“My plan for you is not the one you have created and entertained in your mind. 

My plan for you is the one that is unfolding day after day in all the humiliations and apparent failure to achieve great things that make up this phase of your life. Accept your weaknesses, and then offer them to Me; offer them to Me through My Mother. Every weakness entrusted to My Mother becomes an occasion of grace and an outpouring of My merciful love into the soul that suffers it.” (Inspiration from in Sinu Jesu)

Betty: Your ego is dominating you. St. Paul said, “The old man has to die.” That part has to yield to God’s will. If not, that’s where depression comes. The desire to be in God’s will is important. God will need to use different ways to help us yield our will to His. There are different calls for different people. Fr. John Brown said, “We’re called to be one with Christ. So, we’re all called in some way to have a crucifixion. But we really have to make a decision. The temptation is to live in the past or the future. Those people who live in the past or the future are being crucified, but they’re not being crucified with Christ. They’re really suffering more. They’re not living the life of faith, and they aren’t living with Christ who is in the Eternal Now. Those living in the future have tremendous anxiety. The Lord says anxiety is offensive to Him. He wants us to live in the now. 

You seem to be choosing to be crucified with the thieves. Living in the past and the future is a thief. But living in the now and allowing faith, hope and love to take care of the past and the future–that’s really what we’re called to. When we allow ourselves to go into the past or future, God isn’t there. We are just literally throwing time away. God has no past or future. It’s the torture chamber of Satan. It gives him permission to beat up on us, because by our own free will, we’re going there. 

Since “Perfect Love casts out fear,” (1 John 4:18)  if you have fear and anxiety, you know you’re not in the present. Fear is part of Satan’s tools in his workshop. I’m more and more learning not to go there. That could be part why I have more peace. Faith is saying, “God you’re here. So, I have to trust that whatever is happening is for my good. Help me be obedient and follow you, so I don’t wander back into anxiety and fear.” That’s a perfectly good prayer. It’s a prayer I think God cannot refuse.