Good Thoughts, in Severe Pain

What to do in severe pain?  Keep praying. Keep praising God.  Try to consider all the good things, the gifts, the positive occurrences and people.

Take it moment by moment, and continue to rest.  Know that the pain will surely pass, and the body will rise again and be able to function somewhat.

Offer the suffering for the millions and billions of people in the world, just this past week or so, who have been victims of injustices and crimes against humanity.  Offer the suffering for sections of the world at war with others, particularly and seemingly mostly over religious differences.

Stay in bed as much as possible, remain calm, remember to think of Mary.

I am thinking of Mary these days as a type of informal renewal of consecration to Jesus' Sacred Heart through Mary.  

Consider that as parents or friends, we enjoy receiving personal messages, written notes, original words and thoughts more than a purchased card or what someone else has written or thought, and with only a signature added to it.

I mentioned this aspect to a friend who feels beleaguered by the daily and heavy reading involved in a more formal consecration that a diocese is promoting.  It is all good, but she feels somehow her otherwise sweet and close and intimate relationship with Mary is impinged upon by the heaviness of the purchased "program".

What if we had the confidence and under- standing to offer Mary (and Jesus, of course, or any of the Trinity) our own words of love and expression, our gratitude, our own little (or long) prayers?  Why not make up a hymn?  Did not Hildegarde of Bingen write and sing her own songs of love and praise?  What makes a song perfect any more than any other song?  Who decides?  Does Mary or Jesus disregard any bit of love offered them?

What makes our expressions good is the love with which we offer them, and the fact of even trying and doing, no matter how humble.

I kept folders of my children's drawings, and I still have the notes they wrote years ago.  They mean so much in their heart-felt attempts to express love and depend- ency--and hope--in me as their parent.  No matter how they may feel now or in interim years of leaving "the nest", their expressions of love and closeness are precious.  (If I felt a tad better, I'd try to draw a picture--even a stick figure--of Mary.)

So are ours, to Mary, to Jesus, to the Father, to the Holy Spirit--to any holy souls on the other side!  We consecrate ourselves by love and by desire.  If we do not have the confidence or think we won't get all the right words or thoughts into the expression, fear not.  Try to say or think any words of love, or not even words.  Just feel love for them.  

They are inside in the abode made in our souls.  Even a smile inward, will be known by His Real Presence.  Even a thought of gratitude to Mary for her example of grace and willingness to do His will, is known to her.

It is all rather simple, is it not?  Even in the worst of pain or the most dire situations, we can express love and desire in quite simple ways.

God Bless His Real Presence in all of us!