I am a Tearful Mess Today

I am a crying mess listening to Adele on the first day of the year of mercy. I can’t even write words that begin to explain how much mercy I have received from people in the last 5 years. I have been replaying every moment of my Catholic life and I see all your faces. Thank you. If anything good comes from the story of my past, it is because you saw past all my flaws and were kind to me.

And if you weren’t nice to me, thank you too, because you helped me be strong and turn to God in the confessional every time I cussed you out in my head or out loud.

I know that I have already written about it today but God is so amazing. Nothing at all compares to His love and His mercy and His friendship. Jesus, God made man, came to me and met me right where I was and took me out of the life that I had convinced myself was fabulous and gave me this life full of such great and amazing people who love me and build me up. I don’t deserve any of it. He is so good.

His love does not come with a freedom to sin. As Elizabeth Scalia writes:

“The invitation to ponder and engage with the Mercy of God is not meant to be a license to sin — to do anything we like because God, who is All Love, cannot love us less, and “his love endures forever…” It is true that the well of God’s mercy never runs out, but conversion is the catalyst by which its healing water is directed our way, and comes to bathe us in consolation. To convert means “to turn.” We turn in needful contrition, and God is there. Let us turn, today, turn tomorrow, develop the habit of turning to God in our need. We are not holy; we turn to Christ, and in that turning — in the encounter with his majesty — we find the desire to become holy.” (Read the rest here, it’s a great post)

It is not easy to give up our hearts to Christ. We have suffered so much betrayal and heartbreak. We have handed it to people who have let us down and used us. We have had to be angry shells of who we really are and drink ourselves into calmness just to get by in life because of the things that have happened to us. I know, I really do. But it’s time. It is time to stop being angry and time to hand our hearts and lives to the One who made us and the only One who can love us without letting us down. The One who will walk with us and the One that we can hang on to when life is hard, because it is hard no matter who you are or where you live or how much money you have. Give Him a chance. We gotta start healing, why not make that time now? What do we have to lose? Nothing but our pain.