When I’m tired, I’m irritable… and when I get stressed, I get tired. Now, I am a mom, and I run a business, and between the two, I’m usually stressed, mostly tired, and you guessed it… easily irritated. So I prayed to God to please help me with the stressful situations, please take them away, take away my fatigue, because I am not a kind person in these circumstances. His answer? Many, many stressful circumstances! One on top of another ! It took me quite a while to catch on that my prayer was indeed being answered, but not in the way I expected. “Practice makes perfect.” was His answer that finally dawned upon me! I must learn to accept difficult circumstances with a smile. He would accept nothing less.
It took me several years to realize I was “in training” so to speak, and that my crosses were not going to disappear. That they were given to me in order to make me stronger, more Christ-like. I noticed how these crosses were most painful, because they were forcing me to exercise those parts of me that were the most spiritually flabby. Now I am beginning to see my crosses as a sort of spiritual treadmill.
Much of the bitterness within them disappears then, when I can view these irritants in my life as having a healthy purpose. As being strategically placed there by the loving hand of God, for my good. I cannot express how much of a relief it is, to see a cross in this light! When we think something is bad, we put all of our strength into being rid of it, and it is a wearying and never ending battle which mostly leads to depression. However, when we can see it as coming from the hand of God, this alone relieves the immense weight of it!
I think we all have at least one heavy cross in our life, and most of us many more. I was thinking upon one of mine the other day… I was regretting the relationship I’d had with a particular person years ago, a brief and disastrous one, that left behind it intense pain. I found myself wishing deep inside, that this had never happened, that if I could do anything, I could go back to that time and place, and erase that initial meeting. As I thought about it, I began to see clearly, that this person had been placed there for my good, that I was being forced to practice many virtues I was weak in as a result. Mostly the Big Three, Faith, Hope and Charity. Trust in God rather than myself, Hope in His assisting grace and a greater Love of Him and neighbor in the end.
I think if we meditate upon all of the crosses in our life, even if they are a result of a sinful past, or perhaps the evil one’s attempt to trip us up, we will see that God does not allow anything that cannot be used for growth in virtue, for our good and for the good of our neighbor. Illnesses, difficult relationships, financial hardship… they all hold within them the pearl of great price, if… like the oyster, we embrace them and do not discard them. After all, when you think about it, each pearl started out as an irritant, didn’t it? A piece of sand that rubbed its host the wrong way.
Dear Lord, help me to embrace the crosses you send me, rather than pushing them away. Help me to see the valuable lessons they contain, so that in accepting them, they will cease to irritate and become the pearls You intend them to be.
Amen.
It took me several years to realize I was “in training” so to speak, and that my crosses were not going to disappear. That they were given to me in order to make me stronger, more Christ-like. I noticed how these crosses were most painful, because they were forcing me to exercise those parts of me that were the most spiritually flabby. Now I am beginning to see my crosses as a sort of spiritual treadmill.
Much of the bitterness within them disappears then, when I can view these irritants in my life as having a healthy purpose. As being strategically placed there by the loving hand of God, for my good. I cannot express how much of a relief it is, to see a cross in this light! When we think something is bad, we put all of our strength into being rid of it, and it is a wearying and never ending battle which mostly leads to depression. However, when we can see it as coming from the hand of God, this alone relieves the immense weight of it!
I think we all have at least one heavy cross in our life, and most of us many more. I was thinking upon one of mine the other day… I was regretting the relationship I’d had with a particular person years ago, a brief and disastrous one, that left behind it intense pain. I found myself wishing deep inside, that this had never happened, that if I could do anything, I could go back to that time and place, and erase that initial meeting. As I thought about it, I began to see clearly, that this person had been placed there for my good, that I was being forced to practice many virtues I was weak in as a result. Mostly the Big Three, Faith, Hope and Charity. Trust in God rather than myself, Hope in His assisting grace and a greater Love of Him and neighbor in the end.
I think if we meditate upon all of the crosses in our life, even if they are a result of a sinful past, or perhaps the evil one’s attempt to trip us up, we will see that God does not allow anything that cannot be used for growth in virtue, for our good and for the good of our neighbor. Illnesses, difficult relationships, financial hardship… they all hold within them the pearl of great price, if… like the oyster, we embrace them and do not discard them. After all, when you think about it, each pearl started out as an irritant, didn’t it? A piece of sand that rubbed its host the wrong way.
Dear Lord, help me to embrace the crosses you send me, rather than pushing them away. Help me to see the valuable lessons they contain, so that in accepting them, they will cease to irritate and become the pearls You intend them to be.
Amen.