This is from a spiritual direction with my Aunt Betty awhile back. Her words are in red below. God is continuing to purify me which is a gift. It’s not easy, but well worth it.
There is a part of your inflated ego that is dying in a good sense. The inflated ego is forever in control wanting to be like God. Eve could not let the Lord be her salvation. She had to figure out how she could do it herself.
We have the same temptations. Our inflated ego envisions that God should make us perfect. God has his way of making us perfect. The inflated ego does not like God’s way. Our society puts a lot of time, money, and energy into inflating our egos. The old man has to die for the new man to rise. When on the spiritual walk, the Lord is loving us by helping deflate our egos. Holiness is a deflation of the inflated human ego. The New Age says we heal by our own power. God is saying you recognize your need for me, and that is what is important. When you can want what God wants, that is when you find your joy. Then things are easier to bear. God is calling us beyond the natural.
St. Paul cried out to be delivered from his thorn in the flesh. But, Jesus said, “My grace is sufficient for you. Power is perfected in weakness.” It was St. Paul’s purification process that God was interested in. That’s how we keep close to God. We would try to get rid of the very thing that would sanctify us. We don’t understand holiness, yet we tell God how to do it.
We don’t know who God is. How can we know the individual path to our being washed cleaned? We don’t. We just have to let Him handle the process. What the Lord wants of us He Himself will accomplish in us.
Greater Freedom 
This is so helpful to me. The inflated Ego is very tricky. We try to be humble, but we do anything we can to save ourselves and our family from making mistakes, looking ridiculous, failing, etc. It is such a curse and so hard to break. In our Rosary meeting this morning, we talked about our high school teens, and how much pressure they have to “look good” on paper so that they can get into a “good” college. What’s a “good” college? It’s one with name recognition. It’s so sad that we push our kids to go to certain colleges jUST because they have better name recognition and supposedly better marketing appeal when it comes to landing a job after college. I am questioning this now, and really trying to let go and let my teen decide where to go, based on what fits him. Not what fits me or the world.
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I hear you on that. A “good” college to me is one where they keep their values and character. The thing that helped my family was to pray the “Novena of Surrender to the Divine Will.” That’s what JT prayed, and then God opened the door for him to play football at West Point. We don’t know the path that is best for our children. I never thought I’d have peace with my son going to West Point AND playing football, yet somehow that’s where God wants him. I’m excited to watch your journey with Alexander.
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