I asked my Father for the grace of better understanding grief, frustration, and disappointment as these can be applied to Him. He began by taking me back to the very first visual image that I can remember receiving from Him. This was years ago, and I was a young child struggling to understand how God could know the future.

Picture this, if you will. You are standing on a high mountain in the middle of a vast plain. A road begins at one horizon and stretches across to the other, passing beneath your mountain. At one horizon, you see a baby crawling (your vision is perfect). You watch him travel along and become a boy, then a young man, than an adult. By the time he reaches the other horizon, he is an old man. This is the passage of Time viewed from within the structure of Time.

Our Eternal Father is beyond that structure of Time, and sees it differently. He sees the crawling baby and the old man at the same time. He also sees every step of the journey along with them. I’m sure you’ve seen the time-lapse action photos where each phase of the action seems to be done by a different man in a long line of men. This is very similar to what I’m trying to convey.

My Father amplified this image for me. The straight path is the ideal path, but along with it is another path that runs parallel to that one. All along the straight path are side paths that lead to the other one. All along these are wild beasts waiting to harm the traveler. Now, the person that is making the journey is you child, and you love him very dearly. He wanders along, sometimes on the straight path, but at least once in a while on one of the side paths where the beasts cause him harm. Because you love him, it hurts you to see the harm he comes to. But your grief is for him, not because of any injury to yourself. Even if he ends up on the other path, and is lost, no actual harm comes to you.

Our Father created us to share His love as a gift, not because He needs our love. He is perfect unto Himself, and if we were all lost, He would still be perfect. He can grieve for our loss of Him without actually marring His bliss. But, we will not all be lost. He knows this because He sees not one journey of one child, but all journeys of all children. If we know some have already been saved (the saints that have gone before us), how much better does He know all who are and will be united to Him and share the love He has to offer. With this knowledge and His self-perfection, where is there room for frustration or disappointment?

I understand the grief better now, but there is nothing in what I know on my own or that my Father has shown me, thus far, to account for frustration or disappointment. If I am wrong, I pray He will show me what I don’t see. I don’t want to continue in error.

He set me straight on the green house of Purgatory tonight. He actually taught me nothing about how or why the individual wheat plants were there. I am not ready to learn of the mysteries of death just yet, but He will teach me. Tired, impatient, and prideful, I leaped to a snap conclusion just to be rid of the void. I asked His forgiveness, and that He preserve me from doing that in the future. I also thanked Him for showing me my errors. (1)

(1) Spiritual director: I see nothing wrong with anything you have written here about frustration and disappointment. Besides what you said about grief, I see the frustration and disappointment as being felt by someone who gives love to another, but this love is not seen and is unappreciated. He wants us, for our good, to relate to Him. There is no element of surprise involved. But I, too, will study this further.

I’m grateful you are balanced enough to handle direction by mail, with no immediate feedback. You seem to be able to tell when something is harmful to you and when it is taking you forward. You seem to know when to avoid the harm and go on. I certainly don’t want this retreat to damage you in any way!