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God is... |
This past week I have been pondering on how this mysterious
God of ours, who somehow lives within each one of us, can grow us through
suffering. It brought me to see
God as the Ultimate Recycler taking heartbreak, shame, guilt, rejection, abuse,
fear, anger, abandonment, or whatever, you can fill in the blank, and use it
for our transformation. This,
however, is not an automatic, quick, one-sided process. It does require our full participation,
awareness, patience, trust, and work.
It seems the very first step in the recycling process is
learning to sit with the discomfort, letting pain be pain and mystery be
mystery, and trust good will come from it. And while sitting with my pain, I have found breathing and
praying eventually reveals the next step needed toward growth.
I would have never volunteered to be widowed at age 33, with
three young children, but it did bring me to know a capable woman who could
provide for her children, could learn to balance a check book, maintain a
house, yard and car, and lead me to develop talents I didn’t know I was capable
of performing in the world of work.
I would have never opted to lose my youngest son at age 21 to mental
illness but it did make me more aware, compassionate, and less judgmental of others. I would have never chosen abuse and Alzheimer’s
disease in my parents but it taught me to see God in all things, to know I was
worthy of good self-care, to look for my complicity in any trouble, find my
voice, and lead me to know true forgiveness and reconciliation.
Teilhard de Chardin wrote: “…it is the law of all progress
that is made by passing through some stages of instability and that may take a
very long time.” What if we could
all trust the Divine recycling process?
The depth of this blog is inspiring.
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