What's Your Cross?

It's been a rough week. My husband had knee replacement surgery on Monday and has been dealing with the the pain and swelling associated with it. Hospital stays are always uncomfortable and exhausting with nurses and techs coming in round the clock to check vitals, give medicine, etc. Neither of us got much sleep and came home yesterday pretty exhausted.

Our oldest came to help out, along with four of her five daughters. Besides offering practical help and a third set of ears at the hospital, her cheerful disposition and the chirpy conversations of her girls was a delightful distraction.

Another daughter came over with goodies yesterday and greeted us as we returned from the hospital bearing Whoppers for Dad and Almond Joys for Mom. Dad is well stocked in Whoppers now since the oldest also brought his favorite candy. Plenty to share. We expect our next medical crisis to be an astronomical sugar high.

It's worth it! What a gift to have loved ones to help carry a cross!

In fact, our experience this week got me thinking about crosses.

 There are so many different kinds.

Physical crosses are often easy to see like my husband's current situation. When you're using a walker and limping your cross is hard to miss. A quadriplegic in a wheel chair, someone with a missing limb or an obvious disfigurement: those are crosses everyone sees. But many physical crosses are invisible to those around us. Cancer hides, often until it's so far advanced the sufferer is near death. Auto-immune diseases don't always advertise.

I remember seeing a video by Randy Pausch called The Last Lecture. It's a traditional lecture that hypothetically addresses what a professor would say if he knew it was his last lecture. Only for Pausch who had terminal pancreatic cancer it really was his last. Only he looked the picture of health and at the beginning of his talk dropped to the floor to do pushups.  Just months away from death the only reason people knew about his cross, was he shared about it. And the reason he shared was to leave a legacy of hope for his three small children.



Mental crosses can be easy to spot.  A psychosis is pretty obvious. But they can also be impossible to see. Severe depression can hide behind a smile. Sometimes mental crosses only become apparent when a crisis occurs.  How many people with mental health problems are invisible? And their suffering, their cross, is every bit as real and sometimes even more painful and debilitating than a physical ailment.

And how many in our culture are struggling with painful emotional crosses: hurts from the past or present, fears of the future, memories of broken relationships, the cross of their own characters and personalities?

Many in our narcissistic society carry a cross of out-of-control feelings they've never learned to control. You can almost watch them pound more logs onto their crosses making them even heavier while they look around to see if anyone notices. "Please see my pain!"

Wallowing in self pity, singing funeral dirges to yourself, and constantly filling your mind with negative memories, imaginings, grudges, etc. just makes your crosses all the harder to bear. I'm a melancholic with a tendency to remember only bad things. That's part of my cross and my challenge is to make a positive choice to shift from those negative memories to happier ones -- or to pray the St. Michael prayer for help!

We all have multiple crosses. Some are made of toothpicks and straws. Some are made of hardwood and lead. My sister used to talk about being crucified by thumbtack. That's a very graphic image for a reality many of us experience.

The worst cross I can think of is one you carry alone with no one to help.

We don't have to worry about that this week. My husband has had multiple phone calls from our children and other family members and friends. Prayers and good wishes fill my Facebook page and both our email accounts.

What a blessing when Simon helped Jesus to carry the cross. What a blessing when others help us to carry ours!

And what a blessed paradox it is to think that when we help others carry their crosses our own seem to get a little lighter. In fact, that was advice Fulton Sheen once gave to a woman complaining about being depressed. He sent her on a mission to help others. It helped.

What's your cross?

Do you have anyone to help you carry it?

Do you have the courage to ask for help if you don't?

When someone is rude or cuts you off in traffic or seems to go out of the way to be mean and insulting, do you ever wonder what's going on in his or her life? None of us can read another's heart or know the weight of their crosses. Do we cut people any slack?

St. Francis de Sales, a wise spiritual director, says that we should always put the worst construction on our own actions and the best construction on the actions of others. Wow! It's not an easy directive as I can personally testify from my own experience.

And there's another thought that I got from reading a book by Simon Tugwell years ago (I can't remember the title.) who says part of the cross we have to bear is the realization that we carry it so badly. Amen!

That is indeed a sad truth and one that is sure to keep us humble if we reflect on it seriously.

May we all learn to pick up our cross cheerfully each day and bear it with a smile. As Fr. John Hardon often reminded us, the muscles around our mouth are voluntary. No matter how we feel on the inside, we can make a choice to brighten another's day with a cheerful smile.