Jesus made tears sacred because he cried. He knew the agony and the frustration of our problems. He chose to bear all that is human and as a man with our human nature he brought us with him on his return to the Father. The One who sits at God’s right hand knows what it is to cry. He preached an upside-down world in which the poor, the marginalized, the suffering, those who agonize through emotional pain, are the first, the guests of honor, and the privileged.
From the book Surviving Depression
You are busy. Life happens. You can barely keep up. You know that you could be thinking about more important things, but you don’t have the time to stop and consider what they would be, much less do them.
And then something happens. You are stopped in your tracks. A spouse leaves. A friend dies. A job is lost. Opportunities pass you by. A child makes decisions that break your heart. As you absorb the pain of what is happening, the important things begin to surface. What was hidden, suddenly seems so obvious. The knowledge of what you could have done, should have done, for years perhaps, or years ago, leaves you feeling profoundly empty, or guilty, or depressed.
If only you could do things over again…
Regrets come in all shapes and sizes. Navigating the questions, self-doubt, and haunting what-ifs of your life can be difficult. Facing how your regrets may have turned you into a person you never wanted to be is even more difficult. Yet no one escapes this part of life. It’s the nightfall between yesterday and tomorrow, between the past and the future, between sunset and the coming dawn.
You may feel bad about something in your life that has happened to you or someone you love. You may have a number of things for which you are blaming yourself. Perhaps you have given up hope that you will ever be able to retrieve what you have lost in life or fix what has been broken. A woman once shared with me that she still wonders what she did wrong after her marriage ended in divorce over twenty years ago. To this day, she wishes she could go to bed and never wake up. She is not alone in her suffering.
Through a program I designed called HeartWork, I have worked one-on-one with many people haunted by regrets. The people I have worked with often believe that if they just had just one more chance things would be different, but they also feel that no more chances re available for them. But God always offers second chances.
Hi. I’m the author of the forthcoming book Reclaim Regret: How God Heals Life’s Disappointments. I’m excited about sharing the book with you when it releases in September. But right now I invite you to join me for a five-day journey via email, a journey to inner peace. The email journey has exclusive meditations, insights, and sneak-peaks into the book, along with a special offer. I hope to see you there!
Sr Kathryn J. Hermes, FSP
PS You can get 12 free videos introducing you to HeartWork here
Grace is nothing else but a certain beginning of glory within us.
St Thomas Aquinas
I’m a religious sister, so, you could say, spirituality is an important part of my life.
I’ve always reached for the best in anything I did, and the same is true of “the spiritual life.” In fact, in my younger years, I pursued it with a vengeance.
So I prayed extra. I created schedules for spiritual reading. I tried to imitate the saints. I made lists in my journal of anything that could distract me from a single-minded devotion to God…or so I thought.
One year I was making the 19th Annotated Retreat with a Jesuit Director at Boston College. Each evening I sent an email with a short paragraph about my prayer that day. I struggled through the first month or so, treading water in what were my ideas of spirituality. It was a rocky start to a retreat in everyday life I had hoped would bring me closer to God.
Looking back now I realize how self-willed the exercise had been. The sense of inner violence that was marring my soul’s surface was painful as I tried yet one more spiritual practice. Then one day something changed. I can’t exactly remember the prayer experience I shared with my director which prompted him to send these words in response, but I will never forget what he told me. Somehow, that day, I must have yielded to grace, and he wrote in response to my evening email, “That is the Spirit. The Spirit is a gentle breeze, like perfume on the wind, a light fragrance you can barely catch.”
I remember sitting in my office, deflated and free. The years of soapbox speeches and accumulating spiritual kudos had not of the Spirit. The self-styled aggressive pursuit of holiness actually kept me from the inner life of the Spirit, kept me from living within.
The Apostle Paul was also a professional religious person whose spirit before the encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus was marred with aggression. He rounded up the followers of the Way to put them in jail. Zealously he pursued his plans and religious career. Just outside the city of Damascus, he was met by Love. “I am Jesus the One you are persecuting.”
In an instant he realized he had been wrong. This Jesus that he had rejected as dead, was alive. The community he had persecuted were the ones who had truly understood the action of God in history.
This “conversion” experience is the freedom that arises from no longer knowing, having one’s plans overturned, becoming the servant instead of the protagonist, moving from autonomous isolation to community interdependence. “Go in the city and there you will be told what you are to do.” Though Paul had pursued perfection as a Pharisee, he had not lived within. He suddenly touched the immense horizons of the life within that were being opened up to him as he walked into the city of Damascus, blind and led by his companions.
Something that both I and St Paul didn’t ask in our early heady days of religious “conquest” was this: is God in all of this bluster? Do I want to see his face or my own?
God wants to shower on us the radiance of his glory. He wants to draw us into his plans for the salvation of the world. To convert us from our surface life to the deep inner wells of spirit, from pride to wonder, from zealous aggression to sensitive discernment, from certainty to the inner depth that can sense the slightest movement within without needing to know.
If you want this inner life, here is a simple practice you can make your own:
Stop and focus.
Calmly center. Ask yourself: What am I feeling right now?
Disengage
from any strong opinions and emotionally driven behaviors.
Ask:
Where is God in this situation? Pray: “Show me your face, O Lord. Show me your face.”
Imagine
God watching you as a dear old grandparent watches a grandchild. With that type of love, hear God speaking to you about what is going on.
God says, “Dear child, this is what I see when I look at you. (Listen as God describes the situation from his perspective and what he sees is your reality.) I hear your heart’s desire…. I can hear what you are thinking…. (Let God tell you from his perspective what he hears.) I want you to know, dear one, that I care about what happens to you. I have plans for you. I understand this event more than you could ever know. This is what I want for you… (Open yourself to God’s wisdom. Have the courage to see the situation through God’s eyes, and to want what God wants.)
Youth is a time for building our identities, trying things out, learning what works for us and what doesn’t. But when the moment comes when God’s face begins to show us what the world looks like in God’s eyes, we can let go of much of what we’ve built up on the outside to begin a new journey, gently deepening our inner life.
I’m excited to be coming out with my new book Reclaim Regret: How God Heals Life’s Disappointments September 1. You can get a special offer right now.
“I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them….” This passage, with its mounting joy and jubilant hope for an eternal covenant, is set in juxtaposition to the seeming darkness and threat of death in the final chapters of the Gospels, which recount the establishment of the New Covenant. What went wrong? Or perhaps we should ask what went right, that this covenant promised through the centuries should be written in the blood of the Son of God? The passion and death of Jesus makes visible to us the extent to which God goes to establish this covenant that sets us free to love him and to live entirely for him. God poured out all his love for us when he sent his Son to become one of us.
From the book Cherished by the Lord
‘Of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist it is written: “This morning my soul is greater than the world since it possesses You, You whom heaven and earth do not contain.”‘
St. Margaret of Cortona
Touching the Sunrise 