As soon as I stopped being afraid, I could see God.
When I was a young girl, my mother lost one of the babies she had been carrying before it was even born. The experience was quite traumatic for her, especially because she lost a lot of blood very quickly and almost died as a result of the experience. I was a young teenager, and though I had not been aware that she was expecting a child before she lost that little baby, I was very aware on the morning when she woke up unwell and my father got us to school and then picked us up and brought us to visit our (now recovering) mother in the hospital later that afternoon.
I suppose because that was quite a traumatic memory for me, I always wondered about it in the years afterwards. Nobody – after all – likes seeing their mother suffer, and the idea that my mother could have died from something like that was very frightening to me.
Many years later, when I lost my youngest child before he was even born, I did not have a similar experience. I did not have a sudden emergency, instead, my poor little baby had died quietly and uneventfully some weeks before I even knew he was gone. I had no warning sign that something was amiss, and the first time I suspected something was when the doctor went deathly quiet during the ultrasound. It was a terrible time.
But I have been thinking a lot about that time in my life, because it seems to me that everything was so much worse because I was afraid. And I was afraid of things taking a turn as they had for my mother – when my circumstances and everything else was completely different from that experience.
You see, it seems to me – with hindsight – that if I was not so afraid of all the things and experiences that I was going through at the time, I would have been much better equipped to handle the situation. Instead, I spent my time being terribly afraid for my health, and about my grief and very fixated on the suffering and the pain associated with that.
I have been reflecting on this fear, for it seems to me that the fear was the true enemy of peace, and God is the Prince of Peace… You see, when I was afraid, I could not effectively offer my suffering as a sacrifice to God, because I could not be rational enough in that moment to do so. Saint Faustina would pray to God in advance and explain to Him that since she would undoubtedly be overcome during her periods of suffering, she wanted God to know in advance that she would offer that suffering for the salvation of souls.
And I have been thinking about that today. For it seems to me that as soon as I stopped being afraid, I could see God – and I could see Him in everything… And that is such a miracle, it simply repaints the world again… And all because I chose (through the Grace of God) not to be afraid…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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