Twenty-four years ago today, I set out on a journey home. I had been in Japan for two and a half soul-crushing years, and even though that Spring was the anticipated end date of that time, I had been strongly entertaining the possibility of either staying in Japan for the long term and entering a marriage that would have been a disaster, or returning home long enough to earn a degree to spend my life supporting both of us. I hadn't completely forsaken the latter possibility when my plane landed Stateside, but I did come eyeball to eyeball with the immensity of my brokenness which left me even open to this possibility. I felt very much like Jonah, transformed into a great heap of whale vomit.
But I timed my return with the Feast of the Annunciation, because my return to the States was an act of saying yes to the Lord, saying yes to a new life, as the Blessed Mother had. Well, not exactly as she had, but in my attempt to imitate her faith that when we say Yes, God unfolds His graces.
His graces are still unfolding, and there's nothing magic about it. One false image of God that I grappled with a lot in those days was God as a Great Magician. I had learned to believe in the supernatural, but I had not so solidly experienced a good natural foundation on which grace was to build. So my prayer did sometimes unwittingly devolve into magical thinking, or just meditation on my own anxieties. In my early Catholic days, I often caught a glimpse of something I could barely identify, but for which my soul deeply hungered: it was this good, natural, human foundation. I heard it in how many priests spoke. I witnessed it comfortably being lived by some believers. It was a healing dew; I could never see it arrive and I could never preserve it to examine it, but when it fell it was so refreshing.
Today, I am chosing to continue to say yes. The history that was mine in 1997 is still mine today, and while I've grown, it isn't like we ever leave our brokenness behind. Jesus rose from the dead with His wounds in tact, oddly enough! No matter where we have "arrived" in relationship with Jesus and life on earth, we can never exhaust the degrees and measures of Love that God has ready to pour out, if only we have emptiness in us for Him.
When Mary said yes, the Word became flesh. Jesus entered our disorderd, broken, sinful world to love, heal, redeem. He comes to bring glory, grace, sonship, belonging. This is such a mind-boggling truth to me that it is part of my name in Carmel: Elijah Benedicta of the Incarnate Word.
Even so, Lord Jesus, Come.
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