And needless to say, trying to produce a podcast episode focused on fun is just not something that I have in me at this moment. And yet through prayer and just kind of processing through a lot of the emotions that I’ve been experiencing in the last few days, I wanted to share some things that were on my heart. Particularly if there are any of you right now that might be experiencing pain or grief in your own life, or maybe, you know, somebody that is, it’s my hope and prayer that this podcast episode might provide some comfort or relief. Now, as you can imagine with any sort of tragedy like this, you experience so many different emotions, particularly when you know, the people that you love and care about are hurting so greatly. And one of the things that we teach women in masters is how to process their pain. And so it’s been really fascinating for me to be going through a lot of these really painful emotions. And I’ve been so grateful that I’ve had the tools in being able to process through them. In my past, I probably would’ve either tried to suppress them or try to numb them or buffer with them, but I’ve really found myself in the last few days, just trying to feel them.

And I felt really deep, painful emotions. I’d have to say probably the strongest one is the emotion of helpless despair of feeling like people that I love and care about are hurting so greatly. And having this feeling inside of me that I can’t do anything to bring them comfort, or I can’t do anything to take away their pain or to take away their grief. And it, and it feels helpless. Like I’ve had this, not this, this nauseous feeling inside of my stomach. And that’s one of the things that we talk about a lot when we’re processing through pain is where do we feel it in our bodies and how can we become in tune with that and feel it and experience it. And for me, the huge part of processing through pain is not just feeling it and getting clear with what that feeling is and, and naming it.

But then also sitting with it processing through what are my, what am I thinking? What are the thoughts that are going on in my head? Do I really believe that I can’t do anything? And then of course, inviting God into that, into that emotion, into that moment and asking God to bring forth his light and his truth and asking him to help teach me what I’m supposed to know in the midst of this great pain, sitting with that and sitting with God, inviting him and asking the holy spirit to be present and to bring forth his truth. That is so incredibly powerful. And so I’ve been trying to do that with all the different emotions, the different emotions of despair and heartbreak, sadness, fear, worry, anxiety, all of the emotions that course through our bodies in the midst of difficult times like this.

And I can tell you that it doesn’t take away the pain, but in processing through it, it helps us to understand things a little bit more where we’re meant to learn things in the midst of our pain. And as Catholics, we also know that in the midst of our pain and suffering, that God comes to us and that God reveals his love to us, and we can unite our pain and our suffering to him, and that he can do, he can take that and he can unite that pain to, to his suffering on the cross. And he can take that and he can multiply that grace tenfold, a hundred fold and pour it out in ways that we don’t even, we can’t, we can’t even imagine what God is capable of doing. When we take our own sufferings, we unite them to his. And when we take the pain and our heart, and we ask for him to enter into that, and we unite that with his, it can be so incredibly powerful, and this is what processing through pain and suffering looks like and feels like, and it’s okay to sit with it.

And it’s okay to know that in the midst of life, that there are gonna be moments that are so incredibly painful. And sometimes we’re just meant to feel them to experience it, to experience the fullness of what this life is that there’s the good times and the bad times and the joyful moments and the fun moments and the deeply sad moments, the moments where we mourn and cry and weep and grieve all of it. And we’re called to enter into those moments and invite our Lord to be with us.

And there are a few things that I’ve learned in the last few days through processing through this pain and experiencing it that I wanted to share on this podcast. The first thing is this prayer really matters. Now I just talked about prayer and inviting God into our suffering. And this is the deal when we are hurting, when we are suffering or when we have loved ones that are hurting greatly, we want to do things. It’s like this call to action. We feel like I just wanna do something, take somebody a meal, or help in some capacity. I just wanna do something that can make a difference that can make an impact that can help relieve their pain in some way. And it’s hard sometimes because we think that praying really, I mean, we know as Catholics, we know as Christians, that prayer really does make a difference.

Like we know that in our head, but a lot of times when we do something, like when we take someone a meal, we physically are doing something and we’re making something and then we take it to them and we hope that they feel our love and they receive something from us. And if, hopefully, they experience some sort of comfort from that. It’s like a tangible thing that we can do. And it’s so easy at times to disregard prayer because it doesn’t feel like there’s a tangible effect from it. And yet we know, we know, we know as Catholics, we know as Christians, that prayer really does matter that our prayers reign in the heart of God for all of eternity, that God who is outside of time and space, God, who knows everything, that he allows our prayers to make an impact in this world that we might not even fully comprehend this site of heaven, but someday somewhere in eternity, we will see the extraordinary power of our prayers.

And we will know that our prayers were the most powerful thing that we could, that we could offer the most powerful action that we could take in the midst of terrible suffering or tragedy or loss that our prayers really do matter. And in the last few days, I have seen that firsthand. I have seen our community come together. I have seen and felt the prayers in such a tangible way that it has only been confirmed. That prayer truly is the greatest gift we can offer in moments like this. The second thing I have learned is how truly beautiful our Catholic faith is. In the last few days, I have been surrounded by a community that has gathered to pray the rosary, to offer vigils and prayer services. People coming together for holy hours, who are lighting candles and praying through the scriptures who are reflecting on the lives of the saints and praying ness and chapels and all the beautiful Catholic prayers that we have in our church.

And I’ve just been so struck at the beauty of our Catholic faith, the treasury within our faith, that we have so many things to cling to in moments like this, that we come together as a community and we pray and we experience the goodness of God in the sacraments and in his sacramentals and the angels and the saints. And I truly find myself absolutely in awe of what our faith gives to us in the good times and in the bad times, and in all of it, our faith is such a gift. It truly is the greatest treasure, and it is the gateway to heaven. Our faith gives us a glimpse into heaven and the communion of saints in the holy mass in all of it, God stands there. And we are literally on the threshold of heaven through the truth and the beauty and goodness of our Catholic faith.

And finally, the last thing that I wanted to share that I’ve come to realize in the last few days is the true importance and significance of community that God made us for community. And how do we know this? I mean, it’s obvious, but first and foremost, God, himself is a community of persons. God is an exchange of love between the father, the son, and the holy spirit. The very nature of God is community. And then when he created us, he made us so that we would be fam like he brought life into this world through families. And so we see just in the nature of who we are and how we were created, that we were made for community. We were made for family. And then in a broader picture, when Jesus came, he established a church because he knew that we needed a community to gather in and to worship in and to love and to support each other in.

And so I’ve just been reminded so much, especially in the last few days, the significance of community. I think a lot of times when we’re hurting and suffering, it’s very easy and natural for us to wanna turn inwards. We wanna run away and we wanna hide and we wanna cry and be by ourselves. And that’s natural. And there are times for that. It’s even, you know, sometimes when we’re processing through pain, we need to do that by ourselves. But a lot of times we are called to resist that temptation of just being isolated and turn to our community, to go and to be with others, to cry together, to hug, to share memories and to pray together, all of that, we are meant for community. And as I sat in mass tonight with over a thousand others gathering together at a, at a prayer vigil mass for the families of these boys, I was just so struck by the knee that each one of us come with our, with our own hearts, broken, going through our own grief, but coming together as community and doing what we do, which is to love upon one another in the midst of our own pain and to, to literally physically represent to one another, that we are not alone, that we are in this together and that we are a family and that we are a community.

And so whether we are in the midst of the suffering of the loss of someone that we love, or the pain of, of grief, or whether we’re just we’re suffering with, with other things, whatever it is, whatever the pain might be going on in our lives and our hearts. I hope that you hear me when I tell you this, go and find your people. We need each other. We are not meant to go through pain and suffering alone. We need to reach out sometimes as hard and it’s scary and it requires us to be vulnerable. But this is part of the healing process. When we come together, we are able to process through our pain. We are able to, to share that with another, we carry each other’s crosses and we walk with each other together, embrace. We love, we cry. We share, we comfort each other.

This is how God made it. This is what he wanted for us. And it’s really, really important. Truly. This is so much of where the healing takes place. And I’m so grateful for all of the hugs and the, and holding hands and the embraces and the wiping away of each other’s tears that we’ve been experiencing. Through this, we need each other and God made us a community. He made us for communion with him and with each other. And you never know what someone is gonna do or say to give you some sort of hope or comfort or a message in the midst of the pain. For me, I’ve had many of those moments, but one in particular was on Monday morning when I called Sterling shortly after I got the news. And I called her because I had a coaching call shortly in a few hours.

And I knew that I needed to get to the school that I’d been working at. And I needed to be with my community there. And I called her and I said, can we cancel this call today? I can’t do it. And she said to me, she said, Lorissa, don’t even worry. I’ve got it. I can take the call. That’s what we do. And then in kind of just talking to her for a few moments and, and just having the relief from not having to worry about that call. And she said to me, these words, she said, Lorissa, go to your school and just go and be the light. And I know that as she said that, like, it just hit me to the core, because up until that moment, my heart was just absolutely breaking. And I just felt like this darkness was enveloping around me.

And I remember thinking like I needed to go and be with my community there at the school, but I also had this great fear in my heart. And I was like, I don’t, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know. I don’t even know, like I was in shock, and total grief, but her words pulled me out of that. Her words gave me strength in that moment. And I’ve repeated them over and over in my head, hundreds of times in the last few days, Lorissa just goes and be the light. And I have found myself saying that over and over. I don’t know what to do. Okay. Lorissa, just be the light. And that’s what we are called to be right. That’s who we’re called to be as Christians in this life. And especially in the dark moments, we are called to be the light we’re called to bring his light, whatever that might look like.

It might look like just being his light by simply hugging someone or doing the little things that need to be done just to, you know, bring things together to smile at someone and to just be present. I think that’s so much of bringing his light and being his light is just being present in the midst of these difficult moments. And I truly feel like that one phrase, those few simple words, Lorissa go and be the light. That’s been like my GPS in this situation. Like when I’m like, I don’t know where to go. I don’t know where to, where to turn, or what to say. That has been my navigation that has been, my GPS has just been okay in this moment right now in this present moment, how do I be the light? And so we can never underestimate the power of one person’s words.

Somebody’s loving actions. Maybe it’s a note that someone gives to you or a text message. Like this is what it means to be a part of a community of believers who are being guided by the holy spirit and just doing the best that they can do in the moment. And finally, I wanna share with you a couple scripture passages that have been on my heart a lot as well this week, the first one is the shortest scripture passage in all of the Bible, which is this Jesus wet. It’s from the gospel of John chapter 11, verse 35. And we find it in the story of Jesus, raising Lazarus from the dead, that when he went to Martha and Mary and was told that Lazarus had died and, and Lazarus’s family, and all of his loved ones were weeping. It says in scripture that Jesus wept, even though he knew that he was about to raise Lazarus from the dead Jesus, whom he loved Lazarus so much, like he entered into this moment of experiencing the great grief that comes from losing someone you love.

And so I’ve thought about this scripture passage so much this week and reflected on it and entered into it into that moment of Jesus being with the ones that he loved and weeping with them over the loss of their brother, the loss of his dear friend. And I think that has brought me great comfort to know that our Lord, even though he was fully God and fully divine and fully perfect, that he experienced the depths of suffering and what it felt like to lose someone and that great experience of loss and that it is okay for us to weep. Like it’s him showing us like, this is, this is what we do when we lose someone that we love. And so that’s been one of the scripture passages that I’ve just been spending a lot of time praying through and reflecting on. And then the other scripture passage is Psalm 34.

The Lord is close to the broken hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. And again, as you can imagine, I’m, this is, this is it. I mean, I think everyone that I’ve talked to in the last several days, like the same sentiment has come up over and over that we are just heartbroken. Like, you literally feel like your heart is breaking. And so I found this scripture passage, the Psalm, so, so comforting. The Lord is close to the broken hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit, because even those of us that are strong, like strong in our faith, in moments like this, you just feel crushed like, God, where are you? And what has happened and why like all those questions. And although I know that we can’t always find the answers. We know that our Lord is the answer. And so we cling to him, we hold on to him in these moments and we trust that he is close and that he saves us and that he saves those who feel crushed in spirit. And that it’s okay to feel crushed. We should feel crushed when we are

Experienced pain like this, we should be heartbroken and it’s okay to feel that. And it’s okay to question and to doubt and to struggle and to grapple with it, but to also lean in and to know that the Lord is with us. And so my sisters in Christ, I just wanna ask you, as I wrap up this podcast episode to please pray for our Bishop Kelly community here in Boise, Idaho, this community that I love so very much. So many people are heartbroken right now. And I’m just calling upon you, my beloved sisters and Christ who are part of this beautiful communion of saints to please pray for us to please pray for the families of the boys who have died and to pray for their souls. And I just wanted to implore all of you to please go and just love on your children today, tonight this week, just go and hold them in your arms. Kiss them, love them, forgive them and just hold them close. May we never miss an opportunity to tell them what they mean to us and to love them the very best that we can. I’d like to just close out this episode by reminding you of your greatness and in the beautiful and comforting words of Sterling, go and be the lights.