Mistakes

“Jesus never makes mistakes.” (Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta)

Jesus Calms the Storm (Giclee)

Sometimes thing happen in my life that I can predict.  Other times things are unpredictable.

One of the least easy things to predict is a marriage.

After all, despite our best efforts we are choosing to be married to someone for LIFE.  And that means a lot of things.  Someone could become sick.  A child could become sick.  Perhaps the couple’s plans for children will not be possible.  Perhaps they will realise that as they age they grow apart in interests or behaviours.  Maybe their families will cause them discord.  Perhaps they will make friends along the way who help their relationship, or perhaps they make friends who will destroy their relationship.  Perhaps their values will change during the course of their marriage.  Perhaps they will stay entirely the same, and that in itself will be a problem.  Maybe they will parent differently or maybe they will expect to care for elderly relatives differently.  Perhaps they are so different with money and intimacy that they will struggle to find a middle road.

There are simply a million billion possibilities that could eventuate to make a marriage very very hard work indeed – and sometimes even impossible work.

I have believed for a very long time that marriage is IMPOSSIBLE.  My husband is a good man, and I am a good woman.  We each try our best with the gifts that God has given to us, and yet, marriage between us is IMPOSSIBLE.

It is impossible because if it were based on our human ability, we would fail at it.  Luckily for us it is not.  Our marriage as any other marriage in the Church is based on Grace.  That is why we married in a Church and not a garden or a beautiful café or some other non-consecrated place.

We married there so that when we made mistakes, the Holy Spirit would be able to come between us and show us how to remain together.

And I have been reflecting on mistakes today as I have been reading the passage of the Gospel that speaks of Christ calming the storm…

“On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’ And leaving the crowd, they took him with them, just as he was, in the boat. And other boats were with him. And a great storm of wind arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care if we perish?’ And he awoke and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?’ And they were filled with awe, and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?’” (Mark 4:35-41).  

You see, sometimes in times of trouble – and in a marriage – we are the apostles in the boat during the storm.  Everything seems dreadful.  Everything seems terrible.  Everything seems risky.  And yet, Christ is there – asleep – resting but listening to everything.  And it seems I have only to trust in that. 

Saint Therese of Lisieux desired never to disturb the sleeping Lord in the boat.  She meditated often on having faith to allow Him to rest.  Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who endured illness and surgery an discomfort during the last year of her life when she was eighty-six years old, wrote, “This year has been a gift from God to me, and I am happy that I have been able to offer something to Jesus. We should accept that all He wants from us is a smile... Let us always pray with great trust in God. He loves us and knows what is best for us. I do not know why all this has happened this very year, but I am sure about something: Jesus never makes mistakes.”

And knowing that God does not make mistakes, makes my mistakes so much easier to bear – what a blessing!  What a Holy Blessing is such knowledge as that!

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