The Bravest of the Brave

I have been really captured by a train of thought/ revelation on a couple of blogs in the last week. The train of thought has many levels and aspects and I count myself privileged that I have been able to follow along, be challenged and hear God speak.


(If you are interested the train of thought is found here. Read Meridith's post and then AllYouWhoHope's post and then follow the comment "conversation" below AYWH's post. Be warned it's deep and reflects the hearts and thoughts of long term Infertiles. I just wept and wept and had to go back again and again to absorb it)

I am in awe of these girls and am so challenged/ inspired by their hearts at the moment. These are women who are seeking to learn to live child free after infertility. These women are God-lovers, girls who seek Him and love Him and trust Him and are trying to come to grips with letting go.

I was never able to contemplate living child free. The closest I ever got was to say to God: "It's not ok God (to be child free) but it is ok (Your will be done). There was a part of me that cried out at the very thought of being without a child. I can't imagine that these girls are any different and yet here they are, laying this dream down on the alter and surrendering.

I ask myself "how do they do it?" But then perhaps that's a stupid question and one I personally hated to hear. Because here you are. In the trial. You can't move away from it, or to be honest we all would. You have to come to terms with where you are, submit and seek God where you are. People constantly said to me "oh you are so strong, I don;t know how you do it". Well, there I was and I could lie down and despair and refuse to get up... but I would still be there. Or I could look for God, look for my Jesus and be strengthened and refreshed and comforted by Him. So no choice really.

Still, it's the laying down of the dream with no expectation of God breaking through that humbles me. It's more than the laying down of the dream that I did, where you lift God up above the dream and surrender to His will. Knowing that you still desperately want this dream but trusting that he will give you the strength to survive if He doesn't. This is the total surrender of a dream and the end to even wanting the dream. And even though I may not be explaining myself well, it's different to where I ever got to.

Meridith uses the garden of Gethsemene as an example of once again how Jesus gets us and the situation they find themselves in. Her blog explains it better than I could ever so I won't even try. One of the comments at the bottom of AYWH's post has a link to a (catholic) newsletter that had an article on suffering and acceptance of it. This section explains how Jesus went through agony before acceptance and that's where these girls are.

The Moment of Grace
About a month before Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was murdered for his moral bravery, he recounted one of the many threatening phone calls he received. He said the phone rang and a person said, “If you come here we’re going to kill you.” And he said, in telling the story, that he had heard those life-threatening calls many times before, “but that night, for whatever reason, it shook me to my roots. I couldn’t go back to sleep. I brewed some coffee. I drank the whole pot.” He said: “I began to cry at the kitchen table, and I lost all my courage.” He said: “I put my head in my hands and I thought, I can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to die.”
And he said: “At that moment I felt this strength in me that I had never felt before. I knew what to do, what I needed to do.” You see the Agony in the Garden, and it’s only after the agony that the angel can come. See, then Jesus got up. Then he was the athlete who was ready. Then he could walk to his passion.
When Jesus left the Last Supper room, he couldn’t do it. That was the great transition. Only after he had broken down, had sweated the blood, had told his Father many times, “I don’t want to do this,” he finally broke down and accepted it. How many of us, in our own way, experience that frustration, that same sense of abandonment? Yet, at the moment of acceptance, God’s liberating grace flows. As Luke says of Jesus in the Garden, the angel comes. That’s a deep theology of grace.
Fr. Ronald Rolheiser is a Missionary Oblate of Mary Immaculate and president of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas. http://www.americancatholic.org/Newsletters/CU/ac0208.asp

I wish I could lift the burden off them but that would mean that The work God is doing in them would be compromised. And He has promised beauty for ashes.

So all I am is inspired...and challenged. And that is a good thing!