T
twoangels
Guest
A bit of background. About two decades ago, when I was going through my adolcence, I developed major anxiety and depression issues. I had been bullied in middle school and simply an ignored social outcast in high school. I had no friends. The friends I had previously had dumped me after other peers continually interrogated them (in my presense) as to why they were my friends. This didn’t seem to have a clear cause. I was generically labeled as weird and uncool. I would come home from school and typically have an anxiety attack before anyone else was home. I also cried myself to sleep every night. My cousins treated me pretty much the same way. Meanwhile, I tried to hid my suffering from my parents. There were times I contemplated suicide, but I believed God would send me to Hell for that, so I lived because God forced me to. At one time I began praying that I would just cease to be, that everyone would forget me and that I would have no afterlife.
My anxiety issues made it difficult for me to order food in resteraunts or to fill my car with gas for fear of interacting with the gas station attendant. I didn’t think of it as being afraid of their judgment. I simply saw the situations as anxiety provoking and I didn’t want to suffer through the anxiety. The more I ran from my anxiety, the more the anxiety chased me till I again realized I had to stop running.
Toward the end of this period (somewhere in the transition), I attended a Newman Center meeting at my college. I was never impressed with the Newman Center. It seemed run by individuals with a progressive agenda that wee hostile to Church teaching. However, one day a seminarian who was about to come through, did a presentation on redemptive suffering. I had never heard of redemptive suffering before. No one had taught me to offer suffering up. That night, I prayed to unite all my past sufferings to Christ so that they might be redemptive. It gave me such hope and purpose. It also helped to give me the courage to take my anxiety head on, as my suffering would be an offering to God, a blessing in disguise.
I also began praying a daily rosary, going to confession weekly. I sought medical help and ended up transferring to a Catholic University to help learn my faith more.
A couple years later, I did something I had always wanted to do but didn’t do because of my anxiety issues. I signed up to walk the Crossroads (the pro life walk across the country). The suffering was supposed to be an act of penance. It was to seek grace. It was hard. I thought the suffering would be mostly physical, but the physical suffering plus the lack of sleep we all suffered made us crabby. We got on each other’s nerves a lot. One day when we were sitting in the RV, one of our leaders told us that in order for our offering to be accepted by God, we needed to pretend that we weren’t suffering. We were not to ever mention or talk about our sufferings because if we did, we were wasting our suffering and our mission wouldn’t be successful.
I got angry. It crushed the hope and peace I had found. I dismissed it.
Well, today, a decade later, I was talking to another peer who insisted on a similiar message. She said that in order to make our suffering redemptive, we had to suffer joyfully.
Now I’ve improved a lot over the last two decades. My anxiety is far less severe and my depression is what I would describe as a tolerable sort of constant joylessness. Its a huge struggle for me to enjoy much of anything in life. And this lack of joy is something I seek to offer to God. The mandate to suffer joyfully makes it sound as though I am incapable of offering my suffering up. This individual also indicated that she felt that since joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, I must therefore be willfully resisting Christ or I wouldn’t be suffering in this manner. She said my suffering must be do to a sinful wrath I carry within me.
I know CS Lewis talks about individuals who try to follow their conscience in a grumbling manner. I also know the bible says to offer penance without making a show of it or something like that. There seems also the notion that you should not let your right had know what your left hand is doing.
Does this mean that all the suffering of my life has not been accepted by God? That every time I have prayed to God to accept it that it wasn’t worked because I’m not joyful about it?
My anxiety issues made it difficult for me to order food in resteraunts or to fill my car with gas for fear of interacting with the gas station attendant. I didn’t think of it as being afraid of their judgment. I simply saw the situations as anxiety provoking and I didn’t want to suffer through the anxiety. The more I ran from my anxiety, the more the anxiety chased me till I again realized I had to stop running.
Toward the end of this period (somewhere in the transition), I attended a Newman Center meeting at my college. I was never impressed with the Newman Center. It seemed run by individuals with a progressive agenda that wee hostile to Church teaching. However, one day a seminarian who was about to come through, did a presentation on redemptive suffering. I had never heard of redemptive suffering before. No one had taught me to offer suffering up. That night, I prayed to unite all my past sufferings to Christ so that they might be redemptive. It gave me such hope and purpose. It also helped to give me the courage to take my anxiety head on, as my suffering would be an offering to God, a blessing in disguise.
I also began praying a daily rosary, going to confession weekly. I sought medical help and ended up transferring to a Catholic University to help learn my faith more.
A couple years later, I did something I had always wanted to do but didn’t do because of my anxiety issues. I signed up to walk the Crossroads (the pro life walk across the country). The suffering was supposed to be an act of penance. It was to seek grace. It was hard. I thought the suffering would be mostly physical, but the physical suffering plus the lack of sleep we all suffered made us crabby. We got on each other’s nerves a lot. One day when we were sitting in the RV, one of our leaders told us that in order for our offering to be accepted by God, we needed to pretend that we weren’t suffering. We were not to ever mention or talk about our sufferings because if we did, we were wasting our suffering and our mission wouldn’t be successful.
I got angry. It crushed the hope and peace I had found. I dismissed it.
Well, today, a decade later, I was talking to another peer who insisted on a similiar message. She said that in order to make our suffering redemptive, we had to suffer joyfully.
Now I’ve improved a lot over the last two decades. My anxiety is far less severe and my depression is what I would describe as a tolerable sort of constant joylessness. Its a huge struggle for me to enjoy much of anything in life. And this lack of joy is something I seek to offer to God. The mandate to suffer joyfully makes it sound as though I am incapable of offering my suffering up. This individual also indicated that she felt that since joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, I must therefore be willfully resisting Christ or I wouldn’t be suffering in this manner. She said my suffering must be do to a sinful wrath I carry within me.
I know CS Lewis talks about individuals who try to follow their conscience in a grumbling manner. I also know the bible says to offer penance without making a show of it or something like that. There seems also the notion that you should not let your right had know what your left hand is doing.
Does this mean that all the suffering of my life has not been accepted by God? That every time I have prayed to God to accept it that it wasn’t worked because I’m not joyful about it?
