How Long Can You Wait?

Loss brings with it the unavoidable pain of grief…But is it inescapable? Post-holiday letdowns are not unusual and can be made worse during times of personal loss. Looming large may be the expected or unexpected passing of a loved one or a loyal pet, separation, divorce, chronic illness, assault, home or job loss…Each bringing its own level of grief. In such times, we should do our best to realize the interplay between our body, mind, and spirit, no matter our age. It is important we nurture each of those domains with respect, as how well we pay attention to one impacts the other two. Adequate rest, a healthy diet, and spiritual nourishment can be a far-reaching base in helping us through challenging situations. As mortals, we do our best to manage grief. Hiding from grief just doesn’t work. Acknowledging it is the first step in learning to live with loss and constructively moving on with our lives. Its shadow, though, is long and sweeping. Mastery comes with time and acceptance, but mostly from faith. Sudden and senseless loss, such as suicide, can be even more challenging as the circumstances can provoke enduring guilt. A proper perspective takes determination, time (perhaps even counseling), and a consuming belief in an all-knowing, all-loving God. Grieving is natural and helps us adjust to new realities. However, acquiring a focus on ‘the now’ is important during a time of burdensome grief. So many of us live in the past or anxiously fret over what the future holds. For those of us who truly believe in God’s understanding and mercy, we can continue to find purpose in our lives no matter the circumstances. Faith equips us to trust in Divine providence and be open to finding paths to reconstruct our lives with purpose. Nothing’s Forever Clouds do not last forever, neither does sunshine. It may be helpful to take the time to sit down and make two lists. On the first list, identify all for which you are thankful for. On the second, state personally rewarding actions that you feel can be reached within the next six months. Review the list, prioritize the most important, and set a date by which each item will be completed. Items may include something as simple as going to an entertainment event or visiting a friend or relative across the country. Make plans and just do it. Whatever you choose to do should bring you to a more joyful place. You will then slowly begin to take active control of your life. Guilt is an all-too-common driver of human behavior; while natural, it shouldn’t stand in the way of you doing something good for yourself. Your joy can become contagious to those who care for you, which is no less a reward for you. If you have real faith in the Lord as your Shepherd, you will persevere. Is there hope for the pain of loss to be managed? Yes, there is. The end of something can be the beginning of something else. With faith, we are never alone. We are never abandoned. We are all children of God. We have the choice to accept faith in God and have hope in receiving His healing. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it can and does happen. When tragedy or loss becomes personal, faith can help you accept what is difficult. God’s hand is there; it only takes us a moment to reach out beyond ourselves and believe in His Divine Mercy.

Is someone getting on your nerves and driving you nuts? Ellen has some stainless steel lessons to offer. Where I live in the southwest desert of the United States, we have an average rainfall of 7 inches a year, so we are dependent on getting our water from a deep well. The well diggers had to drill down 600 feet into the earth to find water on our property. It is safe to drink, and we are very grateful to have this source, but it is very hard water full of minerals. As a result, it leaves calcified residue in all our pipes, sink fixtures, and shower heads. Whenever one boils water, a white, chalky film is left that coats the pot. If it doesn’t get scrubbed off, that coating gets added to with each subsequent boiling until there is a thick layer of calcified minerals that would take a chisel and a lot of hard work to get off. We’ve learned over the years to have only stainless steel or cast-iron cookware so that we can scrub hard to get the mineral build-up off. At each kitchen sink, there is a stainless-steel scrubber that we use for this purpose because, as one of the community members here says: “You can only clean stainless steel with stainless steel.” Sometimes when I’m doing the pots and pans, I think of the proverb that says: “As iron sharpens iron, and one person sharpens the wits of another.” (Proverbs 27:17) I think of how God uses difficult people in our lives to clean us up and polish our rough edges. A priest once said: “If you want to be a Saint, you should expect somebody hard to live with. You should expect that kind of suffering and make every effort to love.” Hard-Earned Lessons I recall someone that I had to work with for an extended time. He took a dislike to me and spoke badly about me behind my back. He was gruff and cranky and hard for me to love. And I must confess, I didn’t do a very good job of being charitable to him either. His behavior brought some of the ugliness and sin in my heart to the surface, and I grumbled and complained about him to some of my closest friends. After quite a while of this, I started to take the situation to prayer. I felt the Lord telling me that He had some lessons to teach me through this difficult relationship if I was open to hearing them. As I tried to listen to God over the subsequent weeks, I was surprised to realize that the Lord was using this person to work on me! I had thought all along that this guy was the problem and needed serious work by God. But the Lord was telling me in my prayer: “Stop focusing on his faults. I’ll deal with him. Let’s, you and I, work on some of your shortcomings.” It was very humbling, to say the least. “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” As I saw more clearly that the Lord was using this person to highlight some of my sinfulness so I could confess it and work on myself, it changed the way I interacted with the man. I slowly started to modify my behavior and my way of thinking, and looking back now, I can see that I became a better and kinder person because of that relationship. Think about a person that is hard for you to get along with now. Take it to prayer and ask the Lord for His perspective on it. He sees the whole situation and knows best what needs to happen. He will give you wisdom and show you the way forward. But you may just be surprised at the Lord’s answers.

For years, my mother kept me from experiencing my father’s love, but I found a road back to reconcile with both of them, and myself! No one wants to find out they have been lied to by someone they love and trust, but it happens. The first time this happened to me, I was a child growing up with my mother. I found a parcel of letters that I had written to my father spanning a considerable amount of time. They had never been sent. From the discarded bundle, I pulled a card I had made for him, which read ‘Happy Father’s Day, Dad, I love you,’ and felt a growing sense of anger and injustice rise above the confusion that touched me just moments after I found them. When I approached my mother about the unsent letters, she was unconcerned, casually stating that she had known all along that I would be disloyal to her, and the letters to my father were proof of her suspicions about me—I had called him ‘Dad’ which meant, in her mind at least, that I had betrayed her. The anguish I felt upon discovering the truth was unbearable, not for myself, but for my father. The pain he must have felt, knowing that I never responded to the letters he wrote to me...And yet, I wondered why–after not hearing from me after all this time–he continued to write to me, telling me of his adventures abroad, his daily life, interesting things he had seen, or people he’d met. I’ll never forget the guilt I felt, knowing that my love for him was never understood. I felt betrayed. Words that I had reserved just for my father were infiltrated by someone else. I felt robbed of the right to know my father, and for him to know me. Yet Another Lost-Love Story Some thirty years later, I’d discover another Father whom I had been kept from. After learning the truth about God and the Catholic Church, I felt that I had been robbed of a relationship with my Father in Heaven, which left me with a temporary feeling of loss and guilt, followed by an even larger sense of unworthiness of His love—that He should continue to seek me out despite my absence in the relationship. My life up to this point had prevented me from encountering and more importantly accepting God’s love and mercy. While I may have felt that I had been kept from knowing God, which in a way is true based on my upbringing, I now know that nothing has ever kept God from knowing me. The truth is, Our Father in Heaven wants all His children with Him, and He will stop at nothing to bring us home. All that is required from us is to surrender and give Him our yes. My personal ‘yes’ made me realize that when we sincerely know the love of God, we align our hearts with His Sacred Heart and then, we can only love with His love. This supernatural love helps us see the woundedness in the people who hurt us. His merciful love helps heal our deepest wounds, bringing them one by one to the surface with the utmost tenderness, respect, and care… His infinite love and mercy helped me to understand that forgiveness is not only about letting go of the hurt and anger, but also about releasing the burden of guilt and resentment that I had been carrying for so long. Through prayer and reflection, I began to see that just as my earthly father continued to reach out to me with love despite my silence, so too, my Heavenly Father continues to pursue me with unwavering love and compassion. Why? Because He loved us first, and He knows us in the most intimate way. Finding Forgiveness It was through His grace that I was able to forgive myself for the years of lost love with my father. This supernatural love also led me to forgive my mother for the pain she had caused. God's love showed me that I am worthy of forgiveness and redemption, regardless of past mistakes or hurts. And His love inspired in my heart that my mother too deserved the same forgiveness and redemption. His love transformed my pain into a source of compassion and empathy, allowing me to see the beauty and potential for healing in every broken situation. Through the healing power of God's love, I learned that forgiveness is not just a gift we give to others, but one that we give ourselves. It is a path to freedom and peace, a way to release the past and embrace the future with renewed faith and love. It is my prayer that we may all be inspired by the boundless love of our Heavenly Father, who offers us forgiveness, healing, and redemption in abundance. May we, in turn, extend that same love and forgiveness to ourselves and to all those around us, creating a world filled with grace, compassion, and reconciliation.

Suffering is not bitter anymore, it’s now way more sweeter… Back at the height of the pandemic, affected by COVID-19, I went into acute respiratory failure and was admitted to the hospital for four days. I was given medicines through my veins to help my lungs. The illness caused scarring in my lungs, so I went home with some prednisone and oxygen to help alleviate the inflammation. Prior to this, I was an active senior who enjoyed gardening, walking my dog, journaling, writing, reading, and spending time with my family and friends. I attended Mass and Adoration and prayed at Planned Parenthood. However, life took on a new challenge. I had a sinus headache for months, and no medicine could relieve the pain. I became easily fatigued and had to lay down several times a day. Often, I would start to do something around the house and would get completely depleted. I lost my sense of taste and even some of my hearing. At times, I was unable to drive because I would get confused and dizzy driving. The doctors determined that I was suffering from long-Covid, and that lasted for months. In addition, my mind and thinking became foggy. I was very forgetful—they called it brain fog. I couldn’t read or concentrate and was very anxious. I began to pray for relief and asked other people to pray for me as well. I tried to offer up my suffering for those who needed God’s mercy, but it was so difficult to do. A Wake-up Call Then, I had an inspirational thought which I am sure, was from the Holy Spirit. I had heard of Father Stu, a boxer-turned-priest who gave in to Inclusion Body Myositis (IBM) in the early years of a robust life, but not in vain. Raised without religion by alcoholic parents, Stewart Long grew up filled with rage. During his teenage years, he began street fighting every night. He soon took up boxing as a sport, until he was hit in the jaw that ended his boxing career. As an adult, he moved to California to try getting into the movies but without much success. A near-miss accident and his girlfriend’s conversion to Catholicism gave him a much-needed wake-up call. As he was being baptized, he had a distinct impression that he was going to be a priest. For a few years, he ignored the nudges of the Holy Spirit, but he eventually made the pivotal decision and entered the seminary. It was there that he was diagnosed with IBM, a progressive muscle deterioration disorder that is resistant to all therapies. Incurable, it slowly leads to organ collapse, swallowing and breathing difficulties, and inevitable death. Father Stu spent the last four years of his life in a long-term care facility, where his room 227 became a place where people came to seek spiritual direction and confessions, and even just to hang out with him to watch movies. There was always a line of people waiting to get in to see him. His Masses at the facility were always filled with people. Masses with him were incredible. Father Stu ministered to so many suffering souls and offered up all his suffering till the end of his life on June 9, 2014. Father Stu used to say: “The Cross is a call to trust, even when things are going horribly wrong.” So, asking for his intercession, I started to pray: “Father Stu, if anyone knows how to suffer well, it is you. Please show me how.” Within a day, Father Stu answered my prayer and showed me how to suffer well with Jesus. The peace of Christ filled my entire being with His strength and mercy. I still can’t quite explain it in words. My suffering and pain became lighter and easier. I began to pray my Rosary and Divine Mercy Chaplet, and I also started to do the Liturgy of the Hours which I had never done before. The peace of Christ filled me with so much joy and comfort. This peace lasted for almost a month, a most beautiful month filled with Divine Love amidst my suffering. Yes, I continued to have long-Covid symptoms, but the suffering became sweet. Even though I was unable to attend daily Mass and receive the Eucharist, I would make a spiritual communion every day. Jesus said: “I will never leave you or forsake you.” I couldn’t go to Jesus, but Jesus came to me daily. More Untold Stories I am so grateful for the intercession of Father Stu. He has truly shown me how to offer up my little and big sufferings for those in need of Jesus’ mercy and healing. This was, to me, a touching testimony that Father Stu’s mission, to help other suffering souls, continues today from his Heavenly home. This is just one of the many stories of healing that remain yet untold. Father Bart Tolleson who was ordained the same day as Father Stu has written an incredibly easy-to-read book about his brother priest and friend entitled That was Father Stu. The book shares how, in our sufferings, there is hope eternal. The legacy of Father Stu’s life even inspired Mark Wahlberg, a Hollywood actor and producer, to make a movie entitled Father Stu in April 2022. In his words: “Father Bart’s book picks up where Father Stu left off. We come to realize in God’s mercy that Father Stu is still watching out for us.” When suffering becomes unbearable, let’s not forget that we have Heavenly helpers ever ready to lend a hand. Watch Mark Wahlberg share his experience of making the movie Father Stu on Shalom World’s Beyond the Vision. (shalomworld.org/episode/father-stu)