Lent 2009

+JC

LENT day three:

Okay, so I have been really slacking on this blog thing here. I am prepared to write more during Lent. I have given up phatmass, facebook, myspace, but not my blog. My blog is my way of sharing the inspirations and meditations I receive in contemplation. Lent is a time to really begin to do what I intended to do when I created this... and so, with phatmass on the back burner for now, I can really concentrate and not be so joyfully distracted! :-)

Last year, my Lent was one of the most difficult in my whole life! Here's why: I seriously contemplated what I needed to do for Lent. In contemplation, I reflected on how far this world is from God. I received inspiration to "comfort" Our Dear Lord. The world's ignorance of God became the center of my concern. How does God feel about his wayward children? How is He affected by the indifference? After all, He is God, but does He get wounded? Does He feel pain in His Sacred Heart when He loves and does not receive love in return?

He showers love upon every individual on the face of this earth....but just how much of that love is reciprocated? I prayed to Jesus, to help me to offer up my own relationships, to see just how much it feels like to be unappreciated and to dish out love and receive rejection in return...

...watch out what you pray for...

Without much warning, my most cherished friend decided not to speak to me anymore! I mean, this person was the David to my Jonathan! (1 Samuel 18:1; 20:17.) The pain I received from this sudden alienation was to haunt me, not only for the rest of Lent but even beyond...

Think about it. Think about your closest confidant, the only person you tell all your stuff to, the only one you trust; the person to whom you expose your most vulnerable side. When this friend abandoned me, I felt so humiliated. All my self-confidence was destroyed. Believing that I was cherished as much as I cherished, and then realizing that I was not, left me very humbled....and afraid. The shock of this was intense. I had just lost my mom, I had just walked away from religious life, I was on the verge of losing a whole bunch of new "friends," and now, the only person I felt loyalty from, was cutting me out...for good...it seemed.

You can imagine the rejection I was feeling...the loneliness, the betrayal...at one point, I regretted having loved and cared so much.

I'm not sure if any of you have ever experienced this from a friend. I tend to love my friends very deeply. I know this love is from God, because it wouldn't hurt so much if it wasn't real.

Because of my mortal weakness, I discovered I could not survive being treated thusly, and I totally fell apart emotionally by this episode. Although my sufferings could never compare to the suffering of Christ, I believe God wanted me to taste just a little of what He must endure from our cold, dark world, with it's hatred and ingratitude towards His Great Love.

...and yet, there is one thing we can count on...

...God will NEVER regret loving us...He will never regret the Cross He carried, and the Death He procured to save us from our sinfulness!

People are always complaining about not having rights. They want the right to live wretched, sinful lives. In all the arguments over same-sex marriages, abortions, divorce, euthanasia, etc. We are forgetting that God has rights! He has the right to be loved and appreciated by His creation! But no one thinks of that...they only think of themselves...they don't remember for one moment that there is a God who is madly in love with them...who is reaching out to them...who is pining for them...waiting and hoping to receive anything, something in return for His Love.

...so although it is something I never want to go through again, I received a great gift last Lent (and most of last year...) In the depth of my anguish for losing my most dearest friend, I found myself desperately reaching out in the darkness that surrounded me...and in reaching out...I discovered the Hand of God, reaching out to me in much the same way...