The subject tonight is Love And for tomorrow night as well, As a matter of fact, I know of no better topic For us to discuss Until we all Die!
Hafiz
It’s been my brother Mark’s birthday today. He would have been 56. (1970-2015) I was thinking about love and letting go. I actually don’t like the phrase “letting go.” To me it sounds like sending someone away, like forgetting them. I hate that.
However somebody pointed out to me this morning that loosening my grip this Christmas on our family traditions, my ability to be more open to doing something new and allowing our Christmas to unfold in the new family we are, was a letting go. The fact that I was OK today on my brother’s birthday though a little sad at times, and that I was OK not doing anything in particular in his honor necessarily, was letting go.
That sounds a little scary for me but it’s alright. I am always afraid if I don’t try hard to remember and keep everything I know about them, I will forget the people I have lost. I really fear that. I don’t want them to be far away from me- like childhood friends whose names I can’t really remember anymore. I don’t want to let them go.
Then I thought about how love is a living thing. Love changes and grows as the people in the relationship do. Love is not static. It isn’t only in the past. Love isn’t diminished by change In fact love deepens as people adjust and sacrifice in the midst of and because of it they grow together and for one another.
The love between my brother and me is a living thing. Death has changed our situation drastically. Love has had to adjust and change and grow with that. But death can’t take away love. And maybe that is what it means to let go; when I don’t need to force anything to feel connected, or struggle to wrest back any little scrap death has left behind when it raided my family and took so many people away. Maybe letting go is to be able to trust that love just is and I can let it be itself.
My dad used to say that my brother probably loved me more than anyone on the planet loved anyone. What if I can trust that he still does? He always loved me just as I was. I loved him like that too.
I love my brother as he is right now, even not quite knowing what that is like to be him right now. When I get there with him I expect to love him even more. Death can’t do anything about that.
.So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Something Zane loved to do was make cookies. This is something we did nearly every day. I used to hold his hand to help him crack an egg and make sound effects for him. He liked that. He used to try to eat the butter and show his enthusiasm for our baking activity by mouthing the bowl. His very favorite part was pouring the mix into the bowl. I used to say, “Here comes your favorite part!” I bought the same cookie mix today and I’m in my kitchen making cookies in spirit with Zane, smiling and chuckling at the parts of our process that I remember.
Well. my granddaughter will be happy and surprised to see cookies when she gets home from school.
Zane was a young nonverbal autistic guy with cerebral palsy that I took care of for the last four years of his life. He died at 20 years old on August 22.
I have been rather dysfunctional lately. I go to work (I still have one of my jobs) and I come home, do the minimum such as take care of my chickens cats and dogs. Then I lay in my bed and stare at the ceiling. My heart hurts. I feel like I am dying. It’s grief of course, for Zane, who died suddenly and unexpectedly August 22 of this year.
At the same time I have lost my job. I took care of Zane for about four years. I also take care of Mac, another special needs young man.
So I have lost my main job, my job with Zane, which is a crisis in itself. It’s hard to make decisions when you’re grieving and it’s not the best time to do it. However, I don’t have time to do this any other way.
I really love working with special needs young people. I seem to have a knack especially with those who are nonverbal. It is a calling I believe, to do this work. It’s a work that is love. It means a lot to me.
I interviewed with a new family. It went very well and they would love me to come work for them. I liked them too. I said I would let them know in a day or two. Then I cried in the car and had to go over and hug Zane’s mom. We sat on the couch and talked for a while about Zane, about things. Her loss is so great I had to stop typing for a few seconds just now thinking of it. I feel guilty talking about my own grief but I can’t help it.
When my mom got restless or had a problem she needed to think about, she re-arranged the furniture and cleaned madly. Sometimes she pulled up carpet or made new curtains and painted the living room to match. I’m not good at sewing. I don’t have money for paint. So I stuck with re-arranging the furniture and cleaning madly.
I talked to my friend Shawna who somehow manages to give me clarity when I need it. I continued to clean madly. My dogs were a little concerned.
I thought about how I am worried about the pay for a prospective new job which is far less than I made at my last. I wondered how I would pay the mortgage now. I finally got a house and I am not giving it up. I was thinking about what to do about that.
However the main issue is grief. It’s hard for me to think of replacing Zane and trying to love someone new already. I reflect that I have never failed to love anyone I have taken care of. In the nursing home where I did my clinicals there is no way to really get to know the people you care for. You take care of their immediate physical needs and even if they’re crying or something you have ten other patients you have to get to who need to be changed or whatever. Even then I always cared for each one in a loving way as best I could. That’s just how I do it. I can do this.
I have a daughter in college. I will do whatever I can to make sure she gets as far with her education as she wants to. She is busy applying for master’s programs lately. No matter what she is going. My other daughter has been going through hell this summer. It’s pretty unimaginable the way she is holding it together. However she needs me. Sometimes she needs my help. I’m going to be here ready.
If there is anything in my life I have learned to do it’s grieve and fight for my family at the same time.
I can work out the pay part somehow but I prayed about my next person to take care of. I think this could be the one I asked for or was led to. . I think I will try it and do my best.
The dogs needn’t worry. I think I am through cleaning for now.
Today I did something I have never done before. I took part in an “honor walk” for someone I love very much who has died- just yesterday in fact. I had never heard of an honor walk before. This is something that was done today for this person so beloved by so many. I can’t tell you who this person is to me because the family has not shared anything on line as far as I know so I won’t either.
However I thought this honor walk was pretty touching. Everyone came at such short notice and it was a lot of people!
It had to be carried out quickly due to the family’s decision to donate the organs “so he can be the answer to another family’s prayers.”
His body would be flown to Dallas for this purpose.
This death was sudden and tragic. Everyone I saw there in the ICU was still dazed from the shock of it. Hospital staff had us line the halls. Some of the people had signs with pictures of him saying “We love you.”
We seemed to stand there a long time. I didn’t know many of the others though I could guess who many of them were. I introduced myself to some I had heard the most about. I regretted that I somehow forgot my rosary. I always have one in my pocket but I didn’t remember today. I made desultory conversation with an interesting young person next to me whom I had met several times before. It was awkward or I worried it was.
I repeated “Jesus Maria” in my head as I tried not to let my emotions or my social anxiety overwhelm me.
In High School my best friend, Philip, was killed in a car accident. I remembered vividly watching his mother, Helen, go stoically through all of the necessary procedures. Afterwards I tried to stay close to her through the varying stages of her grief and mine.
A lot of feelings from my past came up standing there because I felt so terrible for the family. I remembered the last time I would ever see my first husband’s face after he had died in a car crash when he was twenty-eight. I had to ask my dad and brother to remove me so the funeral home people could close his casket because I just couldn’t leave Marc’s side. Standing and waiting today I kept thinking of the trauma, shock and horror this family must feel in these last moments with the body. I felt those feelings of horror and bottomless darkness from my past that I wish I could save them from.
I had to sort things out. I didn’t want to avoid my own grief for this person now. But I also needed to be present and remind myself that this is not my trauma. This is their trauma. This is their day, his day. I wanted to pray and to be there. I wanted to grieve this person and not my other people I’ve lost. I so wanted to strengthen the family and love them. As someone who is all full of trauma and loss myself this was hard to do.
Staff handed out water bottles and tissue. I noticed I was crying a little bit. That’s a sign of healing for me because I did not have that ability for many years. It is a recent development.
Finally the hospital bed carrying our person was pushed between the two lines of people from the other end of the hall. Everyone stood in silence. After the family had passed we followed. He was propped up on pillows. His eyes had some kind of shiny stuff on his closed eyelids. There was a ventilator tube coming out of his mouth. There was the face I loved, empty of expression now. He didn’t even look that empty when he was sleeping. He was definitely gone. Still I mentally told him I loved him knowing he could spiritually hear. I asked him to look after his family.
Finally we came to an open door leading to a kind of dock. A chaplain invited us to pray together which we all did. A hospital staff member of some kind read out some words of gratitude for what the family was about to do, and a blessing. She cried while she did it. The mother of our person spoke to him for a while some loving words. I couldn’t hear them exactly. And he was sent out.
I saw a beloved grandmother in the hall and hugged her and the weeping grandfather too.
The parents hugged me. I so wanted to be a comfort to them. I think I was. It seemed that way.
We were all guided back out to the lobby where I joined my step mom and daughter who had come with me, having known him too. I had stood with the family and close friends. My step mom had pushed me over there. I hadn’t been sure I should be so forward but it worked out.
I thought the honor walk was beautiful. It was fitting. It was just like the family, who are so loving, to do this.
I will think about it for a long time.
This is not my trauma but the family’s. However, I grieve. I do grieve terribly.
Now that the family has openly shared about Zane’s death I can too. I was his care giver since he was 16. I loved him – I do love him- very much.
I did not cry for nine years after you self destructed like a kamikaze in our midst. There are not even any pieces left to sort through. Where did you go and why couldn’t I stop you. We were closer than close and I should have known when you locked me out what was coming. We always said when we didn’t spend time together neither of us was right in ourselves so we should always make sure to connect no matter what was going on. You kept trying to apologize, trying to come back into our front porch days. You said “When I hurt you I hurt me and I can’t stand that I hurt your feelings. I hate that.” And I always said it was ok. I said we can work through anything just like we always have. I had faith in that. Absolute faith. How crazy did you have to be for me to not be surprised. Denial is more powerful than I ever thought. When you said “I’m scared I might be mentally ill,” I should not have reassured you that you weren’t. The last time I saw you I hugged you brother and I rubbed your little head. You looked like a small boy that day who had been sick, safe at his parents’ dinner table. Your letter to Dad said I would be OK. Well I’m not. None of us are. You must have hurt so badly to do something like that. You just needed it to stop. I thought oh he will be back like always. He just needs to think. I was so close. But I think you thought we were far away and you had no idea how to get back. You couldn’t find us. And you thought we couldn’t help. I finally cried the other night and it was about something else. It felt weird. It didn’t last long. I wish I could miss you the way I miss everyone else. But there is just a void where you used to be. Like the Mariana Trench. No one knows what’s down there, only how unfathomably deep it must be. I’ve been there. But I couldn’t understand anything.
The widow’s place in the Church in our times seems a bit vague. We are not exactly single. We are alone without our spouses, but they do exist in the next life. Often we are single moms, whose place in the Church seems elusive as well.
The eventual death of a spouse is not spoken of in our marriage preparation. I think it should be talked about. One partner is sure to experience it.
I have come to think of my widowhood as “part two” of my vocation as a wife.
I just discovered that the Church agrees with me.
“Widowhood, accepted bravely as a continuation of the marriage vocation, should be esteemed by all” ( Gaudium et spes, 48)
I am profoundly altered both by the love I knew and the suffering I lived through.
We widows have a lot to give. We have learned to be co-redeemers with Our Lady. Our hearts are wells of a unique compassion for all in mourning or sorrow. We have learned the depths of love.
If you find yourself on the widow’s path, here are my own discoveries I hope will help.
Your husband was unique and unrepeatable, containing a universe of his own, and in whom God dwelled.God remembers and cherishes everything about him. He is alive in God and he continues his journey.
Your relationship with your husband was unique and unrepeatable, containing a universe of its own, cherished and remembered by God. It is alive in God and still accessible to you spiritually.
As St. Teresa of Avila said, God lives within us, enthroned in the center of our hearts. This means that all of Heaven is there in our souls as well. We share spiritual goods with those in Purgatory, and we are all one in the Lord.
In the depths of my agony I would ask my husband in spirit, “How could you go somewhere I could not go? How can you be happy in Heaven when I am going through hell? Do you still love me? Are you still my husband?”
Of course death was not his choice. But these were the cries of my heart. I came to understand that he was a compassionate witness to my suffering. I received a strong sense of his continued love for me.
That last burning question, “Are you still my husband,” caused me a lot of unnecessary pain. On the surface it does sound like the answer is no. “There will be no marriage or giving in marriage in the world to come” (Matt.22:30.) This verse has been historically emphasized in favor of virginity by Catholic writers. This idea was extremely upsetting to me. Why would every other relationship pass through heaven’s gates but not this one in which I became one with my husband? When I was widowed for the second time, this came up again for me because of a homily I heard at mass on this verse. A visiting priest said that husbands and wives always say they want to know their spouses in Heaven but that we needed to let that go. It just freaked me out. I went outside and cried. Priests, when you preach on this verse, please remember me and every other grieving widow in your audience. Say a word of comfort for us to mitigate the sorrow we feel when you imply our profound loss will not be restored to us as the other ones will be.
The resolution to this question of whether my late husband is still my husband is this:
Love is stronger than death. (Sngs 6:8)
Love is the greatest of the “three that remain” (1 Cor.13.) Love is eternal whatever happens on earth or Heaven, and even though all things pass away. I know both my late husbands are very much with me. Not only that but they will be with me in Heaven as well, and God treasures the love we share. St. Joseph is still Our Lady’s husband. He is still right next to her, even though her ultimate Spouse is the Holy Spirit. What we will be in Heaven individually is not clear to us now (1Jn. 3:2.) However we will be more not less. I believe our relationships will be more and not less in Heaven. God will wipe every tear from our eyes and there will be no more death or separation. (Rev.21:4)
Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
In the meantime I have discovered Jesus as my ultimate spouse just as the widowed Saints have done.
No longer will they call you Deserted,
or name your land Desolate.
But you will be called Hephzibah,
and your land Beulah;
for the Lord will take delight in you,
and you will be called espoused.
As a young man marries a young woman,
so will your Builder marry you;
as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride,
so will your God rejoice over you.
Isaiah 62:4-5
A whole new kind of love has opened up to me. I feel as if I am a mother and sister to everyone with a free and expansive heart. The love I had with my husbands and our journeys together have made me who I am. Grief, intense loss and suffering have made me who I am. Taking all of that burning love and sorrow before the throne of God constantly continues to transform it into a greater depth of prayer and service in this world.
This growth required surrender. I had to be able to tell God that for love of him I gave my consent to this way of life I had not wanted, and that I would stay in this world as long as he wanted me to, in the way he wanted me to. I begged him that this experience would purify my heart and draw me closer to him.
My first husband, Marc, was killed in a car accident when he was only twenty-eight. We had a three month old and an almost five year old. I kissed Marc goodbye in the morning and never saw him again.
His death and our loss felt brutal and senseless.
I prayed all the time, “Increase the strength of my soul” (Ps. 138:3.) And God did.
Nobody tells you how hard it is not to kill yourself when you are suddenly widowed like that. Only the love of God and of my children kept me from it.
The Eucharist kept me alive as well. It is a gift from God that my husband had a premonition of his death and said, “No matter what happens we will always be together in the Eucharist.” He had wanted to renew our wedding vows there and then, which we did. A friend called this “a preparatory gift of the Holy Spirit.”
My kids and I went to mass every day. I needed Jesus more than ever.
I didn’t see how I could ever be OK without Marc. It seemed being OK without him would be a betrayal. A kindly widower gave me peace about this. He said, “If your arm is amputated you learn to live without that arm. But that arm never grows back.”
And so it was. I never stopped loving Marc. At fifty-four I love him as much as I ever did. But I have learned to live without him in this world.
In spite of my sorrow I was able to raise my kids joyfully. Our house was like a cross between Pippy Longstocking’s house and a little monastery; a fun, quirky place where we also prayed a lot. We took in many animals, and always had the neighborhood kids running in and out. We were that house on our street where most of the kids hung out. Our family and friends were often there just to be there, have some iced tea, pray in our little oratory.
I never wanted to marry again. When I found myself falling in love with Bob ten years after the death of my first husband, I had to pray a lot to be able to accept it. I learned that Bob was not replacing Marc. My daughters and I were only setting another place at the table.
Bob wrote to my brother-in-law Frank before our wedding, “Marc’s stories will always be told around our table, his picture will always hang on our wall, and his ring will always be on her finger.” This is how it was.
Walking with Bob through his journey with Brain Cancer was the most amazing thing the kids and I have ever done. We fought a beautiful fight and we lived and loved every minute. When the time came, my heart had to expand exponentially to be able let him go with love and even joy amidst the pain. I realized I could not deny Jesus anything, not even Bob. His death was beautiful, loving, and in my arms. Ten years later I still carry that great love.
A help to me both times I have been widowed was Ronda Chervin’s book on the widowed saints, A Widow’s Walk. She introduced me to Our Lady as a widow, which has meant a lot to me.
Here is her daily prayer for widows:
God the Father, I offer you the rest of my time on earth that I may serve with love and come to eternal life. May my husband be blessed on his journey in eternity and everyone in my family be saved. Holy Spirit, be a comfort to all widows, especially the newly bereaved. Jesus, my bridegroom, savior of my soul, delight of my heart, help me. Mary, exalted widow, mother of the Church, my model and intercessor, pray for me. St. Joseph, protector of Mary and the child Jesus and helper of widows, guide me in the trials of daily life. As a widow, may I be a spiritual mother to all I meet today. All you widow-saints, pray for me: St. Monica, pray for me. St. Paula, pray for me. St. Elizabeth of Hungary, pray for me. Bd. Angela of Foligno, pray for me. St. Elizabeth of Portugal, pray for me. St. Bridget of Sweden, pray for me. St. Rita of Cascia, pray for me. St. Frances of Rome, pray for me. St. Catherine of Genoa, pray for me. St. Jane of Chantal, pray for me. Bd. Marie of the Incarnation, pray for me. St. Louise de Marillac, pray for me. Bd. Marguerite d’Youville, pray for me. St. Elizabeth Seton, pray for me. Servant of God, Praxedes Fernandez, pray for me. Ven. Conchita of Mexico, pray for me. All other widows now in heaven, pray for me.
Something Bob said as we tried to process his terrifying diagnosis of Glioblastoma multiforme (stage 4- terrible news!) has continued to guide my life.
As we held each other I asked, “What do we do?” “Well,” he said, “We love, we walk on.” This is how I have tried to live my life.
May 23 2021, a young black man was shot to death by police in front of my apartment. During the commotion that preceded the shooting I had rushed onto my balcony. I saw the whole thing. I called out to him while he lay in the parking lot as the police shouted at him to put his hands up. He couldn’t seem to do it so I was saying, “You can do it please do as they say! I’m praying for you!” I didn’t want them to shoot him again. Finally he was able to raise one shaking hand. He couldn’t seem to bring up the other arm.
He had come out of his apartment (next to mine) waving a gun earlier. When I saw that I knew they were going to shoot him. I decided that I was not going to turn away from what was about to happen. I felt I had no right to. I should remain.
As soon as he had finally put one hand up, a couple of officers turned him over on his face. It was raining. The parking lot has a lot of cracks and dips in it, repairs in the shape of square patches. He was in a bit of a puddle, still alive. His pants had fallen down when he was turned, exposing his naked butt and nobody pulled his pants up for him. The blood from his chest began seeping into the water around him.
That’s the scene that runs through my mind at least once a day.
He had looked so shocked when they shot him. He swayed and looked around at all the faces in front of him; each human face in the arc of police who had fanned out and then closed in. He looked at everyone before he collapsed.
Another neighbor had been caught between two cars and was hunched down crying. I went downstairs to hug her even though she was talking to her son on her cell phone. I heard the young man’s girlfriend screaming and the police shouting at her to stay back. I ran over there, worried she would get herself shot too, or arrested. I put my arms around her and reminded her that he needed her now, and she wanted to be able to be there for him so she should comply. She called to him that she loved him and she was there and she wasn’t going anywhere. She stayed back.
However when she saw her mother across the parking lot she ran to her with police shouting at her the whole way so I went with her and said over and over that she was just going to her mother. As we went past the stretcher, my arm brushed the young man accidentally and his head lolled to the side.
Everything happened so fast that day. I don’t know how objective I could ever be about something like this. I’m not trying to be.
I’m also not writing down everything that happened. These are the parts that have stayed with me the most, that tend to replay for me.
Soon after, maybe the next day, I saw a woman downstairs obviously overcome with traumatic grief. I went out on my balcony not knowing what to do but wanting to do something for her. She looked up at me so I called down to her and asked if she would like a hug. She said she would and I went down and held her close. She needed to sit down so we halfway got in her car and I held onto her.
“I can’t believe they shot my baby! How could they do that?”
There was nothing to say except “I don’t know.” Because that is the truth about these things. We can never understand them no matter what anyone says. At the bottom there is just no real answer.
This is what I am thinking about on this memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows. We can say all of these exalted things about Mary’s sorrow and I know they are all true. But maybe we love her best when we remember that no answer satisfies a mother’s shattered heart.
The profound suffering of another person is frightening to be present to. When my husband’s cancerous brain tumor came back after two years of remission, he asked to be alone for a while. When he wanted me there I came and got into his chair with him and held him. I listened to him talk about his feelings of raw desolation, anger, and even shame, of terror, of feeling there was no comfort anywhere.
I had no mitigating words to say. Even if I had they would have been inappropriate and insensitive. Even with the intense devotion and deep bond I had with him, there were moments I wanted to run out in the back yard away from the enormity of what he was expressing. So I prayed as I listened; just the names of Jesus and Mary every time that urge came up. That simple effort made me able to share that space with him.
When he eventually asked how I felt about this on a spiritual level, all I had was the fact of Christ’s suffering. At least as we went through this we had a God who didn’t die in a shower of rose petals but naked and bleeding like an animal, nailed to a cross, with a cry of spiritual abandonment only just having died on his lips.
My husband nodded gravely.
I thought of Mary, surrounded by mockers, violent men, her weeping friends, silently sharing the space with her Son.
I believe she was near to me as I tried to open my heart to its fullest in the weeks that followed; through Bobs creeping paralysis, his growing confusion, his final inability to speak. She was close, I know, when I tried to surrender with love at the right time to set my husband free when he was ready.
Mary was the face of love to Jesus as he suffered. I tried to be that too, to lay my own grief aside. I have no doubt that is what she did at the Cross. I am sure she thought to herself, “I will grieve later. Right now I have to be here for him, I want to look at his beautiful living face as long as I can in these last moments.” I am sure about this because when you love, that is what you do.
May Our Lady pray for us when we are called to walk with someone who suffers terribly, which all of us are in some way at some time. May she companion us when we must find a way to love more than we feel able, to seek the true meaning of profound compassion that she embodied at the scene of her Son’s execution.
A reading from the Letter of Paul to the Galatians 2:19b-20
I have been crucified with Christ, and the life I live now is not my own; Christ is living in me. I still live my human life, but it is a life of faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
The Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
The last few years have been so traumatic for me that I have felt alienated from everything and everyone, and like I would never be myself again.
Part of my healing in this latest phase of my journey has been to investigate for myself what really happened and to face the truth around my brother’s suicide, to ask questions I had been too freaked out to ask before, to recognize and re-claim my own experience of what happened after a truly dysfunctional family response that left me confused, dismayed, and even more traumatized.
I called my truth- seeking mission “The Immaculate Heart of Mary Detective Agency.” I thought this appropriate because the sword that pierced Mary’s heart, Simeon said, was “so that the secret thoughts of many may be revealed.
I wanted to truly love my brother by understanding all of him, not just the parts that I had enjoyed so much all of my life, but all of him. I wanted to try to understand what drove him to do what he did.
I realized I didn’t have to wait around for people to quit lying to me and tell me what was going on. I could find out for myself. So I started asking questions and interviewing people who had the information I wanted, or a different perspective from my own as the sister and room mate I had been at the time.
Unexpectedly, the whole experience of the IHMDA has been empowering, though I uncovered rank injustice and malice I hadn’t known some people were even capable of. I feel more alive than I have since all this tragedy began. I have a glimmer of an idea that I have a life and a future.
It seems to me that Mary’s heart has helped lay bare many truths, and strengthened me to deal with them.
I am not sure what I will do next. But it seems God thinks my next step is to forgive. That message was in last Sunday’s Gospel. It seems to pop up everywhere I turn. I seem to read or see or hear something about forgiveness every day.
There is hardly anything I have not lost to some degree in the past couple of years of shock and trauma; my home, my life savings, my family, and the cohesion of my group of wonderful friends. Everything is strange now. I have even felt like I lost myself.
I am grateful for the good relationship between my daughters and me, though honestly, at times, even those sacrosanct relationships were violated and temporarily distorted by lies and manipulation.
What do I do with this horrible story? Sometimes I can hardly believe it myself.
How can I forgive the unforgivable? And how can I ever be a whole person again? How can I bear this?
I have been asking all that for a good while.
I realized, praying Morning Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours today, when I read this reading, (above) the answer to these questions. “This is how,”Jesus says.
“You will do and experience both of these things because your life is not your own anymore. It’s better than that because I live in you and for you. From within you, I will forgive, I will live, and we will have a beautiful life together. I have loved you and given Myself up for you. You have loved Me and given yourself to Me, no matter what life has brought you. ”
I thought about this. It is a miracle that the thing I have not lost or had to re-negotiate, so to speak, is my faith in God. Even though I have been broken inside beyond anything I thought it was possible to experience, I have an inner rock solid foundation of faith that God has not let me lose.
I have discovered that, as St. John of the Cross speaks of in his Ascent of Mount Carmel, I am “supported by faith alone,” now, in spite of how disjointed I feel psychologically and socially.
No one and nothing can take me from Christ’s hand. He is even more real to me than I am to myself. And even though my heart is broken, it does know it is safe. It does know Who it belongs to and Who lives there forever. Not even my own death will change that.
In fact, Paul also says that the spirit of Jesus in us is so real, it is that power that will raise our bodies from the dead.
But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. Romans 8:11 (This turned out to be in Evening Prayer tonight.)
All the lies and malice, misunderstanding, persecution, blame, rejection, trauma, loss and grief I have suffered, and that the whole world has suffered, are no match for the Truth of God who is Love, and Life.
In a way, in comparison, these terrible things are not even real.
The reality is God.
And I am glad to be only ashes and dust.
That is exactly how I have everything I will ever need in this life and in the next:
“It is not I who live, but Christ Who lives in me.”
Bethany Hang Out 