“They had faith that God would do what they could not see or control”
I really need to remember to keep a pen and notebook accessible during church. This phrase took over my thoughts during Mass on Saturday night a couple of weeks ago. It was near the beginning of Father Miguel’s homily, and it just kept repeating in my head. Partially because I wanted to remember it to write down, and partially because it just really struck me.
As I sit down and type it out I’m not even really sure where to go with it. So many things come to mind with that phrase. It is hard to have faith. It is extremely hard to have faith when things go wrong. When a child is sick, when you lose a job or face financial struggles, when you move far from friends, when a parent dies, when a child dies. My boys and I have been through all of the above. Those things test you. Why are there hardships? Why do kids get sick? Why do kids die? And HOW can those things be overcome? How can we even survive through such hard times? I don’t have the answers but I do know that Faith has helped us get through.
I’m no stranger to scary and sad things. Those things I mentioned above? They are not easy things to go through. Not on their own, not clustered with other things. As I look back on each of those things they all felt fully devastating. Especially that last one. How can you keep going when a child dies? It doesn’t seem possible. How can you have faith that God will have a hand in the future when something awful happens?
I really don’t know how I can have faith, but I do know that having faith- in God, in Heaven, and in knowing that I will see my child there one day- has helped me get through. I honestly can’t imagine going through those struggles without faith. If I didn’t have any faith then the signs that I have seen around me that are clearly sent from Gabe would be meaningless (I’ll write about those eventually). If I didn’t have faith then sitting in the cemetery next to his grave would be horribly depressing and unbearable, but it’s not.
I do have faith, though. And on those very sad days when all I want is for my sweet boy to still be here, I know that although I can’t be near him he is in the most amazing place. He is pain free, worry free, and happily looking down on me. And I have faith that one day I will get to see him again.
What I Can't Control 