Shut up. Seriously... Stop. This phrase, this beautiful quote, was laid before me at Totus Tuus training. While I was at training, reveling in joy and excitement for the summer ahead, I thought this phrase was the bees knees. Then I experienced the true self-denial in sacrificial love for my teammates. Each problem we had to conquer, every spat of homesickness, all the painful memories of my past that I had to work through...
"Thank you Jesus for loving me in this way." Who can honestly be grateful when God is allowing us to suffer? Who can whole-heartedly thank Him not only IN their pain, but FOR their pain? Call me a weakling, but I cannot (though I make sad attempts).
This past month of October I was an internal (and let's face it... external) complainer. "Jesus please give me these virtues and these gifts and this kind of faith. Oh and purity. Oh yeah, a boyfriend. Someone holy and perfect and just like you. Please help me with my grades. Oh, and can I wake up 10 pounds lighter and totally in shape? I need it. I want it. Please?"
What?
My heart is achy. My heart is longing for the beauty of Heaven so much that I let this earth suck. I turn inward. I am so desperate for joy and for beauty that I miss the daily miracle of being ALIVE. On this earth we are not promised a future, we are promised a moment. That moment is right where you are now- sitting on your couch, making dinner with your family, changing the world for someone else, or (if you are like me) getting lost in your own.
Never let pain have the upper hand. We get so caught up in ourselves, don't we? I have been forgetting the value of investment in the present moment. I have forgotten how to listen. I seem to become so engrossed in finding finding who I am and what I'm here for that I lose patience and turn inward. And that is never okay. There is an entire world that I need. No, they don't need me. I need the suffering, the joyful, the confused, the broken, and the whole. When we learn from those people, we invest in something that far surpasses our own selfishness. We are suddenly lifted from ourselves into a beautiful world of gratitude. Suffering helps us learn compassion. Compassion is love in action when there is suffering. And when we love, we are intentionally grateful despite ourselves.
Honestly...Thank you Jesus. I wish to love you in this way.
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