Tiny Crosses

For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be. // Matthew 6:21

I’ve often felt that mothers have it easy. In some ways, no . . . the long days, the unending work, the physical, emotional, and mental giving that is required almost constantly.

But in some ways, yes. 

I think of the monks in their hair shirts, sleeping on stiff boards in the night in order to mortify themselves and suffer, even if just a bit, in union with the suffering of Our Lord. The life of a mother is so different from a monk’s that it’s hard to see the vocation, at times—it’s hard to see it “supernaturalized.” But as I examine my life, I see it littered with little sufferings. Some are simple—interruptions, inconveniences, annoyances. Some are a bit bigger—the disaster of a kitchen after a birthday party, the budget going awry, the really expensive broken window, the vomiting child in the middle of the night, and beyond—beyond to the suffering and illness and even death. Trauma, tragedy, it’s all there. It’s there no matter what our vocational state—suffering is part of all lives.

Sister, it’s easy to let our daily sufferings go to waste, but we ought not to waste them. They are the little thorns handed to us to suffer through, and to suffer through well. We don’t have to look for our crosses. They are right here.

In the Gospel today Jesus tells us to not store up treasures for ourselves on earth . . . for the things of earth are fleeting. We need to seek the things above by detaching ourselves from the things of this life. This might feel too lofty or cerebral, but remember, we have it easy—it’s all right here. Our little discomforts, the desire to be right, to smile when we’d rather not, to give even more when we feel we’ve got nothing left to give. This is how we store up our heavenly treasures, this is how we live a life detached, this is how we become souls who cling to Heaven.

Lord, help me to see all the tiny crosses You offer me each day, and help me to embrace them with all the tenderness that You embraced Yours.