accept that I have no control over her thoughts.

Finally, I offer it in prayer, especially at the Mass offertory. When the priest offers the bread and wine, I offer my specific suffering with it. This is the beautiful thing about our faith. We are able to unite our suffering with His on the cross.

Axis Parents Guide to Depression and Anxiety

Here is a great resource from Axis. I don't know a lot about Axis, but this guide seems to be right on and very helpful.

www.axis.org
Go to Resources then Parent's Guides. Type in Depression in the search bar.

Sink or Swim: God's Odd Answers to Our Prayers

She was 18 and sitting on her bed alone in her room, five different scraps of paper laid out on her mattress before her, each inscribed with a different family’s name. Her hands grasping her baby growing within, Kelly groaned from the depths of her soul, begging God to reveal His will. “Lord, I am asking you to help me chose the family to whom I should give my daughter!” She chose to keep her baby until birth, but this heroic decision needed to be followed by another: to which family should Kelly offer her child?

Her sorrowful prayer came from a place of love and hope for her daughter, yearning that this daughter might have the life that Kelly knew she couldn’t provide. Suddenly, fear left her, and a sense of calm and confidence came over her; Kelly now felt certain that God wanted her to choose this particular family who could raise Lisa, the baby she would deliver in a few weeks. “Troy,” she recounted to me, tears streaming down her face, “I am struggling so much of what happened on that day, replaying it over and over in my mind, examining those scraps of paper with the names written on them, recalling my prayer that morning. What went wrong? What did I do wrong?”

Kelly pleaded with me for answers, answers she wanted, perhaps even deserved, as her life is plagued now with doubt and guilt because of how the story ends. This baby Lisa, now grown, didn’t have the life Kelly hoped for after all. Lisa, age 35, died by drug over-dose a few months prior.

The family whom Kelly chose for her baby ended up abusing Lisa physically, emotionally, and sexually throughout her formative years. They neglected her spiritually, even though the dad was an ordained minister. They even cooperated in her drug use by driving her to her dealer’s house! Finally, the family totally disintegrated with divorce, breaking up what little stability the family had. Lisa escaped this trauma and confusion by fleeing further and further into the world of sex and drugs, culminating in her own over-dose. “Why didn’t God answer my prayer?” Through her sobs and vivid emotions, I sat there staring blankly at my friend’s question, hoping to camouflage the stunned look on my face. What was I supposed to say? I knew that Kelly was struggling with pain with the recent loss of Lisa, but I had no idea how much pain, nor how to address the question with which she just confronted me. ‘Well, I guess God failed to answer your prayer, but mostly He does answer…’ Or, ‘You just didn’t pray hard enough…’ Or ‘God may have willed your daughter to endure such suffering because He sometimes offers tough love…’ I knew one answer was as terrible and unsatisfying as the next, but I was dumbfounded. If those weren’t the right answers, what was?

In the midst of this struggle for an answer and my own prayer on what to say, the word of the Lord came to me, “To whom much is given, much will be expected.” (Lk 12:48.) This phrase made little sense to me, even as it entered my mind, until I reversed it, ‘to whom little is given, little will be expected.’ Perhaps hidden in this riddle was an answer Kelly and I least expected.

Our Lord knows the depths of our heart and the necessities of our life from the depths of His own wisdom and richness. (and how inscrutable are His ways! cf. Rom 11:33-ff.) I shared with my friend the following possibility, but one that seems to make the most sense, given the situation: perhaps God knew that Lisa, in being adopted by such a dysfunctional family, would need little in way of faith and prayer from others for her own salvation, since so little was given to her. Further, He knew that perhaps had she been given a better family, Kelly may not have spent so many years praying for Lisa.
“This all sounds fine and good,” Kelly objected, “but I have always struggled so much with trust. This doesn’t make sense,” she pleaded, “that God would put Lisa in such a tenuous situation!” A poor adoptive family and a birth mom who was struggling so badly with trusting God meant that Lisa had no chance. And this revelation clarified for me some of the core of Kelly’s angst: In addition to the profound pain of loss, Kelly believed Lisa’s plight was all her fault, and she feared somewhere deep inside her… God agreed.

When we pray, I told her, especially for others, we must remember that God also wants our good, and sees our needs as well. Knowing Kelly’s struggles with confidence and doubt both in herself and in Him, I explained, perhaps He placed her in a situation where she had to sink or swim. For instance, its quizzical that that Jesus gave Judas the betrayer the money bag to watch over, even though Jesus had to have known that Judas was a thief (Jn 12:6.)

Then it dawned on me that Jesus did this for a moral purpose; He wanted to test Judas in order to help him. The Hebrew word for test—nassah—also means to prove. Jesus was allowing Judas to prove himself, knowing his moral weaknesses, by allowing him to be in a position where he would be forced either to admit to the Lord his need in the face of such constant temptation, or to succumb, thus paving the way for his final undoing. Jesus gave Judas the chance to learn to swim, or to sink. Perhaps the Lord offered Kelly the same opportunity.

As we discussed the situation further, Kelly began to see that in her life, despite struggles, she and her family were persevering in faith and prayer. I expressed to her my admiration for both she and her husband since both spend mornings and evening together in prayer. That commitment to prayer as a couple is better than most married couples I know.

To strengthen her weakness in trust, maybe the Lord put her in this position. Since Lisa was given so little by way of moral and spiritual direction, perhaps Jesus knew that the hurdles she needed to overcome for salvation would be greatly mitigated, and as Kelly persevered in prayer, not only would her trust grow, but her prayers and their effectiveness would grow as well. Maybe Lisa would have perished had she been in a better family due to some character flaw that we’re unaware of? This dysfunctional family might have been her saving grace!

This is one of the messages of Fatima that I find most astonishing, that Our Lady asked three small children for prayers and penances for souls that otherwise would perish forever! With prayers and penances from these three visionaries, however, souls would be saved. If this were true for them as they prayed for strangers, how much truer would it be for Kelly’s prayers for her own daughter? God who lives outside of time can apply those constant graces at that moment when her daughter most needed them.

By the time our conversation ended, Kelly realized that her life, despite of all the struggles, was one of overcoming. She learned to swim, even upstream, and her faith life was proof positive of that fact. She told me she felt uplifted now and appreciated seeing things in a different light.

When I recounted this conversation to my wife later that day, she chuckled. She told me that on New Year’s Day, Kelly visited Jennifer Fulwiler’s website which generates both a saint and a word for the year for one’s own reflection and growth. My family visits this site every New Year’s to pick our new saint and word for the year (jenniferfulwiler.com.) Kelly did the same this year. Her word for the year (picked a couple months ago)…Swim! My word for the year…Lift! I hope this true story lifts your spirits when faced with deep struggles, that you may swim in faith, despite the onrush of confusing outcomes!

Lord, If You Wish, You can Make Me Clean

"Lord, If You Wish, You Can Make Me Clean": 
If God so wills.... 
This marks a disposition of soul that says the leper wants God more than he wants his cure. By demonstrating patience and acceptance, he shows he is ready to live his cross according to God’s plan for him. Being self-absorbed and not accepting problems and defects is, in itself, an obstacle to being cured of them. 
Some lose patience in the fight because they want the cure more than they want the one who cures. Such cures may heal the body, but leave the soul diseased and unattractive to God. Openness to God’s time, detachment from an easy life, and total abandonment into Our Lord hands permits illness to cure the soul long before it is freed from the body. 
How beautiful the soul of this humble leper was in Christ’s eyes! May I let this prayer today open my heart to accept all trials of the moment with humility and love for the God who guides me.

Author Unknown

Forgiveness and Contemplation in Prayer

One obstacle to beginning to pray and living within is the struggle to forgive. Whenever someone hurts us in a serious way, there is a spiritual wound that remains. As we begin to pray, we commonly find ourselves going back over these wounds again and again. What is most frustrating is that many times we thought we had already forgiven the person who hurt us. But when the memory comes back, we can sometimes feel the anger and the pain all over again.

What do we do with the wounds so that they no longer impede our ability to pray? The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains, “It is not in our power not to feel or to forget an offense; but the heart that offers itself to the Holy Spirit turns injury into compassion and purifies the memory in transforming hurt into intercession” (CCC 2843).

To pray for those who have hurt us is difficult. In scriptural terms, those who hurt us are our enemies, and this is true even when they are friends and close family members. Christ commands us to love our enemies and to do good to those who persecute us. Betrayal, abandonment, indifference, scandal, abuse, scorn, sarcasm, ridicule, detraction, and insult — these are all bitter things to forgive. The Lord grieves with us and for us when we suffer these things. He has permitted us to suffer them for a profound reason.

The Lord explained to His disciples that those who hunger and thirst for the sake of justice, those who are merciful, and especially those who are persecuted for righteousness and for the Lord are blessed. Their mysterious beatitude makes sense only when we see through the eyes of faith the injustice and persecution they have endured. Somehow, trusting in God in the midst of such things makes them in the likeness of Christ. Trusting in God means to pray for those who harm us, to seek to return good for evil. When this act of trust is made, the power of God is released in humanity. For two thousand years, this is what every martyr for our faith has revealed to the Church.

Why God Permits the Persecution of Those He Loves

We have a special authority over the soul of someone who causes us great sorrow. Their actions have bound them to us in the mercy of God. Mercy is love that suffers the evil of another to affirm his dignity so that he does not have to suffer alone.In his mysterious wisdom and profound love, when the Father allows someone to hurt oppose us in some way, He is entrusting that person to our prayers. When our enemy causes us to suffer unjustly, our faith tells us that this was allowed to happen so that we might participate in the mystery of the Cross. Somehow, like those who offered their lives for our faith, the mystery of redemption is being renewed through our own sufferings.

Whenever someone hurts us physically or even emotionally, he has demeaned himself even more. He is even more in need of mercy.

From this perspective, the injury our enemies have caused us can be a gateway for us to embrace the even greater sufferings with which their hearts are burdened. Because of this relationship, our prayers on their behalf have a particular power. The Father hears these prayers because prayer for our enemies enters deep into the mystery of the Cross. But how do we begin to pray for our enemies when the very thought of them and what they have done stirs our hearts with bitterness and resentment?

Here we must ask what it means to repent for our lack of mercy. The first step is the hardest. Whether they are living or dead, we need to forgive those who have hurt us. This is the hardest because forgiveness involves more than intellectually assenting to the fact that we ought to forgive.

We know that we get some pleasure out of our grievances. The irrational pleasure we can sometimes take in these distracts us from what God Himself desires us to do. What happens when all that pleasure is gone, when all we have left is the Cross? Saint John of the Cross sees our poverty in the midst of great afflic­tion as the greatest union with Christ crucified possible in this life: “When they are reduced to nothing, the highest degree of humility, the spiritual union between their souls and God will be an accomplished fact. This union is most noble and sublime state attainable in this life.” In the face of our grievances we must realize this solidarity with Christ and cleave to His example with all our strength.

Living by the Cross means choosing, over and over, whenever angry and resentful memories come up, not to hold a debt against someone who has hurt us. It means renouncing secret vows of revenge to which we have bound ourselves. It means avoiding indulging in self-pity or thinking ill of those who have sinned against us. It means begging God to show us the truth about our enemy’s plight.

The Work of the Holy Spirit

Here, human effort alone cannot provide the healing such ongoing choices demand. Only the Lord’s mercy can dissolve our hardness of heart toward those who have harmed us. We have to surrender our grievances to the Holy Spirit, who turns “injury into compassion” and transforms “hurt into intercession” (CCC 2849).

As with every Christian who has tried to follow Him, the Cross terrified Jesus. He sweat blood in the face of it. We believe that it was out of the most profound love for us and for His Father that He embraced this suffering. Because of this love, He would not have it any other way. Overcoming His own fear, He accepted death for our sake and, in accepting it, sanctified it so that it might become the pathway to new life.

Precisely because Jesus has made death a pathway of life, Christians are also called to take up their crosses and follow Him. They must offer up their resentment to God and allow their bitterness to die. Offering the gift of our grievances to God is especially pleasing to Him. It is part of our misery, and our misery is the only thing we really have to offer God that He wants.

This effort is spiritual, the work of the Holy Spirit. In order to forgive, we must pray, and sometimes we must devote many hours, days, and even years to prayer for this purpose. It is a difficult part of our life-long conversion. Yet we cannot dwell very deep in our hearts, we cannot live with ourselves, if we do not find mercy for those who have offended us. Living with ourselves, living within ourselves, is impossible without mercy.

There are moments in such prayer when we suddenly realize we must not only forgive but must also ask for forgiveness. A transformation takes place when our attention shifts from the evil done to us to the plight of the person who inflicted it. Every time we submit resentment to the Lord, every time we renounce a vengeful thought, every time we offer the Lord the deep pain in our heart, even if we do not feel or understand it, we have made room for the gentle action of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit does not take the wounds away. They remain like the wounds in the hands and side of Christ. The wounds of Christ are a pathway into the heart of every man and woman. This is because the hostility of each one of us toward Him caused those wounds. Similarly when someone wounds us, the wound can become a pathway into that person’s heart. Wounds bind us to those who have hurt us, especially those who have become our enemies, because whenever someone hurts us, he has allowed us to share in his misery, to know the lack of love he suffers. With the Holy Spirit, this knowledge is a powerful gift.

Once the Holy Spirit shows us this truth, we have a choice. We can choose to suffer this misery with the one who hurt us in prayer so that God might restore that person’s dignity. When we choose this, our wounds, like the wounds of Christ, no longer dehumanize as long as we do not backslide. Instead, the Holy Spirit transforms such wounds into founts of grace. Those who have experienced this will tell you that with the grace of Christ there is no room for bitterness. There is only great compassion and sober prayerfulness.

Saint Thomas Aquinas on Mercy and the Gift of Counsel

As we go further into the discussion of Saint Thomas Aquinas on mercy, he explains that the Holy Spirit’s gift of counsel is a special prompting, or impetus, in the heart that brings every act of mercy to perfection. The gift of counsel, explains Saint Thomas, allows us to know and to understand the misery in the hearts of others. Once we know and understand their misery, we can bind ourselves to them in prayer so that those who have hurt us might feel the mercy of God in their misery, that they might find a reason to hope, a pathway out of the hell in which they are imprisoned.

It is by this same gift that Christ knew our hostility to God and allowed Himself to be wounded unto death by it. He wanted to bear this dehumanizing force in our nature so that it might die with Him. This way, when He rose again, He could free from futility all that is good, noble, and true about each of us.

Likewise with us, this same gift allows us to extend Christ’s saving work into the hearts of others. In particular, the gift of counsel allows us to understand the dehumanizing hostility others have unleashed on us and by understanding it in faith, to offer it to God in love. When we do this, our mercy, perfected by the Holy Spirit, makes space in the hearts of those who have hurt us, space into which God’s love can flow. It is the saving mercy of God, His love suffering our misery, which is the only hope for humanity.

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This article is adapted from a chapter in Fire from Above by Anthony Lilles which is available from Sophia Institute Press. 

Our Lady of Sorrows

I love St. Simon of Cyrene. I love that he was plucked out of nowhere, forced into a task he despised, and found eternity in the process. I love that he kept Jesus company on the road to Calvary. I love the image of walking beside my friends as they suffer and spelling them for a bit.

I love St. Veronica. I love that she stepped out of the crowd to wipe the blood and sweat from Jesus’ eyes. I love the risk she took to offer an act of human kindness in a sea of inhumanity. I love the image of serving my friends as they suffer, bringing some peace and beauty into their painful lives.

I love being Simon. I love being Veronica.

But lately I’m neither. Lately I’m Mary.

Normally, identifying with the Blessed Mother is a good thing, a sign that you’re doing something right. You’re trusting God or pointing people to him or interceding. But when the people you love are being tortured, being Mary just means you’re standing there doing nothing.

I don’t want to do nothing. I want to fix it. I want to love them out of their pain or take it over for them. I at least want to do something, say something to make it better, even just a little, even just wiping the sweat out of their eyes.

I hate being Our Lady of Sorrows. I hate standing there doing nothing, watching the people I love suffer. I hate waiting for a diagnosis, hearing about infidelity, watching depression. I hate going to prayer and begging, begging, begging to take their crosses from them and being told no. I hate being useless in the face of catastrophic pain.But I’m not Simon. I don’t get to carry their crosses with them or for them. And I’m not Veronica. I don’t get to give them a moment’s peace. I’m Mary. I only get to be there with them, loving them in utter futility as a sword pierces my heart.

And yet.

And yet, with all that he could have asked of his Mother in that moment of his greatest need, this is what he asked: just be with me. Just stand there and watch me suffer. Just love me in my pain.

And somehow, that nothing that she did was everything that he needed. Somehow, it bore fruit down through the ages for every one of us. Somehow, it is in her silent suffering with that Mary fulfills God’s plan for her. I’m sure she also wanted to be Simon or Veronica or Peter whipping out a sword or anyone doing anything. But she knew that being there and “useless” was good and right and beautiful.

Our Lady wasn’t Our Lady of Sorrows only on Good Friday. She suffered the day after the Annunciation and when Simeon told her the sword would pierce her and when they fled into Egypt and when Jesus was lost and when he left home and when he foretold his death and when she stood at his tomb on Holy Saturday and a thousand other times in between. Because her suffering with him, somehow, accomplished something.

I can’t say I get it. I don’t know what it does to suffer with someone, especially when that person can’t feel you there. But I know that it works for good because God gave that job to his Mother. The most powerful woman in history was left powerless because her helpless inaction was necessary and good and powerful. I don’t have to know how. It’s enough to know that when I am Our Lady of Sorrows, standing uselessly by as the ones I love suffer unimaginable pain, I am not useless. It is good to love them, even when that love seems impotent. It is good to suffer with.

If you are where I am right now, watching helplessly as those you love suffer, know this: it is not to no effect. You are not alone. Our Lady of Sorrows stands uselessly with you, holding you up as you weep and rage and faint from exhaustion. And somehow none of it is useless. Somehow, it is just what you need, just what your beloved needs, just what the world needs. And sometimes that’s enough.

Author Unknown

Crunchy Time

If you are like me, you are searching for anything possible to help heal your child. There are so many natural ways to help your suffering child. Unfortunately, some of them may not be so good for your child’s spiritual life. Some techniques may open his or her soul to demonic influences. While this is not an exhaustive list, here are a few techniques to stay away from.

Yoga. I know. The stretching feels so good and there are tons of medical research saying that it is so helpful for depression and anxiety. The good news is that the stretching is not necessarily the problem. The problem comes in with the yoga chants and such, and because yoga has spiritual and philosophical roots that are not Christian. Pietra Fitness is an excellent alternative. They use some of the great healing movements, and you can be assured that there is nothing that will harm your child. Pietra Fitness now has an online subscription, as well as their dvd format.

 Chakras and the third eye The opening of chakras has continually come up in my research for helping my child. I tend to lean toward natural remedies, because I know that God has lots of good things that he has created for us to use. For some reason, the natural remedies have been assumed by the New Age and Eastern religions. The idea of chakras is that there are seven energy openings along the spine. These chakras become blocked and lead to sickness in the body and mind. The third eye refers to a place on your forehead that is a center for power and wisdom. I have especially run into this work associated with yoga and essential oil healing. Obviously, a Christian would have a problem with this because we recognize that our being comes from God and there is not this hidden magical god inside us. It is the age old adage of reaching for the apple to make us gods. This is so serious, in fact, that if you have had any experience with opening of chakras, you should visit a priest.

Reiki Again, this has to do with channeling energy. Whenever you see anything tagged as “energy work,” keep away.

 So what natural methods can a Christian do to help with depression and anxiety? There are plenty of good old God given remedies.

Chiropractor The key is to find a good chiropractor that does not do energy work. When your body feels better, you feel stronger. My chiropractor uses an activator, and I love the gentle alignment. In fact, if you live in the Kansas City area, visit Dr. Jessica Wertin at Advanced Chiropractic in Lawrence, Kansas. She is gold.

Vitamins and Minerals Almost everyone is low in Vitamin D. I suggest that you get your child tested for this vitamin. People with depression and anxiety tend to be very low. Some people do better with liquid form that gets assimilated faster. Vitamin B-12 is linked with depression, since it is essential in producing brain chemicals that affect mood. Magnesium is known as the relaxation mineral. I have read that there is a direct correlation between vitamin D and magnesium levels in your body. Your body puts a cap on the amount of vitamin D it will take in if there is not enough magnesium and vise versa. If you are low in Vitamin D, look into a good magnesium supplement. If you have a girl, you might look into iron deficiency, as well. Although it is not a vitamin, omega fatty acids are essential, since they elevate mood and have an anti-inflammatory effect. These omegas are especially important for new moms with depression!

Sunshine and Saltwater Who can be depressed at the beach? I know it may be hard to get your child out in the sun. The dark room seems to be the favorite hang out. I haven’t done any research on it, but the waves of the ocean seem to be very healing. We live nowhere near a beach, so for Spring Break, I googled, “closest beach.” It was a stretch for us financially, but my daughter is moving soon and I am short on time to help her. The positive mood change in my whole family after our beach adventure was palpable. Another option if you don't have a beach is red  light therapy.

Essential Oils These are God’s direct pharmacy. I know they are quite popular right now, but they have been around since the Garden. As with most natural remedies, the New Age movement seems to want to take over these precious gifts. You may see lots of strange things associated with essential oils, but keep in mind that these are just plants. Just like candles are used in many bad ritualistic ways, we also use them for Mass. In fact, we use essential oils in our Chrism. I mentioned essential oil healing earlier as something to question. I found a book called Releasing Emotional Patterns with Essential Oils. I know that oils are healing because of their smell and frequency, so this looked promising. Unfortunately, the author uses Chakras and other Eastern religious practices in her book. I would love to develop a Christian technique to use oils in healing. Oils come in different qualities, so please do not use cheap oils on your beloved child. We only use Young Living Oils. My distributor is Laura Hinkel 1658413. She is great at answering any questions. laurakhinkel@gmail.com

Meditation See Post How’s your Prayer Life?

Root Cause See a natural doctor or MD with an open mind to find the root cause of the depression. Could it be hormone related? Order a hormone panel. Could it be thyroid related? Is it a yeast overgrowth? All these things can be tested.

 What kind of natural remedies do you use to help your suffering children?

Book Review DARE by Barry McDonagh

One of my sons suffers from anxiety. I took him to a wonderful psychologist who gave him a “toolbox” to pull different tools from to help when he gets in a difficult situation. One of the tools was to name the feeling. This made the feeling a real thing. By naming something, you have power over it. That is why in exorcisms, the priest asks the demon for a name. But back to the toolbox...I thought about this idea when reading Barry McDonagh’s book Dare: the new way to end anxiety and stop panic attacks fast. His toolbox has the acronym DARE-- Diffuse, Allow, Run toward it, and Engage.

 DEFUSE: Respond to your anxiety by saying “so what?” “who cares?” or whatever phrase you prefer for acknowledging you're not in any real danger.
ALLOW: Accept the anxiety and allow it to manifest in whatever way it wishes. Become the observer of your anxiety – notice it with curiosity, welcome it, and allow it to stay.
RUN TOWARDS: Run towards your anxiety by telling yourself you are in fact excited by your anxious thoughts and feelings.
ENGAGE: Your anxious mind might still be clinging onto whatever it can to keep you in an anxious, panicky state, even after completing the previous steps. To avoid this, you need to engage with something else that takes up your full attention.

I think this is a great way to deal with anxiety because you are living with it. There is no great goal to “cure” yourself. It is all about becoming comfortable with the feeling of anxiety. So you name it and it becomes another part of your life, but not a part of you. And you are not trying to suppress it. He gives a great analogy of how suppressing anxiety is like pushing a beach ball under the water. When you let it go it shoots up out of control, even higher than where it was when it was resting on the water. I think this would be a teachable program for your child. He has lots of questions that you can ask your child to help them become comfortable with the steps. If you want a quick breakdown of it and enjoy podcasts, I recommend The Formula #41 - DARE-ing to Face Your Anxiety with Barry McDonagh. It does have some language in it, but it gives a great summary if you don’t have a lot of time. If you are going to do the program I suggest the book because it has all the questions to ask. 

Have you tried the DARE program?

You Are Loved in Your Suffering

You are loved in your suffering. God weeps with you, hanging on the Cross for you. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what he’s doing. But I know who He is. He is good. He is love. He is for you. And there will come a day when all is made clear, when you’re welcomed into the embrace of the God who has been waiting for you since before there was time and you see just how all things worked for good. But until then, I will stand with you in the unknowing. Together we will hope and love and suffer. And we will trust in a God who is so much bigger than our pain.

There is nothing He will not do for us. Ours is to trust that when we lie broken amidst the rubble of our lives, even then He is working. Even then we are protected. Even then we are loved by a Father who wills our greatest good, though it may be a long time coming. Wait in hope, my friends. My God will not disappoint.
Anonymous

How's Your Prayer Life?

I have a friend who when you see him, you know he is going to ask you, “ How’s your prayer life?” This man is very intense, so it is best to have a good answer ready. I have even heard him ask this question to the Archbishop. It is that important to him that we have a prayer life. I think it is an excellent question. As mothers of children with depression and anxiety, we have to be close to the Lord. We must have that lifeline connected at all times. We are not strong enough to handle everything by ourselves. God actually made it that way. God keeps teaching me this lesson. I am a bit stubborn. Prayer, or meditation, is especially important for people with depression and anxiety. Prayer settles your mind because you are with your God. He is your stronghold and hope. There are so many bible verses on this. You know God had an idea that humans struggle since He put it in His book. I think the phrase “Be not afraid” or “Fear not” is in the Bible 365 times. Prayer helps us to be in the present moment, which is the only place to be free from depression and anxiety. Depression comes from the past and anxiety from the future. The Catholic Psych Institute has a great program for Mindfulness. I highly recommend this training for your child and you. It is important to make sure it is a Catholic program because at the center of the training is knowing you are safe. The only way you know you are safe is to know that you have a loving Father. The only way you know that you have a loving Father is to have a relationship with him, also known as a prayer life. There are lots of things to help you meditate. You can use the rosary to pray and meditate on the mysteries of the Lord’s life. You can picture yourself in the scene of the Bible or Mass reading of the day and think about what you would do or say. What do you see, feel, smell? What is the Lord saying to you? What are you going to do today to answer his call? If you want to know more about how to pray, go here https://schooloffaith.com/prayer-and-spirituality-1 How is your prayer life?

The Love of a Merciful Christian Mother

Online response from anonymous mother:

"When my son starting using marijuana at 16 and then subsequently got arrested by the time he was 18. I did a lot of finger pointing and judging and said and did things I'm not proud of out of fear, worry, shame, anger. I didn't handle it well, I didn't handle it as Jesus would have. My son did not see Jesus in me. It took a secular psychologist to open my eyes to my own issues and to acknowledge that in order for this situation to heal, I needed to heal. I had wounds that I unknowingly bled on to my children. Even with years of trying to grow in my faith, to be a Christian example to my kids, to raise them with prayer, scripture, all kinds of faith related activities, I had the courage to realize that all of this meant nothing if my kids did not see the love of Jesus Christ within my heart, that they did not see the love of a merciful Christian mother. It was painful to realize the mistakes, but, by the grace of God, He gave me the courage to recognize that I needed Him more than I ever imagined and that I needed to trust His son more than ever. I had to deeply examine my own heart and who it belonged to. It's been 4 years, it's been quite a journey, and, this journey, in reality was not about my son, it was about me. That revelation is healing my wounds, filling my heart holes with God's love, and now, my kids see a different person. My son has progressed, our relationship is better as I witness to how God works in my life not only by what I say, but how I act in response to Him. I'm able to see his hurting soul through the eyes of Jesus. As Jesus did when everyone wanted to condemn the adulterer, He made me aware of my own sin in order to have compassion for other sinners."

Faith and Love

Faith asks and love accepts the answer.

Accepting God's Crosses

"Let us imagine our confusion when we appear before God and understand the reasons why he sent us the crosses that we accept so unwillingly." 

St. Claude de la Colombiere