Note: On Tuesdays and some Sundays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
Let’s be honest. Firm faith is a lot easier to have when everyone’s healthy, when you have enough food and money (and maybe even more than enough), and when your world is tooling around just as it should. It’s easy to give thanks and spew out platitudes about the Lord’s goodness.
But when people you love are in hospice, you’ve been out of work for months, and anxiety and worry are taking up what seems to be permanent residence in your head and soul, it’s like being in quicksand. If the Almighty is all powerful, why doesn’t He chase away the bad? Don’t all those years of rosaries and Mass attendance count for something?
And of course, they do. It’s just hard to remember that we’ve been 
in these places before, and His grace has guided us through them. Not necessarily the way we would have liked, but we get through it.
Several years ago, I was on a Cursillo team. For another team member, the Weekend fell on the first anniversary of her husband’s death, a man to whom she’d been married for decades. When she gave her talk, she brought up the anniversary and how difficult it was for her. Then she raised her arms straight over her head and said, “Sometimes, all you can do is stand firm.”
Giving into the demons happens. It happened to those in Sodom. It happened to some of the Israelites. It happens to us. But the Lord is always, always there waiting for when we manage to breathe deeply—or bottom out—and start anew by standing firm with Him.
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