At the risk of glib bitterness, I knew there was too much happiness the last couple of months. We know how this goes. There must be a holy way of waiting for the other shoe to drop. If you find it, let me know.
I've taken joy in the cross before, so I'd have to suppose I will again. Not right now. It seems like a sick joke. Death is horrific, wrong, and sad, but there are definitely sorrows worse than death. When our loved ones die, most times, they don't mean to leave. Death is a thing that snatches us, sometimes without warning. This thing is different. What do you do when someone you love says, "I don't want to be close to you anymore"? There is no way to feel anything other than broken, or defective. We men, we want to fix it. What should I change? Did I somehow become a pale imitation of myself?
It seems like what I have given is lost, never to return. This is where our heroic notions of giving without expecting anything in return seem to die. It's not that I wouldn't do it all again; it's just that part of me went in the distance. Who am I without this part of myself?
If I don't say I feel abandoned and cast aside, I do not truly name my sorrow. If Christ had not been abandoned, I would have given up already. There is a sense in which saying, "We should unite our sufferings with the sufferings of Christ" can be just claptrap that we say to ourselves, and to each other. Yet there is a way in which it is not, and I'll try to explain.
When I was about to receive Holy Communion after the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, I said to Jesus, "All that I have is sorrow." He took it as if to say, "It is enough." I didn't have to take it far, for Jesus was waiting for me in my sorrow! I don't pretend to understand, but Jesus was waiting. He said, "I will never leave you, or forsake you." I knew he told the truth. I cried freely, as if he had given me a permission I could not give myself. I don't understand why this has happened. I cannot make sense of the explanations of my supposed failures. I still wait for some healing and purpose that may never come.
I live, but I do not enjoy. My favorite chicken, or the triumph of my beloved baseball Cardinals, are but the bare signs of things I used to enjoy. My world right now is in black and gray. All the color has gone elsewhere.
I don't have a profundity to wrap like a bow around these words. But I can say this: Better to live and to die than to never have lived. Or loved and lost. Whichever you prefer. I somehow owe it to the memory of my earlier living self to endure, and to persist. I do not understand, but I believe.
I've taken joy in the cross before, so I'd have to suppose I will again. Not right now. It seems like a sick joke. Death is horrific, wrong, and sad, but there are definitely sorrows worse than death. When our loved ones die, most times, they don't mean to leave. Death is a thing that snatches us, sometimes without warning. This thing is different. What do you do when someone you love says, "I don't want to be close to you anymore"? There is no way to feel anything other than broken, or defective. We men, we want to fix it. What should I change? Did I somehow become a pale imitation of myself?
It seems like what I have given is lost, never to return. This is where our heroic notions of giving without expecting anything in return seem to die. It's not that I wouldn't do it all again; it's just that part of me went in the distance. Who am I without this part of myself?
If I don't say I feel abandoned and cast aside, I do not truly name my sorrow. If Christ had not been abandoned, I would have given up already. There is a sense in which saying, "We should unite our sufferings with the sufferings of Christ" can be just claptrap that we say to ourselves, and to each other. Yet there is a way in which it is not, and I'll try to explain.
When I was about to receive Holy Communion after the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, I said to Jesus, "All that I have is sorrow." He took it as if to say, "It is enough." I didn't have to take it far, for Jesus was waiting for me in my sorrow! I don't pretend to understand, but Jesus was waiting. He said, "I will never leave you, or forsake you." I knew he told the truth. I cried freely, as if he had given me a permission I could not give myself. I don't understand why this has happened. I cannot make sense of the explanations of my supposed failures. I still wait for some healing and purpose that may never come.
I live, but I do not enjoy. My favorite chicken, or the triumph of my beloved baseball Cardinals, are but the bare signs of things I used to enjoy. My world right now is in black and gray. All the color has gone elsewhere.
I don't have a profundity to wrap like a bow around these words. But I can say this: Better to live and to die than to never have lived. Or loved and lost. Whichever you prefer. I somehow owe it to the memory of my earlier living self to endure, and to persist. I do not understand, but I believe.
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