For What Credit is that to You?

In brief,  over the last week

- my brother betrayed my trust

- my mother drove me to overwhelming heights of anxiety

- she ambushed me on the phone yesterday, talking to me for the first time in nearly eleven months.

- I've typed, but cannot seem to write, the missive to my grandparents, brother, and parents about my struggles this past year.

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I am not happy. I am not sure if I am sad. I feel more alone than I have in a long time. I know you are all praying for me, and I am so wonderfully grateful to have so many beautiful people care so much for my being, but sometimes battling our irrational emotions yields irrational thoughts.

In the middle of this, in feeling so alone and so hurt, in my daily reading I keep going back to Luke. In that particular passage, he tells us that Jesus demands more from us than simply doing good to those that treat us well, but that we must do good by those that treat us poorly.

In talking with my spiritual director, he simply said, "pray for them, not yourself. Make your conversations and petitions for the person who hurts you; they need more help than you." He reminded me that the only way to live out true goodness, humility and justice is to die to ourselves in all circumstances to serve others.

That is true power, and as Paul says in second Corinthians, when I am weak, I am strong.

I can believe in that.