Dark Night of the Soul

I thought I had better take this window of opportunity to write now while it's quiet than later when it sounds like a swirling tornado has hit inside the house. The 3-year-old is down for her nap, my 9, 7 and 6 year olds are downstairs watching Thomas the Train trying to recover from strep throat and pneumonia. It has not been a fun week. As a matter of fact it hasn't been a fun three months.

I have always heard of people going through a great spiritual darkness wherein nothing and I mean nothing gives any kind of consolation whatsoever; where they feel so far from God almost to the point of spiritual despair and that is exactly where I have been since the end of December. In fact I took down this blog a while ago because I couldn't even relate to all I had written over the past year or so. I was always very puzzled by people who just "lost their faith," thinking how does that happen, and also thinking surely this will never happen to me. I have always been faithful - always followed "the rules" and always tried my best and so this darkness snuck up on me out of nowhere and swept through every cell in my body. Perhaps it was the enormity of the move from NJ to MA - perhaps I underestimated the toll it might take. Perhaps it was a great deal of un-dealt with trauma that began to rear its ugly head, almost mocking me. I just know I woke up one day and felt nothing. I was literally empty; I did not feel God's presence, nor any small morsel of help from the Saints - even the ones I have always had a strong devotion to. It was just darkness.

I am prone to depression and I do take medication for it (I believe I might have blogged on this before)- an unwelcomed inheritance from both my mother's side as well as my father's side. The depression became really dark and lonely and I felt left with no help from above. A month back I put away all statues of Saints, boxed up prayer books and Holy Cards as I just couldn't bear to even look at them. Basically, I just backed away (abandoned you might say) from the religion of my birth. The only thing that I could not bring myself to put away was a Holy Card of St. Padre Pio, who is especially close to me. So each night before I closed my eyes - there he was on my night-stand staring at me.

I began reading a lot of material and studying Judaism, a religion which has always fascinated me for some reason which I cannot explain. I do believe it was God's way of "not letting me go" - something I could hold on to for this dark time. I even contemplated conversion (and I still think about it daily) since I am laying it all out there - this is where I learned a lot about the people who will stand by you and those who will flee the soon-to-be "apostate." I learned so much and still have my daily Jewish devotion book on my night stand. I suppose you could say it was the thin thread holding me together so I would not fall into total despair. There is a lot of richness and beauty in Judaism and what I learned through a pretty in-depth study was that I did not have to fear those things outside my realm and comfort zone.

My dream of living in New England was short lived as we will be trekking back to NJ this summer, but I do see God's purpose in bringing us here. Had we not moved, if only for a year, I would never have seen that the big, bad, ugly public school system was really not bad and in fact a lifesaver for my two boys who flourished and whose teacher genuinely cares about her class. My 10-year-old and 9-year-old also flourished and essentially were "brought up to speed" in their academic studies at the small Catholic school they attend; something I was not able to provide for them in tending to two toddlers and a baby and working from home at the same time for several years. I found out my oldest child is brilliant (not that I didn't already know this). She tested a grade ahead of her peers - an honor for both her hard work and a much needed pat on the back for good old mom. She made honor roll and kept perfect attendance with the exception of two days of strep.

In summary, coming up here helped release a lot of fear that I had been holding on to for a long time. I know the children will be okay either in traditional school setting or at home. I learned I don't have to remain so rigid to connect with God through His Church. I learned to forgive myself and work on my tendency to be overly critical because I was raised with two overly critical parents. I learned that there is good in all faiths despite what others who take a more rigid approach might say. Though I tremendously fell short this Lent, i.e. not really observing much of anything - sad to say - but I do feel like God put me through one of the darkest (hopefully rewarding) Lents I have ever known.