Take Heart

A Building Friendship

Throughout and after the demonic oppression I’d faced, my friendship with Jacqueline and Zach grew. The three of us became inseparable. We saw each other almost every day of the week, and when we didn’t, we texted each other. We prayed together, volunteered in the same young adult group together, and attended social events together; We went on mini-adventures, mini-pilgrimages, and bible studies together. We were as thick as thieves, although that sounds kind of negative. As sticky as saints? (I really have to work on that one.) All in all, we went through many things together, and we learned a lot about God from one another.

Jacqueline and Zach helped me venture into my next challenge. Now that the overt spiritual warfare was passed, I turned my attention more fully to another matter weighing on me. Because of family circumstances and past physical illnesses, I had gaps in my schooling, and I had to take some special tests to qualify for college (which I hadn’t attended before.) Studying was difficult. I wasn’t used to having a strict routine, and there was a lot I had to review and learn. It was hard not to be discouraged or overwhelmed. Jacqueline and Zach were always supportive and encouraging. Jacqueline would come over and study or read a book in my room while I worked. Zach offered to tutor me in math – my worst subject. God bless him because I wouldn’t be surprised if he shaved time off of Purgatory for himself for that kindness. I was a grumpy student when it came to math, but he always remained in good spirits. As evidenced by the folder he gave me below to hold my worksheets (insinuating that I shared the same attitude as the cat when given instructions for math.)

Our friendships with one another were (and are) a heaven-sent one. When St. Thomas Aquinas said, “There is nothing to be more prized on this earth than true friendship,” ours was the kind of friendship he meant. They grew with me and walked towards heaven with me. All of us loved God, and we sought Him with all our hearts.

Loss and Sorrow

Then I got the news. Zach was moving back to New York to discern a religious vocation there. Not long after that, Jacqueline, too, had discerned a possible calling to religious life with a group of sisters in another state. I really struggled with the news. I always knew one of them might be called to religious life, but I didn’t expect to lose them both (lose having them be nearby.) And certainly not within 6-7 months of each other (Zach moved first, then Jacqueline.) As I struggled with this news, my spiritual director at the time tried to comfort me. She told me I would still have her close by; I wouldn’t be completely alone (which was how I felt.) She didn’t know, but the Holy Spirit told me that she would be leaving soon too. I secretly mourned her loss as well. Less than a year after Jacqueline left, my spiritual director unexpectedly had to move to Rome – not even the same country as me.

I was a mess. I felt like everyone was moving on in life without me. I still wasn’t in college. I still didn’t know what state of life I was called to. In the weeks and months after each one of them left the area, I struggled terribly. A new kind of spiritual warfare ramped up. I could barely sit down at my desk to study because the spiritual resistance I felt was so strong. Demons couldn’t reside in my house like before, so they found other ways to bother me. Hundreds of flying ants poured into my bedroom on one occasion. Mice set up house inside the wall right next to my bed – their scratching keeping me up at night. Most of all, though, was the emotional turmoil I experienced in that year, which was severe. I couldn’t gain weight because of the stress. I became depressed. Some days I felt nothing. I just existed and went through the motions. Other times, I couldn’t even leave my bed. I exhibited OCD symptoms, a condition I didn’t know I had before the symptoms became worse. It had been milder before, and so it had passed my notice previously. The OCD was terrible. I would worry that everything I did could possibly hurt someone else. Having mice in the house didn’t help. I obsessed over the fact that mice could carry diseases that could make people gravely ill, and I was terrified that my items, clothes, shoes, etc. were never clean enough before I left my house and that someone would get sick because of me. I ruined clothing and shoes because of all the cleaning in hot water and Lysol. Along with the OCD came scrupulosity. As a result, I often felt guilty and not good enough. I felt stuck. My emotions were pulled in every direction possible. I was haggard, worn, and it was hard to not to feel hopeless. Mostly, I felt alone. Many of the people who understood me best in life were gone (at least, far away.) I felt like the only one left.

Praying was hard, although I kept up with it. There would be long stretches of time where I wouldn’t hear from God loud and clear like before. This was difficult, and sometimes I was angry at Him for it. Could I really trust God? Did He really want my happiness? It didn’t feel like it. He had called people I cared about away from me, and now He Himself seemed gone. Was I all alone? I had to fight against these doubts. I sought God out constantly – more than ever before. I implored the Holy Spirit not let me forget God’s goodness amid my distress. God did speak to me at times during this dark period of my life, and when He did, it was palpable. Still, it’s hard to hang onto any hope when you’re in that much pain.

However, I started to find that, despite my suffering, some of the best advice I gave, and some of the best things I wrote, was in the midst of that pain. When Zach or Jacqueline wrote me about struggles that they themselves were having (and they were no small things), God always gave me just the right words to say to them no matter how depressed I was feeling. God also revealed to me during that time that my gift of writing was for me as much as it was for other people. “I reveal your heart to you through your writing,” He told me. It was true. I would think that I had fallen into despair some days or that I simply didn’t love God and that was why I was struggling, but then I would read what I was writing in my journal and see that my heart still held hope – and love too. I learned about myself through what I wrote in those times of pain. I saw in those times where my heart truly laid.

Elaboration of a Mission

God did some other interesting things in my life during this time. Amid the hardships, He started elaborating on His personal calling for me. I tried to focus on the times He spoke to me rather than the times He didn’t. It’s easy to resent; it’s hard to hope. I wanted to know what my state in life would be (married, religious, consecrated), so that I could get on with it and know what I was working towards. I wanted to move forward faster. I wanted to not feel alone. God didn’t give me these answers at first, but He did give me hope. No matter how hard I struggled, He never left me without hope.

There are some distinct moments I remember of God revealing part of His plan for me. One took place in a movie theater. I can’t recall what I went there to see, but I’ll never forget one of trailers before the movie: It showed a young man about 15 or 16 years old trying to find himself. He felt trapped in life. He was attracted to men, but he didn’t know how to tell his parents or how to live out his desires for his life. In the trailer, he starts to open up to another young man he has a crush on, and as he comes out more and more, he is shown to be happier, lighter, and freer in embracing his new lifestyle (homosexuality.) While the trailer showed the boy’s story as cause for celebration, a deep pain struck my heart like I had hardly felt before. I almost couldn’t keep from sobbing (anyone who knows me knows I’m not the crying type. I detest showing intense emotions, especially publicly.) Along with the pain came an interior cry from God, “My people are dying in their sin!” I felt the intense sorrow at their dying. These words brought back a memory a year or so before when similar words came up while Jacqueline, Zach, and I were in the Adoration chapel praying. We had understood that Jesus was saddened at the hurt His people were experiencing as they chose sin, and that He was asking us to pray for them and to bring them to Him so that He might heal them. All of us have since been discerning the individual ways God has asked us to “bring people back to him.” For my own part, as we prayed in the chapel, I got an image of a field hospital, and I was working in it. I was pulling people into the tent, tending to their wounds and bandaging them up so they could continue fighting. So they could continue living. As I felt the pain hit my heart at the movie theater I remembered Jesus’ words and the image of me in a field hospital building people back up and helping them to heal. God also reminded me of a battle plan I had read about in history of the early days of America. It entailed a three-prong strategy meant to cut off an enemy from three major points so that the enemy would be surrounded and have nowhere to run and no way of acting out his plans. I understood that God was telling me that this was why He had sent Jacqueline, Zach and I to different places. It was part of His plan. We would all be fighting the same enemy – Satan – but from different points, and in different ways. God showed me how He calls everyone to fight for Him, and that if everyone answered, the devil would have nowhere to turn. God allowed people the free will to reject this mission, and not all would answer, but now it was time for my answer. The piercing pain at the suffering of others continued in my heart. My compassion for them intensified. “My people are dying in their sin,” God said. “This is why I need you. [This is why I desire you to answer your calling.]” Of course, I understood that God did not really NEED me in the strict sense – He could save whoever He wanted without my help. But He wanted my help, and with these words came a question: “Will you say yes?” I knew I could reject God’s invitation, but I chose not to. I said yes – a little reluctantly because the notion scared me. How painful would this mission be? I wondered about it. I had already experienced a lot of pain and had given up a lot, and I didn’t want any more suffering. Yet, yes, was my answer. The trailer ended, and the pain subsided. Ten minutes later, the movie started. After that, I went back to my regular, daily struggles.

On another instance, I was in my room listening to music. A song came on called In My Blood by Shawn Mendes. I will never forget it. Suffering as I had been with anxiety, depression, and OCD, the lyrics of the song resonated with me personally. Sometimes I feel like giving up, but I just can’t – it isn’t in my blood. I knew that God was the one Who kept me afloat. He hadn’t given me a spirit of fear but rather a spirit of power and love and self-control. (2 Timothy 1:7) God sustained me, and it wasn’t in the person God made me to be as His child to give up.  Even when I wanted to give up, He always filled me with hope and drew me back to Himself.

However, this isn’t the only reason why I remember this song so clearly. I remember it because the people I would later minister to in life spoke to me through that song. In the movie theater, God had asked me if I would say yes to helping them; now they were asking me the same question themselves through the lyrics: Is there somebody who could help me? …It’s like the walls are caving in. Sometimes, I feel like giving up; No medicine is strong enough. Someone help me. I’m crawling in my skin. Sometimes, I feel like giving up. But I just can’t – it isn’t in my blood! I was the somebody these specific people were speaking of. They were the future people I would meet in life. The Holy Spirit told me that, through His grace, it wasn’t in my blood to give up and give in to despair. I was meant to help others remember that it wasn’t in their blood either. That all of us are created for heaven – for God – and that when we give up on God and run from Him, we aren’t acting like ourselves – as God created us to be. It “isn’t in our blood” to give up and stop fighting the good fight; God gives us everything we need to go on. He wanted me to remind others of this – that He had not made them for death. Life was meant to be in their blood. I accepted my calling even more. Just like to Isaiah’s answer to God’s question, “Who shall I send?” My heart said, “Me! Send me!” (Isaiah 6:8) My heart said yes.

 In 33 Days to Morning Glory by Fr. Michael Gaitley, Mother Teresa described a similar experience. She kept having visions in prayer of a crowd of poor, suffering people and children. Each vision was a little different than the one before it. In one, the crowd asked her if she would minister to them. In another, Our Lady asked her to bring those people to her Son. In yet another, Jesus Himself asked her to bring those souls to Him. Sometimes we think of these kinds of things as things of the past, but God still calls us in remarkable ways even now. Remembering these instances in Mother Teresa’s life and how they related to my own (Mary helping me to go on and to become more receptive of my mission, the Holy Spirit asking me if I would accept the mission, and now the suffering people themselves asking me if I would help them), I was both excited and terrified. Excited at learning another detail about my calling in life, and terror at whether I could actually live it out.

Learning to Accept God’s Love

In that year of 2018, God worked patiently with me. Nothing He revealed to me was revealed all at once. God knew I would be overwhelmed otherwise. He built slowly and steadily on each experience of love I had with Him and on each of His words to me. He spoke to me in songs and in the Adoration chapel. He spoke to me through memories and through the words of friends. He constantly tried to drill into my stubborn head that I was not alone. He reminded me often of my mission and of His saving grace. He assured me that I would have all that I needed and that His mother walked with me. The hardest time He had was getting me to accept His love for me more deeply. I could accept having a purpose in life. I could accept suffering (somewhat), but love? That was tricky. Here, God had His real work.

I listened to this song repeatedly to help me remember God’s love.

When you are suffering, it’s hard to accept good things. It’s especially hard to accept yourself. I strongly disliked myself. So much in my life felt out of my control, and I blamed myself for it. If I was stronger, I wouldn’t be so overwhelmed. If I was less fearful, I would be further along in my life. If I was better, I would be loved more and I would love myself more. How astonished I would be at the moments that I felt least lovable and I thought myself the most far away from God, when suddenly I would turn around and find He was right there next to me the entire time – so close to me, I couldn’t see Him.

A couple of examples would be when I went to Adoration one night, almost in despair, and as soon as my eyes fell on the Eucharist, God cried loudly in my heart, “I am here!”, bringing the words of Isaiah 58:9 to me: “You shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry, and He will say ‘Here I am.’” God knew I had just attended a Bible study a few days beforehand and had read those words for the first time there. It was no accident that He chose those words. Afterwards, on my way home from Adoration, I was praying a rosary in my car, and I felt that I should stop praying and turn my radio on. Each of the two songs that played in succession spoke directly to an aspect of how I’d been feeling and the lies I’d been struggling to reject. The last song sang,

…life hits you out of nowhere and barely keeps you holding on...

…And when you’re tired of fighting, chained by your control,

there’s freedom in surrender, lay it down and let it go.

You’re not alone. Stop holding on and just be held…

…Not a tear is wasted, in time you’ll understand…

…Your world is not falling apart, it’s falling into place...

…Just be held. (Just be held by Casting Crowns)

God was teaching me of His faithfulness, His trustworthiness, His love. He was teaching me that my suffering would end, but that it was necessary, and it had a purpose. It would enable me to help others in ways I never could have before if I had not experienced what I did (as a French philosopher once said, “Suffering creates places in the heart that didn’t exist before.” -paraphrasing a quote from the Wild Goose series put together by Fr. Dave Pivonka.) My own suffering grew my compassion for other’s suffering. Most importantly, it enabled me to cling to God in a way I hadn’t before. It gave me multiple opportunities to trust Him and to allow Him to respond to me with a generous love. I learned that, while my whole life I had been striving to prove my love for God, I was not allowing Him opportunities to prove His love for me.

Learning to accept His love and to rely on Him in the midst of darkness was preparing me to accept love in general. Something I struggled with.

(I should mention, as this is a running series on Life with Mary, that Mary was hugely involved in my journey at this time as well. I remember a particular instance that my pain was very great, and I felt that Mary had the same pain for my sorrow at that moment as she had for her Son, Jesus, when He fell holding His cross on the way to Calvary. I was her child too, and she suffered alongside me – strengthening me by her presence.)

A Plea in Loneliness

I grew in my love for God, and I was beyond thankful for His consolations. Still, my heart ached. I told God that I yearned to have another person by my side. I knew God was real and that He was there for me, but I also knew that God understood that humans were made for community, not just with Him, but with each other. I had lost my community. I had been through a lot with them. They had literally helped me fight demons, with their prayers, with their support, and with their companionship. Afterwards, I felt alone. It had been a year now of feeling like this. My prayer to God was: God, I don’t need much. I just need one person. One person who won’t leave me. One person that will stay in the same area as me and walk with me. One person who will stay by my side. It didn’t have to be marriage. I still had no idea if I was called to that. I didn’t know what I wanted. Maybe just another good friend. But someone. I just couldn’t stand to walk alone my whole life.

Then came Leo.