As I listen to the countless stories by parents who have walked this path before me, one thing is mentioned over and over. Overwhelming sorrow, grief and fear will grip you seemingly from nowhere ...no warning ...just appears and grabs you with all it's strength ...taking us down all over again. It is a climb for sure. We make our way one treacherous step at a time, seemingly finding a groove, a rhythm to move us onward, only to step on one loose stone sending us to the very base where our ascent began. The difference is that when we began we had no sense of the terrain, now we do. We've learned a few small rings that make navigating the climb a bit less unfriendly. The walk of sorrow becomes our friend. Yesterday was horrible ...there was nothing anyone could say or do....it just had to be. Today was better, still hard, but I was busy, around others and involved in a task that kept my mind focused on something else. Those twists and turns still lurched in my gut, and my chest felt compressed. But I could pass the time, without desperation. They say the physical toll on one's body is enormous. I have no doubt that if I were to go a doctor they could find something terribly wrong. For today, it had eased up some, this pain. Still not free from the gripping anxiety, I know now it will pass. And I know too it will come again.
Last week a dad new to grief shared something that made a lot of sense. He came from a large family, close to their parents. Both parents, whom he loved very much, died within a year of each other. He shared how him and his siblings were devastated. Then he lost his son. ...said he had no idea what true grief was until then ...until his son died. Agony to watch him say this, like looking in a mirror, seeing the broken, bleeding heart. Through sobs ...he said ...my son is worth the pain. Yes, I thought ...my Phoebe is worth the pain, the suffering.
I will learn this rhythm, this chronic sorrow, missing. Knowing that rhythm, trusting in it frees me from despair, that loss of hope that brings us so far away from God. When I go away from Him, I go away from Phoebe ...and I don't want to go away from either one.
Yes, this pain will recede ...the extreme, physical agony and anguish that enters every cell will lessen for a bit. And the sun will shine for a time. The clouds will move in, and rain will fall. I will climb and fall, climb and fall ...but with every climb I seem to go a little higher. I know that now ....that the fall is part of the climb ...just is. How I wish Phoebe had remembered that as she was falling ... that it was just part of the climb.
Tonight I offer the third joyful mystery, the Nativity, for your intentions.
Nativity: Luke 2:6-7
And it came to pass, that when they were there, her days were accomplished, that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him up in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.
The Virgin Mary sees in the Infant that she has given to the world, a child in appearance like all other children, the very Son of God. Mary's soul was filled with an immense faith which welled up in her and surpassed the faith of all the just men of the Old Testament; this is why she recognized her God in her own Son.
This faith manifests itself externally by an act of adoration. From her very first glance at Jesus, the Virgin prostrated herself interiorly in a spirit of adoration so profound that we can never fathom its depth.
In the heart of Mary are joined in perfect harmony a creature's adoration of her God and a Mother's love for her only Son.
How inconceivably great the joy in the soul of Jesus must have been as He experienced this boundless love of His Mother! Between these two souls took place ceaseless exchanges of love which brought them into ever closer unity. O wonderful exchange: to Mary Jesus gives the greatest gifts and graces, and to Jesus Mary gives her fullest cooperation: after the union of the Divine Persons in the Blessed Trinity and the hypostatic union of the divine and human natures in the Incarnation, no more glorious or more profound union can be conceived than the union between Jesus and Mary.
Eternal rest grant unto Phoebe and may perpetual light nine upon her. May she rest in peace. Amen.
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