This is a lengthy post so pour a cup of java, or tea, or whatever you like to drink and pull up a comfortable chair. I am currently in West Palm Beach, Florida where it is too hot. However, when most people think of deserts, they think hot -- right? So the imagery is correct for my journey. Deserts are also cold though; they can be very cold when the sun sets and the darkness of night descends. Sometimes a howling wind comes up and if not hunkered down under the protection of a sheltering tent, the sand stings the already cold skin covering the face and extremities and somehow seems to reach deep inside to the core of a sorrowing heart. The only thing worse than traversing a desert under any and all such situations: hot, cold, windy, or still -- is doing it alone.
I moved two months after mom died although I secured an apartment only two weeks after she died. I always said I would; I was never content in the small town where she lived. To my thinking I needed more cultural events, a larger church community, not to have to commute 220 miles a day, and better shopping. What I did not realize was that by making that choice, I had saddled my camel and gone from the edge of the desert to somewhere deep inside it. During the first year the wind howled, the nights were bitter cold, and my camel and I were not making much progress in the bitter heat of each day's sunlight. Cultural events were unaffordable, the tent I dwelled in was unsafe, I ceased to care about -- let alone look for -- a church community, the absence of a commute cancelled out my industrious motivation, and shopping left me empty. I grieved. So may times I had told others not to make sudden major changes in the early stages of grieving. We humans seem to never be good at utilizing our own advice.
One day, deep in the desert, my camel and I -- exhausted and thirsty -- came to a dead stand still without an oasis in sight. The inner drive I had known my whole life was gone. It is impossible to traverse a desert without water. It is possible to experience the absence of food for extended periods of time, but the lack of water most assuredly brings death. Under the shelter of my academic tent while writing a paper on Matteo Ricci and the introduction of Christianity to China during the counter-reformation, I found myself immersed in the primary documents of those venerable Jesuits who were both the most educated men of their day and totally surrendered to Christ through their vocations. The wind and blowing sand began to decline and I recognized the geography of a spiritual desert. I was deeply in need of some spiritual water! God was calling and without the howling of the wind I was beginning to hear.
Three hours with Fr. J and I was once more on the ancient caravan route through the desert the storm had obliterated and a larger church community of God's own choosing was now my new home instead of the tent of a wanderer. At the same time, the geography of my physical desert was just about to come into view after a respite at the desert oasis. The oasis brought me lots of clean crystal clear cold water to slake my thirst -- a time of great joy while spending hours staring at my beloved in adoration, His calling me back to Himself as His bride with a reassurance that He loved me and that I belonged to Him. There was happiness in showing another, Darlene, the first steps through the desert when she came to live with me briefly. But God was not done with me yet. Darlene left and I was left with the very real aftermath of what it sometimes costs to help another, what was left of my energy disappeared like rising mist after the dawn gives way to the brightness of day. I was ill.
Often there is no word in whatever language we speak that is feared more than "cancer." Now I was to confront that very word with all its realities. The long days of not knowing, then not knowing enough, two surgeries, not wanting to wake up which scared everyone, and long months of recovery. Now there is a body that is not the same and never will be again. An inability to function and complete physical tasks that were always taken for granted brought anger first, then depression. I am not yet at true acceptance. The decade changed -- age 60 --positively unacceptable; there is still so much to do, isn't there? One year cancer free and now we find I have a gall stone and must stop eating some of my favorite things. I find myself struggling through giant dunes watching for places that will swallow me up in a heartbeat. I think I must finish the race out of the desert but some saints spent a lifetime there. Emptiness; God is there but is so silent. I ache for religious community to live with -- to share my tent and share God's praises with me. I long for a deep union with my beloved that I cannot feel. I long to die in the habit I once wore as symbol of my wedding to Christ. Fr.K tells me it is avarice -- Christ's love and His command to put my ring back on my finger in evidence that I belong to Him should be enough. He tells me to read the private writings of Blessed Mother Theresa. I begin to do so and new understandings start to fill my heart. There is someone who knows, someone who understands on a much deeper more painful level than I.
My father is dying. We celebrated our birthdays together for they are one day apart. He is 91 while I have turned 61. There is no stopping the march of time. I am on a long traveling journey that began to grow from the seed planted by the "c" word. I ached to see the place of my birth again before no longer being able to travel or dying. I wanted so much to meet the grandchildren I had never held. I needed to spend time with dad while he is still alive. I had promised to take Sister Mary Louise home to retire. My trek through the metaphorical desert became a very real one in this dimension as well. My mentor gives me the image that it is about finishing a chapter in my life that began beside my dying mother's bed. It is that and more. It is bringing to completion healing of early wounds that have taken a lifetime to close. It is finding the person God created that disappeared so long ago. The years have changed how she appears but the heart is the same. There will be a turning of the page when the journey is complete and a new chapter will begin to be written in a very long story. In the meantime I read, I pray, I listen. Mother Theresa says: "Accept whatever He gives you with a big smile: that is holiness." I have finished reading her writings and I aspire to doing just that. The very first day I failed miserably -- I have a long way to go to become holy.
We got pics :)
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