The Gift of Holy Saturday

Have you ever asked yourself what Holy Saturday is all about? We know the gift of Good Friday – that Jesus suffered and died for us so that we can experience forgiveness now and joy with Him in Heaven. And we understand the gift of Easter – that Jesus rose from the dead, and in so doing, conquered death’s hold over us so that we might rise again, too.

So, what is the gift of Holy Saturday?

Imagine what the disciples must have felt like on Saturday. Surely on Friday they were numb and couldn’t believe what had happened. But Saturday came and they had to admit Jesus had died. All their hopes for a better life must have died with Him. Jesus—who was so charismatic, so good, so filled with potential, who was going to lead them into a new kingdom—had agonized and then breathed His last on the cross.

Think of the women who followed Him and hadn’t been able to embalm His body on Friday. Now on Saturday they were not allowed to do so because of the Sabbath. So, they were left with no way to show Him their devotion, no opportunity to pay tribute to His body. No work to distract themselves from their loss.

I’ve been there, haven’t you? When all your hopes have been destroyed and you realize your dreams will not be realized. Perhaps when someone you love has died? It takes time to process your loss. Your mind doesn’t want to accept the pain and pushes it away in denial. We want to blame someone, and often God takes the brunt of our anger. We are where Lazarus’ sister was when she said, “Lord, if you had been here our brother wouldn’t have died!” We are where Jesus was when He said, “Father, why have You abandoned me?”

Yet, at some point in your Holy Saturday experience, you realize a phase of your life is over, and you must bear the loss and go on.

I think the gift of Holy Saturday is that even when we are at our lowest, and everything seems hopeless, and even when we can’t feel God is near, He is. When we are in that dark pit, alone and desolate and frightened, He is there. When we are “going through Hell,” we can know the Son of God has been there, too. There is no depth we can sink to, where He hasn’t been.

Jesus taught us how to make it through the Holy Saturday loss when, though He felt abandoned, He said, “Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit.” He showed us God still exists, even when we can’t feel Him, and we can trust and place ourselves in His hands.

Yes, He could have risen on Saturday morning. Yes, He could give us everything we want right when we want it. But then we wouldn’t be given the gift of being able to say, “God, I can’t feel You here. I can’t understand what has happened. I’d give anything to change it, and I don’t know why You allowed it. Still, I believe in You. I know, even though it doesn’t seem like it right now, You love me. And I know you are all powerful. So even if I can’t have what I want, I trust You that you know what I need, and You want to shower me with goodness.”

It takes time to get to the point of being able to say this and mean it, all while enduring intense pain. But that’s the gift of Saturday, Time. And because we now know that Jesus did rise and our God isn’t dead, the gift of Saturday is Hope. Because of that Saturday and what happened next, we now can trust that a Sunday will come and with it, the resurrection of all that is good.

Now as Lent draws to an end and we prepare to celebrate Easter, this celebration of new life, let’s resolve to choose life.

Choose gratitude, rather than complaints.

Choose simplicity over materialism and complexity.

Choose relaxation and renewal over busyness.

Choose trust, rather than insecurity.

Choose service, rather than meaningless pursuits.

Choose life!

Choose love!

May all your Saturdays of Despair be followed by Sundays of Life! And may your choices lead you to Joy!

Necessary Losses

In her book, Necessary Losses, Judith Viorst discusses the “loves, illusions, dependencies, and impossible expectations that all of us have to give up in order to grow.” Our life, our growth could be seen as a progression of letting go.

She writes:

In the course of our life we leave and are left and let go of much that we love. Losing is the price we pay for living. It is also the source of much of our growth and gain. Making our way from birth to death, we also have to make our way through the pain of giving up and giving up and giving up some portion of what we cherish.

We have to deal with our necessary losses.

We should understand how these losses are linked to our gains.

For in leaving the blurred-boundary bliss of mother-child oneness, we become a conscious, unique and separate self, exchanging the illusion of absolute shelter and absolute safety for the triumphant anxieties of standing alone.

And in bowing to the forbidden and the impossible, we become a moral, responsible, adult self, discovering—within the limitations imposed by necessity—our freedoms and choices.

And in giving up our impossible expectations, we become a lovingly connected self, renouncing ideal visions of perfect friendship, marriage, children, family life for the sweet imperfections of all-too-human relationships.

And in confronting the many losses that are brought by time and death, we become a mourning and adapting self, finding at every stage—until we draw our final breath—opportunities for creative transformations.

There is plenty we must give up in order to grow. For we cannot deeply love anything without becoming vulnerable to loss. And we cannot become separate people, responsible people, connected people, reflective people without some losing and leaving and letting go.

Viorst lists times in our lives when we must let go, followed by what we will gain by doing so:

Childhood’s End – We give up a belief that we can be kept safe and receive instead the freedom and responsibility to make our own choices. We accept reality, and with it accept that we don’t get special treatment, absolute control, compensation for past loss, or perfect companions. We don’t blame our current lives on our childhood.

The Married State – We learn that no person can meet all our expectations all of the time, nor can some expectations ever be met. Our spouse can’t make us be happy, heal all our hurts from the past, or fill all our needs. Those unfulfilled expectations are necessary losses in order to truly love our less-than-perfect spouses.

Letting Children Go – In parenting we fear our imperfect love will harm our children, or we will fail to keep them safe. Facing our fallibility as parents is another of our necessary losses. We must let our children become steadily more independent and let go of them and our dreams for them. It is also through parenting that we accept that some things we wanted from our own parents we will never receive. We learn to give thanks for imperfect connections.

The Loss of Youth – Time will repeatedly force us to relinquish our self image and move on. We travel stages of our adulthood and must move out of times of stability into times of transition. We leave youth and health behind. We lose abilities and strengths. We let go of dreams as we realize we’ll never accomplish them all. Yet we gain experience, inner depth, acceptance of others, patience, and self-control. We move from body preoccupation to body transcendence. We move from identifying ourselves by what we do or who we parent to who we are. We can become an integrated whole, accepting our weaknesses along with our strengths.

The Loss of our Loved Ones – Mourning is the process of adapting to the losses in our lives. We travel through and revisit stages of numbness, denial, intense emotional pain, bargaining, anger, guilt, and idealizing whom or what we lost. But as we find our way through the mourning and learn to let go of our pain, we can come to acceptance.

Accepting our Mortality – By letting go of our pretense that we will live forever, we acknowledge the importance of the present. We live enriched lives, knowing that each day is vital. We make the most of the present to find a way to leave a legacy to the world for the future.

When we are children, we tend to strive to achieve the next level of growth. My granddaughter has just begun to walk and now her day is spent standing up and down, climbing up and down, daring herself to toddle farther, always strengthening newly controlled muscles and determined to achieve even more.

For some reason, as adults, we hold tighter to what we have achieved and need longer periods of stability before and if we progress again. Sometimes we would refuse to progress if the option were given to us. We know God wants us to become the best we can, which means continually growing, improving, and fighting our weaknesses. Yet, we fear the unknown, grow comfortable with the present, and hold tightly to what we treasure. (Wouldn’t it be better if, instead of collecting treasures, we shared ourselves?)

If we are blessed with a long life, we will face many necessary losses. We lose the constant companionship of our children as they grow up and move away. Even grandchildren will eventually be too old to nestle into grandma’s lap. Many of us will lose our spouses, as well as dear friends. We will adjust over and over to new health issues, grieving the loss of pain-free joints and sharp vision or hearing or thinking, while possibly relying on a cane or walker or wheelchair. We may downsize our house, letting go of sentimental attachment to things.

I watched my mother, who worked until she was 86, need to let go of so much in the course of a couple of years. She had to stop driving and soon after that, she moved from her own little house to our guest bedroom and gave up what treasures wouldn’t fit in our van. She left behind a lifetime of Montana friends and familiar places. When later she moved by train from my house to my brother’s home in California, she brought two large suitcases and left the rest behind. And yet, she did all this with grace. She doesn’t even complain now when Covid keeps her homebound, and she can no longer go to church in person.

Life will hurt us, but because of our wounds, we will stretch and grow and be more than we were. Perhaps this process of letting go, if done well, makes room for God.

Being alive means we will suffer loss. But the loss will open us to new possibilities. Jesus lost his life, but by doing so, regained for us the Kingdom of God. He rose to new life so that we will, too. In that life, there will be no loss.

Blessings on you and on your week!

Betty Arrigotti.

Gratitude Attitude & Grandma’s Platitudes

When I first began writing fiction, I was told I didn’t include enough conflict in my stories. As a mother of four, I spent much of my day trying to reduce conflict. Eventually I realized that people identify with a story when the protagonists, through the trouble that comes their way, learn to face their weaknesses and grow enough to overcome their darkest moments and (ta-da!) save the day.

Real life isn’t too different from stories in that respect. It is through our hard times that we develop character. We’d rather not suffer. We’d like to avoid all pain, for ourselves and our loved ones, but we wouldn’t learn and grow without challenges.

In most of my 4 Minutes emails I give information that professionals have researched and advised, but today, I am turning to another kind of expert. Our grandparents have lived through their share of difficult times, and we can learn from their hard-won wisdom. So, I’m falling back on some of Grandma’s platitudes.

As a child when I’d complain, (okay, when I’d whiiiiine) Grandma would remind me, “Be thankful for what you have!” What is the best (and perhaps hardest) thing to do when times are very difficult? Choose a gratitude attitude.

• I may not have as much money as I want, but thank you, God, that I have enough for today. (And enough that I can share with those who have less?)
• I may feel desperately lonely, but thank you, God, for loving me always. (And for all the people who have loved me.)
• I may not be as healthy as I was, but thank you, God, that I can breathe. (If I can do more, like see/hear/walk/move, I am blessed indeed).
• I may be confused about my future, but thank you, God, that I can think. (And pray and analyze and read and make decisions.)
• I may feel stressed to the point of breaking, but thank you, God, that you know and care and want me to rest in you.

“Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

Grandma would also say, “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” This is a little hard to take, especially when you’re the one in crisis and the person quoting it isn’t. Actually, at some point a crisis really might kill us, so this scarcely seems comforting. However, it is true that hard times force us to grow and become tougher than we were when times were easy.

I remember crying on my Grandma’s lap. As she rocked me, she would remind me, “This too shall pass.” Or she might quote one of her favorite prayers: “Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Reinhold Neibuhr (When she learned AA uses this prayer, she was mortified to think someone might suppose she learned it there.)

Along with working to change what we can, she’d say we must “Pray as though everything depends on God and work as though everything depends on you.” Grandma had total faith in God, as well as a work ethic that kept her from waiting for an answer without doing her part. God will help us. Sometimes, rather than taking away our pain, He will give us the inner resources we need to succeed despite the pain. Or He will send us help. Are we trying to get through this time all alone? Reaching out to others may be part of “working as if everything depended on us.” Allowing someone who is not in crisis to help can be a gift to them, for they receive the blessings and joy of service.

It is especially difficult to bring calm to a situation when someone is angry with you, particularly someone you care for deeply. My Grandma used to say, “When people are the hardest to love, is when they need love the most.” (I tried to tell myself this when my daughters were mid-temper tantrum.) My first reaction to someone being angry at me is to be angry in return. Of course, that doesn’t accomplish much. Rather than the very human response of defensiveness, or worse, going on the offense, take a deep breath, say a quick prayer for patience, and then remind yourself how much you love this person. Or if you aren’t feeling very loving at the moment, try to remind yourself how much God loves this person. 

Another way Grandma would counsel me to deal with critical people would be to say, “Consider the source.” She meant, is it really that important what they think? Does their life experience color their opinion? Are they the right people to rely on for judgment?

One thing we can count on—we will be given “opportunities for growth.” Life will be hard and sometimes all we can control is our reaction and our attitude. But therein lies our strength.

The final quote I leave with you is not from Grandma, but rather from God himself:

“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11

Rest in God for 15 seconds. Close your eyes. Breathe in your thanks and breathe out your fears. Then either hug or say a prayer for your grandma!

Blessings on your week.

Betty Arrigotti

PS – Other posts about “Hard Times” can be found at www.BettyArrigotti.com. See the links in the column on the right edge of the home page.

The Top Twelve Things about Life that I’ve Learned from Writing Fiction

Last Saturday, Beta Sigma Phi, the international women’s social, cultural and service organization, invited me to speak at their regional meeting. We had a great time together and I met very impressive women. Here is part of the talk I gave:

1. People need to connect emotionally. A writer, to be successful, needs to connect with her readers through the emotions she creates on the page. We, as women, are usually much more aware of the need to interact emotionally with people, than many men who sadly have been taught to focus on productivity rather than relationships.

2. Everyone needs some creativity in their lives. For me writing is therapeutic. For others it might be painting or singing, drama or woodwork. We adults need to play! By trying our hand at creativity, we discover that we can keep learning and improving as we go. Without play we can become dull and mechanical. And we won’t have the imagination to see what we could be, if we try something new.

 3. You can’t make someone like you, or what you write, or even make them read what you write. My oldest daughter can’t bring herself to read my novels because she’s afraid there will be sex in them. No one wants to connect their mother and sex in the same thought. I may have been a little devious lately when my husband drove our daughter and me to Seattle. I read novel # 3 aloud and she was forced to listen the whole way. I have to admit, she could have put on her headphones and listened to music, but she didn’t. She says she tried the door but the child safety locks were on.

4. We all hate to leave our comfort zones. Novels often open with a glimpse of the ordinary life and its challenges. Then some event or person disrupts that life or causes the hero or heroine to have to leave it behind. Our current life starts looking pretty good to us when it is proposed to us we need to change it in order to accomplish some good.

In my first novel, Hope and a Future, poor Colm, who is terrified of flying, must leave Ireland for a temporary teaching position in Portland. Otherwise he would never meet Marjorie!

We all hate to leave our comfort zones. But if no one did, even when it becomes very uncomfortable, we wouldn’t make this world a better place.

5. We are all on a quest. Our life story is written day-by-day as we work toward becoming the best version of ourselves. So is everyone else’s, so it makes sense to sometimes be the subplot friend who helps accomplish someone else’s goal. You never know, you might even be making progress on your goal at the same time. But despite setbacks and detours, we need to keep making progress toward our goal.

6. We need friends to help us along the way. Think of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter. Or any 70s sitcom, for that matter. Think of your friends. Without friends, the mission would be doomed.

7. We all have flaws that keep us from being the hero we’d like to be, or doing the deeds that we’d like to accomplish. I struggle with introversion and so I don’t reach out to others as much as I wish I did. Some main characters are proud, or distrustful, or lack self-confidence, or courage. They must overcome their flaws to achieve their goals.

In Hope and a Future, my heroine Marjorie lost her husband of 25 years in a car accident. Her guilt over the failings in her marriage keep her from being open to any new love in her life. Her Irish hero-to-be, Colm, has so many phobias that he lives a very limited life, at least until he starts facing his fears one at a time.

Our weaknesses often are what bring us to growth, when we face them and steadily overcome them, or … at least beat them into submission for a time.

Our flaws, on their flip sides, can be also our gifts. One stubborn daughter is also tenacious and has persevered her way into being a successful engineer. One overly quiet, watchful child grew up and turned her deep thoughts into great academic success, and avoided many common pitfalls by observing and avoiding her friends’ mistakes. One daughter as a teen declared she wasn’t going to work too hard for A’s anymore because she was tired of being a Goody Two Shoes. Now as a school counselor, she has a special connection with the type of students who tend to fall through the cracks.

8. Sometimes going home is extremely challenging. Remember fearful Colm from book 1? He is terrified of horses, and grew up on a horse ranch. In the sequel book 2, Where Hope Leads, his father wants him to come home and take over the business. The poor guy must fly back to Ireland but suffers a panic attack, missing his plane. Going home can be an ordeal.

In book 3, When the Vow Breaks, Kay left an abusive father behind when she fled Montana and moved to Spokane. Now her mother and father need her to return to take care of them. She really doesn’t want to go.

But going home can teach us a lot about ourselves. We all need to look back on our childhood with the eyes of an adult, with the advantage of some time and distance between us and what happened in our families. Sometimes, we can mend hearts that were broken and reconnect to people we truly love deep down.

9. Conflict is good. Our struggles help us to grow so we can overcome that main character flaw that keeps us from succeeding. We fight, we fail, we learn from our mistakes and the next time we get closer before we fail again. But each struggle brings us more information and calls out a better self than we were before. Each attempt, whether a success or failure, leads us closer to our goal.

You might say, “That’s fine for a character in fiction. A good story has to have conflict. In fact, one of the most common errors of new writers is being too easy on their characters. As a mom, I spent 25 years of my life trying to limit, solve, resolve or forbid conflict. I’m not sure I’m done yet. My poor characters, on the other hand, are subject to me increasing, enhancing, and in general bringing all sorts of unpleasant conflict into their lives.

Looking back as a mom, I see how the struggles my children had in their young lives taught them lessons that continue to serve them well in life. One daughter has Tourette Syndrome and had to learn interdependence to make it through. She is just as willing to help as to ask for help and, after working as a special education teacher for several years, is now a mother of two and is back at school working toward a Physical Therapy doctorate. Her personal experience with special needs has made her tender heart want to reach out to help those who struggle to meet goals that are easy for others. Conflict is good.

10. We are often drawn to our opposites. In romance writing, the hero and heroine can be so different that they are at first repelled by each other like opposing magnets. In fact, you can predict the end of a romantic comedy by seeing which man and woman dislike each other the most at the beginning. Consider Mary and Matthew in Downton Abbey. Or Pride and Prejudice’s Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy. Somewhere along the way in most romances, the magnetic field flips and the attraction becomes powerful.

Like good romance heroes and heroines, in real life, we are often drawn to our opposites. I think this is because we are meant to learn from our “soul mates” so that their strengths teach us to overcome our weaknesses. We are meant to learn from each other, but we tend instead to polarize and become more extreme in our strengths and weaknesses. The emotional spouse takes over all feeling while the rational spouse takes care of business. Or the introvert becomes overwhelmed by the extrovert, and rather than learn to enjoy a little more socializing, becomes even more protective of privacy. Perhaps the responsible person watches the fun-loving date become an irresponsible spouse and resents him, rather than learning to lighten up a bit and helping the other grow.

In When the Vow Breaks, independent Kay eloped with compliant Wade on graduation night. When they returned home, peace loving Wade agreed to an annulment to appease his mother, thinking it was only temporary. Heart-broken and angry, Kay fled home planning to never return … but then later found out she was pregnant… with twins. (That’s the cruel writer heaping conflict on her poor characters.) But if Wade had learned some independence from Kay, or Kay some peace keeping from Wade, well… it would have been a much shorter, duller novel. As it is, the novel actually starts 18 years later when their twins have just left home.

11. We need to use what we’ve gained to help others. At the end of any great quest, the heroine should bring back what she learned, or accomplished, or attained, in order to improve the lives of the people she left behind. In The Lord of the Rings the quest brings peace back to the Hobbit’s Shire. Harry Potter, in every book of the series, makes the world a safer place for wizards and muggles alike. In my sequel to the first novel, Where Hope Leads, Marjorie and Colm both want the other to relocate to their homeland. Marjorie hopes Colm will stay in Portland, and he hopes she will fall in love with Ireland. I won’t tell you who wins, but I can assure you that by the end of the book they’ve grown enough to consider the needs of others as important as their own. When they are willing to be open to God’s leading, they find a way to help their version of the Shire.

And finally…

12. We want satisfying endings, and usually in books, though not always, that means happy ones. Daughter 3 once was so upset when a favorite character died, she threw her book in the freezer to punish it. I think we’ve all gotten to the end of a book or a movie and thought, “No, that’s not the right ending!” We feel like we’ve been cheated. We invested hours in reading or $15 at the theater, and we aren’t satisfied. Sometimes I wonder what God thinks as we move away from the direction he wanted us to head. I imagine he might like to throw us into the freezer for a while. Which might explain me growing up through Montana winters!

I suspect that when our time on this earth is over, we will look back and be satisfied with our lives if we’ve done something meaningful, if we’ve improved this world, either by making it more beautiful, or helping others, or by the wonderful children we’ve raised.

So, to sum up, the truths I’ve learned while writing fiction:

• Relationships are deepened through sharing emotion. Don’t be afraid to love, laugh, enjoy, but also to cry, grieve, and let anger inspire you to positive action.
• Expressing creativity sets us apart as human and is necessary for happiness.
• We can’t make people like us. That’s ok. It’s more important to like ourselves.
• No one wants to leave their comfort zone, but wombs get tight, and we can’t grow unless we do.
• Friends make the road seem easier and help us make it through our journey.
• We will all have challenges. They make life interesting, and as difficult and even devastating as they can be, they help us grow.
• We are meant to learn from our loved ones how to grow stronger in our weak spots, not how to avoid growing. If both people continue to grow throughout their journey, the travel is sweet indeed.
• We each have a quest that only we can achieve. To succeed we need to face our flaws and fears and grow through them.
• Then we need to bring back what we learned for the good of others—
• So that we can have a satisfying ending.

Wishing you all successful quests and meaningful lives.

Recognizing Relationship Danger Signals

Last week we discussed differentiating true fear from anxiety and worry. Sadly, sometimes people get so used to true fear that they ignore it. In The Gift of Fear, author Gavin de Becker writes, “People who ignore their intuition, their mind and body’s warnings of danger, either through self-doubt or groomed desensitization, can find themselves in very imminent risk of harm or death.”

You may know people in difficult relationships or be in one yourself, and with de Becker’s permission to quote directly, I include his list of pre-incident indicators associated with spousal violence or murders. Perhaps it will help you to help yourself (or someone you love) recognize an unsafe situation, take control of your life, and leave safely. Or maybe a controlling person may recognize himself and seek help before it is too late. (Note that sometimes the genders in these warnings can be reversed.)

“The signals won’t all be present in every case, but if a situation has several of these signals, there is reason for concern.”

1. The woman has intuitive feelings that she is at risk.
2. At the inception of the relationship, the man accelerated the pace, prematurely placing on the agenda such things as commitment, living together, and marriage.
3. He resolves conflict with intimidation, bullying, and violence.
4. He is verbally abusive.
5. He uses threats and intimidation as instruments of control or abuse. This includes threats to harm physically, to defame, to embarrass, to restrict freedom, to disclose secrets, to cut off support, to abandon, and to commit suicide.
6. He breaks or strikes things in anger. He uses symbolic violence (tearing a wedding photo, marring a face in a photo, etc.)
7. He has battered in prior relationships.
8. He uses alcohol or drugs with adverse effects (memory loss, hostility, cruelty).
9. He cites alcohol or drugs as an excuse or explanation for hostile or violent conduct. (“That was the booze talking, not me; I got so drunk I was crazy.”)
10. His history includes police encounters for behavioral offenses (threats, stalking, assault, battery.)
11. There has been more than one incident of violent behavior (including vandalism, breaking things, throwing things.)
12. He uses money to control the activities, purchases, and behavior of his wife/partner.
13. He becomes jealous of anyone or anything that takes her time away from the relationship; he keeps her on a “tight leash,” requires her to account for her time.
14. He refuses to accept rejection.
15. He expects the relationship to go on forever, perhaps using phrases like “together for life, “always,” or “no matter what.”
16. He projects extreme emotions onto others (hate, love, jealousy, commitment) even when there is no evidence that would lead a reasonable person to perceive them.
17. He minimizes incidents of abuse.
18. He spends a disproportionate amount of time talking about his wife/partner and derives much of his identity from being her husband, lover, etc.
19. He tries to enlist his wife’s friends or relatives in a campaign to keep or recover the relationship.
20. He has inappropriately surveilled or followed his wife/partner.
21. He believes others are out to get him. He believes that those around his wife/partner dislike him and encourage her to leave him.
22. He resists change and is described as inflexible, unwilling to compromise.
23. He identifies with or compares himself to violent people in films, news stories, fiction or history. He characterizes the violence of others as justified.
24. He suffers mood swings or is sullen, angry, or depressed.
25. He consistently blames others for problems of his own making; he refuses to take responsibility for the results of his actions.
26. He refers to weapons as instruments of power, control, or revenge.
27. Weapons are a substantial part of his persona; he has a gun or he talks about, jokes about, reads about, or collects weapons.
28. He uses “male privilege” as a justification for his conduct (treats her like a servant, makes all the big decisions, acts like the “master of the house.”)
29. He experienced or witnessed violence as a child.
30. His wife/partner fears he will injure or kill her. She has discussed this with others or has made plans to be carried out in the event of her death (e.g., designating someone to care for children.)

“With this list and all you know about intuition and prediction, you can now help prevent America’s most predictable murders. Literally. Refer the woman to a battered women’s shelter, if for nothing else than to speak to someone who knows about what she is facing, in her life and in herself. Refer the man to a battered women’s shelter; they will be able to suggest programs for him. When there is violence, report it to police.”

One may ask why a person has stayed in an abusive relationship. De Becker writes:

“Being struck and forced not to resist is a particularly damaging form of abuse because it trains out of the victim the instinctive reaction to protect the self. To override the most natural and central instinct, a person must come to believe that he or she is not worth protecting. Being beaten by a “loved one” sets up a conflict between two instincts that should never compete: the instinct to stay in a secure environment (the family) and the instinct to flee a dangerous environment. […] The instinct to stay prevails in the absence of concrete options on the other side.”

Sometimes people who won’t leave for themselves can be convinced to leave for their children’s sake. However, leaving must be done carefully and with advanced planning, if at all possible, because women are most in danger while, or right after, trying to leave. Women’s shelters can give the best advice.

Violence in relationships is widespread. In today’s Oregonian, Amy Wang writes that 20% of teenage girls who date say they have been victims of violence in their relationships. This could be you, your daughter, or granddaughter. Know the signs. Find help.

National Domestic Violence Hotline 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)  or www.thehotline.org

Dating Abuse and Domestic Violence – “loveisrespect” – call 1-866-331-9474 (24/7) or text loveis to 22522

Single Parent Families

Welcome back to our 4 minute focus on building strong families!

One chapter in Building Christian Families by Mitch and Kathy Finley deals particularly with single parent families. If you are, or have been, part of a single parent family you will recognize the truth in what they write. If you are blessed to be part of a two-parent family, please read this anyway in order to build empathy for the special challenges you have been spared and perhaps to consider helping struggling families.

The single parent family is a true family and a legitimate form of home-church. Let’s follow the example we see throughout the Bible as God shows a soft spot in his heart for “widows and orphans,” or any family who needs extra consideration.

We all have our limits, and it’s only realistic to accept them. However, single parent families have special challenges we should be sensitive to:

• Both parent and children have gone through painful disruptions, whether because of abandonment, divorce, or death. Sources of income must be developed, a move to a new house or apartment may be necessary, and children might need to attend different schools. The grieving process may continue for many months, or even years.
• Parent-child relationships must be redesigned. A non-custodial parent may struggle to pay child support, worry about religious upbringing, have more time to be depressed, or feel acute loneliness.
• While couple parent families sometimes deal with the temptation to leave the main responsibility for parenting to the other spouse, the custodial single parent responds to the demands of children all day long and does it alone.
• Where a widowed parent may be looked upon by the wider community as courageous, others often view the divorced parent with suspicion or judgment. In some worship communities, the single parent who is divorced often feels shunned, ignored, even subtly ostracized. Yet divorced single parents have a deep desire to belong, to be a part of their church community.
• Single parents worry that their children will never have witnessed a normal man/woman, husband/wife loving relationship.
• Single parents must often deal with two particular temptations: the temptation to self-pity and to resentment.
• Many single parent families experience degrees of fear and anxiety that the typical couple-parent family does not usually know with such intensity. Financial anxieties may head the list, but a vague, undefined fear of what the future may bring is not far behind. The single parent is unable to share these fears and anxieties with another intimately known adult. She or he lives with these feelings constantly, so the fear tends to compound itself.
• In the two parent family, it is crucial for spouses to spend time regularly on themselves and on their friendship as a couple. It is equally important for the single parent to carve out of the week a few hours for leisure and, now and then, for prayerful reflection.
• The single parent often finds it necessary to struggle against the tendency to become isolated. Single parents have a need for sympathetic friends and for warm relationships with two-parent families. Single parents often need little more than a sympathetic listener, and they can frequently find this by forming friendships with other single parents and hopefully, by membership in church groups.

On the other hand, single parents may have some advantages over couple parents.

• They build strength as survivors, even though both parent and children have known much anguish.
• Children of single parent families are sometimes more mature than many of their peers from two-parent families. They have, of necessity, been trusted with significant responsibilities at home.
• Single parents may be more free to lead their children in their chosen faith life. In two-parent families, value conflicts which relate to the spiritual life of the family sometimes develop between husband and wife.

Single parents are like all parents:

• No parent or set of parents can give children everything they should ideally have.
• Most parents today often feel guilty about not spending enough quality time with their kids.
• All families know insecurity.
• All parents are called to conversion of heart and life, to trust God above all, to turn away from fear and anxiety as motives for action, to love God and others as the source of life’s meaning and purpose. Parents are called to do this even in the midst of meaninglessness and the temptation to despair. This is true faith, in the real world.
• All parents need other parents to simply commiserate with, to talk to and share their burdens and joys. We should never underestimate the value of honest talking and listening among peers, for it is a terrifically valuable service that all church communities should offer to parents.

Finleys remind us that a basic principle for all parents’ spirituality is to “keep on keeping on.” May God help all of us, married and single to persevere in our effort to parent well.

What is Holy Saturday all about?

Have you ever asked yourself what Holy Saturday is all about? We know the gift of Good Friday – that Jesus suffered and died for us so that we can experience forgiveness now and joy with Him in Heaven. And we understand the gift of Easter – that Jesus rose from the dead, and so doing, conquered death’s hold over us so that we might rise again, too.

So what is the gift of Holy Saturday?

Imagine what the disciples must have felt like on Saturday. Surely on Friday they were numb and couldn’t believe what had happened. But Saturday came and they had to admit Jesus had died. All their hopes for a better life must have died with him. Jesus—who was so charismatic, so good, so filled with potential, who was going to lead them into a new kingdom—had agonized and then breathed his last on the cross.

Think of the women who followed him and hadn’t been able to embalm his body on Friday. Now on Saturday they were not allowed to do so because of the Sabbath. So they were left with no way to show him their devotion, no opportunity to pay tribute to his body. No work to distract themselves from their loss.

I’ve been there, haven’t you? When all your hopes have been destroyed and you realize your dreams will not be realized. Perhaps when someone you love dies? It takes time to process your loss. Your mind doesn’t want to accept the pain and pushes it away in denial. We want to blame someone and often God takes the brunt of our anger. We are where Lazarus’ sister was when she said, “Lord, if you had been here our brother wouldn’t have died!” We are where Jesus was when he said, “Father, why have you abandoned me?”

But at some point in this Saturday experience, you realize a phase of your life is over and you must bear the loss and go on.

I think the gift of Holy Saturday is that even when we are at our lowest, and everything seems hopeless, and even when we can’t feel God is near, he is. When we are in that dark pit, alone and desolate and frightened, he is there. When we are “going through Hell,” we can know the Son of God has been there, too. There is nowhere we can go where he hasn’t been.

Jesus taught us how to make it through the Holy Saturday loss when, though he felt abandoned, he said, “Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit.” He showed us God still exists, even when we can’t feel him, and we can trust and place ourselves in his hands.

Yes, he could have risen on Saturday morning. Yes, he could give us everything we want right when we want it. But then we wouldn’t be given the gift of being able to say, “God, I can’t feel you here. I can’t understand what has happened. I’d give anything to change it and I don’t know why you allowed it. Still, I believe in you. I know, even though it doesn’t seem like it right now, you love me. And I know you are all powerful. So even if I can’t have what I want, I trust you that you know what I need, and you want to shower me with goodness.”

It takes time to get to the point of being able to say this and mean it, all while enduring intense pain. But that’s the gift of Saturday, Time. And because we now know that Jesus did rise and our God isn’t dead, the gift of Saturday is Hope. Because of that Saturday and what happened next we now can trust that a Sunday will come and with it, the resurrection of all that is good.

May all your Saturdays of Despair be followed by Sundays of Life!

Healing After a Miscarriage

Five Steps Toward Healing After a Miscarriage

            “I’m sorry, we can’t find a heartbeat.” I was five months pregnant and the ultrasound technician confirmed my fear; a fourth son or daughter had died before I could cradle the baby in my arms. As I dressed, I heard a doctor talking about the ultrasound patient before me who, upon learning she was expecting twins, had told him she would end the pregnancy.

            In tears, I returned to my doctor who said to expect a spontaneous miscarriage, or—as he called it—abortion, within a few days. When my body continued to embrace its precious treasure, he scheduled me for a TAP, or therapeutic abortion procedure.

            I reeled through the process, so routine for the nurses and doctors who ended pregnancies every day, but so devastating to me. I wanted to proclaim to each of the medical personnel that I was different; I would never choose this course of action if my baby were alive. One kind woman brought me a general surgery consent form so that I wouldn’t have to sign the usual document. The hospital kept me overnight for observation—in the maternity wing.

            Each of my miscarriages was devastating. Each left me with a child-shaped hole in my heart and in my soul. Well-meaning but inadequate comments like, “You can always try again,” or “It must have been God’s will,” gave me no comfort.

            However, today my heart is full and, though still tender, my soul is healed enough to offer suggestions for dealing with miscarriages, whether your own or a loved one’s.

If you have lost a child through miscarriage:

1)      Acknowledge the loss of an individual. Name the child. You will know him or her in heaven.

2)      Mark your loss with a ritual that feels right to you, whether with a formal church service, or a quiet gathering of friends and family at home.

3)      Allow yourself to grieve. Though you didn’t have time to know your child’s face and voice, you knew your hopes and dreams for your child. You anticipated the birth date and carried the child close to your heart. Perhaps you imagined how he would look or what she would grow up to be. Though the details of individuality are still a mystery, God knows and loves your child, and the world suffered a loss when your child died.

4)      Accept that your spouse may experience the loss differently than you. It’s not unusual for one parent to feel much more distress after a miscarriage than the other. With any death, people grieve in different ways. One may want to be alone; another needs to be with loved ones. One person may talk over and over about the loss; another may be made speechless by pain.

5)      Accept that you and your spouse may have mixed feelings, perhaps even relief, about the miscarriage. Parenthood is frightening. You can’t help your feelings, but you can be sensitive to each other.

If someone you know has lost a child through miscarriage:

1)      Acknowledge the loss of an individual. Send a note of sympathy, call, or visit with the bereaved parents.

2)      Let the parents know that you will keep them and their child in prayer. Perhaps you can commemorate the baby’s short life at your next church attendance.

3)      Realize that the grieving parents may not feel the way you expect them to feel. Accept that people grieve differently and that their emotions may fluctuate even hour to hour.

4)      Be sensitive to how difficult it may be for the couple to be around others who are expecting a child or have a new little one. However, continue to include them in invitations to baby showers and christenings, perhaps adding a note to say you understand that this might be difficult for them. Let them decide whether they are ready to accept.

5)      Don’t offer platitudes in an attempt to cheer the couple out of their loss. A simple, “I’m so sorry,” and time spent with them in companionship will let them know you care.

            Today I experience profound gratitude as I watch my four grown daughters, and yes, their births eased the pain, though they didn’t replace the children I lost. Not all women are blessed with motherhood after miscarriages. My heart goes out to them. I know God’s does, too.

            When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. [   ] Jesus wept. (John 11:33,35 NIV)

4 Minutes 4 Hard Times – Trust like Jesus

            Welcome back to 4 Minutes 4 Hard Times. Over the last few weeks we’ve looked at aspects of difficult times: worry, fear, gratitude, necessary losses, and money concerns.

 (1 minute version)

            In this  final Lenten post I’d like to consider Holy Week and what we can learn from studying Jesus as he faced his own “hard times.” We start with his triumphant entry into Jerusalem, riding on a donkey and being hailed as “King of the Jews.” The crowd and the apostles held high expectations for this king, that he would overthrow the Roman conquerors and lead the people to wealth and power. Only a few days later those expectations were crushed, their hope crucified.

            During the final hours before his death, Jesus wept in the garden, pled with his Father to let there be another way, suffered betrayal by a loved one, was wrongly accused, was abandoned by all his followers, and felt forsaken by God. He was stripped, beaten, and humiliated.

             He responded to these challenges with trust when he committed to follow his Father’s will rather than his own, accepted his abuse without retaliation, confirmed his identity, promised redemption to the criminal who testified to his innocence, gave his mother into a friend’s care, forgave us all, and—demonstrating his unending love—commended his spirit into his Father’s hands.

            Let’s look at that final act. He commended himself into his Father’s care. Even while suffering to the point of death, he trusted his Father. Isn’t that the ultimate answer to how we need to respond to difficult times? His trust enabled him to follow, accept, forgive, and love. Placing our trust in God will do the same for us.

             “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

(3 minutes more)

             It all comes down to how we answer some “meaning of life” questions:

•  Do you really believe God loves you, and is in fact Love itself?
•  Do you believe God is all-powerful? (Including able to forgive anything?)
•   Do you trust God?

            If we profess God’s love and power, why don’t we trust him completely, even when things go bad? I think we expect God to keep things going as we want them to go. When our expectations (like the Jerusalem crowd’s) are not met, we are tempted to doubt his love and doubt that he wants what is best for us. We become angry with God. We forget that God knows, better than we do, what is best. When Jerusalem wanted power in this world, Jesus was offering them an heir’s inheritance in the next. When we want health and happiness, he may be helping us grow in depth and holiness.

             God longs for us to trust him. Not a problem in good times. Not so easy when challenges crush our spirits. But he treasures our trust in those times, especially. Much of the Bible (if not all) is written to encourage us to trust in God.

             We read about Abraham’s willingness to trust God, “And he believed the Lord, and God counted it to him as righteousness.” (Genesis 15:6)

             Jeremiah, the prophet, writes, “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.” (Jeremiah 17:7-8)

            David, the psalmist, knew all the rewards that come from trusting God: “In you our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them”. (Psalm 22:4)

 “The Lord is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped; my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him. (Psalm 28:7)

 “Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act.” (Psalm 37:5)

“In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me?” (Psalm 56:4)

            The entire New Testament is an account from Jesus of how much our Heavenly Father loves us and is anxious to forgive us. How even the sparrow doesn’t fall without God knowing and caring. The night Jesus would be betrayed he said to his apostles, “Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me.” (John 14:1) He continued, “I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don’t be troubled or afraid. (John 14:27)

             Jesus knew what was coming and his final words before his arrest were words of comfort for his apostles and for us. He didn’t want us to be troubled by things of this world. He wanted us to trust him and his Father. To trust the way he trusted.

             Even recent saints received messages from God, reminding us to trust in him. The Sunday after Easter is celebrated as the Feast of Divine Mercy. St. Faustina began this special devotion to Jesus’ message, “that His Love and Forgiveness is greater than our sins. All He asks is that we trust in Him, ask for and accept His Mercy, and then let Mercy work through us to help others. He also wants us to be merciful, loving, compassionate, and forgiving to others.”

             Like the gospel command, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful,” this demand that we show mercy to our neighbors “always and everywhere” seems impossible to fulfill. But the Lord assures us that it is possible. “When a soul approaches Me with trust,” He explains, “I fill it with such an abundance of graces that it cannot contain them within itself, but radiates them to other souls.“ (St. Faustina’s Diary, 1074).

             None of us want to hear platitudes when we are troubled. Yet, saying “In God we trust,” is not a cliché. Those words hold the depth of wisdom.

             Trust your troubles to God. Each night give your cares to him. He loves you and will be with you through every evil time. He promised he will cause all things to work together for good, for you who love him.

Blessings on your Holy Week.

Betty Arrigotti

4 Minutes 4 Hard Times – Necessary Losses

Last week I asked if 4 minutes was too long. Response was mixed, so I’ll start with a quick summary and if you want to go deeper, more follows.

 (1 minute version)

 In her book, Necessary Losses, Judith Viorst discusses the “loves, illusions, dependencies, and impossible expectations that all of us have to give up in order to grow.”

Viorst writes,

In the course of our life we leave and are left and let go of much that we love. Losing is the price we pay for living. It is also the source of much of our growth and gain. Making our way from birth to death, we also have to make our way through the pain of giving up and giving up and giving up some portion of what we cherish.

We have to deal with our necessary losses.

We should understand how these losses are linked to our gains.

For in leaving the blurred-boundary bliss of mother-child oneness, we become a conscious, unique and separate self, exchanging the illusion of absolute shelter and absolute safety for the triumphant anxieties of standing alone.

And in bowing to the forbidden and the impossible, we become a moral, responsible, adult self, discovering—within the limitations imposed by necessity—our freedoms and choices.

And in giving up our impossible expectations, we become a lovingly connected self, renouncing ideal visions of perfect friendship, marriage, children, family life for the sweet imperfections of all-too-human relationships.

And in confronting the many losses that are brought by time and death, we become a mourning and adapting self, finding at every stage—until we draw our final breath—opportunities for creative transformations.

(3 more minutes)

There is plenty we have to give up in order to grow. For we cannot deeply love anything without becoming vulnerable to loss. And we cannot become separate people, responsible people, connected people, reflective people without some losing and leaving and letting go.

So there we have it. Times in our lives will hurt us. But because of that hurt we will stretch and grow and be more than we were. Like my Grandma used to say as she rocked me, “This too shall pass.”

We might regain what we lost, but more likely we will grieve and hurt and then learn something along the way. We will deepen our character. The more we grow, the greater our peace and happiness can be in this life, as well as in the next.

Here are some times in our lives when we must let go, followed by what we will gain by doing so:

Childhood’s End –

Saint-Exupery writes, “To be a man, a woman, an adult is to accept responsibility.” We make and keep commitments. We don’t blame our current lives on our childhood. We give up a belief that we can be kept safe and receive instead the freedom and responsibility to make our own choices. We accept reality, and with it accept that we don’t get special treatment, absolute control, compensation for past loss, or perfect companions.

The Married State –

We learn that no person can meet all our expectations all of the time, nor can some expectations ever be met. Our spouse can’t make us be happy, heal all our hurts from the past, or fill all our needs. Those unfulfilled expectations are necessary losses in order to truly love our less-than-perfect spouses.

Letting Children Go –

In parenting we fear our imperfect love will harm our children, or we will fail to keep them safe. Facing our fallibility as parents is another of our necessary losses. We must let our children become steadily more independent and let go of them and our dreams for them. It is also through parenting that we accept that some things we wanted from our own parents we will never receive. We learn to give thanks for imperfect connections.

The Loss of Youth –

Time will repeatedly force us to relinquish our self image and move on. We travel stages of our adulthood and must move out of times of stability into times of transition. We leave youth and health behind. We lose abilities and strengths. We let go of dreams as we realize we’ll never accomplish them all. Yet we gain experience, inner depth, acceptance of others, patience, and self-control. We move from body preoccupation to body transcendence. We move from identifying ourselves by what we do or whom we parent to who we are. We can become an integrated whole, accepting our weaknesses along with our strengths.

The Loss of our Loved Ones –

Mourning is the process of adapting to the losses in our lives. We travel through and revisit stages of numbness, denial, intense emotional pain, bargaining, anger, guilt, and idealizing whom or what we lost. But as we find our way through the mourning and learn to let go of our pain, we can come to acceptance.

Accepting our Mortality –

By letting go of our pretense that we will live forever, we acknowledge the importance of the present. We live enriched lives, knowing that each day is vital. We make the most of the present to find a way to leave a legacy to the world for the future.

 So yes, being alive means we will suffer loss. But the loss will open us to new possibilities. Jesus lost his life, but by doing so, regained for us the Kingdom of God. He rose to new life so that we will, too. In that life, there will be no loss.

Blessings on you and on your week!

Betty Arrigotti

To read more:

Viorst, Judith (1998). Necessary Losses. Simon & Schuster.