Surrender

Meg Herriot found a moment of healing during the Sacrament of Confession—in a way neither she nor her confessor expected.

I went to go to Confession the other day and no sooner had I started (don't worry, I'm not going to share the juicy tidbits) when the question of why I have one child came up.

Now, I know what priest I chose to go to. He is a holy man, and he is a man who adores large families (which I currently don't have). I tried to head off this topic by saying, "We have been praying for 10 years; we have been awaiting adoption for 5 years."

The priest tried to be helpful and tried to suggest various resources (which my husband and I already had known about and gone through). He recalled various saints and centers and all sorts of things. I think he was actually in more pain about the situation than I was at that exact moment.

Trying not to forget the list of sins I had come to confess, I headed him off. "What it all comes down to is surrendering our will, and being OK knowing that God's will may be different from ours."

The old priest paused and said, "Yep, that's about it."

It was touching how much this wise and holy man wanted to help and it was probably refreshing that those words actually came out of my mouth (because that's a hard pill to swallow).

Click to tweet:
What it all comes down to is surrendering our will, and being OK knowing that God's will may be different from ours. #catholicmom

May the healing sacrament of Confession help us all boil it down to surrender. What a coincidence that this happened on the Feast of St. Therese, the Little Flower, who was perfected in her surrender.

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