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The Gift of Suffering

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“God loves us, so He makes us the gift of suffering.  MICHAEL DUDASH The Comforter Through suffering, we release our hold on the toys of this world,  and know our true good lies in another world. We’re like blocks of stone, out of which the sculptor carves the forms of men. The blows of his chisel, which hurt us so much, are what make us perfect. The suffering in this world is not the failure of God’s love for us; it is that love in action. For believe me, this world that seems to us so substantial is no more than the shadlowlands. Real life has not begun yet.” (“Shadowlands,” p. 1) continue to read article>

Adapting for Disabilities

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Photo Source . . . Suffering and sin pressed on me heavily this morning, making me feel constricted, helpless. Feeling burdened and discouraged, I boarded the bus for work. Immediately I noticed something new on the bus: a PA system recently installed that announces every upcoming stop. I couldn't help but notice the new system, because it's loud and relentless. The computerized voice blared out each bus stop as we approached: 120th Street! 118th Street! Watertown Plank Road and 116th Street! Watertown Plank Road and Mayfair Road! Transfer to Route 31, State Street Branch! Given how deflated I was feeling, my first reaction was to be annoyed by the new two-block warning system. And then, by God's providence, I started to imagine why the automated voice had been installed in the first place. Read on at Praying with Grace

How to suffer like a Christian

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Suffering. Ever since the Fall of Adam, it’s an unavoidable part of life. We suffer daily in little ways. The alarm clock rings too early. We spill coffee all over our work clothes. The kids are disobedient. We get stuck in traffic. These little things are a reminder that all is not right with the world. Something is out of whack. We have lost the close connection with God we were meant to have. When we face small trials, we have an opportunity to grow in trust and love.  We can offer our disappointments and dislikes to God in love, asking Him to use them to bring others to Him. We can say, “Jesus, I trust in you,” praying that He helps us to accept His sovereignty over our day. Because after all, we were never meant to be in charge of our life. These gentle reminders of that fact can help us reorient ourselves towards God. (As an aside, I am experiencing a little annoyance right now from my kids. Thank you, Lord, for this opportunity to put into practice what I am p

A sad anniversary and a free chapter of Trusting God with St. Therese

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This is my family (plus two friends) on June 10, 1974. I’m the one with the braids in the front. Terri is behind me next to our mom. Here is how our car looked thirty minutes later. Today is the fortieth anniversary of one of the saddest events in my life so far. On June 10, 1974, our family was driving to the annual Catholic Charismatic Conference at the University of Notre Dame. We began our journey in Spokane, Washington, where we had spent a weekend on retreat. Just outside Missoula, Montana, the car rolled over three times, landing in the median of the freeway. I was in the back with the seat down and no seat belt. So were two of my siblings and two friends. I ended up with stitches in my leg and a bump on my head. My sister Terri, who had been sitting next to me, was thrown from the car and died. She was ten years old. Why did God let this happen? Didn’t He know where we had come from and where we were going? Hadn’t He heard Terri’s voice, when

You can make someone else’s suffering meaningful

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Self Portrait with a Friend by Rafael. In the middle of Lent, I received an email from a new reader I’ll call Jill. Jill shared with me her years of darkness in her personal and spiritual life. My heart went out to her. I wanted to do something for her, more than just writing an encouraging answer. So I thought about it and prayed about it. Then I had an insight. Here, in part, is how I replied: “I explore these questions [about God and suffering] a lot in my book. I will give you a brief version here. Rabbi Kushner, writing in When Bad Things Happen to Good People, said that we shouldn’t ask why when we suffer. Instead, we should ask, What now? How am I to react? Finding meaning in our suffering “Similarly, Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning wrote, “Suffering ceases to be suffering in some way in the moment that it finds a meaning.” He found that in the concentration camp, those who were able to survive and be psychologically

The Finest Wheat

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One thing that serves as a  great consolation to the heart of Jesus and helps give him strength to continually pour himself out and give himself to us in the Eucharist is his people laying their lives down and joining their sufferings to his sufferings. Every disappointment, every tear, every heartache, every physical suffering joined to the heart of Christ becomes a sweet smelling offering of crushed wheat given at the table of the Lord. Jesus then takes this finest wheat and forms it into bread which is consecrated into Jesus' body and blood, broken and given for us all. Beautifulthorns

Keeping watch with Jesus--unexpectedly

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Memorial to the Japanese martyrs of Unzen. (Photo by Connie Rossini.) This is the week for keeping watch with Jesus in a special way. Although God calls us to spend time with Him in prayer daily, we rightly feel that we should spend extra time with Him during Holy Week. But how should we go about it? When I was a teenager, my family started a tradition of an all-night prayer vigil on Holy Thursday. Beginning at 10 p.m., my parents, siblings, and I took turns praying in one or two one-hour slots for the next eight hours. I loved offering this extra sacrifice to Jesus, this extra sign of love. Jesus would not be alone in the Garden of Gethsemane if I could help it. After I graduated from college, I spent two years as a lay missionary in Japan, teaching English to support the evangelization work of an American priest. During spring break of the first year, my roommate Mary Beth and I traveled to the island of Kyushu. We planned to be in Nagasaki for Easter. Read th

The Martyrdom of Me

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Today I realized something about myself.  I don't mind suffering!  Physical distress, poverty, pain:  none of these bother me at all, as long as I'm not inconvenienced or uncomfortable.  I've read gripping works about Christians in horrid circumstances.  St. Therese on her deathbed, Ignatius of Antioch on his way to martyrdom, John of the Cross imprisoned, Immaculee Ilibagiza huddled in a bathroom.  I usually read these things at night, under soft blankets in my cozy house.  From my comfort zone, I am inspired and challenged and ready to endure anything for God. And then I wonder if someone might have misunderstood something I wrote about prayer.  Or if I might be getting a headache.  Or maybe I'm asked to go a teeeeeny bit out of my way to help someone else.  Alas and alack.  Such things can feel like the very martyrdom of me.   back of hand to forehead; long sigh........ (continue at The Breadbox Letters)  

Advantage #3 of Having a Large Family - We Can't Helicopter Parent!

As parents of Large Families, we advocate for our children, we communicate with our children and their teachers and friends but we don't hover over them because we simply can't. There's no time! Have you ever heard of the term Helicopter Parent or Hover parent? I was indeed a Hover parent with our oldest. He would sneeze and I'd be at the ready with a Kleenex and a doctors appointment within seconds. What happened to my hover parenting days was 5 children. Once I had our second, our third and so on there just wasn't the time to hover over each child the way I did with my first. I now see that as a blessing although at first the inability to helicopter parent over each child came with some real guilt. In the past few years, our oldest (I will call him J for privacy reasons) has been diagnosed with severe anxiety and now a new diagnosis of ADHD. We have learnt to advocate for J by encouraging communication with his teachers.  Click here to read more!

The suffering of St. Therese

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St. Therese in July 1896. (Photo credit: Wikipedia). A short time after Therese’s first communion, her sister Marie told her, “I think God will spare you from having to suffer.” The irony is that Therese had already suffered more than some people do in a lifetime. Throughout her life people discounted her suffering. And even today some people see Therese as a saccharine saint, simple-minded, sentimental, a saint for little girls. They are ignorant of her suffering and reject her as irrelevant. Mother loss   When Therese was two months old, she almost died of enteritis. Her mother Zelie–probably already suffering from breast cancer–could not nurse her. A wet-nurse saved Therese’s life. Therese had to live five miles away from her family for thirteen months. She became attached to her nurse, whom she then had to leave behind. Zelie Martin died when Therese was 4. Therese hid her great sorrow from her father and sisters. But when Pauline, the sister who be

Trusting God with your future

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Last December, I began a quest to trust God more. It started with my reading The Way of Trust and Love by Jacques Philippe. You can read my original post on St. Therese’s trust here. (I know I link to this post a lot, but that’s because I consider it among my best. Trust is the Lesson from the Carmelite Saints that is changing my life.  If you haven’t read it, I strongly encourage you to do so.) Later, I told you how I was focusing on trusting God in the ups and downs of my day during Lent . More recently, I have worked on entrusting my future to God. This next step began with my reading Diary of a Country Mother by Cindy Montanaro. It’s the journal of a mother reflecting on the life of her young son who has recently died. As I hinted in my review, I have struggled with entrusting my children’s futures to God. I hear of so many parents who have lost a child. Two of my siblings died in childhood. My former roommate’s daughter died at age four.  Some of my readers have

Yes, No....Not Yet.

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In our prayer God gives us usually only three answers when we pray. 1.  Yes  - your prayer is answered. 2.  No.  - your prayer is refused by God.  Don't loose heart - this is not a bad thing - this is a good thing!  A no from God is a time to reflect on what you were asking for, if it was asked in the right heart.  Was it a selfish desire? If you have asked in the right mindset then know that this is your personal lesson that the will and justice of God, for the will of God and the justice of God is always perfect.  You may even never know why the answer is no.  But if you go forth and submit to the will of God then you usually find the answer for the "No" was because if He had said yes it would have diminished or cancelled a grace or gift He wished to give you later.   3.  Not yet.   God's timing is not our timing and we have to understand this, we will wait patiently for what He said He will do, we may even have to wait our lives for it, but tru

Suffering that Cannot be Spoken

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How great the suffering in Hell of the mother who at death is unrepentant for aborting her child, yet how much greater, even hundreds of thousands times greater is her suffering in Hell if she has aborted a Priest, Bishop or Prince of the Church!

In the Midst of Sorrow: To Grandma on her 1st Death Anniversary

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It's already a year since my grandmother passed away...  I remember how she used to tell me that her favorite devotion was to Our Lady of Sorrows.   She felt that her life had been filled with sufferings and that only her own death can spare her from it.   Our Lady of Sorrows I wish I can tell her now that her sufferings are nothing compared to the love that Jesus can give - if only she will open her heart to accept it.  Read more:  In The Midst of Sorrow: To Grandma on her 1st Death Anniversary   by Samantha Catabas Manuel on  Coffee Moments with Sam  

My Name Is Cheryl...And I Am A Weakling

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My name is Cheryl. And I am a weakling. That’s the kind of group I want to be in: the kind of group where we each take the stand and own up to who we are—who we really are. Not the avatars we put out in the world through our blogs and our tweets; but who we are at the core. After all, that’s where we will all ultimately connect, where we will all see one another as Christ sees us: as humanity steeped in the dignity of our creation but as a weak humanity in need of strength found in him who has offered us salvation. I love being weak. It means I’m “needy” which seems, to many people I am sure, to be an unpleasant state of being. And I’ve been trampled on more than a few times in my weakened state. I don’t always fight back when society would say that I should. I’ve been hurt and I’ve been wounded. For years I tried to fight being weak. A bit ironic, right? I wanted to be able to pick myself up by my bootstraps. I wanted to be able to say with confidence and pride that I

A Grandson Shows How Suffering Can Evoke Beauty

Today our 12-year-old son tidied up garbage in Abuelita's garage, where their spaniel went snacking.  Today he stayed with Grandpapi so I could take Abuelita grocery shopping.   Read more here...

Fishing for the Words

My dad has Alzheimer's. We don't talk about it much if for no reason other than, it hurts. He is still Dad. He will always be Dad; but the shell of him is being slowly stripped away. Word loss creep first led to fewer letters. I've saved them all. When he visits, we get to eat together, to share the chaos that is my life and laugh a bit, sometimes it overwhelms him --which is reasonable; they overwhelm me sometimes too. Alzheimer's is brutal and it's ongoing and it makes my heart howl sometimes when I know he's fishing for the next word, the next thought and they all get away. When my grandmother had it, I remember I did what I could to joke it away whenever possible, and I could usually make her laugh. "You always get to go new places. You always meet new people. You can claim you met anyone you want to and impress because we'll never be certain and neither will you." We had a good laugh about that as I helped her get her "doll face&quo