I have much more work to do on this Earth – both with my son and for my God…
My second son tends to get overwhelmed by his own emotions, and he always has done.
What this means is that a small problem very quickly escalates as his emotional control is poor and he begins screaming and yelling and carrying on about small things when he really should be settling down and not worrying about those things. Often the things that he worries about are not really very serious problems anyway and when they are put into perspective, everything can be resolved in a relatively simple fashion and all is well in the world again.
The problem is that when my son is all worked up and upset, it is very hard to reason with him because his emotions rather than his reason are activated.
And what this really means is that the best thing I can do to support my son – as his mother – is to help to diffuse his emotional angst before it becomes extraordinarily terrible and he is unable to regulate his emotions in any way.
The problem with helping to diffuse my son’s emotional turmoil is that sometimes, I am distracted or busy or tired or just plain lazy and I do not wish to (or could not have) the mental or physical capacity to invest enough into the interactions with my son for him to feel heard and understood and to calm down.
And when this happens, he gets himself all worked up and ironically, it takes twice, or three times as long for me to settle the situation down afterwards because he is twice, or three times as upset!
And I have been thinking about this today. Because all those times when I do not want to make an effort to do the thing for my son what I am really doing is giving myself more work to do later. And this is exactly what Purgatory is like. You see, if I make sacrifices and offer penances now on Earth during my Earthly life, I shall be able to atone for my sins while I am still alive. However, if I am too tired or lazy or distracted or busy in this life to put any effort into atoning for my sins while I am still alive on this Earth, then I will be forced to atone for them after my death in Purgatory.
And just as delaying the effort to help my son to settle causes me more work and suffering in the long term, delaying my sacrifices until after my death causes worse torment in Purgatory. The suffering of the souls in Purgatory as they atone for their sins is beyond human comprehension. And I have been thinking about that today as I have been thinking about my efforts with my son. For it seems to me that I have much more work to do on this Earth – both with my son and for my God…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.