“I just can’t seem to get ahead,” my twenty-two year old son, Seth, lamented. He had stopped by to visit while his beloved dog, Koda, was at the vet. She has kidney stones, and apparently one is so large he has to feed her special food and give her expensive medicine to break it up for it to pass.
When he parked his car in front of the house he realized his engine was hot and he needed coolant. He had just paid an exuberant amount of money to get the car fixed and it seems there is still an issue. He is a new college graduate, in a brand new job, and at first he was ecstatic at what he would be making, but sometimes it isn’t as much as we need. “This is hard,” he mumbled, realizing the reality of living in this world as a full-fledged adult.
My instinct is to want to step in and take care of him. He’s still my little boy and that is the face I see as I watch him on my couch, shoulders hunched over like the world is coming to an end. But I also know if I were to take these growth pains away he would never fully appreciate the accomplishment of overcoming.
“Take a look at the positive,” I encouraged. “You are making the money to cover Koda’s vet bills and even to fix the car. No, you are not left with a ton of cash to spend frivolously but you do have what you need.”
And for the first time I saw my son as an adult. He looked at me and nodded. “You’re right. I have exactly what I need.”
It made me think about Christ’s words to St. Faustina in her time of being called to spread the Divine Mercy. Jesus asked her to spread it far and wide and instead she was told by her superior to stay in one place. St. Faustina was frustrated because she couldn’t do exactly what she felt she needed to do or what she wanted to do and Christ told her:
“My Daughter, do whatever is within your power to spread devotion to My Divine Mercy, I will make up for what you lack.”
The Lord will always make up for what we lack: in time, in finances, even in our own abilities, He is beside us, giving us all we need, we simply must trust in Him.
Trusting is difficult especially when we take on the emotions of urgency, fear, and doubt. The enemy loves to play with these emotions, causing enough physical distress and emotional havoc to debilitate any action. This is when we have to dig deep and to show up we merely must call out his name – Jesus.
Jesus, I trust in You.
When I find myself in situations that cause the panic to rise, or the anxiety to fester I have to go back to a moment when I cried out and God stepped in. There are many memories to go back to, and when I find myself in the most debilitating of circumstances, I go back to that main moment of knowing Him, knowing all I have is to call out his name – Jesus. I was a young mom suffering in depression, uncertain of what having faith even meant and God was running the fields to save me – the one lost sheep. In a moment where I could have made an unforgivable choice to harm my own child the Holy Spirit stepped in and stopped me.
Jesus help me. It was all I could say. I lay face down on my bedroom floor and cried out to a God that I wasn’t one hundred percent certain even existed because how could that God allow such awful things to happen to me in my life? But I cried out anyway.
“God, if you really do exist, take my life and do something with it!”
The knowing. It came then. I showed up just by crying out His name. And He showed up in every sense – I could feel Him, taste Him, smell Him, I knew He was with me and that He loved me. I got up off the floor and began to do what I could do and the Lord did the rest.
In my darkest moments I go back to that specific time when God was all I could trust.
No matter how minor or major the circumstance, remember how He has shown up and trust He will show up again. Jesus, I trust in You.
