Tag: healing

Good Friday

by His wounds

I didn’t pick a word of the year for 2023. I can’t really call it a tradition yet, just something I did two years in a row at the behest of a friend. And while I scoffed at the idea originally, it was meaningful in the end. So I really did try to think of one for this year, but nothing stuck. Yet as Lent draws to a close, I think I’ve found it, the word of the year: wounds.

One of the reasons I was opposed to the idea of a word-of-the-year is that it seemed like a goal-setting mechanism, and that’s really not my style. Goals are anxiety-inducing, just threats of failure looming in the distance. I tend to do better with a day-by-day go of things, so I can go to sleep taking note of little victories and examining little failures. But the word-of-the-year is more like a sacramental, a mode through which Christ speaks to me. The year my seventh baby was born, the word was healing, and that year would reveal a path of healing I couldn’t have anticipated. The next year it was receptivity, and soon I was listening to the heartbreaks of my children, which set us on a road of discernment to relocating, something I couldn’t have imagined. And this year wounds have been the mode through which I’m learning to know myself, and this Lent, a mode through which Christ is revealing Himself.

Listening to Him through wounds has been very challenging. For a while, all I could hear was self-loathing, neglect, and despair. It cast a shadow over everything in my life. At times I thought I could retreat again, push it all back into the shadows and manage like I have for the past many years, but once a leviathan like that has been unleashed, it’s out. It will have its reckoning. All I could do was surrender to the time it would take to process and heal. In the meantime, facing the ugly and walking around with open wounds has been exhausting.

My reckoning with God has taken time, but has left me with significant moments of revelation. It was during the 33 days of consecration to Jesus through Mary that I first realized how distorted my view of Father-God was. It was at the confession-of-my-life where the priest opened that pandora’s box for good and allowed me room to express anger at God. He explained suffering to me in a way that I could understand, and inserted Christ as a light of hope into my darker memories. On my way to daily Mass a year ago, I suddenly was given an image of the Trinity with the words, “Everything I [Christ] am, God is. He has given me everything”. And just in the short time I’ve been in counseling, I feel like I’ve been able to organize feelings into right places, redirecting the anger I had towards God.

What has become increasingly clear over Lent is how well God knows me. That probably sounds silly– of course He does as my Creator. But I think there’s always been a self-protective front between myself and Him. There were parts I hid from Him, not completely on purpose. But He always knew what was there in the deep and waited for the right moment in my life to face those dark depths with me. And He hasn’t left my side.

At times Mass has been difficult, sometimes impossible to sit through. But a source of strength is the wounded, crucified, naked Christ on the cross lifted up for all to see. He leads the way in vulnerability, exposure, and suffering. This is what turned the heart of the thief on the cross. The thief shows us how to approach Good Friday: “He sees a Cross and adores a Throne; he sees a condemned Man, and invokes a King”*. Sometimes we want to turn this around and believe that Christ’s divinity made suffering beautiful, and Christ’s salvific work made the cross easy and light. But suffering is still terrible, the cross is still the way of death. But we’re no longer alone; our pain is seen and experienced by the Creator of the cosmos. We are on a cross beside Him, tempted to curse the day we were born, but strengthened by His fortitude in suffering and the look of love in His eyes as He suffers alongside us.

If I can know myself better through my wounds, and I can know Christ better through His wounds, then I have to believe that the only way to understand others better is through their wounds. It’s hard to watch others suffer, and I think sometimes out of our discomfort we try to fix it, fill the void with platitudes, and sometimes pretend it doesn’t exist. But here lies one of the beautiful mysteries about not just Good Friday, but Christ’s entire mission on earth: he dresses the wounds of others—both physical and spiritual—and is wounded Himself for all to see. There is no hurt unknown to Him, no wound too terrible to mend, no cry of the heart that escapes Him. It’s not simple, nor is it easy. It’s tiring and exhausting, requires a heroic amount of courage and patience. But He is all of that on the cross for us, showing us the way, ever before us.

*From The Seven Last Words, Fulton J. Sheen

Holy Thursday

navigating the priesthood post-2002

It’s Holy Thursday, the day we remember the last meal Jesus shared with His disciples. We remember that it was on this night that Jesus instituted the Eucharist, our shared meal of His Body and Blood.

It’s Holy Thursday, the day we remember that it was at the Last Supper when Jesus instituted the priesthood, by modeling a self-sacrificial life of service as He washed the disciples’ feet.

It’s Holy Thursday, and years of sexual abuse by clergy in the dioceses of Baltimore has been exposed. It’s all over the news. And God be praised it’s out. The only way to expel evil is to bring it to the light.

I wanted to write about the priesthood today, specifically how fortunate I have been to know priests striving to model Christ, struggling to be holier, humble in their office. I was going to write about scandals, Church wounds, and healing. And this news from Baltimore doesn’t change that, but makes it all the more necessary.

I came into the Church in the Archdiocese of Portland, Oregon in 2001, and the very next year in 2002, years of clerical sexual abuse and cover-ups were exposed. Bankruptcy soon followed. On the opposite coast in Boston, the same thing was happening, though on a much larger scale. We would move there in 2011 and see for ourselves the fallout: closed parishes, abandoned churches, diocese reorganization. The diocese of Seattle where we lived for a time had also gone through its own slew of scandals.

In all three of these archdioceses post-scandals, there were extensive steps required to volunteer, including background checks and training. When my husband worked as a youth coordinator at our parish, the background checks were actually useful in determining who could volunteer and who could not, and in one case just the mention of a background check scared away a probable offender. All these precautions are no guarantee, and how can we laypeople trust that necessary reform is happening in the seminaries? Sadly, there will still be predatory laypeople, monastics, and clergy, just as there are predatory coaches, teachers, and ministers (though predatory clergy is especially heinous). But I do believe the precautions have slimmed down chances, and hopefully prepared laypeople to watch for signs and suspicious behavior.

However. Oh, damn that however.

I am still shocked to see a lack of outrage and urgency in areas of the Church, both among laypeople and clergy. I am, right now, living in an area near a Catholic institution that refuses honesty and transparency about accusations against its beloved priests and brothers. I feel like I’ve stepped back in time, as though 2002 never happened, as though the Dallas Charter* was never created, as though scandal after scandal hasn’t rocked the Catholic Church.

As though they are untouchable.

It’s strange to have just moved from the Archdiocese of Portland, where reform is in active motion. When people hear “Portland” they think of the news from Covid lockdowns of rioting in the streets, the out-of-control homeless population, and liberal politics. Portland is so much more than that, and one of its treasures is the clergy. They aren’t all perfect (several years ago a Portland priest fled the country before he could be charged with criminal activity), and I’m sure there’s much I don’t know, but the priests I have known are joyful, struggling pilgrims. They’re openly struggling with holiness, openly asking for prayers, and preaching with humility. I think one of the reasons these priests are so obviously hungry for holiness is their shepherd, Archbishop Alexander Sample. One priest said to me once that as a priest, it’s easier to want to be a better priest when you have a bishop like Sample leading the way.

Not long before we moved away, some of my priest-friends had mentioned that during the Covid shut-downs of public spaces, including churches, Sample had been worry-laden. He had a conversion of sorts, realized wounds in his own spirit, and after seeking counsel and healing, his eyes were opened to the probable wounds of his priests, the men under his care. How could they offer Christ’s healing to the people of Portland when they themselves were so deeply wounded?

In a conversation I had with Bishop Sample before we moved away, he told me about how St. Therese had given him a sign that she was watching over his priests. He renewed his devotion to her, and entrusted his priests to her care. Then he began to do the work, making himself more available to his priests and having them attend retreats and seek counseling if needed. Wounds and healing became a part of the priests’ vocabulary in Confession.

It was an exciting time in the Portland archdiocese, and I was sad to move away from it, and even more sad to move to a place that lacks transparency, honesty, and humility when it comes to the abuse that has already been reported and actively suppressed. Take a clue from Portland. Confess. Repent. Heal.

It’s Holy Thursday, the day we spend our last moments with Christ before he is abandoned, condemned, and crucified. I will be thinking about the latest reports of abuse in Maryland; I pray the victims, and those affected by association, and the archdiocese can begin to heal. We all take the wounds of this crisis on ourselves, the Body of Christ, battered and bloody. Let it be crucified. And I hope the Archdiocese of Baltimore will rise with Christ and offer healing to its wounded members, as is happening elsewhere in the Church at this moment.

*The Dallas Charter is a comprehensive set of procedures originally established by the USCCB in June 2002 for addressing allegations of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy. Read more about it HERE.

Want to pray for priests? Try This prayer by St. Therese of Lisieux.

Want to listen to a fascinating, heart-breaking, enlightening podcast about the abuse crisis in the Church? Check out some fine research, analylsis, and hope moving forward with the Crisis podcast.

Want to hear the story of a survivor? Check out Faith Hakesley.

the church phalanx

Where I attend Mass, there is a foyer separating the sanctuary with stain-glass windows. When I am back there with my toddler– which is often– I can still see the church within, but it’s muddled and distorted through the geometric multi-colored glass. It’s a familiar sight line. It reminds me of my life before baptism when I was intrigued by the Catholic church but peering in as an outsider. I could make out some details, but much was unclear to me, almost incomprehensible. But it also reminds me of how I have felt at times as a Catholic, even of late. Sometimes I want to run, but where else can I go, Lord– you have the words of eternal life. Sometimes, I feel like a weary beggar reaching out along the road. Another hit of that spit and mud poultice, please Jesus– my vision is clouding.

But the good thing about being in that place spiritually is that it brings to mind the many who must feel like that all the time. There are so many Catholics who feel like outsiders. Whether neuro-divergent, or trauma survivors, or mentally ill, they don’t feel like they fit whatever mold a church community is selling. Our human desire for community sometimes means that we get so excited to find like-minded people, that we close in too tightly around one another and move through life like a phalanx. We think we’re keeping out the spears and arrows of our enemies, but who do we lose along the way? Or whom do we fail to see as we close in on ourselves?

Christ in the Gospels is a Healer. We should be a healing Church. We can’t even hide our wounds; one scandal after another proves that. And thank God we can’t hide from the rot. I think the secret sauce to rebuilding our Church is through healing. And that means seeking out the lost, the wounded, and beaten-down even within our own parishes. The outsiders who are looking in through muddled glass need to feel like it’s okay to be wrong, to not fit the mold, to be a bit messy when they step inside the sacred space. They don’t have to be bombarded with the mold and all its rightness. Love them. Be the truth, live the moral high ground instead of preaching it, extend compassion and mercy, and God will do His work. How long will they wait, peering in and wondering if their mess will be welcome? How long before they turn their backs and seek a warm, welcoming people with only half-truths to offer them?

Break the phalanx formation and look around. Attend to the wounded.

2022 ~ Word of the Year

Ok, Pee-Wee Herman, get your giant underwear ready, I have picked a word of the year. Wait for it, drumroll… 

RECEPTIVITY 

No, wait that’s not it… The word of the year is: 

FORGIVENESS 

Ach, that’s not quite right… Yes, I know: 

MERCY 

Can it be all three? Are there rules about the word-of-the-year? I’ve had a hard time settling on just one, as you can see, and I think that’s because I am going into this year with more of a concept-of-the-year. 

Nearly the very first thing I did this year (besides waking up, eating breakfast, etc) was go to Confession. This wasn’t an ordinary Confession, but a healing general Confession with a priest who offers deliverance prayers and blessings. By the fall of last year, the piercing, revelatory light of God’s love uncovered dark cobwebbed corners of my soul. A better image would be wounds that had been scabbed seven times over with grotesque scars. (I have written about that elsewhere, and more about the general confession elsewhere.)  

But January 1, I marched up the church steps, slid into the narrow confessional, and encountered Christ the Healer in a way I never have before. It pulled back the scars from those wounds and laid them bare. But the powerful prayers called off any evil that had laid claim to those dark memories, leaving them exposed and raw, though protected by grace. Just as my baptism didn’t end a conversion, but began a new life and deeper conversion, so this sacrament of Reconciliation blew the lid of some dark shit and led me into a deeper stage of conversion.  

That’s what I’m focusing on this year: inviting God to heal what has festered for so long. That will require receptivity, right? I need to have a spirit of surrender with Christ the wounded Healer. I need to be vulnerable with Him. This vulnerability can lead so quickly to shame that I need mercy, both to claim it and accept it. The Divine Mercy was one of the first images that pricked my heart all those years ago at the beginning of my conversion to the Catholic Church. Now I have to live it, open my heart to it, bathe in its light. And in receiving it, I need to reflect it, to pour it out on those who have wronged me, both intentionally and unintentionally. Thus, forgiveness.  

You can see how I have to have three words this year. So if there’s a life coach out there who’s like, No, you only get ONE ya loser, to them I bite my thumb and cry, Fie! Leave me my three, the world depends upon it. I truly believe this is a new phase in the Church, a time of healing and wholeness. We need to heal so we can heal the Church, which can then heal the world.  

Barf, sentimental hogwash, you say. Trust me, healing is afoot.

Word of the Year

{aaaahhhhhhhh!!!}

In January of last year—2021—my lady-friends at church and I got together for a friend’s birthday. The birthday girl requested we come to the gathering with “a word”. A word-of-the-year: apparently, it’s a thing. I immediately went to sarcasm and thought of every children’s television show with their words of the day: would Word Girl greet me mentally every morning, her cape flowing behind her, with a reminder of my word-of-the-year? It was hard not to imagine Pee-Wee Herman screaming in hysterics with giant underwear on his head every time this word-of-the-year would be uttered. That’s where my brain goes, what can I say. 

aaahhhhhhhh!!!

But the pop-up image of Pee-Wee Herman wearing giant underwear on his head wasn’t the only turn-off to this exercise. I admittedly have a knee-jerk repulsion to female groupings of any kinds—prayer groups, Bible studies, book clubs—which is objectively unjust and something I’m in the process of examining and hopefully rectifying. That being said, my first reaction to my friend’s request was panic and repulsion. But I simmered-the-hell-down and realized the more appropriate and reasonable response between avoiding the get-together and making up a saccharine and dishonest response, was to politely decline word-choosing and be a good listener. 

This lady-friend group continually challenges my repulsion towards lady-groups with their sincerity and generosity of spirit. And this was no exception: as I sat and listened to their honest, and non-saccharine responses, my heart softened. I understood more the purpose of the exercise, and in that moment of emotional receptivity, a word floated into my head: healing. 

I was pregnant, due that May, and I had approached and begun this pregnancy with the intention of learning to trust God more fully. There were a lot of knowns and unknowns to fear with this pregnancy. I had been praying for complete and total healing, but also that God would help me trust Him more, whatever the outcome. St. Gianna Molla’s mantra of whatever God wants was purposely on my lips, even though there was fear in my heart.  

I swallowed my pride and suspicion and told my friend later that week what my word-of-the-year was. She was a physician, a mother of four, and a recent convert to Catholicism. She explained that she wanted to know her friends’ words so she would know how to pray for each of us. And later that year, she would—unbeknownst to me—begin a novena to St. Gianna Molla towards the end of my pregnancy when things got scary. It would be Gianna’s feast day when I was finally released from the hospital. Only then did my friend let me know about her novena, and it had been the first time she had ever entrusted a prayer to the intercession of a saint.

It is experiences like these when I feel God lighting a loving flame to melt one more hardened, sarcastic piece of my soul. My friend requested vulnerability, which I systemically responded to with suspicion. But through the vulnerability of my friends, my own heart was softened so that I could hear the Holy Spirit whisper, “Healing.” That year—2021—really was a year of healing, but in more ways than I could have anticipated. God needed to prepare me, needed me to have my eyes wide open and my heart attentive. Even though the prayer for healing was already on my lips, I needed to entrust that to the body of Christ, these lady-friends with open hearts. 

mystery scar

Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed.

Save me and I shall be saved.

For you are my praise.

Jeremiah 17:14

I have a long, gnarly scar on my shoulder. It even has a couple crossbars like a jacked-up railroad. The fun thing about scars is the stories behind them. I have an especially grotesque one on my left arm that’s a weird conversation starter. (“Wow, what happened there?” “Oh this? I had a huge-ass mole removed when I was 16.” “Was it cancerous?” “Nope. Purely cosmetic. Vanity, vanity, vanity.”) But I have no idea how I got this new one. Even stranger, I didn’t notice it until just a few months ago, this long, gnarly scar that deserves a better story than, “Yeah I don’t know what happened.”  

This is what I want to say if someone asked me about it: You know it’s funny, this scar is a manifestation of the hidden scars that have just recently started surfacing, forcing my prayer and attention, making me an emotional, crumbling mess, and inconveniencing the hell out of my life. But that would probably make for a dismal conversation starter. 

The thing is, part of me wonders if it’s true. 

With this mysterious scar, I feel more like a character created within magical realism whose spiritual wounds begin to manifest themselves outwardly, etched in her skin, deforming her body, where she can no longer hide them or—worse—lie to herself about their existence. 

Something happened to me when my last baby was born. The torrent of afterbirth—which was especially grotesque this time around— was followed by a metaphysical torrent. A few months later, I wondered if I was in some kind of bizarre post-partum depression, when I reconnected with a friend who told me a harrowing story of a car accident that had unleashed past trauma during her rehabilitation. I learned that it was neurologically possible and even common that present trauma could indeed activate memories of past trauma. These weren’t memories or feelings that I had forgotten; it was more like I had separated and parsed the traumatic events out and stored them in different parts of my brain. I can pinpoint moments in the past twenty years when a memory or two has been jostled into my consciousness, usually because of a trigger (damn, I hate that word right now because of how over-used it is, but I mean it in its true, psychological sense). 

Since then, I’ve been on this speed train of healing. The timing was right, I guess. The funny thing—GET THIS—is that when I found out I was pregnant this last time, I was justifiably terrified, but really wanted to practice total trust, and prayed for complete healing through my body. This was, hilariously, the most traumatic birth yet. My body is shot, folks. No more babies for this super-uterus. But God was most certainly healing me, yet in a more whole way, a way I didn’t see coming and didn’t know I needed. He was preparing me for mercy. Labor ripped me open, and with that came a torrent of healing grace.  

So this scar… It’s a reminder to be honest, to resist wanting to quickly patch this all up and move on. It’s also a reminder that the past is a part of my story, and I’m beginning to see how it’s not a source of shame, but a sign of grace.