How can I repay the LORD for all the great good done for me?
I was livid. What did she know about me? Or my symptoms? What did she know about a life half spent in bed too weak to move - what it was like to hear the voices and laughter of my husband and children rising up from downstairs, living their lives without me?
In particular, what did she know about the spasticity also known as clonus that grabbed ahold of me without warning and took ownership over my arms and legs so that they jumped and danced wildly or, well, spastically?
What did she know about me at all? I was furious.
I never blamed God for multiple sclerosis. I accepted that suffering was a part of life. I offered my suffering to the Lord, uniting it with the suffering of Jesus. But the idea of thanking and praising Him for it was unacceptable, really unbearable to me.
And then one afternoon, as I was lying in bed, the clonus took over my legs. They began shuddering and jerking. I tried shouting it away. That was the solution my husband and I had come up with. Shouting to it out loud, “Get out! I’m stronger than you! I will defeat you!” I yelled curses. Sometimes that strategy actually worked. I attributed that to the whole mind over matter phenomenon. But this particular afternoon, it was useless.
The symptoms did not go away, but something else happened. Something better. It was as if the Lord had entered into my suffering. He took it upon Himself. He took the weight of it upon His shoulders. And He gave me a lighter burden. At that moment, I knew that the fight was not my own. I was not on my own. My Savior would battle for me.
From that day, to this, words of praise and thanksgiving come easily to me I am so grateful to the Lord.
This has been the cry of my heart for a very long time. The question seems unanswerable. Everything, everything comes from God – how can we possibly repay Him?
Ana María García is a Catholic lay evangelist representing Good News International. She proclaims the Gospel and witnesses to the healing power of God’s love and mercy. Ana María is the mother of three children, grandmother of four, and a parishioner of the Church of St. Luke in Toms River.