truth

April 11, 2022

Treasure in Jars of Clay

I have walked down the aisle so many times before: as a baby in a baptismal gown; as a candidate wearing a dress that was specially selected for the final step of my journey into Catholicism; as a bride, veiled and adorned with white lace; as a mother carrying a little child draped in white. Yesterday, I came to the front of the Church shepherding a little girl whose post-Lacrosse hair had been forgotten and hung in an off-center, half-fallen out ponytail. I came carrying a little boy whose shoes were inadvertently left at home. I came after sitting through the reading of Christ’s Passion while trying to prevent that little boy from poking the lady in front of us with his palms. I came after whispering threats of spending the remainder of the service in his car seat if he didn’t quiet down and stop kicking the pew. I came hoping that no one heard him belting out, “The Doggy of Faith!” in a distorted echo of the priest. I came after keeping my foot suspended for almost an hour so that the kneeler did not get knocked down into any unsuspecting shins. I came after trying but failing to silently mouth instructions to my daughter through my mask. I came realizing I should have worn a belt with my new pants. I came thinking that I should have checked what my daughter picked to wear before we left for church. I came hobbling along with my ankle in a brace, unsure when it would choose to give out again. In short, I came as a very human, very imperfect person and that act of coming helped me realize the incredible beauty of my Savior and the Mass He gave us.

The wonder of our liturgy is not the bells that brought a gasp of awe from my distracted son and redirected his attention towards the altar. It is not the music we sing, texts we read, or words of prayer we say. It is not the faithful solemnly processing in a line. It is not those who are meticulously clad in their Sunday best. It is certainly not my ragamuffin family tripping and stumbling its way along.

The treasure of our liturgy is Jesus, himself. He is the one at whose presence the bells ring. It is Jesus to which all of our songs, readings and prayers point. He is the Bridegroom waiting for us at the aisle’s end with nothing but infinite love. He is the one who wants to be united to us whether we are dressed like royalty or paupers, knowing that we are all hopelessly a mess underneath the coverings with which we wrap ourselves. His unquenchable love for us that endures all of our short comings and His all-knowing and complete welcome are the true treasures of the Church. He is what makes our faith beautiful and in the process of surrendering our pride and coming to Him in the midst of our own humanness, we are made beautiful, too.

So I encourage you to come to Him this Holy week. Come with whatever shortcomings, embarassments, and disappointments you have. Come with your Lenten failures and your unruly children. Come if you don’t remember when to sit, stand or kneel. Come if it has been years since you last came. Come if you just can not get over your sense of guilt and shame. Come if you are late. Come however you can. You will find a Savior waiting for you with wide-open arms, ready to dazzle you with His unbelievable love as He welcomes you home.

October 5, 2021

Seeing the Perfect Christ In His Marred Body

When I was in high school, I spent a horrible week doubting that God is the good God who He says He is. Like far too many in our world, a family I cared about had been wounded by the abuse of someone who should have been safe for them and I could not understand how a good God would allow such a terrible thing to happen. I was angry and felt betrayed by the God who I had, up to that point, always trusted implicitly. Believe me, I let Him know about it. I raged at Him exactly as you might expect a rebelious teenager to do and, somehow, He responded by leading me to the Book of Job.

I devoured the chapters, accusing God alongside Job and then, suddenly, God spoke back. Who was I to question Him? Would I discredit His justice? Did I understand enough to condemn Him? Me, who was not there when the foundations of the earth were laid, who cannot command the sun and the moon, who has never walked in the heavenly storehouses full of snow? Like Job, my doubts were consumed in the wake of His overwhelming, mind-blowing presence. At the same time, my certainty that I knew enough to challenge Him was swallowed in the doubt that comes with the awareness of how little I truly knew. Who was this God I had challenged, this One whose power was so far above and simultaneously so encompassing of all the ways of man? Who was this Almighty Strength who could destroy me with a glance and yet chose to mercifully forgive my accusations and draw me more intimately to Him through my doubts? Could a God who has so many responses at His disposal but chooses to respond with gentleness be anything but good?

For the first time, the realization that God was so far beyond anything that I had ever thought or known engulfed me. I had always rested in the fatherly intimacy of God, yet, in that moment, I came face-to-face with His otherness.

It was this separation between God and His creation that helped me to make sense of how a good God was not irreconcilable with the evil committed by His people. Over the years, I have often come back to that lesson that God taught me during that torturous week of my adolescence – when facing abuse by a person studying to be a youth minister, when journeying into the Catholic Church with eyes wide open to the abuse that was covered up in the city of my birth, when wrestling with allegations within my own Catholic Community. Always, I am reminded that God and His Truth exist regardless of the actions of His creations and even His followers.

Yet, more recently, this has been harder to remember. Over the past few years, it seems that too many Christians have done unimaginably heinous things to mar the precious Body of Christ here on earth. From supporting ideology and lies that foment hate, to failing to sacrificially love and protect one another; from devaluing the precious value of all of the lives God has created, to allowing divisions to shatter Christian unity; from the unbelievably horrific acts in Canada’s Native American Schools, to the 330,000 child victims of abuse by the French Catholic Church; from my own Diocese’ choices that continue to lead to unnecessary COVID spread and deaths, endangering my own children, to the desires of some radical traditionalists for the Pope’s death – the actions of Christ’s representatives on earth recently have been heartbreaking.

Yet, I can’t help but think of Christ’s other body and how man similarly marred and distorted it beyond recognition. I think of the image left on St. Veronica’s cloth – bruised, beaten, bleeding. I think of the broken back and the pierced hands. I think of the lifeless body, brought down from the cross and laid in the arms of a mother who knows she holds her Son but would not recognize Him if she had not stayed with Him throughout His destruction. I think of a powerless corpse, laid in a tomb and left to succumb to the final destruction of death’s decomposition.

And then…

And then that body had the power to do what none had ever done before. It defied death, defeated it, and it walked out of the grave.

Somehow, God took all of that damage and destruction of His son’s appearance and He made it the ultimate picture of Who He really is: a God of infinite love, mercy, and even power. Somehow, out of the distortion that His creation had inflicted on His image, He drew the purest, truest representation of Himself. He who described Himself simply as the One Who Is, was so far above and beyond the deeds of his creatures that what they did could in no way diminish Him. Infact, inspite of their worst intentions, their abuse only led to His glorification.

I don’t know how God will deal with the misrepresentations and distortions of His image here on earth right now, but I know that they won’t be the end of the story because I believe that God exists independently of anything His people do or don’t do. His goodness and His truth are not dependent upon us – they are realities that exist by their own right. He is, He has always been, and He will always be. Nothing we do can change that – it can only serve to glorify Him, whether or not that is our intention.

April 6, 2018

Divine Mercy

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I haven’t had much energy this month for writing. Its been one of those “everyone is fed, everyone’s clothes are clean, we did school today, everything else can wait” kind of months. However, I led a small group of women in a discussion of Divine Mercy today and I thought that I might share something that I learned as I prepared for that talk: God is love and His Divine Mercy is the outpouring of that love in response to our needs.

John 4:8 tells us that “God is love.” As incomprehensible as it is, His very being is love. When that Love encounters our many needs, He acts in mercy because that is what love does when it is confronted with need. Our needs are many, so we can see His mercy manifested in countless ways throughout or lives: comfort for our sorrow, peace for our fear, satisfaction of our hunger, justice when we are wronged, the presence of His Spirit to teach and grow us, and so many others.  In all these ways God’s Divine Mercy is manifest in our lives.

Yet, the most pressing of all of our needs, the one that threatens to separate us from God and even to destroy us is our sin. That is why, the most profound way that God demonstrated his Divine Mercy was by sending his Son to suffer and die and then to conquer death and rise again. Because God is love and His love for us is unchanging, He responded to the great need that our sin created by offering this incredible gift of love and mercy.

As we approach Divine Mercy Sunday, I pray that we will all have the time and the energy to spend quiet moments reflecting on God’s great love and Divine Mercy as they were revealed to us on the cross at Calvary and in the empty tomb. And I invite you to pray with me that each person on this earth will be filled with a deep, heartfelt knowledge of God’s mercy, for to be loved so deeply and not know it must be the greatest tragedy of all.

February 2, 2018

More

 

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“God, I know, its all of this and so much more, but God right now this is what I’m longing for…Heaven in the face of my little girl.” – Steven Curtis Chapman

I was thinking about the day Mary got to Heaven the other day. In my limited understanding of what reaching Heaven is, all I could think of was the incredible joy she must have felt to see her Son again. I just can’t imagine how it must have felt for her to touch Him and hold Him. Her rejoicing must have been beyond anything we have experienced in this life.

As I was thinking these thoughts, I realized that all of my thoughts about Mary’s assumption into Heaven centered on the very earthly delight of seeing her Son again, not on finding herself in the presence of the Living God or seeing His face which would also have been very really aspects of her joy. This focus on seeing her Son made me consider my own dreams of what it will be like to reach Heaven and I realized they were also completely focused on one thing: reuniting with my daughter.

Its silly, really how I can cognitively know that being brought into the presence of the Creator will be a much bigger deal than wrapping my arms around my dark haired child, but honestly, that act of holding my living little girl would be the most amazing and heavenly thing that I can imagine in this life on earth. Everything else is too far beyond my imaging to even begin to comprehend it because I just can’t imagine anything more wonderful than embracing my daughter in God’s eternal kingdom.

Yet, I thank God that He is far beyond the confines of my simple imagination and that He has prepared wonders for me that I simply cannot fathom – the greatest of which is Himself.

January 5, 2018

Nativity

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Last week, my husband hurled our Christmas tree out of our living room window. We discovered this method of getting the tree outside last year and it saves us from having to collect needles that were, in previous years, strewn across our living room to the front door. Pushing a tree out the window is also just ridiculous enough to feel liberating. While our tree (which was so dry that it was ready to go up in a fiery blaze) had to be disposed of early this year, our Nativity set reminds us that it is still Christmas for one more day. However, it is a different Nativity scene that I find myself contemplating as I write this.

Unlike the peaceful statues that depict the birth of Christ in my home, the Vatican Nativity scene this year has caused quite a bit of controversy. If you haven’t seen pictures of it, I would encourage you to look it up. Far from the usual tranquil and picturesque scenes that tend to depict Jesus’s birth, this one is chaotic and messy. The walls behind the Holy family appear to be crumbling. The figures are crowded together, so much so that it is sometimes hard to tell which appendage belongs to which statue. When we really think about the Christmas story, we realize that this is how it should be – Christ’s birth was chaotic and messy. His family was “living out of a suitcase” as they stayed in a town that was overflowing with visitors. They were sleeping in a shelter for animals which, no doubt meant that they were enjoying all of the sounds and smells that accompany a quaint barnyard birth. Into this environment that was far from homey, came unfamiliar visitors from diverse social classes. To top it all off, the king already wanted Jesus dead. Certainly there was peace and joy on that night, but that had nothing to do with Jesus’s surroundings. Instead, God Himself reached down and drew peace and joy out of a virgin womb. It was this act of God that brought those two gifts into the hearts of those who worshiped the newborn King who was born to dwell in the desperation, filth and despair of humanity.

While the infant Jesus is at the center of the Vatican’s Nativity scene, the figures that surround the more traditional Christmas statues reveal another aspect of our Savior through the corporal works of mercy that they are performing. In one corner, a woman quenches her neighbors thirst. In another, a man offers dignity to a boy lying naked beneath him by offering him clothes. At the bottom of the scene, with arms outstretched, a figure walks toward an invalid who is bandaged and flushed with fever. Next to them, someone visits a prisoner and, in the far corner, a young man provides burial for a dead body. These figures not only prod us to do what Jesus calls us to do, but they remind us that the irresistible baby lying in a manger would grow up to be a man whose teachings divided families, who demanded that we take up our cross daily, and who told us that to truly serve Him, we must care for others.

 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’” Matthew 25:34-40

If you know this passage, you will also know that Jesus’s next words are some of the most terrifying in the Bible:

“‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’” Matthew 25:41-43

Every time I read these words, I shudder. For how much food do I have in my pantry, while there is still great hunger in the world? How easily do I open my faucet that flows with pure water, while children are dying from diseases borne by unclean water? How many strangers have I failed to welcome into the safe, little world that I exist in? How many homeless men and women are shivering on the streets, while hats, gloves, scarves and coats hang unused in my closets? How many times have I been too busy or afraid to offer help to the sick or to those who are cast aside or imprisoned by society? The reality is that I do not measure up well to the standard that Jesus has set before me. However, one of the incredible mysteries of our faith is that salvation is available only through Christ even though we do not deserve it and, yet, Jesus Himself has commanded us to perform great acts of love and sacrifice.

The 2017 Vatican Nativity, portrays both of these truths: that God loved the world so much that He sent His son to be born amidst a desperate people and that He sends us to minister to that world today. It reminds us that faith in Christ has little to do with adoring the little Lord Jesus who made no crying and much more to do with following a man whose message was loud and painful. It forces us to consider the reality that, from birth, our God made His home in the often dirty, fragrant, and chaotic company of the poor, the forgotten, the sinners, the hopeless. It makes us wonder whether or not we have made our homes with Him there, too.

 

December 22, 2017

Peace To All People

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On that first Christmas night, so long ago, the shepherds fell to their knees as they beheld a wondrous presence. They bowed, with their heads so close to the ground that they could smell the rich dirt beneath their knees, and heard a host of angels crying out, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” (Luke 2:14) As the years have passed, these words have persisted at Christmastime. We print them on our cards, we sing them in our carols, we write them in our stories: “Peace on earth, goodwill to men,” “Peace on earth,” “Peace,” “Peace,” “Peace.” Yet, somehow, in the two thousand years since they were first proclaimed, the angels’ words have lost their power. They have come to be happy reminders of warm, cozy feelings that many of us associate with Christmastime, rather than signaling a powerful change that was taking place in our world.

When the angels’ songs pierced the cold, dark fields that night, they heralded the beginning of a life that would shake the very foundation of our existence in two profound ways: by His sacrifice and by His teachings.

First, because the baby born that winter night would offer himself up as a sacrifice to appease the wrath of a perfect God, the angels’ songs proclaimed that the time had arrived when the favor of God, which had been lost through sin, would be restored.  The Bible tells us that when sin first entered our world, Adam and Eve heard God coming and hid from Him. In other words, their sin shattered the intimacy they once shared with God and the angels’s song so many years later proclaimed that men could again draw near their Creator. “Peace,” they sang, “peace to those on whom God’s favor rests.”  They rejoiced before the shepherds: “Finally through God’s son, His favor can rest on you,  unworthy though you may be.” The praise of the angels was an announcement that the sin of man no longer demanded that he was the enemy of God. Instead, unlike Adam and Eve men could again stand before God naked and unafraid.

But let us consider that moment when sin first entered our world again. Immediately after Adam and Eve found their relationship with God to be shattered by their disobedience, they discovered that their own relationship had been marred. While Adam had once loved Eve so deeply and intimately that he viewed her as part of himself (Genesis 2:23-24), after sin entered the world he became so detached from his beloved and so controlled by his fear that he turned on Eve in an attempt to deflect blame from himself (Genesis 2:12). God Himself identified this shift in their relationship when He told Eve that, because of her sin, “you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you” (Genesis 2:16). Because of sin, the selfless peace of right relationship that had existed between man and woman was lost. Not surprisingly, the Bible tells us that this disruption of peace spread beyond the relationship between the first man and his wife. The story that comes immediately after Adam and Eve’s descent into sin and their banishment from the garden, tells of the murder of their son by his older brother (Genesis 3).

Peace no longer dwelt with humanity. There was no peace with God. There was no peace between men.

Yet, in the fields outside of Bethlehem on a dark Christmas night, the angels announced the birth of one who would teach his children to live in peace with one another again. This little baby whose birth brought peace between man and God would also grow up to teach that the love of our neighbors was second only to love of God (Mark 12:30-31). The same child would one day proclaim that those who fed the hungry, quenched the thirst of the parched, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, and visited the sick or imprisoned are the ones on whom His favor truly rests (Matthew 25:31-46). This tiny baby, the one whose birth was celebrated by choirs of angels, came to restore all of the peace that was lost through sin. He came to bring man peace with God through His sacrifice and He came to teach peace between neighbors.

These past few years, though, it has been difficult to believe the angels’ promises of peace. Continued conflicts in the middle east, battles with ISIS, the threat of nuclear war with North Korea, the weakening of alliances within the European Union, the fear of Russia all remind us of the fragile state of peace on a global scale.  At home, we have witnessed our leaders fighting with words that are banned from our homes and overlooking violence their peers have done to others for the sake of their own power. We have been forced to face the horrific resurrection of racism that we thought was dead. We have mourned for our brothers and sisters who are being killed on the streets, at concerts, in their schools, and in their places of worship. We have turned our backs on those orphaned and abandoned by addicted parents. We have blamed and neglected our own countrymen who suffer unimaginable losses.  Even nature seems intent on seeking revenge for the years of abuse that we have battered it with and our determination to continue to take it for granted. In short, all too often, we find ourselves forgetting the song of the angels, and instead sing along to the words of Longfellow: “And in despair I bowed my head; ‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said, ‘For hate is strong, and mocks the song of peace on earth, good-will to men!'”

Still, as we light our Advent candle this week, we are forced to remember the angels’ songs. We are reminded that Longfellow’s poem did not end in despair. Instead, we must sing along: “Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: ‘God is not dead, nor doth He sleep; the Wrong shall fail,the Right prevail, with peace on earth, good-will to men.” As we are comforted by the knowledge that God is not dead and does not sleep and as we begin to hear again the song of the angels who proclaimed the birth of our Savior, we hear Jesus whisper to us, “I am here, Emmanuel, God with you. I have restored your peace with me. Now, go out and bring my peace into the world as I have taught you to do. Advent, the time of preparation has ended. Go now!”

*If you are interested in listening to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Poem, “Christmas Bells,” I highly recommend Casting Crown’s version of “I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day.” 

December 15, 2017

Rejoice

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The third week of Advent begins with Gaudete Sunday and is my personal favorite. The word Gaudete means “rejoice” as in “Rejoice in the Lord always” (Philipians 4:4). Not surprisingly, the candle that we light on Gaudete Sunday is the Joy Candle or Shepherd’s Candle, which reminds us of the angel’s greeting to the shepherds on the night of Jesus’ birth: “I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. The Savior – yes the Messiah, the Lord – has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David!” So, in the midst of the penitential season of Advent, we are called to joy (hence the contrast between the traditionally pink color of the Gaudete Sunday candle which symbolizes joy and the three other purple candles which symbolize repentance and waiting.

Unlike happiness, the joy that the angel proclaimed is an abiding joy that does not change with the seasons or vary with external circumstances. It is not just a warm, contented feeling. Instead, it is strong, enduring, and (for us who have the benefit of looking back after Jesus’s earthly life ended) rooted in the reality that our Savior has been born, lived, died, and rose again. Because of His life, death and resurrection, we can rejoice knowing that we are rescued from the bondage of our sins and that God is working out the realization of His kingdom in our world today.  We can be filled with joy in the midst of the most difficult circumstances because we know that, ultimately, everything will be alright.

The Bible offers us many examples of joyful people who expressed their joy in a variety of ways.  Miriam and David  danced and sang before God as they thanked Him for His work in their lives (Exodus 15:20-21 and 2 Samuel 6).  Hannah, Zechariah and Mary  sang songs of joy for the the work of God, His compassion, and His care for the poor (1 Samuel 2, Luke 1:46-55 and 68-79). The shepherds that we remember during this week of Advent received the angel’s news of great joy and confirmed it with their own eyes. Then they ran to share their joy with others and returned to their daily work “glorifying and praising God.”(Luke 2:17-20) Later, the disciple Paul learned to be glad even when forced to confront his own weaknesses because he saw God working through them (2 Corinthians 9-10). Amazingly, the Bible even offers us a glimpse of the rejoicing ones that fill Heaven: the angels and other Heavenly beings who “fall before the throne with their faces to the ground and worshiped God” (Revelation 7: 11) and those who, having “washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb and made them white,” serve God without ceasing as He shelters, feeds, protects, shepherds and comforts them (Revelation 7:14-17).

Even in the midst of our everyday lives, we see glimpses of those who live life with an abiding joy. We see it in the elderly woman at church who can say “it is well with my soul” in the midst of great loss. We see it in those who have been rescued from addiction and live each day in gratitude to the One who saved them. We see it in writers, speakers, priests and pastors. We see it in all who attest to the truth that Christ has come into our world and is at work in our lives. And when we pause to consider that truth – that Christ has, indeed come and that He is working out each aspect of our lives for good – we can see joy in ourselves, no matter what our circumstances may be. The question is, once we have glimpsed this joy, will we keep it buried deep inside or will we, like the shepherds on that Christmas night so long ago, hurry to share the good news with others and allow our joy to permeate our lives, even as we go back out into the fields and resume the everyday tasks involved in tending our flocks?

“Joy to the earth! The Savior reigns! Let men their songs employ. While fields and floods,
rocks, hills, and plains repeat the sounding joy, repeat the sounding joy, repeat, repeat the sounding joy!”

 

*Dedicated to my daughter, Marienka Joy Sroubek -wanted child and sorrow that God will turn to joy.

May 12, 2017

The Battlefield

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I just watched two Canada geese, with their feathers ruffled and necks stretched straight ahead of them, chase two other geese who were hoping to get some bread from me. Even though I didn’t have any bread and wasn’t planning to feed any of the geese, I was angry at the two aggressive Canada geese since I dislike all forms of aggression. It is no surprise, then, that I tend to pass over Bible verses that talk about the spiritual battle we are engaged in. Lately, however, I have been thinking about them more frequently and I am beginning to realize how much they reflect our reality. Whether I like it or not, we are living in the midst of a battlefield where the forces of evil are doing everything they can to diminish the glory of God and to destroy His beloved children. Of course, we do not need to fear because God has already won victory through the death of Christ but, in this time between Christ’s death and the final restoration of His kingdom, the battle still rages on.

I recently read something that helped me to realize that, in me, the battle is most apparent in my distorted thoughts and feelings. Too often, I find myself thinking that the world is out to get me, that I am not good enough, that I am deprived of something, or that life is not fair. Not surprisingly, these thoughts quickly lead me to feel depressed, frustrated and bitter. *

I have to remember that the devil is the father of lies (John 8:44) and that He loves to pull me away from God’s truth by getting me to believe untruths about my reality. If instead of believing the devil’s lies, I choose to believe the truth of God’s love and abundant graces, my feelings of depression, frustration and bitterness quickly change to joy and thanksgiving. Ephesians 6:11-12 and 14 says: “Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil. For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in heavenly places…Stand your ground, putting on the belt of truth…” Of course, the most powerful of God’s truths are found in the Bible: we are His creation (Genesis 1:26; Psalm 139; Acts 17:26-28), we are deeply loved (John 3:16-17; Ephesians 2:4-5; Romans 5:8; Romans 8:38), He is intimately involved in our daily lives (Proverbs 16:9; John 15:5; Romans 8:5), His plans for us are good (Jeremiah 29:11; 1 Corinthians 2:9; Romans 8:28), we serve an important purpose (Matthew 5:13-16; Romans 12:1-5; 1 Corinthians 16:12-20; Acts 1:8), and we are saved (John 3:16; Ephesians 2:1-10; Romans 8).

Ironically, some of the lies that I believe are so simple that I can easily refute them with logic when I spend time actually thinking about them. For example, today I was feeling sorry for myself because of the many “challenges” I face. Yet, when I spent a moment thanking God for the blessings in my life, I quickly realized that the blessings greatly outnumbered the difficulties. In fact, I am so blessed that when I tried to count my blessings, I couldn’t do it!

There are other lies, however, that are much more powerful and can only be refuted by clinging to God’s Truth. One of these is the lie that the story of my youngest daughter, Noemi, is entirely and only sad. While her story absolutely contains sadness, it is saturated with joy! Joy that God chose to create her – a unique person with a beautiful body and her own special soul. Joy that God chose us to be her family. Joy that we had eight months to have her in our lives here on earth. Joy that our belief that she was a tiny person allowed us to accept those months as her life. Joy, unbelievable joy, that she still is, that she brings God glory, and that we will be with her again.

A few weeks ago, I went to Noemi’s grave alone and, for the first time, rather than petitioning God to take care of my baby and allowing me to see her again in Heaven, I found myself thanking Him for Noemi and her story. As I stood there, looking at the ground where I had laid my baby’s body, I was overwhelmed with gratefulness for her life and eternal story. I felt God’s sweet victory which won, not only my daughter’s eternal life, but also my freedom to embrace the Truth and to conquer the lies that the devil had strewn across my battlefield.

*Our emotional struggles are complex. I absolutely believe that the battle between Good and evil is waged largely in our minds and hearts. As a result, our feelings and mood can often be heavily impacted by this battle. That being said, I also firmly believe that there is both a physical and a chemical basis for our mental health. Fortunately, God grants us insight into the biological bases of mental distress through the fields of psychology, psychiatry and neurology. I would never want my words to diminish the importance of these fields in helping those who suffer or to make someone feel that their mental health difficulties are somehow their own fault.