The last week has been one of my most trying weeks in several months. If something could go wrong, it did. It started on last friday when I injured myself on a door at work, I was in a hurry and smashed into a key sticking out of a door handle while I rushed out of a room. I thought I punctured my kidney, it was excruciating and I had to have someone look at it to make sure that I hadn’t seriously injured myself. Thankfully the key only cut a little into my side, although I bled, it wasn’t a deep wound and I managed to walk away with a 7 inch bruise across my lower back. I left work before finishing all my duties because I was in such pain. On saturday I decided to stop by work on my own hours to finish up what I missed on Friday. I ended up making a mistake that came back to bite me on Monday morning. Saturday wasn’t a great day… besides recovering from the sore side and wound from a day earlier.. I felt like I was under a terrible spiritual attack. Over the past week a darkness of doubt, sorrow, and spiritual pain has made its home in my heart and soul, choking all goodness from within. I can’t explain it any other way. I wrote a blog about this a few days ago regarding my vocation and the doubts that I have been dealing with. It’s been a prayer of the heart.
Monday was awful to say the least.. everything seemed to go wrong at work. When I tried to do something good, it turned around and bit me. I got stuck on a project and contacted the company that installed a service that I was working with. I was seeking some help and verification regarding the work I had done on the project. Later that night I got an email from my boss thanking me for my initiative in reaching out to get help.. but not to do it again because he got a big bill for the help the company provided. I couldn’t believe it. Tuesday was just as aggravating of a day. I went by Church and asked God why he had left me in such darkness and what I had done to separate myself from his graces. I left and went home. I felt like a complete failure. An overwhelming and suffocating darkness was again gripping my heart. I am not normally a depressed or sorrowful person, it’s rare that I fall into such feelings and I rarely have such a difficult time at life.
Today started out worse than all the other days. I was spiritually attacked in the middle of the night and was woken up at 3am on the nose which then led to me strangely getting extremely ill for two hours. Today is my grandfathers birthday, he would have been 92 today. I was planning on going to mass today to remember his soul. I did offer up all my suffering in the middle of the night for him, so not everything was lost. My alarm was set at 7:30am… I didn’t wake up until nearly 10am. I was supposed to be at work at 9am. I jumped out of bed and managed to get a few growls off before I left the house and drove like a bat out of hell to work. I arrived late and got off to a bad start. Things progressed at work like they have all week… it was one bad thing after another. Someone in the office was so rude to me I couldn’t believe it, it was treatment from someone I just never would have expected such behavior. I was supposed to meet a client today for some training and I knew I was going to be late because work was holding me up. I grabbed my phone to give the client a call and I discovered that all my cell phone number in my address book had been deleted except for 18 numbers. I lost tons of information with no way to get it back. I was flabbergasted and couldn’t believe it. Now I didn’t even have the info to call the client. I left work and arrived at the clients house an hour late. After I left the clients house I went to Church and saw that adoration was going on.
I knelt in the back pew and said to God “My God, My God… why have you forsaken me… Why have you left me in such darkness… what did I do to separate myself from you, did I offend you somehow and I lost your love and graces?“. I sat in silence for a few moments and then decided to leave. I genuflected and made my way back to the holy water font. I had just dipped my right index finger into the holy water and began to make the sign of the cross when a thought appeared in my head, it was something that didn’t come from me, it wasn’t a voice per se, but more of a question and it asked “If all of the sufferings and crosses that I have sent you this week were for the salvation of the soul of ______ _____, would you accept them with joy?” Without missing a beat I replied “Yes Lord“. I felt the darkness and the weight of the sorrows that have afflicted my heart dissipate immediately and sense of joyful graces began to pulse through my body. I have felt at ease and joyful since that moment and the darkness seems to have disappeared for the time being. The name of the person that was mentioned to me is someone who I have been praying for and trying to get back into the Church for some time. The person is suffering greatly from a terrible illness and it seems that their situation is getting more dire.
I feel better tonight knowing the purpose of this suffering, I am happy to offer it up for the soul in question. If I had know what I was suffering and why I think I could have done it better and handled things more patiently. I guess Our Lord is trying to teach me to trust him more and to understand more intimately redemptive suffering.
Please pray for the special intention of the soul that I mentioned. Join me in praying for their conversion.
God Love & God Bless,
Michael
http://monk2be.com
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