Ep.27 | Making the world a better place through personal suffering
(Meditation song at the end - Be not Afraid by Bob Dufford, SJ)
Have you ever been in a place in life where you’re like – ok….so what exactly am I supposed to do now?
That’s where I am, in this very moment, this dark moment. I got a reply from one of the jobs I was really hoping to land saying they chose another candidate. Honestly, I had a feeling that it would happen, that I was a good match for their mission but not for their exact needs, but I wasn’t exactly prepared for what I’m experiencing now.
Today, at the dinner table, with my dearest husband and daughter cutely babbling in her high chair, I just had to close my eyes because I just felt like I was going to shut down and not wake back up again. In that moment, I did something I haven’t ever done sincerely – to tell the Lord thank you for my suffering.
In this season of Lent, I’ve been finding myself wanting to learn more about suffering and how to be able to do what the saints did so well – to not complain bitterly and let everyone and their mother know they are suffering, but to rather suffer well.
So when I realized this was on my heart, there was a split moment of realizing what I was saying. But I was too deep into the suffering to linger in that feeling for long. So I snapped out of that moment of shock and returned to being grateful because some part of me knew that there was nothing to be done to get out of it. This was a deep moment of heart suffering, just for me.
Back in the day, and honestly, still many days now, when I experience a suffering, my immediate reaction is to want out immediately. Back then though, I would turn to a whole bottle of wine, whip out the whisky, run to the bar, or light up whatever form of marijuana I had close by. I was the queen of running away from all ill-feelings.
Man, the number of sufferings that were wasted…
THANKS BE TO GOD, with the divine partnership with my husband, all dependence on substances of any sort are all gone! I’m not actively trying to run away from my suffering anymore…yet the sufferings still continue.
But tonight…what I felt was different. This was the first time I actually thanked God for my suffering.
It’s been a goal of mine to want to genuinely say it, to mean it, and not just utter words with no love behind it. Today, that was all there and I think it’s because of my heart’s understanding of Jesus’ role in our salvation.
I’ll briefly summarize what my heart has come to truly understand in a few moments. I just think that the key to all this is that my HEART has come to know this. There was one walk I went on with my husband and my little one last week, just joyfully expressing all of why I love attending daily mass. My husband was like…yes, all of what you said is correct. A part of me said…you know, I actually think I’ve known this too, but it just FEELS different, like I’m living this out really and truly.
Ok, what is the ‘this’…
It’s the truth that we no longer have the same relationship with God as we once did, pre-Jesus time. Because we, aka humanity, got it wrong time and time again – that is, how to live meaningful, purposeful, fulfilling, wholesome lives as God created us to live – in an ultimate act of love for us, God decided to give us Himself to help us. How amazing!
The life of Jesus is a whole other topic in itself for another time, but it’s the end of His life that has brought new meaning to my life and why I am saying THANK YOU for my suffering.
It’s at the end of His life that He took all the heat for us. He positioned Himself to be the ultimate sacrifice to help us to be reconciled with God, so that God no longer is angry with us, but merciful and compassionate (which He always was by the way). With this reconciliation comes a new relationship, not of judgement, but of cooperation. God now looks to us to help Him in His generations-long mission to have His children come back to Him, to rediscover His love for them, to bring light and love into our world which has been taken over by darkness.
God is oh so very empathetic towards the fact that we are broken, that we are inclined to turn away from Him. Therefore, through Jesus, instead of our weaknesses being the means of God’s wrath coming down upon us, it’s now been issued that all that we suffer because of our faults can now be offered up through Jesus to help in this heavenly cooperative effort to spread love into the world. And really, it’s not just our sufferings, but it’s all that we do, day in and day out, that can be offered up…but I’ll hopefully tackle that another day.
Again, Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice – but that doesn’t mean that now we get to stand idly by and reap the benefits of this reconciled relationship to God. Jesus is the sacrifice, but in order for the graces of His sacrifice to have effect on our lives it needs our participation, which we’re not forced to do, but are invited to partake in.
This may be a stretch, but it’s like someone custom builds you the fastest, highest performance race car for your racing career, and it’s guaranteed that you will win every race you enter…you still need to actually get in the car and drive it though. So this means training, preparation, etc.
Or here’s another far stretch of an analogy hehe. Remember in school, how you’d be grouped up and you wished to be grouped with that one classmate that would do all the work for you so you wouldn’t need to do anything? Well, Jesus is that one classmate and God has grouped us with Jesus for our assignment of living life. We’re guaranteed to ace EVERYTHING, to ace life! Thing is we actually need to contribute and participate to actually make that happen. I hope you get the picture!
By uniting our sufferings to Jesus, we’re participating in the sacrifice. We are not only able to perfect our praise and thanksgiving for God, we are also able to atone for our sins – past, present, and future….the sins of our families, the sins of our friends, the sins of all those around the world.
Though the ‘why’ for our suffering is always a divine mystery (outside of the ones that we put on ourselves and are hard to get rid of with our own will and power), thanks be to God, we now have a means of doing something with them, something that bring purpose, far beyond what we’re ever able to do on our own.
Which brings me back to why I am starting to not run away from suffering, but say thank you. For someone like me who is sensitive to the ills of our world and wants to help change the world in at least 10 different ways each day (it’s true, ask my husband!), it’s honestly a relief that I actually can…not by trying to create a new nonprofit each month, but by offering up my sufferings, trusting that they are perfected in Christ to help those I know in my life. I can help in ways I am not able to and even help those who I know are caught up in Satan’s games and chains that I once were in.
I’m sure there’s a plethora of theological material out there to ‘explain’ all of this, but at some point, one must pray for that gift of faith to simply believe.
And because of faith, I feel like I’m tapping ever more into the beauty of living as a child of God, something I may have waited my whole lifetime for, waiting for all of this to make sense in my mind…a scientist’s mind at that.
What’s even more exciting about all of this is that I think it’s also going to help me a lot moving forward with my job hunt and ultimately being a wife and mother too! I can know in my heart that I can make a big difference in the world by offering my everyday activities and sufferings!
Personal prayer: Our Father, there is such great mystery surrounding who you are and the role Jesus plays in our lives. Please grant us the gift of faith, and the graces to courageously accept it, so that we may ever more come to learn of the relationship you desire to have with us. Help me to learn how to live that which you are – love – and obediently and humbly accept any sufferings that come my way. Teach my heart how to suffer well and feel a deep joy and peace for accepting your invitation to participate in Christ’s perfect sacrificial offering to you. Amen.