A couple weeks ago, one of my nieces got married in Idaho. It was a long trip from Pennsylvania to the airport in Spokane, WA and then the hour and a half drive to my brother’s town. What a beautiful town it was with a large, glistening lake surrounded by mountains. Even the sound of the many long freight trains traveling through town day and night with their distant horns blowing was soothing to my tired spirit!
We had been looking forward to my niece’s wedding and to seeing my brother, sister-in-law and their family of six for months! I wouldn’t even let myself get too excited or talk much about the trip just in case it didn’t happen for some reason (the ol’ Irish optimism). Well, a week before the trip, I had what I thought were mosquito bites on one arm that then became full blown poison ivy as the day approached for departure for our trip. The day we flew out, the poison ivy started to spread even more and I wrapped what I could in gauze for the traveling. Well, to make a short story of it, I was in agony with the itching throughout the trip and tried every possible cream, spray, soap, essential oil, as well as the steroids I was given by the doctor right before I left, to try to ease the itching and calm the spreading wildfire of a rash. All week long there were family events, the wedding, and being out and about all day and evening so I lathered up every chance I had in between events. I tried to brave it out as long as possible between these moments of very temporary relief until I felt like I was going to rip my skin off again from the itching.
Fast forward a week (including having our flight cancelled and changed to an overnighter to return to Philadelphia) and the poison ivy was a full-blown mess from keeping it covered in gauze (to not gross anyone else out). We landed in the morning, dropped my mom and our luggage off at home and went directly to Urgent Care. I’m happy to say, a week later, the poison ivy is very much on the mend and I finally can sleep and function like a normal human being again.
Why do I share this story? Well, it was so agonizing for me and so “poorly” timed, in my mind, that I’ve been meditating on what could possibly be God’s message to me in all of this. For sure, I offered it for a ton of intentions, including the Holy Souls in Purgatory, and I hope many received some relief, but I felt there had to be some message in it all. While I was writing back to a friend of mine in Poland this morning, it came to me. I was telling her how after all of the suffering during the trip, yet wonderful visit with family, it felt like a reset for me, like a new lease on life. The suffering has eased, God gave me the graces I needed to make it through the trip and a great peace from seeing my family, especially the little ones. And being in a place of such glorious beauty helped to erase the exhaustion and stress of life before the trip and put life back into perspective.
I concluded to my friend “I hope I keep the peace from all that happened but, if I forget, I have the scars on my arms that will remind me.”
And if we forget how much we are loved, we still have Jesus' scars to remind us too.
God works all things for good for those who love God ... Rom 8:28