Month: July 2019

In today’s Gospel, Christ sends out the 72, in pairs, who would go out to towns in various parts of Judea ahead of him. He tells them not to take anything with them, no money or a bag, or shoes. Do you understand how gnarly and difficult that would be today, much less more than 2 thousand years ago?

St. Theresa of Avila is often quoted as saying:

“Lord if this is how you

treat your friends no wonder

you have so few”

I used to joke about this saying quite a bit, and in some ways it is true. The path that Christ is asking us to walk is not easy, it is extremely difficult. One of the paths that I know Christ is asking me to walk is one of healing and forgiveness. For me that path is as difficult for me as the path he sent those 72 out on. Right now he isn’t asking me to go out and teach, preach, or be that “out loud” disciple of his. Right now he is asking me to walk the journey of healing my wounds so that those wounds don’t keep dragging me into darkness and sin. In some ways, emotionally it feels like I have walked across the desert sands barefoot for years, but instead of having the love and faith in Christ at my side/with me I had been trying to force the journey without faith – and that was a disaster.

I have a Spiritual Director now who, thanks be to God, is very no-nonsense and who will tell me to knock it off when I start getting a bit neurotic over things and wrapped up in the current emotional garbage I am dealing with. And I firmly believe we all need someone in our lives who will tell us to knock it off.

Recently I feel like God took a USB Flash drive and plugged it into my brain. A couple things that my Spiritual Director has been trying, a few times, to get me to understand (hey I am slow on the uptake sometimes…) some things are finally ‘clicking’ for me.

The biggest piece that I am discovering and starting to understand is peace. The internal peace and joy that for so many years I saw in others is slowly making its presence known in me, but most of all, it is making itself known without causing its own anxiety- now at least. You see, I didn’t understand what this new emotion was. This internal sense of peace and faith. This new emotion caused a heck of a lot of confusion and anxiety because I didn’t understand it or know how to process it. Because I didn’t know what to do with it I relied heavily on a couple trusted people, and Thanks be to God, he gave them the patience to handle me during that time.

I’ve talked a lot today about the renewed faith in God and Christ I have now, that isn’t to say that I didn’t believe in God and the resurrection of Christ before all this, what I want to say is there is a drastic difference between knowing that God exists and having faith. Many times we equate the two and they aren’t the same thing. Faith is the heart behind the knowledge.

Now , you may wonder what the heck I have been doing differently at this point in my life then in others. Well, the first thing I am doing is I have a Spiritual Director who doesn’t let me get away with any B.S. and whom I have a lot of trust in. Now before anyone thinks I am going to give the guy a big head, I’m not, I trust him because he is always pointing me to Christ – if he didn’t – I’d be running in the opposite direction. The second thing I am doing is I am in therapy to work on my past trauma. Now there is going to be some overlap between the two, because, there just is, as one of my biggest issues is anger and un-forgivness of those who did the biggest damage to me, but I am slowly peeling the onion that is my past trauma and working through it.

The third thing is prayer. Now my prayer life has largely sucked for most of my life as a Christian, a large part of that is due to some of my trauma. For many years I couldn’t say the Our Father without ending up in tears and inconsolable – I am ever grateful to a Jesuit priest who was my college spiritual director for getting me through THAT.

In January when my husband and I had a surprise miscarriage, we were devastated, and it brought a lot of my issues to a head very quickly and dramatically. God used this tragedy to break through the hardness of my heart and the wall I had put around myself to protect me and my emotions. But most of all he used it to break through the hardness of heart that kept me from loving him fully. I spent hours before the blessed sacrament weeping, not crying, weeping and it was weeks before I even spoke to Christ. I spent weeks just in his presence in Adoration at every moment I had. When I finally did start giving to him all the pain, anger and garbage thoughts I was thinking, I started noticing the pain wasn’t as bright, it wasn’t as rough … I wasn’t in agony. This is why I survived our second pregnancy loss this year in April with far less agony. I clung to my budding faith and spiritual direction as a life preserver to get through all of that. Now moving on to using the growing faith and peace along with spiritual direction as a tool to deepen my relationship with my God and to understand what I need to work on as I go. How to abandon myself to the Love of God. How to avoid the darkness and sin in my own life and how to be a witness to my faith and love & honor all of God’s creation.

There is something about travel that makes me anxious. I think it is mainly because of my chronic illnesses/pain. Not knowing what something is going to do to me.

Surprisingly my pain levels as we settle into the hotel here in High Point, NC are fairly low. I almost feel “normal”.

I am currently reading A Guide to Christian Meditation by Fr. John Bartunek. I an not too far in yet but it is very interesting so far.

One of my biggest ‘struggles’ for the last few years has been my prayer life. After quite a few crappy moments in life building up and the resulting emotional turmoil, resentments and anger. In many ways I am rediscovering some of the “basics”. The hardness surrounding my heart has been shattered and I am trying figure out what is “Normal” in my faith life.

The emotional interaction with my God, the relationship with my faith and my religion, my thought processes on forgiveness of not only myself but others has been rapidly changing as my prayer life gets better. I told someone recently, if it was anyone other than Christ, you would consider it an emotional affair.

Basically, I have found myself moving from knowing that God exists, to actually having faith and falling in love with Himself. I am also becoming more comfortable with calling myself a person of faith. It is who I am, this is what I believe, and I am finding peace and healing.

I keep trying to re-start blogging but never quite get there. The last few months have been a whirl wind of activity and emotions.

I suffered two pregnancy losses in the span of several months, losing Ezra in January and then Judith & Anthony in April. I have been working on me quite a lot with all my various issues between therapy and spiritual direction and making a little bit of progress getting healthier mentally and spiritually.

Recently I lost a very dear friend, Sarah Taylor, someone I only knew for a year, that slipped into my life first because of work, then as a friend and eventually as someone I considered family. She and I shared so much in common. We both suffered from anxiety and depression, we both had tough childhoods, we both went through times where we rebelled and returned to faith. We shared our struggles and we were each other’s accountability partner in adoration and prayer, and each other’s sounding boards when anxieties got the better of us… now granted, hugely imperfectly, but we tried. Regardless of her imperfections, there was a Joy that was present in her that radiated from her because of her faith in God. I have had the wonderful opportunity to speak to others who have known her, and we are all saying the same thing, that even though we are praying for her and offering mass intentions for her, each time we have an overwhelming sense of peace and love wash over us as if we are being told, not to worry.

Ironically as I am preparing to travel to NC on Thursday for her Funeral on Friday, I was supposed to be visiting her this week anyway, I was supposed to visit her at her new place just outside Asheville, NC and we were going to hit the brewery and wineries in the area and stay up all night and go to adoration in the middle of the night and just relax and be silly. Instead of visiting my friend and having fun, I am helping to say good bye for now to someone who is dearly loved by many many people who had the privilege of walking this life with her.

May Sarah and all the faithfully departed rest in the peace and presence of God.