It’s the month of Rosary again, I have this very inspiring article to share to everyone. I hope this true to life story I’ve got online will give us more reason to to do meditation with our holy rosary through the Intercession of our Mother Mary that we may all received the every healing and blessings we need in our llife time too.
And as I write this sharing, we received another answered prayer. I just got a positive result from my pregnancy test this morning.
God Bless us all!
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http://www.americancatholic.org/Messenger/Jul1998/feature2.asp#F7
The Rosary Was My Lifeline
By Leah McCarter
IN MAY 1993 I WAS HAPPY. I was 26 years old and a full-time volunteer in campus ministry at a small state college. My boyfriend and I were discussing marriage. I had good friends and lived in a beautiful part of Pennsylvania. I am a convert and my ministry encouraged me to grow in knowledge of the Church. My spirituality was growing by leaps and bounds. Every part of me was certain that I was fulfilling a plan that God had for my life.
One morning in late May I woke up to experience a “blue spot” in my left eye. I assumed that I had scratched it. Because I couldn’t see through the blue spot, I went to the doctor—who sent me to other doctors. The bottom line was a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS).
I had to leave my campus ministry job to get needed health insurance and a living wage. I returned to a job I had formerly held—defeated, disappointed and terribly, terribly afraid.
I was afraid of my own body. The body that I had long trusted to stand, sit and walk on command no longer seemed to be under my control. I was afraid of the future. MS is an unpredictable, progressive disease. Would I be unable to walk in five years? One year? Next week? What was I to become?
And my boyfriend? I was not, as you might think, afraid that he would leave me. No, I was afraid that he would stay with me out of pity, not out of love. I was ashamed of myself—ashamed of my sudden physical deficiencies, ashamed of my failure to be a healthy young adult, ashamed of my inability to handle all of this gracefully, ashamed of my fear.
But I remember most vividly my fear of God. I asked the eternal question, “Why me?” and God was silent. Underneath my fear, I became angry at God and jealous of everyone else who loved and trusted God and was well.
Mass, which I had once enjoyed, became an act of obedience in an attempt to ward off any more unwanted divine attention. I didn’t dare stay home because God might notice and become angry at me. I didn’t want to pray because I didn’t want to draw any of heaven’s attention to myself. I thought if I could just hide I could somehow recover my strength myself.
In my loneliness, pain and attempts to hide, I turned to Mary. Somehow I felt that Mary, being a woman, could understand me. Didn’t I want the same things that she had wanted at one time—to be loved, to have a family of her own? She could understand my fear. (Would an angel have to tell her, “Do not be afraid,” if she wasn’t?) She experienced firsthand the inexorable will of God, and somehow, she could say, “May it be done to me according to your word,” and mean it. And she could still love and trust him in spite of (because of?) it all. The rosary became a thin strand of faith to which I clung.
Inch by inch I made my way back to being in relationship with the Lord
I prayed the rosary sometimes three times a day, always asking for healing—not necessarily physical healing, but healing of my heart and mind so that I could accept God’s will. After those prayers, I could pray to God, holding on as tightly as I could to my knowledge that even though I felt so bad, he loved me.
What I have always heard people say about praying with Mary was true—she does turn you toward the Lord. Mary reintroduced me to the human Christ through the events in which he bowed to the will of God no matter what. I was reminded that I wasn’t being singled out for suffering. My “Why me?” changed into “Why not me?”
It was such a gradual process! For so long I felt as though I was walking blindly through total darkness and was so completely alone. I felt no one could possibly understand the emotional and spiritual suffering I was going through, but I was wrong. The rosary opened me up and helped me to stop focusing on myself by forcing me to meditate on the sufferings of someone else—Christ.
The Sacrament of Penance helped me tear off the veil of secrecy from my fear. Saying the words “I’m afraid of God” aloud and learning that I wasn’t the only person to experience this fear was a tremendous relief. I needed reassurance that God hadn’t left me alone. Exposing my fear to the light was healing.
Finally I realized that God was not punishing me, that he wasn’t angry at me, hadn’t abandoned me, and truly loved me. Inch by inch I made my way back to being in relationship with the Lord. That is not to say that I never get angry at God anymore. But I do trust and know him in a different way now, a more intimate way than before.
Leah McCarter was married in June 1994 and became pregnant in 1997. During her pregnancy she experienced the cessation of all debilitating symptoms of MS and gave birth to a healthy son last October. His name is Daniel.
(originally posted on October 4, 2010)
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