With a big smile...

“The easiest way and the simplest way of belonging is this: the Holy Spirit makes us do that giving of self, that total surrender to God without any reflection without any counting the cost, we call that blind surrender. We allow God to take from us whatever He wants and we accept whatever He gives with a big smile.“ Mother Theresa

Barbara McGuigan, a host of EWTN's Open Line, read this quote last week on Open Line when she was doing a show on helping others heal from the loss of a child. She emphasized the last sentence, "we allow God to take from us whatever He wants and we accept whatever He gives with a big smile." It sounds difficult, if not impossible, to do...accepting a miscarriage with a big smile. How can this be done? The key is the first sentence..."the Holy Spirit makes us do that giving of self, that total surrender to God without any reflection without any counting the cost;" this takes openness to the Spirit, and at times, especially after our first miscarriage, all I could offer was a prayer that I could be open to the Spirit. But God accepts us wherever we're at and if we but give Him the opening into our hearts, He can use that. Pray and pray to be open to Him, to His healing, to His will for your miscarriage, that He will use you as He wills to bring about the good He longs to bring forth from your suffering. He is a good God, a perfect Father, and He comes to us, holds us, and accepts us with a big smile. Let us in turn do the same for all the He wills for us, and most especially, for the crosses He gives us to bear with Christ.

O Marvelous Sacrament!

Jesus did not leave us alone here in the world to toil our way through, to find our own way. No, He wished to remain with us, to be in our living and our dying. He left us His precious, most sacred, body, blood, soul and divinity in the Holy Eucharist! A greater source of healing, you will not find. Run to Him; embrace Him; adore Him; receive Him. He is in the tabernacle, the monstrance, on the altar, waiting for you. Receive Him daily if you are able. Let His truth penetrate the darkest parts of you, and be healed. Embrace the Church He left for us all, for you will find so much healing in our Holy Mother Church, His gracious spouse. Pay heed to the Sacraments; call on the Spirit given to you in your Baptism and at your Confirmation; be reconciled to God through the sacrament of Reconciliation; use the sacramental graces God bestowed upon you when you were joined in Holy Matrimony; but most especially, meet Jesus in the Holy Mass and receive Him often, for His consolation is so great.

The Saints embrace our children

Our children our in perfect company, the company of the Saints and angels in heaven. And the Saints embrace our children! (We always want our children to have good, holy friends don't we??)

With our first miscarriage, we named our daughter Ariana Faustina. We chose "Faustina" after St. Faustina Kowalska, who brought us the devotion of the Divine Mercy. Our priest offered a holy Mass in rememberance of our daughter in the chapel at our parish. When we entered the chapel for the Mass, there was a beautiful Divine Mercy image to the right of the altar. My husband, thinking Father had placed the image there since our daughter was named for St. Faustina, went up to thank Father after the Mass. He told Father "thank you for putting the image there, it meant a lot to us" and Father said he had not even thought about our daughter being named for St. Faustina, and that he had not put it there for the Mass. The image, he explained, was an apostolic Divine Mercy image that had been blessed by Pope John Paul II, and it was the only one of its type in the United States. It travelled from parish to parish around the U.S. and it was only at our church for one day and when we set the date for the Mass, no one had any idea it would be there.

Coincidence? The world may tell us this is just a crazy coincidence...but we know better. We believe Christ and St. Faustina were comforting us, showing us God's Divine Mercy, and that our little daughter was there with them, embraced by St. Faustina and all the Saints, embraced by her Mother, Mary, embraced by Christ Himself.

Remember O Most Gracious Virgin Mary

Remember, O Most Gracious Virgin Mary,
that never was it known that anyone
who fled to they protection,
implored thy help,
or sought thine intercession
was left unaided.

Inspired by this confidence, I fly unto thee,
O Virgin of virgins, my mother,
to thee I com, before thee I stand,
sinful and sorrowful.
O Mother of the Word Incarnate,
despise not my petitions,
but in they mercy hear and answer me.

Amen

How can I speak of healing from miscarriage without mentioning our Blessed Mother, who also lost her Son because of God's perfect will? Because of her "fiat," her perfect openness to God's holy will, salvation came to all of man. She said "be it done unto me according to Thy will" and she knew God's will was perfect. She heard that a sword would pierce her heart, and she did not waiver, only trusted in God. What a model of perfect submission to God's holy will we have!

After both miscarriages, I have thought about our Blessed Mother and the suffering she must have endured seeing Jesus through His Passion and Death; the pain I felt after losing Ariana and Gianna having only held them in my womb for a few weeks was so immense...it is impossible for me to imagine what it must have been like carrying Him for 9 months, and then caring for Him for 33 years before He endured such a death, and she endured such a loss. How beautiful that she would endure this burden for our salvation and the salvation of our children! How horrible that it was my sinfulness that necessitated her Son's death, but they also gave reason for His becoming man...reason for His becoming hers. Not that I plan to continue in sin, nor am I grateful for sin, but it goes to show God can work all things for good. And so He does with us...He works all things for good. Perhaps by losing our children, we will turn our hearts all the more to Him and thus be aided on our path to salvation. We pray that the good done from losing our little ones in this life bears fruit for our eternal life!

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.
Our Lady of Perpetual Help, pray for us.
Mary, Comforter of the Afflicted, pray for us.
Mary, Mother of Divine Grace, pray for us.
Mary, Refuge of Sinners, pray for us.
Mary, Most Holy, pray for us.

See the Litany of Loreto

Miscarriage Prayer & more

I received this in an e-mail from Angela, and wanted to pass it along to you all:

"With my first miscarriage, Fr. Gary called me and said, "Congratulations!" I was stunned, and replied, "EXCUSE ME!!" To which he said, "The idea is to get your children to heaven sinless....you did it!"

Recently with my fourth miscarriage, it joyfully occurred to me, that upon my death, I shall leave 5 very lively, loving children behind and upon entering Eternal Life, I will be greeted by the four whom I have lost!! I shall not enter Heaven alone as a mother!! Isn't that a wonderful thought?

I also wanted to share with your Mother Angelica's Miscarriage Prayer:

Miscarriage Prayer

My Lord, the baby is dead!

Why, my Lord—dare I ask why? It will not hear the whisper of the wind or see the beauty of its parents’ face—it will not see the beauty of Your creation or the flame of a sunrise. Why, my Lord?

“Why, My child—do you ask ‘why’? Well, I will tell you why.

You see, the child lives. Instead of the wind he hears the sound of angels singing before My throne. Instead of the beauty that passes he sees everlasting Beauty—he sees My face. He was created and lived a short time so the image of his parents imprinted on his face may stand before Me as their personal intercessor. He knows secrets of heaven unknown to men on earth. He laughs with a special joy that only the innocent possess. My ways are not the ways of man. I create for My Kingdom and each creature fills a place in that Kingdom that could not be filled by another. He was created for My joy and his parents’ merits. He has never seen pain or sin. He has never felt hunger or pain. I breathed a soul into a seed, made it grow and called it forth.”

I am humbled before you, my Lord, for questioning Your wisdom, goodness, and love. I speak as a fool—forgive me. I acknowledge Your sovereign rights over life and death. I thank You for the life that began for so short a time to enjoy so long an Eternity.

-- Mother M. Angelica"

You can also see the link to Mother Angelica's prayer and a prayer of blessing for parents who have miscarried in the links on the right. Thank you, Angela, for your reflections! May we dedicate ourselves wholly to Christ, so that one day we may be united with Him and our children!

Deep calling deep

"Deep calls to deep
at the thunder of they cataracts;
all thy waves and thy billows
have gone over me.
By day the Lord commands his steadfast love;
and at night his song is with me,
a prayer to the God of my life."
Psalm 42: 7-8

There is something about the thought of the depth of God calling out to the depth of my heart that brings me deep consolation in all tribulations. I think it is knowing that God knows the innerworkings of my heart; He knows the depth of my soul, and still he calls to me, to that very part of me. Not only does he call to the depths of my soul, but He commands His steadfast love, His deep and abiding love; a love filled with mercy and with hope. How can I not sing His praise? How can I not offer my life and the life of my children as a prayer to Him?

The question "why?"

The day after we found out that we were miscarrying Gianna, we had our holy hour. While in adoration, I questioned God asking "why": why did we need another miscarriage; why wasn't one enough; why do they have to happen at all; why would He give our girls life only to take it away a few weeks later? The answer was hard; not a reason at all, but questions back to me: "Why do you sin?," "Isn't it for your sins that my Son died?" God was being my Father. He wasn't belittling my mourning, but He was letting me know that I don't need to question why He does the things He does. He is perfect. He knows what He is doing, and He does EVERYTHING for our good, even to the point of sending His own Son to redeem us from our sin, something we are not worthy of, and yet He extends His mercy. The fragility of life is a reminder to us that we need to strive eagerly to live a life of holiness, to rid ourselves from sin, and to trust completely in God's mercy.

Sometimes I get little glimpses of why we are called to struggle through this...because we have intercessors in heaven, because we can minister to others through it, because we can unite our suffering to Christ's and thus break ourselves from sin, because we can offer those sufferings for the good of the world, and, in our case, especially for the end to abortion. Accepting the death of our little ones is accepting the will of God. And we need not question the will of God, only spend our lives doing whatever He wills.

"Therefore, since Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same attitude (for whoever suffers in the flesh has broken with sin), so as not to spend what remains of one's life in the flesh on human desires, but on the will of God." 1 Peter 4:1