Additional Columns by Sherry Antonetti: Learning to be Unafraid to Ask The Gift of Courage Coming Home to the Wide Open Door of the Father Loaves and Fishes To Do List for the Day, Every Day Delighting in the Unexpected Immediate Intimacy of Answered Prayers Celebrating the Song of Songs on Saint Valentine's Day Forty Lenten Resolutions

Becoming a Great Story by Sherry Antonetti

Beloved Pope John Paul’s struggle with Parkinson’s made his long reign as head of the Church a better story. He showed the world that the boundaries of his condition had nothing to do with the state of his soul. His humor, his happiness in his faith and his leadership were neither limited by his body’s frailty, nor defined by it. What transformed his suffering was how little it impacted his faith or his willingness to go on living, go on serving, even when the rest of the world felt confident in making allowances if he wanted to step aside for a more youthful man. It made a great story a holy and profound one.

Likewise, Mother Teresa’s decision to pick up the leper and then continue to do so over and over again, to become a tireless servant, indeed, slave to Christ via her service to the poor and devotion to the Eucharist, made a good and inspiring story, a great one. Her journal detailing the purgatory of silence in her faith life that did not cause her to cease either her prayer or her service, revealed the depth of her trust in Christ. She held on through the darkness of her faith to the one thing, Christ, that gave the whole story meaning.

“Once upon a time, they lived happily ever after. The End.”

Not a very exciting story is it? There was no blood, sweat or tears, no sacrifice, just beginning and end. I bring these two modern examples up because they remind us that we are called to be the actors in great stories of faith, and that such stories will involve struggle and in some cases, sacrifice, loss, pain, doubt, fear and the unknown.

One of the biggest questions out there is what meaning is there in suffering? Why does a loving God allow it?

When one is in the midst of a tragedy, the knowledge that our God loves us beyond all telling does not always satisify our need to ask “Why?” God wants us to come to Him freely. God wants us to be examples, great stories to the world.

God could have waved his hand and with a mere word or thought, expunged our sins and placed us back in the garden each time we failed to follow God’s plan. As any parent knows, children have a tough time with obedience if there aren’t real consequences for wrong actions. We would be constantly in a state of do over with no real motivation to become loving actors for God if our whole being was constantly rewritten whenever we acted freely against our Creator. God has not rewritten us. He has allowed us to be as we are, fallen. We are, ergo, we sin. Fortunately, God loves us as we do our children, and forgives us. Even more fortunately, He does also require we seek to sin no more. We do not get to happily ever after, to heaven, without work.

We will have to decide when we are afraid to go forward, to go forward anyway. We will have to choose to keep putting one foot in front of the other. We will follow the path of the many holy men and women like Pope John Paul and Mother Teresa that have walked before us, to imitate Mary and say “Yes.” to all that God’s plans may entail..

It will make a better story. It will make for a great lived life. It will not be easy, but it will end with restful hearts at the great wedding feast in Heaven, happily ever after.

Sherry Antonetti is a mother of eight children and a freelance writer of humor and family life columns with prior publications in Absolutewrite, the Catholic Standard, Beaumont Enterprise and the Washington Post. She can be reached at Smwbmpfjm@netzero.com. You can read additional pieces from her blog, http://sherryantonettiwrites.blogspot.com.