You Send What We Need

Lord you know how hard yesterday was. It was long and difficult and full of speed bumps that disheartened us.  But it was also full of Mercies and Friendship.

I found this prayer and it summed it up.

Prayer for All Who Carry Their Cross

Oh my God, I thank you for this cross you have allowed me to carry.

Please give me the strength and faith to perservere so that I may bring glory to your name

while withstanding the burden of its weight.

Thank you for offering me a share in your suffering.  

I know that you have always been, are now, and ever will be,

at my side every step of the way.

Thank you also for every "Simon" that you have sent to help me bear this cross.

I have prayed so often that this thorn in my flesh would be removed,

but I trust that your grace is sufficient.  

Change my heart's troubled cry of,

"How long, O Lord",

into words of trust:

"However long, O Lord."

May I seek only to do your will and to unite my sufferings with your passion.

Help me to not get lost in my own self concerns, but may I find in these trials

a way to greater virtue, 

a call to prayer and a path to trust in you alone.

Permit me not to waste my pain,

but to make of these struggles a sacrificial offering for others.

Lord, when I am weary and I fall,

exhausted under the weight of this cross,

please give me the courage to press on as you did.

Lord Jesus, I embrace with love my cross,

as a share in your own.

By your grace, may I carry it all the way to the vision of your glory.

I abandon myself totally to your will.

Christ Jesus, I trust in you.

Amen

Pedro de la Cruz 2012

To all the "Simons" in my life.

Thank you!

~Cindy

In the Waiting Room

I was feeling sad yesterday sitting in the waiting room with Michael.  They were running late with his chemo, so we sat and waited. The TV was on low and there was only one other person in the waiting room.  We were alone as we are even if the room is packed.   I was drawn to rub his back.  I am not sure if it was to comfort me or him.  Both of us, I suppose.  We sit quietly together and alone full of our own thoughts, fears and hopes.

They call us in.  We laugh with the nurses who shelter us with their smiles and good humor.  We welcome their jokes and hugs.  I love it that they always try to get Michael in his favorite chair.

Lord, help us as we pray in our own Garden of Gethsemane.   We too would gladly let this cup pass, but we accept your will.  Abandon us not, but strengthen our desire to embrace your cross as our own.  Amen

~Cindy

Distraction

Again I am pruning.  Pruning not only the trees and shrubs, but also my prayer life.  Like the trees that I pruned earlier you could see that it helped them grow up tall and straight reaching for the sky.  I am told that if you prune the sucker branches immediately that it helps the tree put it's growing energy into growing up and not into the little sucker branches that keep it short.

Sucker branches are like distractions in my prayer life.  There I was all pruned and growing straight and reaching for the heavens.  Then like the tree I found that I had sucker branches/distractions.  Before I start the Divine Office let me check my email and my Facebook, my bloglov'n feed.  As I am praying the Rosary, my mind wanders and I am thinking about what to make for dinner, the laundry that needs to be done, etc.

Distractions fill my day and I am like the child with ADD.  I can't sit still.  I am pulled in all directions and accomplish nothing.  I am sound and fury.

I am being pulled to the Cross.  It is a where my Beloved is.  It is there that I find comfort. But then I get distracted and look away.  When I look away I am scared and uncertain.  It is only when I am able to not only stand at the Cross, but to embrace the Cross that I am whole and not distracted.

So today on the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross as I was able to meditate this morning this thought came to me.

It is always the Cross.  You call us to it.  You ask us to not only stand there but to embrace it.  Our love story is the Cross!

~ Cindy