I tend to enter into the school year on fire with the Lord. I am stress-free and unbothered. I laugh at what the future holds because I know it is in his hands, but as the work piles up and the events of the year become more demanding, that fire seems to die out little by little.
I’ve suffered with desolation for most of my faith journey, and during the first part of the fall semester, it seemed to worsen. The Lord’s voice is drowned out by my constant worries. “I am with you” becomes “You’re alone.” “You are good,” becomes “You are not enough.” “Rest in me” becomes “You’re running out of time,” and eventually, those whispered words of peace go as if they were unsaid.
These periods of spiritual drought, along with the constant torrent of stress, are exhausting, yet it is during these times that I have come to know the Lord better than I have before.
To suffer is to grow closer to the heart of Christ. I don’t know where I heard this, but it never really made sense to me until recently. It always used to seem that suffering would draw me away from my faith. Why would Christ want me to suffer? Why would he allow me to go through this struggle and pain? These questions were left unanswered until last fall.
During that time, I was taking the hardest class of my life. Math has never been my favorite, but pre-calculus wasn’t just something I disliked — it was the thorn in my side. Most nights, I stayed up until midnight finishing homework sets, and most mornings, I would wake up early to try and finish the problems I couldn’t complete the night before.
This class had me in tears. I had never struggled in a class before, and this feeling of not understanding was completely new. I felt worthless and confused. My grades have always been something I define myself by, but since I no longer was the straight A student, I didn’t seem to be worth anything anymore.
This mentality, along with the constant piles of homework in pre-calc and my other classes, weighed heavily on my spiritual life. I no longer cared about what I was worth in God’s eyes because my worth only depended on my academic performance.
Certainly I wasn’t good if I couldn’t even stop myself from breaking down over a math problem. But the Lord revealed that this was anything but true.
After weeks of losing sleep and pushing myself over the edge, I broke down. A big, fat, ugly pile of tears and delirium were all that could be found in my place. My exhaustion had caught up with me, along with the realization that I had pushed the Lord away. After hours of crying in bed, dwelling in my suffering and hurt, I asked God why. Why wasn’t I good enough? Why did you leave me? Why did I have to suffer so much? And it was then that I got the answer.
It was never my suffering. It was his. In every tear I shed, Christ was beside me, wiping them away. Every self-deprecating thought I had hurt him just as much as it hurt me. Every doubt in myself, every insecurity, every little obsolete detail that seemed to make or break who I was, was felt in the same heart that I was supposed to trust in.
I was never alone; I was never abandoned. I strayed away from my shepherd, and the journey back tore me apart. It ripped away what kept me from him, and though it hurt, it left me stronger in my faith and closer to Christ.
High school is not easy. It’s not always fun. It is a time when we forget who we are while at the same time learning who we are meant to be. It is in suffering that we find the truth.
Although we are hurting, we are not broken. Although we are imperfect, we are not invaluable. Remember, we are his as much as he is ours.
Isabel Vacca is a senior at Mena High School. St. Agnes Church in Mena is her home parish.
