Read more about dealing with your grief:
Click on the link: https://kathiwaligora.com/a-welcomed-grace/#more-8838
//Kathi Waligora//
Grief is the Price of Love
Profoundly Human – Dealing with Grief in a Parish
Minute Meditation – What Grief Can Teach Us
The “small piece”—the blow and suffering of unwanted loss and change—was a darkness to which I brought many emotional habits and patterns: anger, a feeling of being jinxed or doomed, and a longing to escape this path on which I found myself. I know today that grief did not create these patterns; it only illuminated them. They were already there. Still, it felt as if grief were the only cause of my confusion and unhappiness. It was difficult to accept that if the soul is to mature, it must go through the darkness and beyond it. But it must. The “large picture” is only revealed by the dark’s hidden and sustaining light. Recognizing which habits and patterns kept me lost in a loop of reactivity was crucial. The old patterns were lifeless and offered only suffering. But the darkness was alive, and offered a reappraisal of everything I had formerly concluded about life and its meaning.
—from the book Stars at Night: When Darkness Unfolds As Light
by Paula D’Arcy
//Franciscan Media//
Life is Messy – Mourning the Life that Could Have Been
God is Your Healer
A body riddled with cancer. A heart loaded with grief. A mind addicted to prescription medication. A soul attached to gambling. A heart restless, seeking purpose. A relationship torn apart.
THIS WEEK’S GOSPEL IS MARK 7:31-37
Where do you need healing in your life? Today, Allen reflects on something we all need: God’s healing power.
Did Somebody Call a Doctor? God is Your Healer
What Part of Your Life Needs Healing?
A body riddled with cancer. A heart loaded with grief. A mind addicted to prescription medication. A soul attached to gambling. A heart restless, seeking purpose. A relationship torn apart.
Where do you need healing in your life?
Today, Allen reflects on something we all need: God’s healing power.
//Dynamic Catholic//
Meditation of the Day – Some Make Light of Their Faults
“Some beginners, too, make light of their faults, and at other times indulge in immoderate grief when they commit them. They thought themselves already saints, and so they become angry and impatient with themselves, which is another great imperfection. They also importune God to deliver them from their faults and imperfections, but it is only for the comfort of living in peace, unmolested by them, and not for God; they do not consider that, were He to deliver them, they would become, perhaps, prouder than ever.”
— St. John of the Cross, p. 9
Seeking God in Suffering – Jesus the Overcomer
Jesus the Overcomer
DAY 28 | John 16:16-33
“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” —John 16:33
When I was a young teen, my father was critically ill with complications from a surgery. He asked the school to call me out of class and make him a poster saying, “Be of good cheer! I have overcome the world!”
At the time, I didn’t realize how sick my dad was, but I tried to make the most beautiful bubble letters ever and fill them with glitter. He survived, and that poster hung in his study for years afterward.
When Jesus was about to submit himself to death, he tried to prepare his disciples for the grief they would experience, and to encourage them with the final victory they would witness. Jesus would defeat sin and death, rise from the grave, return to the right hand of God the Father in heaven, and ultimately overcome this fallen world.
This verse comforted my father as his life hung on the edge. It comforts me today as I near the end of a three-year cancer-treatment plan, knowing that the doctors give me a 50-percent chance of making it to five years. But I have deep peace in my heart because God controls my life and this world. Until he calls me home, I will continue to love and serve him with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. His prognosis is eternal life!
Lord, we don’t know what the future holds, but we know you hold the future. Thank you that you have overcome this world with its troubles and that we will reign with you forever. Amen.
//Reframe Ministries//
Seeking God in Suffering – Worrying is a Waste of TimeG
Worrying Is a Waste of Time
DAY 22 | Matthew 6:25-34
“Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” —Matthew 6:34
My 15-year-old grandson took a high school psychology class and began diagnosing each family member with a mental disorder. When I asked him about mine, he said, “Anxiety.” I laughed because I’m generally a glass-half-full kind of person. I trust God for the future.
Yet I admit that I do secretly worry about what will happen when my three-year cancer treatment plan ends. I worry about my children who have already lost their father to cancer. I worry about my husband having another heart attack. I worry about my dad’s grief and loneliness after losing my mom and then my stepmom.
What secret worries linger in the back of your mind?
We can imagine Jesus lovingly shaking his head at all of our what-ifs, and asking the rhetorical question “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” Jesus teaches us not to waste time with such concerns but instead to “seek first the kingdom” of God. We can focus on living out the gospel, sharing it with others, and maximizing the time we are given.
Jesus challenges us to have faith and to trust that the Father knows exactly what we need. Rather than fret, we are invited to surrender our stress to Jesus. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened,” he says, “and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).
Lord, we worry when we should just pray. Help us to bring the concerns of each day to you in faith, and empower us to trust in your providential care to sustain us and our loved ones. Amen.
//Reframe Ministries//
Daily Message from Pope Francis – There is No Grief Borne in Solitude
THURSDAY, APRIL 15, 2021
“In the Church there is no grief that is borne in solitude, there are no tears shed in oblivion, because everyone breathes and participates in one common grace.”
Pope Francis