Hope

I have gotten a lot of calls and messages from so many of my friends and family. It's been so wonderful to hear from all of you! I'm grateful for the thoughts and prayers and am sorry I'm not able to keep all of you better informed about my knee and how I'm holding up. I'd like to ask you not only for prayers for my surgery and recovery, but also for HOPE. I feel so loved by you, but it is still something I'm finding in short supply. And now I'll try to honestly share with you what's going on with my knee, but mostly how my heart is.

 

It's been three weeks since I broke my knee... I have an avulsion fracture where my ACL attaches to my tibia and damage to my meniscus. I may also have completely torn my ACL. My surgery is scheduled for Monday and they are going to do it by scope! I have had such joy and peace in the injury - I don't even understand it. It's been such a grace from God! I'm not sorrowful or resentful of the pain or the things I am unable to do. Jesus has been calling me to, and giving me the opportunity to, spend so much more time in prayer with Him lately. To embrace my weakness. To get in the wheelbarrow.

 

One of the graces He's given me is this little meditation during Holy Week: Jesus held the soldiers driving the nails through His hands in existence as they were crucifying Him. He held His own breaking body in existence as it was being broken. He is holding me and my knee in existence right now - and that existence is in its brokenness. If this is the reality Jesus is holding in existence to make me a saint, who am I to feel any way other than loving it and being grateful for it?! [ and for my UND friends, let's be honest... as an exhorter I'm not so secretly thriving on suffering. (: ]

 

Yet, as time continues to pass, Jesus is allowing me to see that my cross in this isn't the injury itself. My cross to bear is the frustration of waiting for so long to know anything (when my MRI would happen, if I needed surgery, what surgery they will have to do, when surgery would be, if I can still be in my friend's wedding in June, how I'm going to get to summer training, where I am going to be placed as a team director next year, etc...). My cross to bear is the lie that I am not enough - that I can't do my job well, that I am a burden on those in my life, that I can't do anything right, that I'm not important. My cross to bear is the loneliness I feel not getting to see more of the students, not being able to do the fun things everyone else is, not feeling wanted. My cross to bear is not knowing how to answer the questions and frustrations of those I love who want to know how I am doing and want things to go well. Combatting the despair I feel in these conversations by consoling rather than being consoled.

 

My cross to bear is this emptiness I feel. Even when I know in my heart it is a lie from the pit of hell. This is the dandelion bouquet the child Jesus is offering me.

 

Empty.

Such a simple word. Yet it so easily contains all of the powerfully dark emotions I'm experiencing. And the devil so easily succeeds in making it hard to see the purpose behind the emptiness, to have hope.

 

One of my new favorite songs has helped me unite myself to Mary in this.

 

It's helped me realize the beauty of woman flows from the empty womb... the potential it has to bring forth life. Purity of heart is only realized in emptying the heart of everything except God in order for it to be completely filled with Him. Trust in the will of the Lord only happens when we can empty our hands of our own will... to "let go" and wait with empty hands to receive the amazing life God wants to give us. The Lord is risen and the tomb is empty.

 

In her emptiness, Mary was able to bring forth the Son of God. In mine, I can hopefully receive the Spirit into the world.

 

Born in Me by Francesca Battistelli

 

I am not brave
I'll never be
The only thing my heart can offer is a vacancy
I'm just a girl
Nothing more
But I am willing, I am Yours

Be born in me.

 

 

 

 I was also very inspired by these two beautiful women: Barbara Castro Garcia & Chiara Corbella. Last year, they both joyfully suffered and gave their lives for their children to be born.

Thought I'd share if you were at all interested.

 

pax