August Acceptance

By Mercy Gutierrez

Last month, I delivered a series of talks for women attending an all-day summer retreat. Although I was given four hours to teach, I was the one who walked away really learning a valuable truth. Let me explain:

The title for the retreat was Transformed by the Spirit: Living in His Truth with Conviction and my lectures addressed the journey of a Christian life. We started the day examining our lives, especially the areas where we are in most need of repentance and reconciliation. After recognizing the need for Christ to transform our hearts, strengthen our minds and cleanse our souls, we discussed the importance of learning the faith, living in Truth and growing in love for the Lord. Then, during the closing lecture, we discussed the importance of persevering in holiness in times of joy and suffering.

During the joy-filled moments in our life, it is easy to rejoice in God’s faithfulness and mercy (as long as we remember to give HIM the glory). However, during times of suffering, it is not as easy. Suffering is complicated. It is intellectually difficult to understand and emotionally draining to discuss. So in preparation for the talk, I asked the Holy Spirit to send me a word that would lend comfort during those times of suffering in our lives. He sent me two words in prayer: availability and obedience. When God calls us to persevere in love and service to Him and the Church, we need only be available to His wants and obedient to His needs. Just as Samuel said in the Old Testament, “Here I am Lord (available), I come to do your will (obedient),” we need to respond with an open and willing heart. In doing so, we allow God to truly penetrate the daily circumstances of our lives, especially in times of sorrow and suffering.

As I wrapped up the session, I decided to open up the floor for personal remarks. At that, an older woman in the front humbly raised her hand. She thanked me for the day’s presentations and asked if she could add a “word” regarding the last session. She said, “we surely need availability and we must be obedient, but in my 60 years of living, I understand that we also need acceptance.” Acceptance. How true. And no one knew this better than the women in the room.

You see, throughout the day, many of the women approached me to tell me about what God was doing in their lives: one woman had just lost her husband and was left to raise their three teenage sons; another had lost her daughter to a brain aneurysm just days before her wedding was to take place; another had two sons with severe disabilities; another was devastated that her thirty-year marriage was falling to pieces; another was lamenting that her grown children had left the Church. These women knew suffering. They were living it out everyday. Just as the women on my retreat knew suffering, so do many of the women in our ENDOW groups.

It is difficult to accept certain crosses that we are given, but we must make it an act of faith, trusting in God’s plan for our lives. Although we may not be able to answer the “whys” of such sufferings, we patiently wait to discover “how” God will use them for the good. We must find consolation in the trusting words of the prophet Isaiah: “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts, says the Lord” (55:9).