I am admittedly on a Fr. Mike kick.
In this week's homily he talked about how the grace of God is available to all of us at any time and yet, we don't seem to receive it, our hearts don't become transformed by it, and I'm guessing Jesus doesn't have a moment where he stops everything because he has felt power leave his body. He describes us as often putting on "spiritual raincoats" where we block the grace, in some way, from entering our hearts.
As disappointing and true as this may be, I've come to understand that there are reasons, maybe not logical, but to the hurting, young parts of our hearts, there are very good reasons that we shield ourselves from the love of God, or that we unknowingly block ourselves off from him while remaining vaguely aware of a feeling of distance.
So why is it that sometimes we can receive communion, literally touch God himself, as the people did in the crowds in the Gospel story about the hemorrhaging woman, and feel as though nothing has happened and other times we find ourselves with tears streaming down our faces because our hearts have been pierced?
One, you may be distracted, especially if you are a mom of young children, but more likely, more often, and more frustratingly, it is because we are blocking ourselves off from the love of God, we have put on our spiritual raincoats.
90% of the time, we don't even know why, and sure as heck don't know how to stop!
There's something elusive under the surface that's getting in the way of us receiving him. It's blocking us from fully trusting the Lord, fully surrendering our hearts to him. Blocking us from fully giving him access to the spaces in our hearts that are the most tender and most vulnerable.
But why?
Why don't we trust God?
Because, we have parts of ourselves that have been hurt. Hurt in life, hurt through relationships, hurt from acts of unlove or missed opportunities to be loved, or even just from the misinterpretation of the experience of being loved by a God we cannot quite understand, and from these experiences we have developed a misunderstanding of God, who he is, who we are in his eyes and our place in his house.
We have parts of ourselves that fear him, that hide from him, that may hate him, and these parts are so deep, so protected, so tender and so scared that we subconsciously block them from being seen in the light of day by our conscious mind, and so, we get confused.
Confused that God feels distant, confused that we feel untouched by the Eucharist, confused by our own actions of indifference or anger and confused by the state of our own hearts.
We know our Faith. We know intellectually who God is. We know it can't be his failing, but we can't see what is going on within. We know there's something on our end that's putting on these spiritual raincoats, but we can't put our finger on it. It evades us.
And so we start to tell ourselves things that aren't true to make sense of this disconnect. We believe that close intimacy with the Lord is only for the saints, we say to ourselves, "this is just my cross to bear", we wonder if we are in some dark night of the soul, or we stop even noticing that our hearts are unmoved, but here's the thing. It doesn't have to be like this.
There is a way through!
There is a way to access these areas of our hearts that are closed off to the Lord. There is a way to reach and get to know these parts of ourselves that need to be seen, heard, known loved and understood by our own selves so they can then be brought to the Lord from a place of Assurance, Confidence, and Trust.
These parts aren't evil, they aren't our enemy, they are the hurting areas of our hearts, often our very young hearts. They need to be known and they need to know they're not alone. They need to know they won't be rejected by you if they speak their experience. They need to be listened to, have their story understood, their perspective resonated with and in doing so, they become open to the possibility of change and possibility of coming to know God as he truly is.
In short, they consent to Redemption.
This is how we remove our "spiritual raincoats". It's slow. It's gentle. It's not so much a taking off as a curious inspection of what this raincoat is even made of. The fabric, the design, the reason for the fit. A re-purposing.
Every part of you is Good. Even the parts that fear God and find it hard to Trust.
Come walk with me and we can do this work together of uncovering your wounded perceptions of God, of renouncing them, laying them at the feet of Jesus and asking the Lord in to redeem and restore the young parts of our hearts who do not truly know who he is and how he loves us. It's worth it!
And remember, that you are Good, that your heart Matters and that you are Enough
God Bless,
Nora
A healed heart is free to be a full conduit of grace, and we were all made to be living expressions of the outpouring of God's abundant love.
Hi, I'm Nora :) Catholic mother, daughter, wife, poet, blogger, podcaster, avid reader, 12-Stepper, and Certified Catholic Mindset and Interior Life Coach. I help people who struggle to see their dignity and value amidst the hardships of life find hope and fulfillment by reworking limiting belief patterns and learning how to know themselves deeply in a way that invites compassion and understanding. I use the tools of Mindset Coaching through the lens of Internal Family Systems to help my clients see the Truth of the Goodness and Beauty of who they are and how they were Made.
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