1: The cross we don’t choose there are some crosses that we choose those crosses we can usually afford to bear… There are the crosses we don’t choose the ones life pushes us to bear… those are not just crosses they also hurt our free will and prove to be heavier by making us more vulnerabl of course, every cross has its worth every cross tests our vulnerability but the crosses we don’t choose seem to be more testing and heavier! 2: Feeling inefficient What to do when we’re taken over by that feeling of inefficiency that feeling of uselessness even after doing our part? Should we try to do more to appease ourselves and convince ourselves of a kind of efficiency? When the feeling of emptiness continues … is it that important to fight it and chase after the good feeling about ourselves in a pursuit of delight in what we’ve accomplished? What if it is a cross… what if we should bear patiently that uncomfortable feeling of emptiness which still lingers after we’ve given it all? What to do when that feeling remains despite having poured all our efforts into the work… can this be a kind of cross… can this really be a cross? Maybe the most important thing to keep us going is to keep in mind that “in the Lord, your labour is not in vain.” 3: Fasting from the control-freak inclination A friend of mine decided that for Lent this year, he would give up or at least try to give up on his tendency to have control on every tiny aspect of his life. It’s not a bad thing, he explained, to care about almost every single detail of his daily activities. However, he said, his tendency to have everything under his careful attention, every aspect of his life thoroughly planned doesn’t show a willingness to make room for God and give God some control over his life. He then decided that a good Lent resolution for him should be to let go of some of his constant inclination to be at the control center of his life. As he put it, “for this Lent, I want to share with God the air traffic control center of my life. I would starve my control-freak way of life and be more open to God”. To which I responded: “We all need to do that type of fasting”.