Additional Columns by Sherry Antonetti: If Today You Hear His Voice Feeling like a World of Sparrows Haiku Prayers The Year of Paul the Apostle The Gifts of Sons Teen Tips for Surviving to Adulthood, Spritually Intact The Luminous Mystery of Marriage, A Primer for All of Us Prayer Spam My Son Peter Meets the Pope Being Spiritually Awake for the Feast Why We Don't Always Get What We Want...And Shouldn't "Cheer, Cheer for Old Notre Dame!" Becoming a Great Story Learning to be Unafraid to Ask The Gift of Courage Coming Home to the Wide Open Door of the Father 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

Asking for the Gift We Do Not Know We Need
by Sherry Antonetti

This past week, I was missing friends keenly. A good one had moved out of state, most were off with their families at the beach and I felt the walls of my own home closing in on me from the August heat and solitude. Seeking to break up the routine, I took some of the kids to mass on Saturday and found myself pleading with God without the slightest clue what I wanted. “Please, please, please, please.” Each prayer feeling more desperate, more alone, more agonized.

Mass ended and a woman I have known for ten years but never been terribly close to, offered me a sheet advertising a retreat in early September. “How are you doing?” she asked. Whether or not she intended, the question caused me to finally crumble. I cried about my stress over the pregnancy, I cried over the health worries of our unborn son Paul, of the logistics in managing my large family, of the pressing needs for a 15 passenger van and all the summer projects that were as of yet incomplete. The colored walls, the scratched and toddler painted dining room table, the need to purchase a new car seat and a crib, the list seemed almost endless to me as she sat next to me while my kids climbed all over the playground, and I hadn’t known all of this was sitting on my heart until she asked, “How are you doing?”

She patted my shoulder and told me how her four year old crazy glued pennies on the coffee table, and that it took several months to remove them all. “Please please please please please” had been answered in the form of this gracious sympathetic mother, who understood how hard it had been to even admit that this was hard. We laughed for a good half hour and promised to get together again. The weight had been lifted. God had known who to place where, so that my please please please prayer, could be answered..
The good news for all of us remains, even if we do not know what sits on our heart, God knows what we need to feel lifted, all that is required, is that we ask.

And one more thing, “Thank you thank you thank you!” Amen.

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.