I awoke with a start, my heart pounding, glad I had only dreamt that our four-year-old son fell off a 30-foot balcony as I watched helplessly. But it wasn’t a surprising dream.
Life hasn’t been the same since Paul almost drowned a year and a half ago at the age of 2. The short story goes like this: We were on vacation, and I was out getting dinner when my husband pulled Paul’s blue, lifeless body out of the water and desperately performed CPR until help arrived. Paul began breathing, but we didn’t know how long he was underwater or if he had sustained brain damage or would ever open his eyes again.
Hours felt like an eternity until I met my husband and Paul in the PICU with no change. Around midnight, a friend and a priest arrived. We prayed, and the priest administered the Anointing of the Sick. Seconds later, Paul opened his eyes for the first time, saw he was hooked up, and weakly cried, “Stop.”
Less than 24 hours later, we were discharged with a clean bill of health — no medications or special instructions except to live life and run around to clear up his lungs.
Yet, we are forever changed from having our hearts broken open.
His freckles in the summer remind me of the petechiae around his face — the tiny burst blood vessels — that showed how close we were to losing him. The phrase, “Where’s Paul?” still sends all our nerves into a panic.
You realize how precious something is once you’ve almost lost it. I saw a Facebook post asking for prayers for a boy who was fighting for his life after drowning. I wept deep tears and cried fervent prayers for a family I don’t even know because the ache of longing opens us up to receive the sufferings of others.
The boy I saw in the Facebook post didn’t survive. Survivor’s guilt is real. I don’t know why Paul made it, and others don’t. All I know is that my heart aches for others’ sorrow in a way it didn’t before.
“Longing makes the heart deep.” -St. Augustine
Not a day goes by that I don’t think about that accident. There’s a gratitude that he’s here but also an ache of longing to keep him (and all my children) safe, to hold them tight and never let them go, to pass through suffering to the other side.
It seems, though, as parents, the tighter we try to hold on to something, the more it slips through our fingers. We want our kids to be safe and healthy. We want our children to grow up and remain Catholic. And yet, so much of it is out of our control.
As parents, our hearts carry sorrow for the sufferings of our children — the miscarriages, the medical diagnoses, the physical and mental pains, or the spiritual choices of our children — that we seem powerless to heal.
All we can do is bring the ache of longing to the Lord as children dependent on our Father to provide for us.
As I drove to the hospital that fateful night, I cried to the Lord, pleading with him for my son back when God gently reminded me, “He’s my son, too.” That encounter revealed to me the longing of the Heavenly Father for all his children. Every time I gaze up at the crucifix, I see that his thirst for each and every one of us has not yet been satisfied.
The Scriptures tell us, “Rend your hearts, not your garments.” Instead of tearing our clothes in half, our hearts must be broken open to receive the love of God. In a mysterious way, it’s precisely through our suffering that Jesus draws us closer to his heart. Staying in the ache of longing and bringing our sorrows to Jesus prepares us for greater things.
“Simply by making us wait, he increases our desire, which in turn enlarges the capacity of our soul, making it able to receive what is given to us.” -St. Augustine
In this season of Lent, we give up something that satisfies us — meat, candy, screens, etc. — to reveal our longing for something deeper, more transcendent. Something we can’t grasp or obtain fully in this life, but something we can hope for. And that something is eternal beatitude where there is no more suffering or pain.
Last month, I read in the Magnificat a commentary on the Beatitudes: “Jesus declares blessed the poor, the hungry, the weeping, the hated — all whose hearts cry out in longing and expectation for what can only be satisfied by God.”
As parents, the suffering we endure on behalf of our children can increase our desire for Heaven, just as the sacrifices of Lent help us long for Easter. The longing purifies us, expands our souls, and prepares us to celebrate the mystery of the Resurrection, our hope of glory (Col 1:27).
After all, we are in the Jubilee Year of Hope. Pope Francis wrote in his Bull of Indiction announcing the Jubilee year, “In the heart of each person, hope dwells as the desire and expectation of good things to come, despite our not knowing what the future may bring… Christian hope does not deceive or disappoint because it is grounded in the certainty that nothing and no one may ever separate us from God’s love” (Spes Non Confundit 1, 3).
May the Jubilee be an opportunity for all of us to be renewed in hope amid our sorrows, and may our Lenten fasts enlarge our capacity to receive God’s grace.
