Inaam Abiad tells Debbie Warrier how she experienced the pain – and liberation – of the Cross.
I am originally from Lebanon and worked as a nurse there until I met my husband who is an Australian. We married, and I migrated here with him. My first few years in Australia were tough, as I was trying to adapt to a new culture while missing my family and trying to adjust to motherhood for the first time. But after an extended trip back home with my husband and child, I made the choice that Australia is my new home and I have never looked back. I made friends and joined a parish group of ladies whom pray the rosary for our kids. These ladies are my extended family. My husband and I now have three children who are 18, 16 and 9. After raising the kids I went back casually to the work force as a nurse and teach for the Billings Life Leaders in Fertility Education in Melbourne.
I attend Mass and say the Rosary daily as well as the 3 o’clock prayer and the Divine Mercy Chaplet. I make the effort to spend whatever time I can get in Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.I also say novenas to the saints and devotions too. But most importantly I offer every second of my day to the Lord in forms of little prayers and conversation.
I have always been faithful, praying and worshiping and most importantly believing in the good Lord to whom we owe everything, but my faith took a sharp turn a few years ago when I learnt that my 33 year old sister was diagnosed with an aggressive and incurable cancer. My world crashed. I turned to God all the more and started going to Mass every day and going to Adoration a lot and praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament to the good Lord begging with all my being for her healing. I knew that my only hope was in the Lord. They say to watch your loved one suffer is harder than to suffer yourself; this is so true and being away physically from them makes things even worse.
Little did I know that with all the suffering I endured, I was getting purified myself and my soul was being lifted up to a new level of faith I never knew existed; I have never felt so closer to Jesus and Mary. I experienced an illumination of my soul in a way I never felt before. I thought I was faithful and that I knew my Lord until I really got close to Him in suffering on the cross. At times I would feel my heart physically aching and my shoulder physically feeling the weight of the cross. The more I suffered the closer I got to the cross until when at the climax of all this pain I felt and experienced what our blessed mother could have felt at the foot of the cross!!
Amidst all that our Lord has sent me different “Simon of Cyrene” to help me on the way, namely my beautiful husband and kids who were so understanding and supportive, and other guardian angels in human forms who were praying for us constantly. My sister sadly died but today I can only imagine what all her suffering would have done for her soul and the place that she is now occupying and enjoying in heaven.
I now see things differently; I listen and trust in God in a different way. I don’t waste any suffering, big or small; I offer it up and unite it to the cross. The scripture comes alive to me now in a new way. I know now that suffering does not just take you to the cross but way beyond that, it takes you to the glory of the resurrection.
I became a teacher of the Billings Ovulation Method because I felt our Lord and our Blessed Mother pointing their fingers to it and telling me to. I am still learning but I feel that I am at home there because I can truly say: “Here I am Lord; I come to do your will”. It is a place where I can apply my faith to my work and this is where today I see my sister in heaven guiding me also to the Billings door; her herself, having had fertility problems, wants me to help other women in a natural and simple way. Faith is a gift given only by Divine Grace which we should always be open.