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.