2011 Year-end Reflections – Disappointments And Loves Forgone

This is a year of personal awakening, venturing out of my make-belief world into one full of disappointments, inhabited by certain people existing under the guise of progressive liberalism while acting out their relentless passive aggression in petty power trips to benefit their own self-serving interests. Their abundance of envy, bitterness and/or hypocrisy together with their unforgiving nature in life may earn them a place in a Dantean-like inferno upon death, eternally watching the wasting away of their maggot-rejected bodies cheapened by the disdain they continuously and willfully harbored against God’s other children.

While few, if any, are completely selfless, unconditionally loving and free from sin, those with the compunction to self-examine one’s inner cruelty and the heart to exercise a modicum of humility and compassion and pray for God’s grace to grow in His image may one day see their prayer answered. [1]

This is also a year of personal realization, among the many lesser disappointments is one of the greater, regretting my youthful years when I wore a coolly confident exterior, leaving a trail of broken hearts while wallowing in inexplicable depression and coping with intractable anguish from the unfathomable depths of anxiety. For I had not loved well, enough or at all, I am now punished by an unfulfilled desire to know how my life would have been enriched had I lived wisely and learned patiently rather than judging harshly and prematurely. To the extent that I am able to seek redemption through prayer, I have, by asking Mother Mary to protect and love those who had given me the chance to love them. A chance to love is a gift so simple and so pure that I was, and perhaps still am, incapable of comprehending and accepting. While I am sure that Mother Mary’s love and embrace, even for a moment, would make up for a lifetime of mine, I remain regretful, even if I had been forgiven or forgotten. I am also certain that those beautiful souls for whom I yearn are far better off and their earthly lives far more happily lived without me. [2]

Another one of the greater personal disappointments, an on-going one and probably the greatest disappointment of all, is my refusal to answer yes to God’s calling because I am afraid of my certain failure to meet such high expectations. Instead, I have chosen not to fail by not trying at all, which in itself is a failure: the failure to try. Freely trapped between these two suffocating failures, salvation at once seems elusive even as salvation imagined seemed possible. [3], [4] & [5]



[1] For everybody, as well as for the reprehensible, this Fatima prayer is helpful: “O My Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of Hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who have most need of your mercy. Amen.”

[2] “Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne!

“Chorus.-For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We'll take a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.” http://www.carols.org.uk/auld_lang_syne_song.htm

[3] In Your infinite justice, please grant us Your infinite mercy. Amen.

[4] “O My Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of Hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who have most need of Your mercy. Amen.”

[5] Perhaps there is still time. Lord, please grant me the vision and the voice, the courage and the confidence, the strength and the stamina to do Your will. Amen.