Grace Will Lead Me Home (Adapted From An Upcoming Work)

Today marks one year that we’ve been in our new home.

This time last year, it was Holy Week, and I felt a little odd doing something that was customarily celebratory in nature during the most solemn time of the year. But at the same time, it didn’t feel quite celebratory. It felt more like relief- the kind that envelops you when you’ve been in labor for 20 hours and your exhausted body finally surrenders your baby.

 

It was also a hesitant- yet hopeful- surrendering of the previous three years to a solution I wasn’t quite sure was right. I could only celebrate the fact that my husband was sure. That he was leading us. That he had chosen, and that I was even willing to surrender to that. I celebrated the fact that here there would be no one threatening us, that my children were safe, and that I knew exactly where they’d be laying their heads to sleep in six months.

 

In this last year I have grieved and I have ached, and I have wept, yet I have laughed. The essence of our journey has taken its toll, yes. But there is beauty even in the darkness of our journey. In the breaking. In the bleeding. In the salty tears of heartache and betrayal and fear and angst.

 

And this past year has ceded to a slow, forward movement away from the bitterness and sadness of grief, toward a healing and wellness that only God’s grace can provide.

 

It's ever so small a movement, truly, but I feel it, and I see it:

It’s in the way I catch sight of the old me sometimes- the me that wasn’t always overwhelmed, the me that relished small hands constantly needing their mother, the one that had no concern for tomorrow or where my children would lay their heads at night, or which people in our life would still be there in the morning. I see small glimmers of the hopeful mind I used to have, filled with dreams and plans happily abandoned to the will of God. The one whose creative side found its voice in writing, baking, and painting old furniture.

And sometimes I even feel the joy that had always been entangled with the craziness of our life, and I know it isn’t the pretend happiness I was forced to build on quicksand. 

True joy. Just there….Maybe a little bit further below the surface now, but definitely there.

I’ve been asked how I am still standing. How I can function. How I can move forward after everything we’ve been through. My answer is always the same: God’s grace. I have no abilities on my own. Everything I’ve been able to do these last few years, especially this past one, is because God, in His deep well of generosity, has given me what I have needed to stand, to put one foot in front of the other, and inch by inch, move. Move forward, deeper, further down the path which He set us on those long four years ago. His grace sustained us through so much loss, so much betrayal, so much hardship. Through the dark valleys. Through the storms. Through the unknowing.

God’s grace.

 

A month ago I bought this picture for our living room:

 

When I saw it in the store, something stirred quietly in the depths of my heart. Considering all that we had been through to find our home, and the fact that I was ever-aware of the light of God’s grace working even in the darkness, I knew that picture- the very last one, slightly hidden on the shelf- was meant for me.

 

Of course I know this life is not our true home. This fact has been especially profound in the course of this past year, and really in the overall journey of finding a home. But a house, a shelter, somewhere for us to live out our ordinary days, striving to love God and each other, a place from which to serve, a place to which my husband and working children may return at the end of a weary day- that is what we call home here in this life. That is where we little beings who are chasing after the Beatific Vision, who are just living and loving and growing our families, find the grace of God- tucked into the crevices of the painted walls, the messy floors, the coverlets we lay across our children at night.  

 

That picture spoke of the grace which led me through one of the darkest valleys I’ve ever traversed in this life. Through that valley, to this little home we now call ours- here on the mountain. This mountain, though lackluster at first, has spent the last year singing of God's glory with every new sunrise He paints across her peaks, and whispering of His making all things new at each change of the season. 

It's been a whole year since grace has led us home. 

God is so very good.

 

 

PS. I'd be remiss without a little shout to our realtor, Michelle Leo Hart, for being an angel in our story of finding home. She truly made the process so much brighter than it would have been, especially after the experience we had with another realtor before her. She could never know how deeply grateful we are, and how much her guidance and patience felt like balm to our weary souls. If you live in the Central PA area and are looking for a new place to call home, connect with her! You won't regret it, I promise!

A Story About My Mother, Our Lady of Guadalupe

Let me tell you a little story about my mother...

Today, while clearing out untitled google docs, I clicked on one, and all it contained was this link. It's a link to an article over at Catholic Exchange, about Our Lady of Guadalupe. Although I don't remember it, I apparently had copied the link to the doc and saved it, on March 20, 2018,* in the midst of a painful struggle I was having three months after my seventh baby was born. 

The day she was born was a miraculous day. It was the day I almost died, and it also happened to be the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. With her very tangible intercession, God kept me here instead. 

While I was still recovering from all of the physical and emotional things of that time, I felt so broken. I didn't know if I'd ever feel whole again. I didn't know if God desired my brokenness to be permanent, or if it was just temporary. I was just trying to put one foot in front of the other, care for my new baby and my other six children, and try to remember who I was. That was around the time I must have found that article, gleaned something from it, and saved it for another rainy day. 

Hang onto that, because I'll come back to it.

My mother interceded for me in another way 

At another point in the months that followed my experience close to death, when I was in tears over the endless cycle of illness and grief in which I seemed to be drowning, my mother interceded for me in another way- 

One night, I randomly came across the words that Our Lady spoke to Juan Diego when she appeared to him in the year 1531: 

"Am I not here, I, who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not in the hollow of my mantle, in the crossing of my arms? Do you need anything more? Let nothing else worry you, disturb you." 

Instantly I had had peace. It was a reminder to me how God allows His mother to be my mother, and not just on the traumatic day my little baby was born, but in those moments of grief and emptiness out of which I could not climb afterward. 

And every day of my life, if I want her.

A message I needed to hear in this moment 

For months now, I've often found myself frustrated, fretfully wondering how I'm going to get back to "normal." How all the broken pieces of me would be restored, as I continue to sift through the shards of life created by the destruction of this past year+. How can I trust people again? How can I ever allow anyone close to our family, close to my children, close to me?  How can I get back to the way I used to be- The way I was before we moved the first time? The person I desperately tried to keep hold of when we moved again? The person I lost sight of as we were moving twice more, heartache and betrayal marring the already-withering landscape of our dreams? How do I heal from one betrayal that traumatized my family in such a profound way? 

How do I reclaim my old self from what feels like an illness I have yet to name, much less heal? 

It's been a long, dark struggle, during which I've frequently cried out to God for answers. 

Today has been a particularly difficult day. 

So when I rediscovered that link, over eight years after I had saved it (and then promptly forgot about it), and I once again read the article by Maura Roan McKeegan, peace seeped in, along with some conviction. The story of a broken statue which she writes so beautifully, conveys a message I needed to hear in this moment of my recovery: 

"Let go of worrying about how the broken pieces of life will fit together again. Instead, simply hold onto to Mary and love her. Then, God will have room to take the shattered shards that seemed hopeless, and from the hollow He can make me whole." 

Although I know God is with me, and that His path for me has already been trodden by His divine feet, I still find it hard sometimes to just keep going without having knowledge of what's up ahead. To not be privy to His plan for how He will restore me sometimes leaves me feeling a little bit anxious. But children do not think like this. Children just keep moving, and in innocent trust, they don't need to know the details. 

This is why Mary's motherhood and intercession in my life is such a beautiful gift to me. It was so random to come across that link which I saved so long ago, on a day when I have felt particularly hollow...  I am always amazed at how much God allows His mother to be my mother. To be with me in moments of despair, darkness and grief. She is so loving and gentle, especially when I am such a baby. She draws me up into her arms, safe within her mantle, so to carry me to the feet of Jesus.  

He gave to us His mother as a gift

When Jesus was dying on the cross, He gave to us His mother as a gift. In His divine wisdom, He knew we needed her, and He knew no one could ever love her more than He did. He allowed her to intercede for us, much like she had for the people at Cana. I cannot ignore the many times she has shown up for me over the last eight years especially, particularly in her title of Our Lady of Guadalupe. God has allowed her apparitions to draw people to Him, the way He converted 9+ million Aztec people to Catholicism through her, in the decade following her apparitions to St. Juan Diego. 

She is our mother, gifted to us by God Himself. If we become like little children, she will take our hands in hers, and gently lead us Home.   

 

*You may notice that the date on the linked article says 12/12/24. I confirmed with the editor that the article was originally printed on 3/8/18 (shortly before I first discovered it), and then reprinted 12/12/24 for the Feast of OLOG.