Returning to what matters

Janie #5

Janie connects her resourcefulness now with the one moment in her life when she faced what could have been a disaster, and made a choice that convinced her that she was capable of asserting herself when she was afraid. This choice led her down a pathway of prayer that gives her confidence in any situation. She told me the story this way:

“Before the terrible times around the deaths of my boys, I had been drinking like I had learned to drink in my family. But after the boys died, if I started drinking, I couldn’t stop. I’d use the occasion of drinking as a release from my grief, and in addition, my doctor gave me Librium, and I started mixing the two. From the family that I grew up in and from what I already knew, I knew that I was in trouble, but I couldn’t stop myself. Then there was an incident at school that made me realize just how bad things had become.

“The principal at my school had been after me for a while. Now you call it sexual harassment, but I didn’t know about sexual harassment back then. He must have been after a lot of young women because men like him are usually after everyone. It all came to a head with him one night after we had moved from one school to another, and I was at school after-hours getting the library ready.

“The principal was in his office. He called me in and I knew he wanted to have sex with me, but I went in anyway. He gave me a drink, and I took the drink, maybe two drinks. I had never done anything like that before. I thought, ‘Oh my God. I’ve got to get out of here,’ and at the same time, I thought, ‘I’ve gone as far as I can go.’ I can’t remember exactly what I did or said, but I got out of there. Before that moment I didn’t know that I had the strength to stand up for myself.

“The next day I called in sick and immediately went and joined Alcoholics Anonymous. From then until now many spiritual things have happened for me. When I joined AA, which is another way of looking at yourself with truthful eyes, I became a person of prayer. I slowly returned to the dedication my mother made of me to Mary. I guess that was when I went back to wearing only blue and white. I found the Cenacle Sisters and studied and worked with them in the community. The Cenacle refers to the upper room where Mary, the Apostles, and their families waited after the resurrection for the Holy Spirit to come down and give them wisdom, grace and inspiration.

“In 1990, I began to study more seriously with the Cenacle Sisters so that I could take vows as a lay nun. Ten years later in 2000, I took my definitive vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. The vow of poverty meant that I wouldn’t be dependent on anyone for my upkeep. The vow of chastity didn’t change anything about my life, but freed me from all concerns in this regard. Now my name is on a list in Rome that says I am living this vow. I don’t really care about the list in Rome, but it just is what it is. It puts things to rest. The obedience just means that you hope that you are doing God’s will most of the time.

“If you are what you are and if it is recognized by the people you hold most dear in your community, not in a big way, but in a little way, it is comforting to be acknowledged for what you have chosen. Suffering gets you to the point where you can choose the one thing that matters which for me was my spiritual life. I could have just holed up or never seen anyone or drank myself to death, but this choice freed me. It gave me the power of a skyrocket if I wanted to be shot off, figuratively speaking.

“In 1999, the same year I moved here, I had a total hip replacement, and that grounded me for a while and helped me with my spiritual work. I was always running around, and this got me grounded and taught me to have an hour of prayer a day, which I learned keeps me ready for whatever happens next. Something I won’t do without now. To me, prayer means reading the scriptures for each day. I have a prayer book, which gives the Morning Prayer, the mass for the day, and the evening prayer. It gives information about the saint of the day and sometimes includes obscure saints of the day who bring something special. Really prayer is a quiet time, a period of meditation for an hour each morning. It prepares you for the day, and no matter what happens these readings from the scripture fit your life. I don’t go to daily mass, but I say all the prayers. I feel light, like; you know the lightness of being.”
I could almost see light around Janie as she said this. We sat quietly for a few minutes before she went on:

“I’m cutting back on the goings out. So I choose what I do carefully, but I hold onto all my important relationships, although I see everyone a little less often. I see my friends from the Stella Maris group every Sunday, and the Sisters of the Cenacle. Here in St. Louis there are only four of us from the Cenacle group left.

Janie stopped for a moment and then went on:
“Suffering can open a door. You have to know that you are going to encounter suffering, and it is not what it does to you, but what you do with it. Some people think that they are going to get by without it, but we know that none of us do. When others suffer I can empathize and sympathize like this year with my granddaughter Callie. She went away from home for the first time, her other grandmother died, and she was in an automobile accident. When she still got all A’s at the end of the year, I just told her how much I admired her.”

“When I think about the next ten years, I look forward to being a little more quiet, a little less going-out. I love to write letters to friends that live out of town. There are always the Christmas cards that I haven’t opened yet, and I don’t like to be in that spot, but that will of course whittle down in the next ten years.

“It’s the three “Fs” -- family, faith, and friends that matter to me most. If I can just stick with those it will be a good ten years. I want to spend more time with my family, and my daughter Mary is good about that, but I don’t bother them. When I was helping at the Cenacle learning about affirmations, I learned to say, ‘I am completely self- determined, and I allow others the same right’. That kind of keeps me out of everyone’s hair. I see them every other week or every three weeks, but I follow all their goings-on, and keep track of all of them. In the summertime, my granddaughters, Callie and Jessie, and I go to lunch. I will probably ask them next Wednesday to go for an Irish lunch to celebrate James Joyce’s Bloomsday. It’s an occasion we would hate to miss.”
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The day I interviewed Janie was the first extended time that we had spent together. We laughed and cried, and by the end of the day neither one of us wanted to stop talking. I was deeply affected by Janie’s ability to acknowledge her grief and her limitations while still living by the values she treasures, and still laughing at herself and with others. The excruciating things that had happened didn’t paralyze her, or remove her from the people that she loved.
Before we parted Janie asked me questions about my life, my children, and the stories from before I met my second husband who is her nephew by marriage. She listened with interest, and I imagined that she now included my stories in her family tapestry. I was pleased to be part of the cloth.