My Life with St. Joan and St. Thérèse - Chapter 7
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My Life with St. Joan and St. Thérèse - Chapter 7
Our Lady tills the soil with St. Joan and St. Thérèse
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2006, Gurnee IL traveling to the Pocono Mountains
Thirteen hours. It would take roughly thirteen hours from my home in Gurnee, IL, to reach the retreat site in the Poconos. The date was July 16, 2006, twenty years after my consecration to the Virgin Mary in Guymon. The weekly roses I used to hide from Mrs. Birdsill and set at the feet of Our Lady’s statue in the chapel of St. Peter’s were a distant memory. I was in my car, a 2003 Toyota Camry that had served me well for several years, calmly cruising across Interstate 80 eastbound toward Pennsylvania. It was the first sense of calm I had felt in years. More specifically, it was a calm sense of determination, a feeling that I was finally taking action that might free me from the hell I had been in for the past twenty years.
I said the prayer.
It was getting dark. A half hour ago, I navigated the route splits in the interstate outside Cleveland, a feat that kept me true to my destination. Needing to go through Ohio and then Pennsylvania, I was roughly five hours away, maybe six. The Poconos are in eastern Pennsylvania, and it was going to be a very long drive and a very long night through a very long state. It was going to be an overnighter. I had no time to stop for a hotel. The retreat began that very evening, Sunday. I had departed from our driveway, waving goodbye to Josey around three or four in the afternoon. The retreat participants would be in the first session early Monday morning. No time for a hotel. Plus, I only had the slightest desire to pause my journey other than to make necessary pit stops and get more coffee. I had the momentum. Just keep going until you get there. I enjoyed long rides through the night, anyway. Long rides across states reminded me of our days driving through “Big Country” in the Texas Panhandle when Josey and I were newlyweds.
Josey just finished this very retreat in the Chicago area the previous week. It was a six-day silent retreat given by a Catholic Vincentian priest. No talking was allowed outside of morning Mass and the conferences, which were presented twice in the morning and once in the afternoon. Between and after meetings, participants ate together in silence. They would go to the chapel to pray in silence before the Blessed Sacrament. In the evenings, one might hear hushed whispers in hallways and rooms as everyone prepared to sleep but were still too excited not to say something to someone else.
I smiled when I heard about all this from Josey during a phone call mid-week of her retreat. No way would I ever go on a retreat like that. Toward the end of the call, my amusement turned to horror. Josey wanted me to attend the same retreat the following week in the Poconos. She spoke with the priest. He wanted me to go as well. What to do? How would I get out of this?
That Saturday, I went with Emery, now ten years old, to attend the closing Mass and bring her home. I kept making up in my head every excuse possible to avoid going the following week. I could not get off work (lie). People don’t suddenly decide to take off to another part of the country like that (lie). We couldn’t afford it (lie). This was going to be rough.
I decided to bring it to Our Lord.
“Lord, if you want to me attend, give me a sign. Not just any sign. It needs to be big, something that will not leave any doubt. Do not expect me to interpret subtle messages. I need to know what you want.”
During the Mass, the priest went forward for his homily. No more than thirty seconds into it, he raised up a crucifix. The moment he raised the crucifix, my heart was confirmed by my desire to go to his retreat. My immediate thought was, “I must go to this retreat.” The Lord heard and answered my prayer. No subtleties are involved. The Lord touched my heart, and I was prepared to go. I was halfway between Cleveland and the Pennsylvania border twenty-four hours later.
Sipping on my coffee as I drove, hopefully keeping me awake and alert through the wee hours of the morning, I sensed something else, something not quite as calm as this lonely interstate leading me toward a serenely darkening horizon. I sensed desperation. One might even call it terror. Over the years, how often have I tried “solutions” to my hellish condition? How many times had I tried spiritual and medical solutions, all to no avail? Would this be one more failure? If so, would I finally be ready to jump off the cliff, so to speak, to dissolve into despair? The challenge I faced in my own being was impossible to solve, humanly speaking. I had tried everything. Everything. I had even been hospitalized. Nothing. Nothing could be done to help me.
Now, here I was, cruise control set on seventy-five miles per hour, alone, a hopeful wife back home, and heading into the darkness with the intent of reaching an old, abandoned seminary not far outside of Philadelphia so I could sit silently for a week with people I have never met.
Hoping. Just like Josey.
I repeated the prayer.
Be alert. The pavement on the interstate ahead disappeared as night fell. You could trace the path forward only by watching the red tail lights of the cars and trucks ahead of you, along with the increasingly bright headlights of the vehicles coming toward you. I went around a slow car (probably driving the speed limit), turned on my right flasher after a safe distance to indicate that I was coming back into the right lane, looked over my shoulder to make sure no one was in my “blind spot;” though, that would be impossible as no other cars were even remotely close to us at the time, and started thinking again.
How hard the past twenty years had been. How good my wife had been to me. How incredible to have a wonderful son. How many heartaches. How many joys. But still. The Beast. The Beast ruled my life, and the Beast ruined everything. I wanted to kill the Beast, but every effort to do so for twenty years had failed. On the contrary, the Beast was killing me. Or was I the Beast? Was I the Beast, and I simply was killing myself? Did it even matter? Kill it. Or, kill me. Just make it stop.
I repeated the prayer.
I clicked on the right flasher again. I was not passing a car. This time I was exiting to find food and fuel. I was in Pennsylvania around 2:00 am, steadfast in my determination to reach my destination. I needed to stay awake and, just as importantly, required more fuel.
I was back on the turnpike.
The world seems like a different place in the early morning hours. It was now about 3:30 am. I reflected that I did not have far to go, sipping on my last cup of coffee for the night.
I repeated the prayer.
What was it that brought me to this point? How did I endure such physical and mental pain over the years? Why did Josey and Emery have to suffer because of my suffering? What was wrong with me? Nobody knew. I had seen priests, psychologists, psychiatrists, you name it. I spent thirty days in a hospital. The years trudged on, each new one more painful than the last.
Glancing quickly in the rearview mirror, I reviewed the headlines of my life’s story. I was a very highly paid executive. The family business in Guymon had not fared well during the agricultural crisis. Josey and I left Guymon for Yale University, where I received my master’s degree. From there, my career led us to New York, back to Connecticut, where Emery was born, then to Texas, and finally to Chicago. With me pursuing the high life of big pay, international travel, and prestigious cocktail party talk, we gradually let Carmel slip out of our hands. We never did make our final promise after our exciting start at the Carmel in Piedmont, Oklahoma. Even further, my devotional life had almost completely disappeared. There were Sundays when I would not lead the family to Mass simply because I was too anxious, too depressed, or incapable of the self-awareness it would take to sit through Mass.
I was miserable. Though the Lord was always faithful, I had been unfaithful. I had pursued false gods. I was now in exile. I was in hell.
I wanted out. I wanted out of hell.
I repeated the prayer.
During these years of devastating spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical decline, I had celestial companions who were always at my side, namely Mary, Thérèse, and Joan. Their presence was always felt, even in my darkest hours. One day while on a business trip, I was on my bed in a hotel room, literally writhing in some manic pain, both physical and mental. I murmured, “I offer all my sufferings for offenses committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary!” Later, I wondered where that came from and why I did that. I asked how I did that. They were always near, interceding for me, helping me, and…
…cultivating.
Our Lady needed new, fertile soil for the spiritual rose of grace she had given me in Guymon to take full bloom. Remember that dry, arid soil must be broken up. Turned over. Beaten down with plowshares. The result is a new field, ready for planting, growing, and harvesting.
In Mary’s care with St. Thérèse and St. Joan, my twenty-year life had become something new; it was being beaten down and turned over. And it was painful. However, the more bountiful the crop, the more work, painful work, must be accomplished in the field. Mary, Thérèse, and Joan were preparing me for a harvest more bountiful, in my eyes anyway, than anything I could have imagined on my own. That meant significant pain. I felt every cut, dig, and pull. I was hurting.
I repeated the prayer.
“Holy Mother, please give me the Holy Spirit! You must give me the Holy Spirit!”
This was the prayer I repeated as I traveled across the country. The field had been prepared. The seed had been planted. My prayer was a timely call for anything to burst forth and grow, relieving me of my agony.
I hit the brake rounding the exit at the end of the turnpike. After driving through the Ipass lane, where a green light lit up indicating, to my pleasant surprise, that my Illinois electronic toll mechanism worked in eastern Pennsylvania, I was off on a state road. Thirty minutes later, I turned left onto a narrow county road. About two miles down that road, I saw an old stone building on a very spacious property. I pulled into the long driveway and parked among roughly a dozen or fifteen other cars. I was exhausted, having driven all night.
The front door was open, but, as expected, no one was around. I had no idea where to go. There were four different hallways. I did not want to wake anyone up. I really did not even know where anyone was to wake up. I saw a couch by one of the walls and plopped down. I made it. This was the old abandoned seminary I was seeking, the abandoned seminary that was hosting the six-day silent retreat.
It was 5:30 am on July 17, 2006. The day, the “one day” twenty years in the making, had arrived.
I leaned on my side and fell fast asleep.
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