Never Get Angry with God, Go to Him with Everything
By: Missionary Team
Growing up I never had much faith. My family would attend mass only on holidays but after many holidays where my sister and I would be fighting in the pews we stopped going to mass all together as a family. I still received my Sacraments but, like many other kids, it was just a box to check to appease our parents. First Communion and Confirmation to me were just an excuse to invite a bunch of family members over to eat and give me their money. I never really understood the importance or beauty of these Sacraments. Like many others, after confirmation, I seemed to have graduated from the Church and did not have much more contact with anything having to do with faith.
My senior year of high school this all changed. My father called me and said “get home now, we need to talk.” I thought I was in trouble again and tried to figure out how I could talk my way out of this one. When I got home my father met me in the driveway and said “Victor, mom has pancreatic cancer.” I immediately started crying as the thought of losing my mother entered my head. That night I prayed for the first time from my heart. My prayer that night was “God, help my mom to be okay.”
Fast forward several months, surgeries, and chemo treatments later and I found myself on my first-ever retreat. My friend had gone behind my back and had my parents sign me up for this retreat and I was not happy. The first night I was miserable and angry at everyone on the retreat. I pushed anyone away who would try to talk to me. The next day things changed. A girl got up and shared a story of how her father passed away from cancer and how the community of the church really helped her through it. I immediately started crying and could not stop. This was the first time where I recognized someone else in the world has/had a parent with cancer. This was the first time I felt not alone.
Later on that day, we received letters from some of our loved ones. I received a letter from my mom. In this letter, she talked about the Our Father and said “The most important words are ‘Thy will be done’ because you need to trust in God's will, whatever it may be.” After reading this letter, and crying a lot more, I was committed to living out my faith moving forward.
After this retreat, I wanted to live out my faith but didn't really know how. I started reading my bible and receiving some mentorship from people involved with the church. I came across the verse Jeremiah 29:11 which says “For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans for welfare not for woe, plans to give you a future full of hope.” I read this and thought about what my mom had said in her letter-I need to trust in God’s plan for my life, whatever that may be. At that moment my prayer changed from “God, help my mom to be okay” to “God whatever Your will is, I accept it.”
My faith continued to grow and I continued to read my bible. As my faith grew, my mom was getting more sick. After several trips in and out of the hospital, she returned home on Hospice care. A day or so before she passed she called me over to her bedside and said “Victor I am so proud of you and how you have grown in your faith. Never get angry with God, go to Him with everything.”
About a year after my mom passed I decided to become a missionary with Hard as Nails in order to live out what my mother told me and all I had learned over her fight against cancer. I started sharing my story with young adults across the country. On one of our last trips I was sharing my story and I said “I am grateful my mom got cancer.” I had not planned to say this and was sort of shocked it came out of my mouth. I paused-not sure what to say next. Then I said “I am grateful my mom got cancer, because if my mom never got cancer, I would never have had a relationship with Jesus Christ, and that is the greatest gift that anyone can ever receive.
