How This All Began.

I had been grieving the sudden loss of my husband for some months. I had been attending different weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly prayer group/ bible studies, and had known in my heart that my healing from grief could only come through Jesus.

At one prayer group, we sit quietly and invite God to visit with us in a space that one pray-er calls our Heart Room (a term in a book), a place where we can safely sit with God and possibly hear His Voice in some different way than in those places we are accustomed to praying in regularly. I have done this type of meditation in a form before, using the Bible to meditate and to place myself there in the bible story in a way that may bring me closer to Jesus (a form of Jesuit meditation.)

On this occasion, when I closed my eyes, I went immediately to a place that exists in life between our church and our Parish Life Center (which was originally the convent that serviced our parish years ago.) Recently, some parishioners had spearheaded an effort to build a grotto in this space, and this was accomplished a few years back. There are some benches there and I have rested there on retreats, but truthfully I didn’t think of the place as a spiritual destination. I preferred, I guess, the chapels or the main Church as places to personally pray. Yet in my present meditation, I immediately “went” there. I felt that Jesus was there, sitting on a bench, waiting for me, to comfort me, and also that He wanted me to meet someone else there. I sat beside my Lord and felt His Comfort and His Love and also His encouragement to greet this other person, but I grew very frightened of that possibility and I left that meditation quickly. Many times since, when I have closed my eyes, I have been “brought” to that place and I have left quickly in what I call fear.

This avoidance has caused me pain. I wonder what Jesus wanted me to see and to know and I sort of curse the fear that holds me back. I wonder if Jesus will continue to wait patiently for me to have courage. I believe He will.

Recently, suffering from strong anxiety, I made my way to the Franciscan nuns’ mission in Tenafly, New Jersey and one day, while gazing on the grotto there and the path of the Stations of the Cross, it came to me that what I should do is to visit local grottos and shrines, and journal my visits in some way. I feel that I will find peace as I do this. Today, the words that came to me were “mission” and “pilgrimage”. When I got back to my computer, I did a search of local shrines and what I found is that I am not the only one who has felt this desire, that there are “pilgrims” like me, many, many of them. So although this journey is personal, there are so many others who have gone, and are going now, on their own personal journeys. Like the Catholicism series I saw on PBS, the shrine at Fatima and all the pilgrims who process with their candles are lighting my way for me, towards what I hope will be healing and peace.

In Jesus name,

Amen.

My writing is a way for me to express my feelings. Like the ocean I love, my feelings often come in rough waves and then in gentle, peaceful tide. If you are kind enough to read what I have written here, my only suggestion might be not to read everything I’ve written in one sitting, but to space out the reading. If you read them all at once you may find yourself incredibly bored, or tired, or too full. Thank you for your support.  – Regina