Peace, Acceptance. and Glimpsing the Eventual Gifts of Suffering

May 18, 2014

Peace that surpasses understanding

I woke up the other day with thoughts swirling around the concept of peace.

About six months ago I abruptly lost my job due to some organizational restructuring.  Within a few weeks, my mother made her last trip to the hospital and then on to hospice where she died.  A few months later, we marked the sixth anniversary of Daniel’s death.

Though a job loss pales in significance to witnessing the death of my mother and still struggling years later to fathom the death of my son, this combination of experiences has blended into making the first half of 2014 unusual and challenging emotionally and spiritually.  Over these months I have experienced many moments of feeling these deep losses and grieving the changes to life that they bring.

And yet when I woke up the other morning, my first conscious thought was one of peace.  

Somehow in the midst of loss, death, and grieving, I seem to “be at peace” with God and with life, sensing that indeed all things are somehow working themselves out for good in my life and in the lives of my family.

Is this a taste of the “peace that passeth understanding” that St. Paul describes?  (Other translations say “peace that surpasses or transcends understanding”, words that describe it even more clearly.)

I trust that this peace is coming from God since I know I don’t have the capacity to conjure it up on my own.  

June 29, 2014

Acceptance of loss:  “sacrificing our Isaac”

I was a lector at my church this morning and read the story from Genesis of Abraham taking his long-awaited son Isaac up the mountain at God’s bidding and making the decision to trust God to the point of being willing to sacrifice Isaac on an altar as directed by God. Of course the story takes you to the climax where Abraham is ready to slay his own son, only to have God call out at the last moment that this is not necessary and the boy is saved.

As I read this passage I was aware of the intensity of feelings that Abraham must have been struggling with as a father on the verge of losing, and actually sacrificing, his beloved son.

Father Stace preached eloquently on this scripture, highlighting that we are all called to be willing to “sacrifice our Isaac”, whatever it is or whoever it is that we think we have to hold onto to in order to survive or to be content or fulfilled in life.

I realize that I had no choice in Daniel’s death and so my experience of losing a son is totally different than the emotions that Abraham might have been wrestling with as he anticipated sacrificing his own son.  

And yet, I also realize that even now I am faced with the challenge of whether or not I am willing to accept this loss of a son and the sacrifice of so many dreams and aspirations that I had for him and for our family of five.

Losing a son feels like a huge sacrifice in my life and one that even six years later I struggle daily to accept.

Am I capable of sacrificing my “Isaac” – am I willing to accept Daniel’s death and thereby sacrifice the dreams and aspirations for him and for our family as a whole?

God:  grant me the enormous grace required to do so.

Glimpsing the eventual gifts of suffering

I ran across a poem recently while reading a thoughtful blog reflection on the aftermath of a recent college campus shooting by Jack Levison at Spiritchatter, http://www.patheos.com/blogs/spiritchatter/2014/06/a-memorial-service-memory-and-the-eventual-gifts-of-suffering/)

 At a campus memorial service after this shooting, this poem was handed out to participants; it speaks eloquently to my heart.

For Suffering, by John O’Donahue

May you be blessed in the holy names of those
Who, without you knowing it,
Help to carry and lighten your pain.
May you know serenity
When you are called
To enter the house of suffering.
May a window of light always surprise you.
May you be granted the wisdom
To avoid false resistance;
When suffering knocks on the door of your life,
May you glimpse its eventual gifts.
May you be able to receive
the fruits of suffering.
May memory bless and protect you
With the hard-earned light of past travail;
To remind you that you have survived before
And though the darkness now is deep,
You will soon see approaching light.
May the grace of time heal your wounds…

These phrases stand out to me:

“May a window of light always surprise you”

“May you glimpse its eventual gifts, May you be able to receive the fruits of suffering”

“May memory bless and protect you with the hard-earned light of past travail”

Rich, rich words that convey deep and profound meaning from Donahue, an Irish poet, former Catholic priest, and philosopher.  

Am I now beginning to glimpse its eventual gifts and perhaps to experience any fruits of suffering from losing Daniel?  

Is there some hard-earned light from this past travail that is beginning to shine through the windows of our hearts?

God:  grant us eyes to glimpse the eventual gifts of suffering, hearts to respond to its fruits, and an awareness of the hard-earned light that it provides in our lives.