Out of the Fire

I am having trouble finishing this one up, but I have a few people who need more information, so here is the beginning of the conclusion.

I'm trying to remember where I ended. I think I was still writing about sweet Mary Lou Hunt.

The day before I was to go on my Walk to Emmaus, my phone rang. It was Mary Lou. As soon as I heard her voice, I knew: She had forgiven me. It was a non-issue to her. And the heavy weight I felt on my back was lifted off.

So Mary Lou forgave me. We laughed a bit and then I went off on a retreat. It was like getting hit right between the eyes with love and then another couple of slams over the next four days. I must have cried off four pounds.

What I took a LONG time to write is that, as we encounter our sins and failures, while they are important to our spiritual health, they are often not as bad as we make them out to be. Once we know in our hearts we let God down, it weighs heavy on us. "My sin is ever before me." And we think the world is just going to end if we say it out loud, or confess it to a priest...or whomever you trust.

It is a scary narrow path to walk when you decide to tell the truth. How many words did I write just to get the idea down? How many were actually needed?
Answer: you write or speak as many as you need to get the job done. I've paid a lot of money to therapists to get me out of hell. (OK my ex-husband will tell you that HE paid for a lot of therapists) But they all helped me with understanding life. I never got out of hell, though. I just really understood that's where I was.
Confession got me out of hell. They call it "Reconciliation" now. But the important part for me was the confession. I had to say it, tell it and then pray like hell that it was the right thing to do. I cannot remember when over the last ten years, I was literally driven to church to do something I did not want to do.
It was a kind of dying. Over the weeks, I had been forced to see my life in a new light. I was suddenly aware that things that I thought we okay were not okay. I mean, I explained them away. I was innocent, I was stupid, I was ignorant. But I still did them. And they needed God's grace.

Returning to the original premise I set out to write about, the company of women. I feel a true call to face my thoughts about it. And so it ends up here on a blog. Writing the annulment papers, I realized how wonderful my male friends were to me and how I had very few female attachments.

Working on this ACTS retreat, which is 'inside, outside and upside down' about women, I feel called to connect with Mary, Mother of God, and to these women. I need to learn this, and to love it.

I'll have to finish this later.
God bless you for coming along for the ride.

Love,
Cindy