At the Foot of the Cross: How I Learned to Trust God
I slipped into the back of the ad-hoc Eucharistic adoration chapel - a small meeting room at a Chicago hotel - and knelt on the generically unappealing carpet. I looked up at the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, the monstrance resting on a temporary folding altar with painted stained glass. My mind raced and my body ached with all the stresses, concerns, and effort of running a conference. I could barely fight through the fog to pray, so I sat back on my heels and closed my eyes.
That’s when God decided to take over.
Over the previous months, I’d been facing the Catholic single woman’s conundrum: Lord, if You made me for marriage, why am I still alone? And now, in a moment more profound than I have ever received before or since, our good Lord spoke into the burden of my singleness, the struggle of years wondering if I’d ever find my future spouse, the heartbreak of loneliness that had been weighing so heavily on me. He saw all my apparently unanswered prayers, my pleading and begging for hope, my doubt in His love for me; and in a grace that I didn’t deserve, touched me with the absolute knowledge of His presence.
Yes, it was as startling as it sounds. Everything around me seemed to fade away into a warm dark silence, and then I heard Him speak.
“You will find him at the foot of my cross.”
At first I was simply shaken, for an encounter with the living God can only pierce you to the core. Every once in a very long while God speaks to me in this way, and His words resonate so deeply in my heart that I know without question they are from Him. It’s like the words have a solidity, a multi-dimensional existence that etches them in my heart, mind, and memory.
In time I was able to contemplate the words I’d been given. Three things became clear to me as I continued bringing the experience to prayer.
First, this was divine reassurance that I would find my future spouse, and that the Lord held my vocation in His loving hands. Second, the man meant to be my husband would be in the midst of suffering when we were drawn together. And lastly, if I was going to find him at the foot of the cross, I needed to be there too.
“You will find him at the foot of my cross.” This sentence became my call and my focus, my guiding light over what then became perhaps the hardest year of my life to date.
Months later I stood in another chapel. “Mary, help me to stand with you,” I prayed, broken and weak, swamped with loneliness, insecurity, feelings of failure. “I know I need to be at the foot of the Cross, but I need you to hold me up.”
I wish I could say that prayer gave me light and peace - but instead, I simply got certainty that it was the right prayer. If I believed the Lord’s promise to me, and I believed the truth of the Paschal Mystery, I had to keep my station on Calvary even in darkness and strife. I clung to that promise. For a long time, my daily ejaculation, sometimes my only real prayer, was “Help me to stand at the foot of Your Cross” - interspersed with the occasional “Lord, are we there yet? Have I suffered enough?”
Tayler Crabb, @taylercrabb.
At the same time, the Lord was drawing a man named Carl closer to Himself on Calvary. I’d met Carl a few years before at a young adult group, where we’d never been more than casual acquaintances. Though I didn’t know it, Carl was experiencing his own calvary. His dad was in the throes of his last battle with leukemia, and Carl was watching his beloved, joy-filled, selfless father waste away, until one day in June when the end came. The grieving hit him hard, and it was several months before he returned to his own search for a spouse.
I’d rarely thought of Carl until a day in late October when I received a DM. It was a Shakespeare meme - he remembered my nerdy sense of humor well - and after a few days of chatting, he mentioned that he was taking his mom to Mass and asked my prayers for the soul of his dad. I can’t tell you how or why exactly, but somewhere in that conversation he mentioned “being at the foot of the cross” in his grieving.
Those words hit me like a lightning strike. It was a bit of an “Oh $#!%” moment, to be honest. Is this it? Is this man supposed to be my husband? Lord, I barely know him! Are you sure???
Of course, the Lord’s response was basically “sit down, shut up, and keep trusting.” So I did. I took it step by step, and so did Carl. We prayed, discerned, argued, struggled, drove three hours every weekend to see each other, had the occasional existential crisis…and I got on board (happily) with the Lord’s good plan. Now Carl is my kind, gentle, strong husband. We spoke our vows with our hands clasped on a crucifix.
I wish I could have held on to trust in the Lord’s plan for my life without that experience in adoration - wouldn’t that mean I was holier, stronger, more virtuous? But I wasn’t. And our good Lord knew that, and spoke into my weakness, just like He speaks into yours.
What are you struggling with, sister? What big choice or life change has you tossing and turning tonight? What little speedbump has you tied up in knots? I can guarantee you that the Lord is speaking to you in this season. He’s inviting you to trust, and He’s not leaving you alone in the dark.
Discernment can so often feel like an isolating experience. Loneliness, confusion, pain can damage our humanity, sending us spiraling into a sense of divine abandonment. Sometimes all we need is someone reminding us that the Lord’s promises abide. Here’s your reminder today to keep an eye out for the Lord’s personalized invitation to trust. He waits for you in the darkness, and He reaches out to you in the mess. Trust in His promise that “All things work together for good for those who love God.”
Meet Rebecca Martin
Rebecca W. Martin serves as Associate Editor for Our Sunday Visitor’s trade books. A native Hoosier and Christendom College alumna, she lives and writes in southeast Michigan with her husband and three cats. She is a Lay Dominican, book addict, Shakespeare fangirl, amateur baker, and musician. You can find her on Instagram @rebecca.w.martin.