story

i wanted to tell a story that came to me during the retreat. So many good stories were told, but one stuck out that i wanted to share.

I final speaker was talking about the loaves and fishes at the meeting with Christ,(sermon on the mount) you know the one with the multitude and all. She was telling us ways to find that with God's help we will have enough. enough for our family, for ourselves. What we don't have God makes up for the difference just like the loaves and fishes. she told several stories that i enjoyed and related to, i got warm fuzzies several times knowing that i had been through those things, and knowing that i was on the right track. (yippee right?)

She said that when her son was 3 he was diagnosed with diabetes. He had a very severe form, sticking and poking each day was required for him to live. one day she set him on the counter to check his levels and administer his shot and he looked her in the eyes and told her that he hated her. he hated her because she hurt him every day, that he was the only one in the family that she hurt, and poked and prodded. He pinched her cheeks in the rage and anger, and said didn't say anything. she finished what she had to do to keep her son on this earth, then let him go screaming and shouting that he hated her while he ran to his room.

Of course she sobbed on the floor, who wouldn't. She couldn't make a 3 year old boy understand that she did all this because she loved him, that she had to do all this if his body was going to allow him to live a normal life.

I could so relate to the hardships she was facing, the overwhelmed feelings and feeling so alone and isolated from everyone i knew. no one could understand my life or hardships either (when i had to watch my baby be wheeled off into surgery.)

anyway she went on to explain that if she had to describe that year (13 years later) in one word, it would be 'darkness'. Darkness because in her burdens she had pulled away from the spirit of God. she had not really understood why either, and she hurt inside. one night after everyone was asleep she cried, sobbed really. She thought of everyone in her life that she knew and didn't feel that she could call any of them, none of them were qualified to help her, to lift her out of the sadness and burdens that she found herself in.

that is when she had a thought that God would understand. So she got down on her knees and told him everything from the top. she poured out her agony and sadness, knowing he already knew but that she needed to purge it from her heart. she said that was the first night that she slept well in a year at the time.

When she woke up her problems were still there, they didn't change, but somehow they felt a little lighter. the days that followed were just as hard as the night she went to bed in tears, but she knew the moment her family was asleep she could call on God and pour her heart out to him.

she looked forward to the time when she could pray each night. over the years she has developed so much faith she wouldn't change a thing of her life. (not that she could)She knows that her trials made her who she has become and who she was intended to be all along.

prayer = peace. if we pray and exercise our faith god will make us enough to do what is needed of us. (just like the loaves and fishes :)

Pass it on... s