By LouAnn Edwards
We all remember the scene in Mary Poppins where Mary assures little Jane and Michael that “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down!” And then again, Julie Andrews as Maria comforts the Vontrap children during the lightning storm with the famous tune “My favorite Things.” “When the dog bites, when the bee stings, when I’m feeling sad. I simply remember my favorite things and then I don’t feel…so bad.”
Human beings need a lot of help getting through suffering. And it’s everywhere. As I am writing this today, the news just announced the terrible tragedy of another shooting of innocent school children. The local Facebook page said there was a horrible car accident nearby. A neighbor’s healthy athletic sister just died in her sleep. The list goes on and on.
Of course, as Catholics we know there’s more to the story. We know the reason everything is a mess, so to speak. We know when it all started. Back in the Garden of Eden our first parents Adam and Eve chose to reject God’s laws and this changed everything. Sin came into the world, and along with it, great suffering. But we have something to help us endure it: the spoonful of sugar, the song, the help.
In his book Ten Prayers God Always Says Yes To, author Anthony DeStefano points out a gift God always gives us when we are faced with a terrible ordeal, something he describes as our “escape hatch.” He points out that this doesn’t mean we will necessarily be given a way out of our suffering itself, but from the bleak hopelessness that it can lead us into. He stresses this with an example from Christ himself. When Christ prayed that He be spared from the agony of the Crucifixion, God did not grant that request. But He did dispatch an angel to comfort him and stay with him. DeStefano says that’s the same type of assistance you and I will get just for asking. We will always be strengthened and consoled when we ask for help. But there is a catch…we have to do our part. “We will have to reach up, turn the valve, push open the hatch, and lift ourselves through the opening” he explains. We must reach out in prayer and accept the help God sends us.
When you ask God to help you, He will guide you to the best pathway for you.He knows exactly the right thing to do. Maybe you need someone to talk to and God connects you to a good listener. Maybe you need quiet time alone and God inspires a friend to offer you their mountain cabin for a weekend. Maybe He will lead you to the perfect book with consoling words. Maybe He will infuse you with supernatural courage as you face that surgery or funeral. DeStefano says the difference between Catholic believers and others is not that we suffer any less, because we don’t. We suffer with hope. Hope that good will come of the suffering and that it has meaning. Hope that God will pull some kind of good out of the worst tragedies and miseries of life.
The author assures us that when you utter the heartfelt prayer “Lord please help me get through this” you will never suffer alone and never become bitter, disillusioned, or hopeless, because God will help you. “He’ll come and find you, lift you up by the arms, and carry you out of the darkness. He knows what it means to die and be buried–and He knows the way out of the cold, desolate darkness of the tomb. “
