There are pivotal moments in life when you look back and you see your surrender and how it reoriented you to Christ. Suffering necessitates surrender.
Recently, my husband suffered a cardiac event that rendered us speechless. The left side of his heart was not pushing the blood through fast enough and he became very sick, very fast. His cardiac numbers were three times the number of a typical heart attack.
Every symptom called for immediate action. As I followed the squad to the hospital, that was what I was told. We stayed there for four days and are now treating a very frustrating condition that, along with taking a plethora of medicine, mandates rest.
Have you ever looked in the mirror and allowed yourself to marvel at the woman before you? I have. I’ve stood and gazed into the face of the woman before me and pondered every line and the stories that formed them.
Our lives are an epic novel, one of those thick books that we wonder how someone can read something that thick. How would we ever get through it?
My daughter reserved from the library one of the assigned books for her British literature class. It was a book from Charles Dickens. We assumed it was a short little ditty because she remembered A Christmas Carol as sweet, cute and meaningful but not too tedious a read. When we went to pick it up at the library, you should have seen her face! The book was massive.
My husband looked it up and apparently Little Dorrit was written at a time when Dickens was paid by the word. Our lives look and sometimes feel like this book, right? But I’m a writer and I love words. One thing I love about a big book is that it gives the author time to really write about the depth of the character. We fall in love with them, their joys, their struggles, their story.
Friends, that is what Jesus is doing for us. Our story is being written through our joys and our sufferings and who He is creating us to be is made clear to us with each small surrender. Each Jesus I trust in you helps us become more of who we were created to be.
Here’s the thing, though. That moment of standing in front of the mirror looking at that woman? She’s not only becoming who God created her to be, she is becoming who she always wanted to be but could never be without her fiat to Jesus.
Fiat. A fiat is a declaration or a decree. We as Catholics use the word fiat to reference Mother Mary’s yes to God’s plan for her life. This is interesting to me because it is such a strong bold word. To declare something/to decree it and yet what is Mary declaring in scripture when she begins her Magnificat?
In Luke Chapter 1, verse 46: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; My spirit rejoices in God my savior. For he has looked with kindness upon his handmaid’s lowliness.”
She is proclaiming her surrender to His will in her life. In the suffering she knows what this yes will bring; amid her fear of the unknown, she models surrender. If suffering necessitates surrender, Mary shows us how to do it with abundant grace.
Many of us hold our suffering under lock and key. We suffer in heavy silence, but I invite you to give that key to Jesus.
In the same way we begin at Mass calling to mind our sins and offering them to the Lord, perhaps we might also take time to gaze upon His cross, calling to mind our suffering. Unlock the door, give Jesus the key, and lay our suffering before the Lord. Ask him to show you who he wants you to walk with in this part of your journey. Have faith that with each surrender you are being formed more fully into the woman you so very much want to be and the woman God created you to be.
To read more of MaryBeth Eberhard’s writing, visit her website and subscribe for updates at www.marybetheberhard.com.
