Jesus calls us to Take Up Your Cross and follow Him. People have thought of this in different ways.
There is a concept called Throwness. It is meant to describe the situations we are born into to: Where do we live, who are our parents, how. Intelligent are we, what are our opportunities, are we male or female, tal” or short, etc. Some of these things make life easier. Some of the make life more difficult.
As life progresses things happen to us. The proverbial cards we are dealt”
Perhaps we think our cross to bear is a difficult person.
I had a parishioner who was elderly, weak, and in ill health. She had within the past few years lost her husband and eldest son. She told me about all this on our first meeting. When we were sharing home communion I asked if she would like to offer her own prayers they were all Thanksgivings!
My late wife Lily, pictured on the left as Flower the Clown worked very diligently to be a positive person I spite of suffering with Muscular Dystrophy, Scleroderma, Reynard’s syndrome, and Migraines. I discovered after her death a stack of cards with positive sayings. My favorite says “The worse you feel the better you dress.
The man on the right was born with arms. He Learned to play guitar with his feet.
There is an old story about a on on pilgrimage. He carried across with him on the way. When he reached a resting place, he placed his cross among those of others, who had reached the point ahead of him. The next morning he was the first one up when he went out to get his cross he thought he might try one of the other ones he picked it up intern, but none of them felt comfortable to carry. Finally he found one that fit just right it was his.
While dealing with Lillys illness, we eventually decided that it was no good to ask the question why? The better question is to ask how. How do we now live given the present situation?
Another aspect of dealing with difficult people is connected to Codependency. It does no good to directly help anyone with addiction, Codependency or drugs or what ever compulsion. The real cross for such people, and for ourselves, is to deal directly with life. That is to face whatever we are using our addictive behavior to avoid. This is the cornerstone of 12 Step Spirituality. We must turn our lives over to God, face our weaknesses and personality regardless of the pain. This too is a cross.
More directly, following the example of Jesus our crosses might be the consequences of following the truth, acting for a righteous cause, sacrificing to carry out a ministry.
