Please bear with me, I am afraid this will be a bit long.
Going through a very difficult time in my life (unemployed banker, up to now not even jobs at 1/4 of my former wage available notwithstanding extremely active search, in the meantime market’s meltdown destroys the savings of a lifetime and a portfolio deemed extremely well balanced; with only a once very prudent and robust, but now dwindling cash reserve avoiding total ruin) I have faced the first 7-8 months of unemployment with trust in God and a defiant faith, a “the Lord is my sheperd, I shall not want” attitude.
After the seventh month, and with the markets meltdown in september-october, desperation slowly started creeping in.
I resisted the urge to cry, blaming the urge to my poor faith, and tried to give myself courage day after day. Ask, and it is given, and all that.
But the continuing situation, better said its worsening, gnawed on me, starting to slowly eating me alive, the fight between faith and despair becoming harder every day, the urge to cry stronger and stronger.
A couple of weeks ago, I could not resist anymore: I faced my paint of the Blessed Heart of Jesus and cried, cried my entire soul, cried with no reserve or dignity whatsoever, cried with all the force of the repressed tears, laying bare to Him my entire frailty and even my shame for being unable to have the joyous, glorious, unassailable optimism one who believe in Jesus should, I think, always have.
It has happened a couple of times since, followed by some days of consolation and renewed effort to find a job, and further falls into a fully impotent cry of help.
Last time yesterday night, and I have not recovered yet.
On the one hand, crying does give me some consolation. My cry is also the admission that I cannot do anything, and He can do everything. Is a surrender in weakness, if I am not strong enough to surrender in optimism and faith. I have a feeling that it is a powerful message which I am sending above: that tears, in a way, can do more than optimism.
On the other hand, I feel that I might be doing something very wrong here. People are starving whilst I write, or are being persecuted, and I should cry? A grown man in his forties?
Most of all: Is it a step into the slippery slope of self-pitying?
Should my faith not be strong enough to get up in the morning and warn the world to be very afraid, because I am going, with God’s help, to get a job able to sustain me, and no mistake?
Should I not be a fearless warrior? Should I not see any impulse to give up and cry as the way the Devil tries to weaken me, to push me into a spiral of despair and, in time, depression by allowing me to lower my shield, to contemplate any other possibility than unflinching optimism in complete victory knowing that He is at my side and that if I ask in faith, I will receive?
What should I do? I am rapidly getting to the point where tears will become a more and more frequent experience, and I cannot understand whether this is a salutary surrender, and a powerful prayer; or on the contrary the way I slowly lose my capacity to fight with irresistible force and steely determination.
On the one hand, I think that Jesus wants to see me strong in the face of every adversity, full of faith and defiance in the midst of my crashing little world, joyous in Him in whatever circumstance.
On the other hand, why should I not offer him my tears, and ask him in tears to give me strenght, and to help me because he sees my tears, if I am not strong enough to ask Him to help me because he sees my faith?
Any help is very welcome, God bless you all, and thanks in advance.
like the Martyrs.