Five Minute Friday: Break

Note: This post is my weekly contribution to the Five Minute Friday community that is hosted by Kate Motaung on her blog Heading Home. Click here for more information about Five Minute Friday and how you can get involved! To link up with all the other entries for today's prompt word, click here.

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I need a break.

I'd like to believe that I could take one, but life as an adult doesn't often offer us a chance to take breaks. The constant stream of responsibilities that we face seem to take up all our available time and then there are the things we must do like eating and sleeping and bathing that take up the rest. Vacations are a wonderful thing, but I never quite seem to get one. But oh, how I need one!

One of my favourite places to vacation -- the beaches of the Gulf Coast. Emerald and sapphire waters, sugar white sand beaches, an abundance of fresh seafood, warm breezes and lots of sunshine....so wonderful...*sigh*

I need a break -- a real significant break of about a year or more -- from this episode of depression too. What I'd really like is an end to it. Actually, a break that is the length I would like would signal an end to it, but again, I don't think that's in the cards. Instead, I make do with little tiny breaths of peace, warm fuzzies, and moments of contentment. I try to use those to sustain me when the darkness gets dark and threatens to close in ever tighter around me.

A momentary diversion from depression -- a warm chocolate brownie dessert with salted caramel sauce from Firebirds. Had one of these for the first time this past Saturday with Gray. It was so good, I might have heard an angelic chorus singing...

I need a break from this spiritual dry spell too. I'm not asking for lots of signs and wonders or even some dramatic mountaintop experience -- just something to know that He is there. Some kind of sign of His presence that is more than just the cerebral knowledge that He is with me as I walk through my days and nights.

What I am yearning for is a break from this heart feeling that He has abandoned me and left me for dead here on earth, that I am alone in this sojourn that I walk until I reach the moment when my life ends and I face Him. I know in my head that He is with me, but I ache for a moment when my heart feels what my head knows.

The Hand of God by Rodin -- I have often wished that the hand of God would reach down and touch me in a way I could really feel, but for the moment, that doesn't appear to be His will for me.

The reality is that this lack of a break is something I must accept because, it would appear, it is my cross.

Fr. B. said last night at Mass that we must all embrace our cross. The only way to salvation and eternal life is to embrace the cross because it is only through the cross (not around it, above it, below it or ignoring it) that we find our way to heaven. As he said, "all the saints have done it." In my heart, I know Fr. B. is right.

Rejecting the cross because I want happiness or peace or comfort isn't what God wants for me. Those are not the end goals for a Christian. Happiness isn't a bad thing, but holiness is our goal.  If that means He asks me to carry a cross, I must do it or else find that at the end of the race, I have lost the prize.

Pope Francis venerates the cross on Good Friday. The practice of venerating the cross is a reminder to us that we must embrace the cross that we are given. It is also a reminder to us that we ought to cherish the cross of Christ because it is by that cross that Christ's sacrifice opened the doors to eternal life for all of mankind.

Somehow, I have to find a way past this need and desire for a break -- whether from my day to day responsibilities, from my depression, or from my spiritual desert -- because those are all crosses of a kind. To embrace my cross is to embrace Him crucified and to decrease while I allow Him to increase. It is to preach "Christ and Him crucified" with my actions and my life. It is to understand that for me, my break -- as much as it pains me to admit this -- comes not in this life, but in the next. To that end, I must, as my friend Chez says, keep putting one foot in front of the other, cooperating with the graces He gives me, and bear this cross with perseverance and an eye on the end goal.

What better thing can I do to show my love for Him?

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