January 8

“We fall into a lethargy and despondency saying it is the will of God and saying it accusingly as if God’s will were always the most disagreeable thing possible....What we must do...with God’s help, is to accept sorrow as a friend, if possible.  If not, as a companion...”  Eugenia Price, S.P.S., 1/8

God’s will has always been a scary thing for me.  In my imagination it was indeed the “most disagreeable thing possible.”  I always figured God’s will would be hard and unpleasant at best and unbearable at worst.  So why did I think this?  Was it because He didn’t answer my prayers as a child that my Dad would stop drinking?  I must have figured it was God’s will for me--and it was, indeed, unpleasant at best and unbearable at worst.  Now that I’m an adult looking back I can see how the life I had shaped me in a positive way.  Yes, it also shaped me in negative ways, but I see that as dross that God can burn away quickly if I allow myself to succumb to His furnace.  What is left is the character that was built through the trials and tribulations of living such an insecure childhood.   I was also saved from making many of the mistakes youth perpetrates.  But even though I have been able to have a positive outlook on my past I realize I haven’t “made friends” with the sorrow it created.  Seeing my father destroy his life as well as my mother’s in the long run is a sorrow I will always carry because it’s a wrong I can never right.  It would make sense, then, to see that sorrow as a companion, accepting it into my home, and allowing God to show me how this companion adds to my life rather than subtracts.

“For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother.”  Matthew 12:50