I found it!

The devotion I mentioned in my previous post is on EWTN's video and audio on demand. It's under Benediction, click on either video or audio according to your preference. I don't know how long it will be there, it may only last a day because it was different yesterday. Here's the quote I was talking about, I believe the priest talking is Fr. Dominic Mary:

Love is purified, increased, and perfected by suffering. Which means not only bodily pain but crosses of all kinds. God allows everyone all the sufferings they need on earth to cleanse, strengthen and perfect their love. But most people waste their sufferings. They do not want them. They complain about them. They try to escape them in every manner possible and even by committing sin they try to escape their sufferings. Because of this attitude the fires of their suffering are unable to burn away the selfishness from their love. So that it would be perfect. So they must go to purgatory, where they will have to suffer much more intensely than they would have if they had accepted the sufferings of earth. Their love is purified in purgatory but it does not grow. And that's an imporant point: we are going to suffer worse in purgatory than any suffering that is allowed us here on this earth, and we can't grow in love through it. The love is just perfected but we can't grow. The charity whith which we die s the charity that we'll have for all eternity, but if we accept the sufferings of this life, the love and charity can grow and we'll have a higher place in heaven. But for many, including myself, our faith is weak, and so we don't take advantage of what we have ... In purgatory God's cleansing fires burn away the souls selfishness until its love becomes perfect and it is ready to fly to heaven. It's sufferings only purify love but don't increase it. And so for all of us we need to take advantage of all the things God allows us to suffer with in this life.

I've been thinking on this all day. I had asked God how to increase in love when you don't feel it coming from anywhere - like how can you give what you don't have? But this seems to answer that question. Love will grow when the selfishness is burned away by suffering -- suffering accepted not fought off at every turn (guiltily raising hand).

Today I tried to just accept what happened, all the little daily mortifications of a mom of many: lack of sleep, interruptions, sick husbands, children getting frustrated with their work, rosaries being broken by babies that don't know their own strength, babies erasing what I took a half hour to transcribe... with every one I tried to say a heartfelt "Thanks Lord! Now my heaven will be even MORE wonderful!" I know that sounds silly, but it did help. I'm left wondering if that isn't selfishness in itself: accepting what's going on because it will ultimately benefit ME, instead of accepting it simply because God loves me and it's from Him. One day at at time, I guess.

I still grumbled quite a bit internally today, but I was outwardly much more calm as all the buttons I had were pushed. I'm hoping the "inwardly" part of me will come along in time, as my selfishness is burned away.

Burn, baby, burn.