" Jesus said, 'The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.' " [John 12: 25].
Last summer, I was on vacation with my family in a lovely little beach town. We were staying in a sweet, old-fashioned cottage, set on a picturesque harbor. The weather was fine. We went to the beach almost every day. We sunned ourselves on the cottage porch, we slep late and took naps. Really, I should have had no complaints.
And yet, one night, I cried myself to sleep! I was crying so hard, my husband woke up. He wanted to know what was wrong? I wailed, "I hate my life! There has got to be something better than this, maybe in heaven!"
I was focusing on the traumas of my past. At age 3, there was a fire in a relative's house. My parents went to inspect the damage and they took me with them. In the room where the fire had been, they told me, "See? No fire!" I was horrified at the smell of smoke and the dark smudges of ash on the wall. I still hate the smell of smoke.
Then, at age 4, I almost drowned in a neighbor's pool. As I sank, I thought, 'This is what it feels like to drown.' My mother pulled me out, choking and gasping. At age 5, I began kindergarten. Already, I had the signs of trauma. I remember being afraid of everyone.
This was so, because I had no one in my young life to nurture me. I had trained myself to get out of diapers at age 2, tried to teach myself to read at age 4, put myself down for naps at age 5. No one in my family ever hugged me or said, 'I love you.' My mother was loving one minute, harsh the next. When I was 6, I came home one day and the family dog was gone. My mother had given the dog away. I remember asking myself, 'What kind of mother did I get?'
I was called ugly on a daily basis. Sometimes, I was hit. Outside in the neighborhood, the kids would taunt and bully me. I had no friends.
At age 7, I was diagnosed with a chronic lung disease. At age 10, my beloved grandfather died. He was the only person I was close to at all. That was the year that I stopped speaking.
In the family, there was alcoholism, suicide, depression, abuse of all kinds. I went on to college, then to graduate school. In grad school, I became the victim of a violent crime. I almost died that day. My family left me in that university town to cope alone. Strangers helped me.
I did get married: a triumph. I am a mother: another triumph! I was not supposed to be able to do these things!
But, these layers of trauma and crisis and abuse tend to become cumulative. In the last five years or so, I have lost my father, my mother, my best friend, and my mother-in-law whom I loved. Other relatives are growing frail and ill, and I fear losing them as well. Each and every loss triggers painful memories of every past loss.
Is it any wonder why I cried out, "I hate my life!" ?
I have asked God so many times, 'Why does one person have to endure so much, lose so much, suffer so much?' I confess that I often fall into despair that these abuses and traumas have happened to me at all. This is where 'hating my life' comes into the picture.
The very next day, after I cried myself to sleep, I went to Mass in the tiny little chapel in the beach town where we were visiting. And what do you think the reading was for that day? Yes! "The man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life." I had to believe that, since I had cried out to God the previous night, the very next morning, He had an answer for me!
My first thought was, Ok, so I am not supposed to like abuse, the death of family and friends, suicide, alcoholism, bullying, violence against me, family neglect, serious illness, etc. If I did love these things about life in this world, wouldn't something be wrong with me? Put another way, then I would love all that is wrong with the world; this is not exactly the way to draw close to God and Jesus.
Several years ago, I was counseled to pray the Serenity Prayer every day. Does it work? I do not think you get instaneous results from this. Acceptance, leading to Serenity, is a process. I confess that there are parts of this prayer that I still strongly resist; such as, "Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it." I still have some work to do on acceptance and finally to reaching peace.
I am trying to tell myself that hating all that is wrong with this world simply means that I am longing for something much better. It means that I am longing for God and for His Son! You can hate all the sad, tragic and traumatic things of this world, but also love life. . . .
And, I do love life -- or I would not have fought so hard for all that is good in life. Where there was hate in my life as a child, I countered that with love, or I simply walked away. Where there was strife or even violence, I demonstrated peace and gentleness. I went to the light and left the darkness behind.
I once told someone that I have led a blessed life. When I said this, the person cried. After all that I have been through, how could I say that? I say that because I have been saved so many times, by my faith in One more perfect, more sacred, more powerful that I could ever be.
Another time, I told someone, "The only thing that we have in life is each other." The person I was talking to looked stunned.
I had been feeling that yes, Heaven is way better than this life can ever be, but it is an awfully long time to wait for it-- a lifetime, in essence. I say, 'All we have is each other', because we create a bit of Heaven on earth every time we treat each other with deep love.
You could see my life as a testament to loneliness and abuse. Or you could see my life as a testament to the human spirit, one that sees life as oh-so- precious! I do not see the fact that I have this life at all, as inevitable. Nor do I see the love that we have for one another as inevitable. These are great gifts, to be treasured.
I have pondered these things for a long time now. I am starting to see that I lost so much-- a childhood, a sense of security and self-worth, any feeling of being loved and accepted. But today, I can tell the world all that they have gained with God and with believing in His Son. I believe now that this is the true meaning of John: 12!
God, I have lost the world, but I have gained You! And that is more precious than anything in this life!
[Related Posts: "Seeking Happiness", January 26, 2012]
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