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The Way of Love for the Lord
Chapter 62. I had wanted to take a quiet rest and pray. (March 5, 1983)
I quit my voluntary work for the charismatic movement after promising the Lord that I would offer up my prayers and pain unseen by others.* Even afterwards, many people came to me for spiritual advice. I found it hard to even hear their stories due to my redemptive sufferings, but never did I turn them away. For quite a while, my family, who had never known in detail about the cause of my pain, just watched me suffer. Later they came to be worried about me, so they persuaded me to be hospitalized. I knew well that it would be of no use to stay in the hospital. However, the reason that I did not persist in my opinion was to obey them and to show my love for them. There were four women in my hospital room. One of them beside my bed said to me, “A very humorous Catholic was in your bed. After she went home, you, another Catholic, came in.” The looks on their faces told me that they had been very bored and that they had been looking forward to someone who could amuse them. To their disappointment, I was regarded as uninteresting because the only thing that I did there was to light the candle and pray. I wanted to take a quiet rest at least in the hospital. A patient on my right side was suffering from her ruptured kidneys, discharging hematuria. She needed kidney transplant, but there was no one to donate kidney. Feeling hopeless, she did nothing but cry every day. Another patient on my left side was suffering from her repetitive fits of coughing. It pressed heavily on me just to watch her in such pain that I even took pity on her. She also had to cough up sputum three to four times a day for sputum examination. Every night, she coughed so severely towards the direction of my bed that I could not get any sleep at all contrary to my prior expectation. I offered all this up to the Lord. “O my Love, my Beloved! You love me so dearly that You've called me here, so that I may pray more instead of taking a rest. I offer up this pain of not being able to rest or sleep due to her coughing for the sake of Your glory and for the conversion of sinners. Please save one soul by one soul each time I hear her cough. Make her cough sound like a melody of love to other women so that they may have a sound sleep.” Two days later, I noticed that the woman with renal rupture got startled every time the door opened. I asked her, “Why are you so startled like that?” She replied, “Ah, whenever the door opens, I get panic thinking that the nurse would come in to give me a shot. The shot is very painful and that’s why I have a phobia to it.” As soon as I heard her words, it occurred to me that I should change my mind and pray for the disappearance of her fear of the shot. Until then, I had not prayed for someone by myself except for urgent cases so that I might not hear people say that they had been healed through my prayer. All of us including myself are no more than instruments used by the Lord for a little while. It is the Lord who takes charge of everything and heals the sick. Therefore, all thanks and glory must be given only to the Lord. Since those who had been healed through my prayers tried to give me thanks which the Lord alone deserves, saying that they had been healed by me, I had made a firm resolution never to pray for someone by myself. But on this day, I broke that resolution of mine because I felt so sorry for her. I prayed before she got a shot, “Lord! You prayed for the children who were pitiable. Don’t You think that this woman is also pitiable? Please stroke her when she gets a shot so that she may not feel pain.” After she got the shot, she exclaimed with joy, “Oh, it didn’t hurt even a little. Amazing!” She then no longer feared the shots which she had to get several times a day. She was freed from her phobia of injections. She no longer jumped at the sound of the door opening. She even smiled at the nurse who came in to give her a shot to the extent of telling her to come in quickly. All our roommates were delighted to see her smile for the first time in days. “O Lord of love, please receive thanksgiving, glory, and praise from all the people of the world forever and ever. Amen.”
* Refer to chapters 33 and 34 for the detail.
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