Compassion

The death of that child enabled in me a compassion that I would never have been able to achieve without that experience of grief.

Compassionate Christ (Meryl Doney)

Sometimes the thing we most desire is right in front of us and because we fail to recognise it, we cause ourselves all sorts of anguish…

The thing that I desire most in the world is that I and my family and friends (and all the people whose lives touch mine) will be sanctified and saved eternally in Heaven.  The closer my relationship to a particular person, the more I want this for them.

And I have been thinking about those this reflects in my life…  Some years ago, I lost a little baby before he was even born.  After him, I had no other children and eventually had surgery – due to a myriad of other complications – that meant that I would never have any other children.  When that child died before I was ready to let him go, I was overcome with grief.  I was not depressed.  I was not sad.  I was grieving.  I was expressing the love I had for that unborn child with everything that I have to express it with.

Grief is a very difficult thing.  Grief is the sort of thing that is very hard to witness.  When a person is grieving there is terrible pain and anguish.  And for those around that person – who knew that person before that grief – it can be devastating to have to witness the changes in that person as a result of grief.  At the time, I used to describe it as having a rock on my chest.  It was a physical pain.  I could feel the rock I could feel the weight.  And nothing and nobody could help me to lift it off.  It was a terrible thing to have to carry.  And though the platitudes say that time heals all wounds, with grief there is no healing.  After all, how could I say I truly loved my child if one day I stopped being sad that he was not physically with me?  And just as all my living children changed me in some way through my interactions with them, why should the child who preceded me to Heaven not be able to change me in some way also?

And for a very long time I considered the death of this child as the worst thing that could ever have happened to me.  My own early death would have been a better outcome for me.  And then – through Grace and no merit of my own – I felt the power of the Holy Spirit come into my soul and reveal to me that this child was my greatest blessing because he was in Heaven with God praying for me and one day I too – and my family as well – would be in heaven with God through Grace and no merit of our own…

And still there is a sadness in me for the loss of this child.  I think very often about him and how he would have been at a certain age.  And I miss the earthly life we might have had together.  And yet, I have come to realise that the death of that child enabled in me a compassion that I would never have been able to achieve without that experience of grief.

And that compassion is perhaps the single biggest gift of my life.  It is through that compassion that perhaps God is able to reach other souls through my own miserable efforts, which really means that it is through that compassion that I am able to be of use to my Beloved in achieving the thing I desire most in the world…

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.