be not afraid conference

my brother spoke at the be not afraid conference in charlotte last thursday and so i got a ride up with him for the day. the conference was all about educating the support network of moms, dads, and families who are affected by a poor prenatal diagnosis. tracy winsor asked fr kevin to speak on grief within the arms of faith. she was especially touched by his letter he wrote upon learning of jedidiah's death. so he kind of used the letter as an outline and branched off from there.
one of the mom's came up to me after the talk and shared that her own brother- a protestant minister- told her she was sinning by grieving the loss of her baby boy. that since he was in heaven, her tears were somehow offending God. my heart ached for her. it still does. i am SO blessed to have the family that i have. sometimes i take it for granted. she spoke with father kevin afterward and i think got some healing and consolation from his words.
i also met a mom who recently lost beautiful twin girls who happened to share a heart. they died in august when they were 12 days old- and i have to repeat how beautiful they were. just gorgeous! we talked a bit about our experiences and i can't speak for her but it was healing for me to be with her. to just be with other moms that have experienced an infant loss- it's healing. you don't have to explain yourself, apologize, or guard yourself against insensitive comments.
i only wished i could have stayed for the rest of the conference. but friday was mary jane's fifth birthday and i wouldn't have missed that for the world.

freedom

this is from the book "interior freedom" by jacques philippe

it is natural and easy to go along with pleasant situations that arise without our choosing them. it becomes a broblem, obviously, when things are unpleassnt, go against us, or make us suffer. but it is precisely then that, in order to become truly free, we are often called to chooses to accept what we did not want, and even what we would not have wanted at any price. there is a paradoxical law of human life here: one cannot become truly free unless one accepts not always being free!
to achieve true interior freedom we must train ourselves to accept, peacefully and willingly, plenty of things that seem to contradict our freedo. this means consenting to our personal limitations, our weaknesses, our powerlessness, this or that situation that life imposes on us, and so on. we find it difficult to do this, because we feel a natural revulsion for situations we cannot control. but the fact is that the situations that really make us grow are precisely those we do not control.