Choices

Today was a beautiful day. I witness the incredible strength and beauty of a young woman involved with Made in His Image. She went to confession and made tremendous strides in regards to her recovery by making little choices to work diligently to get better. I’m so incredibly proud of her!!

Another woman asked me why God allows evil to exist. A great question, and one that I use to wrestle with for years. One time I asked my Spiritual Director, Why didn’t God stop the abuse? He looked at me and said, The same reason He didn’t stop the Romans from killing His Son.

You see God gives us free will and while He doesn’t will evil to happen, He allows it because He will not take away our free will. It is up to us to decide how we will use this gift He has given to us, some use it to harm others, others for good. I challenge you to use your free will to fight for freedom, whether that be an eating disorder, recovering from abuse or any type of struggle. Be a solider for Christ, walk with Him to Calvary and as you fall along the way, ask for the grace for the cross to be placed squarely on your shoulders as you rise again. Choose to see beauty despite what has happened in your life, or how others have wronged you. Forgive, pray, ask for grace and seek beauty in the ambiguity of life.

The last fall is the worst fall. In it Christ identified Himself with those who fall again and again, and who get up again and again and go on- those who even after the struggle of a lifetime fall when the end is in sight; those who in the last fall lose the respect of many of their fellow human beings, but who overcome their humiliation and shame; who, ridiculous in the eyes of others, are beautiful in the eyes of God, because in Christ, with Christ’s courage, in His heroism, they get up and go on, climbing the hill of Calvary.

In the third fall, the showing of Christ’s love is this: He does not indwell only the virtuous, only those who are successful in overcoming temptation, only those who are strong and in whom His power is made manifest to the world; He chooses to indwell those who seem to fail, those who fall again and again, those who seem to be overcome even when the end is in sight. In them, if they will it, He abides; in them He overcomes weakness and failure, in them He triumphs; and in His power they can persevere to the end, abject before men but glorious with Christ’s glory before God. – Caryll Houslander