Thoughts on current life situation

I have been reading "Priests for the Third Millenium" by Archbishop Timothy Dolan lately. In it, he talks about virtues/characters that one needs to be a good priest. A common thread that I saw was: perseverance.

Etymologically, perseverance comes from two latin words: per+severus. It roughly means, through (per) the harsh (severus). Through the harshness of life, we would peddle through, knowing that good will overcome evil. That life will conquer death in the end.

St. John of the Cross once says,

I saw the river over which every soul must pass to reach the kingdom of heaven, and the name of the river was suffering... and I saw the boat which carries souls across that river, and the name of that boat was love (emphasis added).

Love and suffering...

Of course, the first word that comes to mind when one mention "love" would never be suffering. Love is usually identified with the warm feeling in which we long to obtain from those who are close to us. Yet, as I see my nephews and nieces grow, I can see the correlation between love and suffering. For example,

When the baby's crying, parents are obliged to have countless of sleepless night, just so that the baby would go back to sleep.
When the kids growing, and all they want to do is to play. Parents, out of love, have to remind (or even coerce!) the kid to study, to learn things that are useful to them. When parents have to discipline their kids, how much do they suffer?

As I grow too in life, things really never go as smoothly as I wanted to be. Hiccups and failure come and go. Most of the time, it really was due to my pride, my selfish being, and me wanting to have things my way. Yet at times too, things could go wrong, even when I have tried my best. Then, what could I do? Persevere.

One thing that I took when reading, "You Can Understand the Bible: A Practical and Illuminating Guide to Each Book in the Bible" by Peter Kreeft, is the idea of Israelites journey.

As we all know, being a Christian, we are spiritually Semites. We are all called to learn from the history of the Old Testament, in our own journey, from the time of Abraham to the time of Zachariah. Peter Kreeft then says that throughout the history of the Jew in the Old Testament, what did we see? War, slavery, division between their own nation, and of course, their stubbornness in not wanting to follow God's will. So for sure, adversity is the norms, not the exception. Suffering is something that can't be eradicated, even with all the technology and the advancement in the area of medicine available to us in this 21st century. But all in all, without suffering, I am convinced, that we would not be able to mature.

Just like a clay in the potter's hand, here I am. When things are bad, blessed be Your name. When anything that can go wrong, go wrong... Blessed be Your name. For You give and take away. All is Yours and I praise You Lord for all that I have been able to gone through.