Joy and Sorrow

Something happened today, and even now I am in tears. Really, I am crying out loud, there is snot running down my face and my throat is dry. And yet...it is in this moment that I realize how far I have come...I only hope that my words can describe what it is I mean, because in all my life I have wished that I could express myself, really express myself. I will not say what has happened, though the reader is free to guess, simply because I am too ashamed. With all the feelings I have within me, shame is not an insignificant one.
I feel that I truly realize the meaning of "God chastises the one's whom he loves." Never before in my life have I understood this in my heart, I always felt something twisted like "If things are going well, it must be that God isn't chastizing me, and therefore doesn't love me." Or, when things are going bad, it was "God is punishing me for my sins." The implication there-in was that God was angry and vindictive, simply trading hurt for hurt, as I have done, many times. And this, I see now, has nothing to do with Our Father in Heaven. It is truly, in all its crappiness, a moment of grace for me, and the deepest prayer of my heart is that this experience would not leave me unchanged. It is the greatest fear of my heart...I feel the tightness in my chest at the mere thought of it, that I, once I begin to feel better, will go back to my former self. That I will be left unchanged, and that all of this would have been for nothing. But even so, my fear is not of useless suffering (though that would truly be awful), but that of truly remaining unchanged. Holiness, and maturity of the soul, are the only things which really matter in this life. It is the essence of what it is to be human; to be like Christ. In holiness and maturity we learn love, we learn sacrifice, we learn self control; all of these things make us fitting citizens for heaven. Blessed be He that He has not spared me these lessons! Pray that He may never spare me these lessons, but that His dealings with me would always be tempered by His Mercy! My Jesus, let me not go unchanged, I beg this of you. It seems for my whole life, I have longed for some sort of milestone. Some sort of conversion experience, or defining moment. Could it be that at last it has arrived, in all its bitterness? And yet, AND YET, and this is the astounding, amazingly funny part, because my faith has told me this all these years and still I have not believed, it is this bitterness that the greatest blessings can come! As my dear friend Anja has said before, "Cling to the rugged wood of the cross, and in its shadow you will find sweetness and honey." (God bless her!) Hope...that is something I feel...not despair. Not the familiar cloud of self loathing and fear of all the worst things that could happen, the familiar down-ward spiral of negative thoughts which land in the ultimate, seemingly inevitable conclusion of a life of misery ended with damnation. How strange, that in my life, when things were best, I felt at my worst, and now, at their worst, I realize that indeed, the grace of my Lord is with Me, that his name is Faithful and True.