I had just finished praying the rosary. Tears flooded down my face wetting the floor. I could hardly open my eyes after crying for a couple of hours.

Lord, help me finish this life, not by my own power but purely by your grace.

When these words poured out of my mouth, my tears finally came to cease and I regained peace and confidence. It all made sense. By His grace, and only His grace alone, I will get through this and overcome. God will see me through to the end.

By finishing my life by my own power I was referring to ending my life my suicide. It is daunting to reveal this suicidal part of myself even to me. It’s unthinkable, it seems. Me? Still contemplating suicide after a decade passed since my conversion into Christianity? My Christian knowledge tells me that suicide is never an option. But it is a thought that I go back to time and time again when the mental pain becomes a pure torture. It is a real threat to my earthly existence but no one that lives in my world understands what I feel. I feel trapped in my own body and I hear the loud scream of my soul asking to be set free. I must ignore. I sing hymns under the loud stream of shower. I take NyQuil on some darker nights. I kneel to pray and cry for hours. I say my rosary prayer and I repeat over and over again. Lord, help me finish this life, not by my own power but purely by your grace. Purely by your grace. By your grace alone…

Everything is a grace… everything is the direct effect of our father’s love— difficulties, humiliations, all the soul’s miseries, her burdens, her needs— everything, because through them, she learns humility, realizes her weakness— Everything is a grace because everything is God’s gift. Whatever be the character of life or its unexpected events— to the heart that loves all is well.

–  St._Thérèse of Lisieux, Last Conversation, 57.

I reread these passages this morning. I feel it strengthening my soul. As Therese has said, everything is truly a grace, especially this screaming misery of my voice inside. It is a grace because it makes me rely on God’s grace alone. I find no other cure, no other escape, no other means, but only Jesus’s dying on the cross that makes it possible for me to believe the power of resurrection. If God raised Jesus from the death, then of course, He will raise me up from this invisible downfall. It will be so easy for Him to do so.

With that shift of my gaze from fear to love- all is well once again and I find my quiet, tranquil submit on the holy mountain of God. And today, I intend to sit there to take in all the blessings of God. Everything is a grace. How true that simple line is to me today.