Two weeks from today… I am winding down not only on my marathon
preparations, but also on my time of lent, my spiritual training before
Easter. It is so amazing, the correlation
between the two- the two sides of me- physical and spiritual.
I know God finds us where we are,
because He knows we will never “get it” if we can’t relate to it (as
self-absorbed as we mere creatures can be) and my brain in continuing to play a
merry game of leap frog- hopping from one thought to another as He offers them
to me.
For me, God will always find a
willing participant in the game to leap frog through the way of the cross, I
really like to spend time thinking about and praying on the Passion of
Jesus. It is said that the saints would
spend countless hours before the crucifix, finding there the wellspring of holy
inspirations and grace. In praying in
the silent church today my mind leapt to a
number of thoughts to share.
In the great paradox of the
crucified Christ the world sees only failure, someone completely controlled and
dominated, despair… But the world does
not see what is truth. What is really
there is victory, the greatest
accomplishment of all time… And with the tremendous success of Jesus,
although He drank fully of every cup of despair and sadness, He was also filled
with a holy joy.
Joy.
Now a joy-filled Jesus is something
that is hard to come to grips with when you really focus on the horrendous
image of the cross, of the mangled body secured to that torture devise. Joy.
Why joy? How could it be that
Jesus would feel that kind of emotion there?
For me, to make it relatable, to
affix that type of emotion on that type of suffering my thoughts leap instantly
to my lowest time, the death of my mommy to see how this could be possible. And
I can see and understand how it is very possible
because when you are really and truly united to God, when you are completely
doing His will, there is no greater joy to be had- no matter what the
unimaginable hardship you find yourself in, you will find a happiness, a
gratitude like no other, all leading to pure joy.
So right now I am leap frogging
again, focusing on my mommy, and the hell of watching her die, and it is
reminding me of the different points in my marathons when I was at my
lowest. At those moments I remember
calling out (and not just mentally) to my mother for help. God knows how pain-filled it was, and so did
my mom. And it wasn’t like suddenly she
was up there waving a magic wand and “bing”: praise
Jesus, for it was a miracle! I was pain free. Um. No. Not is the slightest.
But, I don’t know, it united me to
her, to that church triumphant and she prayed for me. As it says in Revelations 5:8, the holy ones
in heaven do pray for us. I know it is
true. Again I leap frog back to the
words that I have been thinking so much recently: We are all connected. And this is not just with my fellow pilgrims,
the church militant, on this journey of life, but also those who have won the race
and are in heaven. We are all
connected.
There is a safety in numbers for
me. There is a comfort when I know
someone out there feels my pain. Gets
it. Not that I am going to wrap this
installation up in a neat little connecting of the dots today, but just
throwing out a handful of the thoughts churning around in my ever-churning
cranium. As always, I am leap frogging
my way through life.
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