Spiritual Infancy

I am learning heaps and bounds about myself on this island. Mainly, I am learning how incredibly deficient any form of spiritual growth is in my life as well as the patience and discipline needed to bring about said growth. I had no delusions that I could flounce to the wilderness and hear God's voice the next morning, but I was not prepared to experience the complete stripping away of everything I believed good about myself. In this strange environment without modern conveniences I have to relearn even the most basic of tasks, such as washing dishes, fetching water, and even bathing myself. Chores are harder in my full length skirt and headscarf. After being here ten days, my monastic honeymoon is over. Feeling desperate and quite literally trapped, I start running laps around the island to burn off steam and defiantly strip off my headscarf whenever I enter my living quarters.

How did I get to this place of frustration and despair? I was doing so well accepting my tasks and discipline with obedience as well as focusing and refocusing my thoughts toward God. They would wander and sometimes I would feel the stirrings of anger or other emotions directed toward one person or another before stopping my daydreaming mind and returning my thoughts aright. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. But apparently, my breaking point comes at ten days and the strength I have to keep myself going completely disappears. Instead, I am tired all the time, my thoughts run taunting circles around my head, and it is all I have left to crawl bitterly into the woods and weep with disappointment and disgust at myself and the situation. Of course, this desperate crawl is after stomping around the island all day making hell for myself and those around me. What went wrong?

Then it starts to make sense. Everything I have accomplished up to this point -and please graciously read this as absolutely nothing- was pushed along by my own strength. Pride puffed up the view of my condition until like dough left to rise on its own, my pride was punched down into a pile of miserable goo. Expressing my frustration to my spiritual mother, she encourages me to have patience and remain diligent in my efforts.

After talking and letting the storm of my emotional condition pass, I wake up feeling ashamed, like a child throwing a temper tantrum. I being to understand humility, as I finally see myself accurately. I am a spiritual infant and I have a long and difficult path to walk toward health. My old patterns of seeking affirmation in family, friends, and men is gone here. There is nothing to fill up my sudden emptiness except for the God that I have chased to the wilderness. Lord have mercy on me. Humbly- I hope I can finally claim a small understanding of brokenness- I stand before the icon of Christ and for the first time turn to the desperate cry of the Psalms, "Harken unto me, O Lord" and "The sacrifices of the Lord are a broken and contrite spirit. These, O Lord, you will not despise."

Writing is hard. I feel I have nothing to say beyond the cooings of an infant. Also, being on an island without electricity, computers and internet access makes silence easy. Instead, I am here chronicling the spirit lifted up, broken down, lifted up, broken down. One of the nuns described the process of healing this way. You are given a thimble and you are filled up with grace. Your cup is full and you are on the top of the world. The next morning you wake up and feel empty. But it is not because the thimble is now empty, but you have been dumped into a teacup. You are just given a bigger vessel to begin filling. With my experience, I can say with thanks that perhaps my pinhole was filled and emptied into that thimble. By God's grace may I continue to heal and bring that tiny thimble to its brim.