Today I was thinking about my daughter. She's coming home to visit soon, and I am very excited. We don't get to see her as often as we'd like. So visits are so special.
Sometimes I look back on her youth, and I think of all the things I could have done better. It makes me wonder how she turned out so good and spiritual and compassionate. Can you tell I'm a proud mom? Yeah, I admit it. Yet, I am aware I was a wounded person, raising a beautiful child.
Being a parent is not easy. When people say to me "You're lucky, your daughter is really good" I think to myself "LUCKY?? Luck has nothing to do with it! It is hard work, everyday, and when I fail it's God that saves her from my failings."
Raising children is no easy task. Sometimes the most intelligent thing a mother hears all day is her own voice! No wonder some rural moms start talking to themselves! I know I did!
When we moved to PA from NYC I thought I would lose my mind. Yes, I loved it here and still do. HOWEVER, adjusting to rural life was a challenge I truly had not considered. I was a city kid. Concrete, noise, delis, and lots of people. Here in PA we were in a rural development with few people around, and I was shy. When my husband left for work I was alone. Well, not really, but you know what I mean. I had God. I had the Communion of Saints. But, I couldn't see them!
I had good days, and a lot of bad days. Depression. Lonliness. Writing was a huge help for me back then. I had a wonderful husband who loved me, but there was something missing in my own inner life that I could not figure out. I've since realized it was the peace that comes from truly loving myself. Geez, loving oneself was the same as selfish, or so I believed. So, I sacrificed for everyone I loved, or tried to. I was there for my aging parents. I took in many children, and helped whomever I could in our ministry. But facing my own wounds and loving myself? Nope! Worst thing was that I was oblivious to my own needs.
I knew my husband loved me. No doubt. I had the most wonderful child in the universe. No doubt. And yet, there I was restless and going into a major depression. My poor family suffered from it. I tried therapy, but in hindsight I realize I was too hasty and did not take my time to find the right therapist for my particular problems. But how would I know? I didn't know my problems!! Since then I have come to recognize them honestly and found a wonderful therapist who helped me tremendously, and it made a huge difference for healing.
Grace alone, given through my husband's love, and my spiritual director's help kept me going until time and prayer opened me to look deep enough inside myself to face my own personal pain and woundedness--the things that caused me to feel unlovable, and therefore never SATISFIED with the wonderful love I was being given. How could it be real if I was not worthy? I was wrong but did not know it then. How sad, too, for those who loved me and watched me suffer...
Tremendous abuse makes a human feel unworthy of love. Women experience this all too often. I did. (I know it's hard too for men who've experienced abuse, because society tells men they have to be strong, adding yet another cross to the one they carry.) When God sent me someone who did NOT abuse but who truly reflected God's Own Love, it was hard to trust that I was loveable. It had nothing to do with him--it was my own lack of self-worth that caused me misery, and I spread the misery around freely too often!
Oh, yes, and add aging to that mix, and the feeling of not being able to create my "identity" and succeed at anything I wanted to do... Aging and women can make for trouble enough long before we recognize the symptoms.
Dear God, how do women who carry such crosses make it through life? How did I? How did I come to such deep peace? GRACE! It is not called "amazing" without reason! It comes in many ways and sometimes we don't even recognize it until we look back in 20/20 hindsight. Maybe that's what's called the wisdom of years--recognizing the Grace that saved us, and now the Grace that can save others. I don't know. I do know it has been hard work working on myself. And I am far from done! Always a work in progress, we are as humans. Yet the key, as I look back, was brute honesty about my life, my wounds, my intense need for God to heal them, to heal me.
I remain a wounded healer as a priest. But that's good! I praise God for making all things work together for the good, as promised. The very worst things I have suffered in life, abuse, betrayal, unexpected loss of my family, prolonged grief are being transformed each day by Grace into compassion and empathy for others who suffer such crosses in life, or different crosses. God takes the blackest of coal in our broken hearts and makes diamonds! Without the coal there would be no diamonds.
Funny how one thought leads to another. Thinking about my beautiful daughter coming home...remembering her as a child, now grown into a lovely woman...how God has kept us close despite my many failings, and then reflecting on the journey... Writing is good. In the old days I said I like to "think in ink," now with computers it's still good. Reflection encourages gratitude, and I am so very grateful.
Thank you, God. Thank You. Thank You for Your love for me. I love You, God. Goodnight.
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