It was the summer of 1990. Much had transpired in between the time that I wrote about on last evening’s post and this time. In many ways my faith-life had been turned upside down. Things I once believed strongly—the evangelicalism of my early adulthood, even the value of belief itself—seemed simply to be no longer; the things I once valued no longer captivated my imagination, nor did they seem to call to me. In fact, I was in a somewhat dangerous place in life.
I had gone through a period of loss that seemed to return time and again like a tidal wave sweeping away the debris on the shore and washing the remains out to sea. The loss in my life felt so great at times that it left me with a feeling of complete emptiness. I had graduated with a degree in philosophy three years prior, and had tried to earn a living at a number of different jobs—all without real success. It seemed that I always ended up back at the night restaurant. After a failed relationship ended late during the previous year I uprooted myself, left everything behind, and moved back to east Texas where I had grown up.
I still recall the prior winter, when one afternoon alone I felt the sense of my failures come crushing down. I remembered having been taught to turn to Jesus. I remember praying, “Where have I failed? Sustain me just a while longer…give me hope.” Somehow in that cold afternoon warm light seemed to pour into the room. A familiar presence, though I couldn’t say who or what, seemed to be with me. Just for a moment all my questions and longings to escape loneliness seemed not really to matter at all. In a way that eludes my words everything seemed to be answered in a single breath.
Just a few months later I began to make choices. I left everything behind—whether it was a leap of faith or not was something that I didn’t consider. The only anchor in my life was that I had been taking a great deal of comfort in the Catholic faith, though at the time I was still just observing from a distance though growing ever closer in the heart.
After having moved back to east Texas I recall having yet another epiphany of light—I woke up one morning feeling as though God had communicated the secrets of the universe the night before. I didn’t waste time getting to the Catholic parish to tell them that I was interested in becoming a member of the Church. As I began to attend regularly I purchased a wooden rosary from the parish gift case. It seemed to attract me. I thought about that rosary of a number of years past. As I held it in my hands and felt each of the beads I felt a strong sense of peace.
On the way home from church the morning that I bought my rosary, I stopped to rent a movie for the afternoon. Among my selections was a documentary film about Mother Teresa of Calcutta. I thought that getting to know the “living saint” was a good way to get a little better acquainted with the faith that I had chosen to embrace. One scene showed Blessed Teresa holding a rosary in her hands. At least the rosary that I had purchased came with a “how to” booklet. I prayed all the mysteries in one setting that first day.
Still alone in life for the most part, I took the opportunity on many afternoons to find a nice place to sit and pray in my favorite park. It was always “Rosary prayer,” and it blessed my life abundantly in ways that I didn’t begin to imagine at that time. I recall one Friday afternoon, while praying the sorrowful mysteries, I spotted a tree that reminded me of a cross. I envisioned seeing Jesus on that cross giving everything for me—so that I could be happy. I returned to that particular place several times over the next couple years to pray, always with rosary in hand. My life was beginning to take on new meaning and I was making new friends as well. I even had an evangelical friend with whom I worked ask me if she might go to the park with me some afternoon to “pray my Rosary prayers.”
It is an interesting phenomenon that in our experience of life we run into the repetition of certain qualities of life that appear to us unchanged over time. It’s kind of like my tidal waves that come along ever so often and sweep things away. In life at this moment I feel that a huge wave is lurking on the horizon—for me there’s the unknown: a change in jobs, certainly—a change in careers, perhaps even so. Yet in it all I'm holding on to my lifeline.
Four years ago I had a dream. I was looking for answers to life’s most perplexing questions—perhaps I was perplexed. Yes, Deacon Dan thrown into the mix of all these souls just searching, not really knowing, often failing, still often perplexed…in the dream I came to a shrine of sorts where the souls of the departed were waiting. There I met Mother Teresa, who at the time of the dream had not yet been beatified. In the dream I knelt before this saint to be and in my silence she spoke to me “Do not be afraid to turn to our Lady.” I can only turn in the way that I have learned to turn--one bead at a time.
Now, as my reflection for today, along with the evening, draws to an end, I reach in my pocket and take out my rosary—it’s the one my mother held in her hand the day she became Catholic—I take it out of it’s case and I place it around my neck. There’s just something about having the crucifix hang over my heart. I’m going to go into the back yard and sit on the swing and pray tonight. You can pray with me too. I don’t know what I will pray for, but the times in my life when I’ve turned to Our Lady have been times when I’ve seen Jesus most clearly. The quality of my life experience of late has had a familiar feeling. Perhaps I see a wave coming my way again, perhaps not.
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