In Which I Relate What I have in common with St. Therese

I'm in my very final term of my Spiritual Direction Formation Program. It started with a prophetic bang back in September of 2024. There was a moment on the last full day of our in-person intensive, during a group spiritual direction session, where one part of one line of one reading impacted me so profoundly that I wept for the 20 minutes of meditation we had, and then I wept some more as I shared about it with my small group. The line was this: At the heart of the Carmelite rule, there is a call for us to commit ourselves to Jesus.... That wasn't even the whole sentence. But it struck me profoundly and memorably that the Lord Jesus was impressing upon me that up until that time, I had a concept of what it meant to follow Him. And He was calling me to an entirely new level. The tears were not exactly tears of joy, nor were they anxious tears. I suppose I could say they were sobering tears. What came to mind during the group sharing was the image of Aslan, how he is not tame, but he is good. I think I wrote a post about this at the time. Ah yes, here it is. I am reminded that I realized that I do not control in this relationship with the Lord. 

In 2025 I experienced a couple of totally unforseen developments in my life which picked up my identity, and really my practical day-to-day life, and shook them all about. In the midst of this, I came face to face with some of the highlights of traumatic things from my past and began dealing and healing with professional help, new personal habits, skills, and lots and lots of emotional support.

Then we had our fourth intensive in March, in Chicago. On the last day of that intensive, it became clear that I was losing that lots and lots of emotional support, instantly. Yeah, ok, forgive my coded writing, but let's just say that I have now been moving from the highlights to the deep depths of traumatic things from my past. Same Lord. Same call. Same formation. And now I am grappling with that commit ourselves to Jesus part from two years ago.

And this is where St. Therese comes in. I've read about her Christmas Eve conversion dozens of times, but it is speaking to me in a brand new way right now. Therese knew about loss and pain and trauma, having been ill as an infant, sent away from her family to a wet nurse, bonded there, then removed from there, sent back home with some degree of anxiety, possibly soaked in from her mother's anxiety. Then her mother died. Then she attached to her sister Pauline as her mother, and then Pauline abruptly left home to enter Carmel. So by the time she was 10, Therese had a "mystery illness" which was something of a psychotic breakdown. Even after she recovered, she recounts that she had the horrible fault of being extremely touchy and crying at the slightest provocation. (For the record, all of this is what I can relate with the best in her life.)

The Christmas Eve grace seems so simple and silly, but it was transformational for her and understanding it is powerful to me. Coming home late in the evening from Mass, 14-year-old Therese was on her way upstairs to put away her coat when she overheard her tired father make a comment about the custom of Therese opening the little gifts which were waiting in her slippers, that at least this would be the last year they'd have to do that. Her sister heard it too, and caught her glance, knowing that this was prime fodder for Therese to break into an emotional mess. But Jesus delivered to her a grace that changed her. She writes, "Forcing back my tears, I descended the stairs rapidly; controlling the poundings of  my heart, I took my slippers and placed them in front of Papa, and withdrew all of the objects joyfully." She says at that moment, she left her childhood, and found the strength of soul that had left her when her mother died. She was able to choose to navigate her emotions, rather than to allow her traumatized emotions to ride roughshod all over her. She was not surpressing; she was choosing. She was choosing to stand in the strength she had received rather than in the hurt she had known. And from then on, the choice to love God and neighbor was rock solid in her. Even in her final illness, when she struggled in feeling a sense of faith in heaven at all, she says she was still able to love. 

This is really foundational to her famous Little Way, which boils down to abandoning oneself to the merciful love of God, with gratitude. 

Let me tell you, studying this with a real-time experience of having so much childhood trauma triggered in me 24/7 has been ... a ... [squinting] ... grace... I guess I have to say. And it is a call. I'm not at the point where I've received the grace and I'm bounding down the stairs to be joyful in the face of the beloved one who just innocently had filled my eyes with tears a moment before. I'm meeting these old pains and hugging them tight because apparently I don't yet have the trust to hand them over. But I think right there is the commit ourselves to Jesus moment. It's so much deeper than thought or real time action. This is deep, deep trust in ways I've never accessed before. 

But I know and believe that God does not play with us. I signed up for formation, and formation I am receiving. I remember that during my application interview, I blithely said that I'm often saying yes to the Lord in things where I don't really realize what I'm getting myself into. This has definitely been another case of the same. 

Some sobering things are now on my plate. When I have a moment of dipping out of the 24/7, I'm looking at the sobering things. I'm in a very serious place of there's no way out but through. Please pray for me. On Thanksgiving Day I visited the relics of St. Therese in Virginia, and we had a chat about what I have felt as a call to trauma-informed spiritual direction. My dear Therese is informing me, that's for sure. So, yes. Please pray for me.