March 24, 2025
The pain is excruciating and capturing. All I can do is sob and wail and beg God for relief. God please take care of me. All verbal understanding goes out the window. All understanding of the spiritual benefit of bearing this cross becomes irrelevant in that agony. Because that understanding has not fully penetrated my soul. I wouldn’t have known that but for this trial.
I somehow know that this begging is my completely raw honesty, the wailing is the most humble expression, and that is what I have to offer now. I can’t do anything other than this right now. Even to articulate this is putting something artificial on top of what happened in those moments of utter simplicity before God.
It was a “terrible blessing.” I have images of how martyrs suffered, their union with God saving them from an experience of total hell, the light of God infusing them in every moment. My experience isn’t exactly like that. I feel that in those absolute worst sufferings I am not able to glorify the will of God as I wish I could, but only beseech God for relief, like a beggar. Yet there is more nuance there. Not to analyze it, but in the experience itself was a kind of surrender to a naturalness beyond the usual prayers and remedies.
May it Be Blessed: An Orthodox journal 