“I know I’m not supposed to say this, but God’s promises don’t seem to apply to me,” a family member said to me recently.
I didn’t bother looking up from my work and just gave her the theologically true response, “God wills everything that happens to you for your good, even the things that are painful or appear bad.”
But this particular loved one already knew that. And it brought her no comfort.
How do we reconcile Jeremiah 29:11—”For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope”—with the fact that our lives do not seem to receive the blessings that others’ do?
Easy Street and Skid Row
We all know people whose lives seem perfect, or nearly so. They have a loving spouse. They have lots of children, all of whom are faithful and have few problems. They live in a lovely home and are well off financially. For whatever reason, it appears that God early on hit the “easy button” for them. It’s easy to see how God has planned their welfare and given them a future of hope.
And then there’s us. Spouseless. Or childless with infertility. Ostracized by our families of origin. Job loss, and even with a job, barely making ends meet. Plagued by anxieties, panic, and deep wounds from childhood. Undergoing physical ailments, handicaps, and permanent debilitation. Houses filled with mold, pipes that burst, HVAC systems that die, and foundation problems. Where are those promises for us?
Wounds
I mentioned wounds. Many of us have painful wounds from childhood—sometimes our entire childhood was one of difficulty, hunger, abuse, and loneliness—and these wounds don’t just go away. They persist into our adult lives and dog us every single day.
We ask ourselves, understandably, why God allowed us to be so harmed, when we were defenseless and innocent, even and especially by members of our own family. And as children we were trapped—you can’t just leave your family at age seven or ten or fourteen—you are stuck with them and whatever they are doing to you.
Exacerbating this is if our families were religious, maybe Protestant or Catholic, and so we faced the contradiction of going to church on Sundays and saying prayers while also enduring abuse, neglect, and scapegoating. Now all the harm we are suffering comes with the assumed endorsement of Divine Providence. No wonder so many of us go around as the walking wounded.
Suffering Saints
I have found it helpful to consider certain saints whose lives were very difficult. St. Jacinta, one of the children of Fatima to whom Our Lady appeared, died at age nine, alone, in the hospital, after contracting influenza, which worsened and led to an agonizing surgery without anesthesia. In her life, St. Jacinta had the unparalleled blessing of seeing Our Lady, but she also faced terrible sufferings as a little girl and died very young.
St. Bernadette’s life was similar. She was from a very poor family. Our Lady appeared to her at Lourdes. Many people, including Churchmen, disbelieved Bernadette’s claim to seeing the apparitions. She later entered the convent and died in her thirties from a very painful condition. Famously, Our Lady told Bernadette, “I do not promise you happiness in this world but in the next.”
Calling to mind the heavy sufferings of others, including these saints, helps us more easily bear the smaller things that we suffer. The Imitation of Christ says, “For nothing, no matter how little, that is suffered for God’s sake, can pass without merit in the sight of God.”
Simple But Difficult
Does God will everything that happens to us—even people sinning against us—for our good? Yes, He does. He does not will that the person commits the sin, but He does will that you suffer from it.
Why?
In His humanity, Jesus learned obedience from what He suffered. God prunes you, like a vine, so that you will be more fruitful. But the pruning is painful.
God is not just wise. He is infinite wisdom. His ways truly are beyond our ways.
It is one thing to intellectually understand all this. It is quite another to accept it, deep in your heart and will, while enduring miseries.
I have found three things that have helped me do so.
First, read Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence. This short book succinctly and convincingly lays out the case I am making. I’ve read it multiple times over the past twenty years, and each time my understanding and acceptance deepen.
Second, pray the Surrender Novena on an ongoing basis. It was given to Servant of God Fr. Dolindo Ruotolo—a friend of Padre Pio—by Jesus Himself. A great many people have grown to surrender themselves and all that happens to them to God through this novena, giving them relief from worry and anxieties.
Finally, begin to do Mental Prayer each day. This video from Fr. Ripperger is a good explanation. St. Alphonsus Liguori said that “every saint, became a saint, through Mental Prayer.” It is a silent prayer you make, sitting quietly with God, meditating on a particular subject each time, then responding to Him with contrition, affection, gratitude, or awe, offering Him your needs and petitions, and then making a resolution to overcome a specific vice or fault you have.
None of these practices are magic bullets. Healing and acceptance do not come quickly. The struggle that we make each day along this journey of trustful surrender is itself the thing that God asks of us and that He blesses us through.
Image from Wikimedia Commons
