Once I was going through an emotional crisis and profound sadness, the pain was so deep that I cried copiously even though I did not find a clear reason to justify such despair. I could not organize my thoughts because it seemed that all my unconscious accumulated emotional pain of a lifetime had decided to manifest itself at once.
After a while I caught myself praying for God to relieve me and give me direction and after a few minutes, I received a call from a close friend.
Rey, I’m glad that you answered the phone, I need to talk to you because I'm not feeling well and while I was praying and your name came to my mind. My friend said.
What happened? I asked.
After about 40 minutes of conversation in which I tried to be a good and helpful listener, she hung up, thanking me because she was feeling better. Minutes after the call, my sadness returned and I looked up to the sky, as if wanting to locate God, and I said:
God, you have an ear problem or it must be a divine WIFI interference, I prayed to be consoled and you sent someone for me to console? How about me?
I resumed to pray after a few seconds of indignation but, at this time, I decided to be more specific in what I was asking to avoid “communication problems”, but I was interrupted once more by another call from a dear friend who I had not spoken in a long time.
Hi Rey, how are you? I miss you, how are things going? He asked.
I have a few problems and you? I answered, hoping that I might have the chance to vent and have the comfort I had asked God for, but to my surprise, my friend replied:
I’m feeling terrible...
My friend immediately started to vent about his personal issues but interestingly I had a lot in common with what he was feeling. After almost an hour of conversation, he thanked me for showing other points of view about his dilemmas, he was already feeling better and motivated and we said goodbye.
When I hung up the phone, I felt something very interesting, my pain was still there but its dimensions changed inside me. It was then that I realized that the phone calls were really the answer to my prayers, my mental field was contracted because my only focus was the pain I was feeling, I was attached to it, from the moment I allowed myself to be an instrument of help for others, I detached from my pain and automatically my mental field expanded, It wasn’t all about me anymore.
Any act of charity is first and foremost an exchange, for whoever helps is being helped. Rey Souza
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