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.
We want to provide a space to bring prayers, resources, support and hope for mothers of young adults with anxiety and depression to avoid isolation.
Friday, June 21, 2019
Sunday, June 9, 2019
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!
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!
Saturday, June 8, 2019
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.
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.
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