Reflecting on Splinters from the Cross

Be careful what you pray for. God has a sense of humor. (How else could we have one?) He often illustrates it when answering prayer. Once when I was praying for patience, I had two quick opportunities to practice it. The first was when I lodged a spoon in the garbage disposal so tightly it was impossible to get out. I ended up calling a repairman. It was a bit mortifying, so God clearly was using humiliation to magnify the lesson. Then I backed into the fencepost in our driveway which not only invited me to practice patience, but my poor husband as well who had to fix it. I stopped praying for patience.

Recently I was reading St. Louis de Montfort’s Letter to Friends of the Cross. It is jam-packed with admonitions and advice on embracing the cross in order to grow in the spiritual life. The same day I uploaded the post my husband and I went to visit my sister in a nursing home an hour and half away in Frederick, MD. Usually I check the route, but neglected to do so that day. We got to Harpers Ferry and, lo and behold, the road was closed. Apparently, they were working on the bridge crossing the Shenandoah. We had to backtrack for half an hour to take a different route. Just a tiny splinter from the cross. It gave us another half hour of conversation with my husband and time to pray a rosary before we got to the nursing home.