Are you in a pit?

Wow! What a weekend! I had the opportunity to attend the St Mark's Passion Retreat - boy was it great!

The theme was getting out of the pit, for more info, check out Fr Anthony Messeh's blog posts this week.  What a great topic to choose! We've all felt down in the ruts in certain times in our life, when everything just going wrong, and it doesn't seem like there is much hope for us - that nothing will change and that we're stuck in the situation we're in.  Everyone has felt that right?

I experienced something else this weekend when I sat with myself in quiet thinking about the 'pit' I was in and how I was to start getting out.  You wanna know what I found out? That I wasn't in a pit - that was my pit.  I was so stuck in one, that I didn't even realize it anymore! After sitting in quiet time and thinking "Man, these talks are great - God help me out of my pit.. Umm, just let me figure out what it is" Has this ever happened to you?

Sometimes we are so deep in, that we completely forgot what it was like to be outside! That was the situation I was in.  I thought I had everything in control, nothing was majorly wrong in my life, I could handle the small struggles that I was going through, and that I should just focus on helping others get out of their pit - wrong! What was I thinking? After speaking to a few other people, I found that I wasn't alone in this boat.  Many others have so casually 'decorated' their pit and not been able to recognize it from the outside.  "We were created to live in a palace, not a pit," Fr Anthony urged.  I don't want to forget what the palace was like! My pit was that I was in control of everything. My life wasn't in such a mess or anything, that I thought I could handle it on my own - and I think that is worse than any other pit out there.  The moment I thought I didn't need God that much in my life, is the worst feeling in the world.

In Way of the Ascetics by Tito Colliander, he states "To let in fresh air, we have to open a window - achieving hope is no different.. However weighed down and tangled in earthly fetters you might be, it can never be too late. Not without reason is it written that Abraham was 75 when he set forth, and the laborer who comes in the eleventh hour gets the same wages as the one who comes in the first."

Never lose hope! God tells us that the only unforgivable sin is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit - and thinking that we are too 'gone' that the Holy Spirit can't save us any more, is that sin. Are you with me? Most pits we get in, we feel that God has abandoned us. In mine, I had abandoned God - and yet, His love is so great that He will run to us no matter what..

I'll finish off with my favorite quote from this past weekend.  "You are a much better person healed than you are if you had been well"