The High/Low Effect

What is it? What is it that has us swinging from an extended period of joy to an unannounced interference of lostness? Lostness being the period that people of faith often find themselves in during their journeys of hope towards eternity. I have recently found myself in this state of lostness. It is distressing. You reflect, but it is hard to identify when the feeling hits or where it has stemmed from. But this can be good for me. Life is filled with highs and lows...peaks and valleys...it waxes and it wanes. At the peaks we can see such prospect and potential, the future to be grasped, but in the valleys we are reminded of just how small and dependent we really are. We need the Lord. When we are living in the heights, this fact is known, but it is irrefutably apparent when we are feeling at our lowest.

However, I have found that this moment of lostness has come at the most opportune time: During the week of Our Lord's Passion. Much can be learned from His example. A friend, in whom I often confide, pointed out to me this week a reading from the Liturgy of the Hours. It spoke of how, in life, we may have an experience of "death" in which an old part of our lives passes and we begin anew. This death brings with it a necessary pause where we must turn and go in the opposite direction we came, leaving the death behind and running fully towards newness. As my friend suggested, I may be at that pause. In the Lord's Passion, he went into the tomb, and before His Resurrection...he paused. On the third day, he came forth, from the tomb, glorious and filled with strength. He came forth new. Even in the depths of life, the Lord does not cease to lead us by example and in love. The night before His Passion, Jesus asked for His cup to pass, but it was not to be. My cup shall not pass until I have died to my self and come forth from the tomb of the past to glorify the Lord by my life.