My Grace is Sufficient For You
Sometimes it is too easy to focus more on how I feel and how the world is affecting me that I forget the needs of the people around me. Often I let my emotions overcome my sense of reason and when this happens I unload my confused emotions, and feelings on others without considering their needs or even first turning to God as my refuge. I get tunnel vision on my own problems so easily I forget how to turn to God and how to share His love with others. So I am writing this reminder for myself and anyone else too, to help us know how to turn to God, the source of all peace. “May the LORD give might to his people; may the LORD bless his people with peace!” (Psalm 29:11).
God truly is the source of all peace and He is The Someone we can always count on when we need help seeing ourselves and others with the eyes of love. “God is our refuge and our strength, an ever-present help in distress” (Psalm 46:2).
It is really easy to think that our thoughts and feelings are more important than they really are. When our emotions control how we think, act or how we treat others, we become a slave to the moment and captive to our emotions. But God wants us to live in the freedom of His love and share in the glory of His Divine light. When we turn away from Him and try to do everything by ourselves we fall into the trap of becoming self-centered instead of God-centered and get nowhere real quick because we need His grace to do anything. “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
Because of free will God allows us to be the ones to make the decision to turn towards Him or turn away from Him. “Thus says the LORD of hosts, Return to me… and I will return to you” (Zechariah 1:3).
So how does God help us find peace?
The answer is through grace. God has an overflowing abundance of graces He wants to share with us and it is those graces that can help us begin to find true peace in our hearts and shape us into the best versions of ourselves. This is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says about the power of God’s graces and how our acceptance of His help correlates to the gift of free will:
2002 God’s free initiative demands man’s free response, for God has created man in his image by conferring on him, along with freedom, the power to know him and love him. The soul only enters freely into the communion of love. God immediately touches and directly moves the heart of man. He has placed in man a longing for truth and goodness that only he can satisfy. The promises of “eternal life” respond, beyond all hope, to this desire.
2022 The divine initiative in the work of grace precedes, prepares, and elicits the free response of man. Grace responds to the deepest yearnings of human freedom, calls freedom to cooperate with it, and perfects freedom.
2023 Sanctifying grace is the gratuitous gift of his life that God makes to us; it is infused by the Holy Spirit into the soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it.
Because God’s love is freely given to us, He has also given us the freedom to know and love Him or to choose otherwise. God knows that we need Him to overcome anything, including gaining control of our emotions, so He has given us graces that help us in 3 key ways:
- Grace draws us to God and makes us long for Him even when we don’t know it is He Who our hearts are yearning for. “Grace is nothing else but a certain beginning of glory in us”. — St. Thomas Aquinas
- Grace calls us to want to freely cooperate with the Will of God. “God gives each one of us sufficient grace ever to know His holy will, and to do it fully”. — St. Ignatius of Loyola
- Grace truly frees us to become the best versions of ourselves which then allows us to fully participate in the love of God and share His love with others for His greater glory. “Grace is not a strange, magic substance which is subtly filtered into our souls to act as a kind of spiritual penicillin. Grace is unity, oneness within ourselves, oneness with God”. — Thomas Merton
Grace helps us to know a deeper union with God and better share His love with others so that they can know Him too. Grace has the power to heal our souls, help us turn away from sin and sanctify us. God’s grace is the source of peace.
We all need God’s help and grace to see clearly. When we see our emotions begin to take control of our thoughts it is important to have patience and step away from that conversation or thought or else pride will cause us to throw key virtues out the window like prudence, fortitude, temperance and charity. No point worth being made is part of God’s Will if it means you have to let go of virtues in order to make it. Now and then we all become blinded by our emotions and focus on ourselves instead of God and the needs of others around us. Because of that, we need reminders of healthier options to take in the future.
Try these actions instead:
The very moment you see yourself becoming excessively emotional in a discussion or find yourself venting or unable to slow down and listen to the other person because you are talking too much, I invite you instead to step away from that conversation or event that triggers emotional reactions to give yourself time to cool down and try these actions instead:
1) Walk with the Lord. Seek a clear perspective by physically changing direction by going for a walk outside and getting some fresh air. Walk with God in the silence of your heart and give Him a chance to speak to you. This isn’t only good for your soul, it’s good for your body too! “You have been told, O mortal, what is good, and what the LORD requires of you: Only to do justice and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).
2) Turn to prayer and spend some one on one time with God and let Him be the One you unload onto. You can tell Him anything and He likes to listen to you too! He wants to hear about every aspect of your day and help you transform your storm of emotions into tranquility. “ In their distress they cried to the LORD, who brought them out of their peril; He hushed the storm to silence, the waves of the sea were stilled” (Psalm 107:28–29).
3) Spend time with the Word of God. Sometimes the only thoughts we hear in our minds are our own, so it’s really important to spend time reading the Bible, the Catechism or Catholic articles from sites like Aleteia, or the Catholic New Agency so that we can hear His thoughts and broaden our minds too.
4) Write in a journal all of your feelings and emotions. Just get it all out of you. Especially the ones that you don’t understand, and afterwords put that entry to prayer and ask God to help you in all your struggles and offer up your emotions to His Cross for the holy souls in Purgatory and for the forgiveness of sins.
5) Seek a Catholic mentor, spiritual adviser and/or a therapist to help you navigate through the hard stuff in life. “Iron is sharpened by iron; one person sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17).
6) Make frequent use of the sacraments. Specifically spend time with Jesus in the Eucharist at adoration where you can be in His presence. Go to mass where His body in the Eucharist revives you and make you spiritually stronger when you enter the outside world, and go to confession as often as you can so that because through confession God heals your soul and helps you not fall into future temptations. God gives us the sacraments as tools to help us grow closer to Him and become more like Him, what a vital gift!
While it can become all too easy to get caught up in the “heat of the moment” and think, speak or act in ways that leave you and others feeling drained afterwards, the best news ever is that we have a God Whose very nature is calmness, steadiness, patience and love, and in Him we can find true peace when our thoughts feel like violent storms.
Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me.Then the God of peace will be with you (Philipians 4:6-9)
Always remember that God isn’t asking us to do anything in life on our own and He is there to help us and guide us. He wants us to ask for grace in our daily lives to begin to let go of the burden of emotional stress. He just wants us to have patience with ourselves and others the same way He has patience with us, because nobody is perfect and we all need reminders to ask for His grace. “For grace is given not because we have done good works, but in order that we may be able to do them” -St. Augustine.
Peace be with you brothers and sisters in Christ!
