I’m proud of you
Four little words. You wouldn’t think that four little words could cause so much internal consternation and emotional confusion and lead to healing. But they did. About a year or so ago, give or take a month, my spiritual director said those words to me for the first time. It was also the first time since I was about 5 or 6 that a man who had a role in my life said those words to me. I remember my heart beating fast and blinking at him rapidly and not really responding to that – because I didn’t know how to respond or even how to internally react to it.
“I’m proud of you.”
As a victim of abuse of varying kinds over a large swath of my life, hearing a man I respected and trusted say those words was shocking at first. I didn’t think anything I was doing or working through was “good.” Instead, all I saw was that I was drudging up a lot of garbage, a lot of sins done to me and sins of my own coupled with immense sorrow and grief that was so raw that to this day, I still don’t have the right words to describe it. I had just started seeing the sunlight after a surprise miscarriage, I still had moments of absolute rage at God blaming him for all the wrongs I suffered… in a “if you loved me like everyone says, why didn’t you stop it?” way not only with the miscarriage but a great many things in my past. A way that is perfectly natural to go through in grief and momentary despair, because even in that questioning and asking ‘why’ I was still turning to God in my pain, I was seeking Him out however imperfectly.
When our faith is immature, and even some moments as it matures, we still expect God to act like a superhero in our lives to step in like the Avengers and make it ‘right’, much like a child expects a parent to fix everything and ‘make it all better.’ God doesn’t work that way, he allows things in our lives because of our and other’s free will, but he is always there to walk the journey with us if we will only turn to him. When my Spiritual Director said those four words, “I’m proud of you,” God showed him what door needed to be opened in my heart so that I could let Christ in more fully.
“I’m proud of you.”
Those four words had an immense healing effect – after the shock and initial panic wore off, that is, and in the several more times, I have heard it since then. It was the encouragement that I hadn’t heard in so many years, words I hadn’t heard since I lost my Granddad. People underestimate the need to hear words of encouragement, especially when growing up, but even more so as an adult. Many times that emotional building up gets lost in teaching the young how to do things to survive in the world. It is just as important for young women as it is for young men to have positive male role models. When those who should be role models are lacking or are the source of abuse, it can cause so much damage to self-esteem, as well as the development of healthy relationships with other human beings and in some cases, can even damage our relationship with God when they use religion as a tool of abuse.
As humans, we look to others we trust and respect for examples in life, we learn new behaviors by mimicking what we see in those we respect and look up to. It is no different in the spiritual life, one thing that my spiritual director did, either intentionally or accidentally, was he let me see him on his knees in the church praying. I don’t remember the first time I noticed him in the back of the church after an early morning mass, but I remember seeing him frequently on and off for months. Several mornings after the 6:30 am daily mass, rosary, or breviary in hand, I saw him actively spending time with God in Adoration. These simple acts modeled what it meant to be an active Christian, to worship on a daily basis, to simply talk and be with God. It was his and other’s example that showed me a relationship with God was more than Mass attendance on Sunday or even on a daily basis. Sometimes, as humans, we forget that our actions can be as much an evangelization tool as the words we say to other people. It was in these moments that I saw my spiritual director pray that he showed me God. He introduced me to Christ in a way, with a depth that I had never encountered Him before. He showed me how to let God heal me, and it was through spending time with God and letting Him be with me in the silence of my heart that God showed me that the silence was nothing to fear.
I was evangelized to with four words, “I am proud of you.”