Reflections of a friend

A friend of mine recently sent me an email talking about her own way of the cross that she is going through. While not related to infertility, I think that her reflections are beautiful and I asked her permission to share them. I pray they encourage you as well.

There's something I'm meant to learn by going through this, of that I am certain. The pain sucks, but it has to hurt less than being nailed with the entire sin of the world, right?! I certainly want to make the pain go away or at least find a good way to manage it; but, I have to say, the process so far has been really effective at increasing my faith. I think I'm really ***starting*** to maybe learn what it is to say "Thy will be done" and abandon the results to God. Before, I was all tied up in anxiety and would have worried myself sicker. It's fascinating to be up to my ears in crap and have a lot of my world teetering on the edge as it were, but still have hope and see joy. I can't say that I'm particularly "happy" to be going through this, but it's my lot and it's clearly meant to change me. I prayed that God would increase my faith and help me do His work on Earth -- at the base of it, I believe that this is somehow an answer to that prayer.

During Stations one week of Lent, one of the reading made this claim: All creatures can feel pain -- dogs, cats, etc. Not all creatures can feel suffering. The difference between pain and suffering amounts to the ability to ask "why?" The suffering comes from that deep question. On the one hand, I do ask "why?" On the other, I trust that there is an answer that is profoundly right and intended and divine. I don't really know the answer, but I deeply trust that the answer does exist and that I will know it one day, and more importantly, that it is His perfectly right answer. So, despite the pain I feel, I don't actually find myself suffering too much. That is where I find my comfort; I cling to that rock, and by knowing that the answer is out there and perfectly true, I think I'm learning to abandon myself to it. As much as it confines me in the day to day, I do feel strangely liberated in a way I've never really known. There is a strange beauty to the process -- I just need to reminmyself of that on my bad days. What I've really learned is that as long as I have Jesus and A., the rest of it's details, and it's still a very blessed life. It will be what it will be... that is, I hope, according to His will which makes it perfect in its own way.

~ S