I really am stressed out. It's a bit thick now. So, to re-focus, I'm going to post at my other site of gratefulness, as a change of pace for awhile, and to give everyone a break from my personal tragic mindset. At A Quartet of Things I focus on small things, and maybe that'll resettle my heart a bit.
Read this last night in Colleen Carroll Campbell's book My Sisters the Saints (excellent, by the way). She's referring to infertility and waiting. I deal with wayward boys and the waiting for their hearts to change. Here's what she wrote:
"The waiting is the cross." (her mother told Colleen)
Maybe that was the truth I had overlooked all these years: that the waiting, the not knowing, even the interior desolation and doubts---that was the suffering that Jesus wanted me to offer up to him. Maybe the prayer Jesus wants in dark times is not one of petition or inquisition but one of simple surrender to the Father's will, the same prayer that Jesus himself offered from the cross.
I wanted to analyze and dissect my cross, to know how long I would have to carry it and how my carrying it would glorify God.
Jesus, I realized, wanted none of this. He did not need my supervision, and he was not asking me to understand my cross. He was asking me to carry it. He wanted me to wake up each morning, bend a knee on the cold wooden floor beside my bed, and offer that day's sufferings and joys for whatever purpose he wished to use them. He wanted me to joyfully embrace my daily duties and leave the big picture to him---to do, in other words, what Mother Teresa (my note: this chapter talks about her quite a bit) had done when facing much harsher trials than mine.
Like Colleen, I want answers. I want the suffering to stop. I want closure, but these situations with our boys might last many years. Gulp.
I was burdened last night and into this morning with our oldest son. Prayed last night, and felt worse. Something wasn't right in his world. I could feel it. We've always been close this way, though he's unaware of it. I got in touch with him today, he said he's fine. As I told a friend, his idea of fine and mine are two totally different things. Polar opposites. We both said we loved one another (all my kids will do this, thankfully), and that was that, at least in his mind. I told him I'd keep praying. He knows.
Going out to pray again tonight. Purge my soul. Stay out there until I feel the burden lift.
