Faith

Trusting that I am Where I Should Be

~ Betty Vertin ~ Leave a comment

“Be Who God meant you to be and you will set the world of Fire”

St. Catherine of Siena

.  The number of times I’ve seen this message and the reflection stirred up has made an indelible mark on my heart.

For nearly my entire life, I have been my harshest critic. It was a defense mechanism learned during childhood. If I were harder on myself than anyone else, then the hard things and criticisms I often heard would not hurt me as much.

The critic in me started to change when I met my husband. My married life has been one of my biggest blessings. First, his love changed me, and I could be kinder to myself when I could see myself through his eyes. Then our love grew and grew each time we welcomed a child. After the boys were diagnosed with Duchenne, I continued to grow. The walls I had built around my heart to protect it and my defense mechanisms weakened as people started to embrace and love and support us.

I had grown as a person. I liked the person I was becoming. Then, as my son Rowen started to lose his ability to walk, I grieved and grieved. My heart was hurting so badly. It affected me more than I can share.

During this period, I experienced harsh criticism for how I was grieving, and I was unprepared for it. I sometimes think as a mother, you can hurt so badly for your children that all else leaves you, and I was not trying to protect myself.

It knocked me to my knees. I internalized what was said to me, and it hurt. At that point, I quickly could have believed the bad because that was easier for most of my life. Unfortunately, it was easier to accept the bad than the good.

However, I had just finished a bible study repeatedly discussing being a beloved daughter of God. It was the first time I realized I did not have to earn God’s love. I recognized he gave his love freely, no matter what we did or how we messed up. That message had taken root in my heart.

I wrestled with the hurt. It was an internal struggle. It was a hard pull between believing that a bad person I was, unworthy of love, or knowing that I was God’s beloved daughter. I felt like the evil one was fighting very hard to win. Yet, I didn’t give in. God loved me. The roots in my heart were planted so deep they could not be pulled up.

It was not easy. I started attending my Eucharistic adorations with a different intention and desire. All pretenses were dropped, and I just went to my father. I had intense feelings of sitting next to him, laying my head on his shoulder, and finding comfort in him during those months. I had always heard that healing could occur before the Eucharist; this was the first time I had experienced it myself.

Adoration gave me the courage to reach out and start counseling with a profession. I needed help processing all the big feelings I was feeling. Unfortunately, it was cut short because of the pandemic. Still, we had time for the necessary work, and healing continued before the Eucharist. I also know that the door to the counseling office is still open for any time in the future that I need help during any part of my journey.

I came out of that hard place feeling not necessarily stronger but softer. I felt malleable to God’s plans in my life. Parts of my faith that had laid dormant woke up and grew. I have much work yet to do, but I like what Catherine of Siena describes. Become who God meant you to be! I think of where I am now—an expecting mother. I am meant to be a mother.

I am also writing professionally for the first time at age 41. I had a teacher in high school that had encouraged me to major in creative writing in college. However, I did not even consider it. I couldn’t see myself as a writer, and I could not believe anyone would want to read what I had to write. I thought it was better if I was just quiet. However, once the boys were diagnosed with DMD, I leaned on writing to cope with the complicated feelings the diagnosis had exposed. The more I wrote on social media and blogs, the more I wanted to write.

I think about being an expectant mother for the seventh time and a writer, and I can’t help but feel St. Catherine of Siena. Those pieces are part of who I am meant to be. I trusted God and let Him lead my life, and I find myself in a place where I can feel the warmth from the fire St. Catherine of Siena takes about. Today was significant because I received a message from a mom in Greece who read a column and it support her feelings of hope. There is no limit to how far God’s reach can be. When St. Catherine of Siena said the world, she meant it.

Being in a place of trust does not mean my life is more straightforward. This past weekend alone, I watched two children experience hard things I could not fix. Sleep has been challenging because of the unease I experienced at not making it better. I can pray for them, and honestly, I can trust that they need to go through these things to become the person God is shaping them to be, but it still hurts my heart to watch them break.

Being a place of trust means that I can rest knowing I am where I am supposed to be. I can relax knowing that God has me in his hands.

Finding Trust in the Moments

~ Betty Vertin ~ 1 Comment

I’ve had these little, almost imperceptible moments over the last few months. Moments that I would take in, understanding they were valuable and just holding them.

These moments have been lessons in trust. There is an underlying sadness in my life. My boy’s diagnosis makes me sad. It’s not what any parent would want for their child. Except for a few difficult seasons, my family does its best to find the silver linings, live in the moment, find joy in our journey, and make every day count. Life is precious and short, and we will soak it up best.

I’ve found that prayer, quiet contemplation, and adoration have become part of my formula to live life this way. It’s often in the quiet that either these moments come to me, or I have time to take them out and think about them.

I was very emotional one Monday morning. My sons are doing well considering their diagnosis, but they have moments of intense suffering still. One was suffering, and I was hurting for my son. I was in the church praying the rosary and meditating on the glorious mysteries. The first of these two are the resurrection and the ascension.

I was thinking about Jesus’ mother. She had watched her son die a slow and painful death when he was crucified. She was there. I can only imagine that the resurrection was to her, as it is to all of us, a miracle. She could see her son again. I’m sure that every parent who has ever lost a child wants to see their child again, and Mary did. She did see her son again! I wonder how her heart must have been so happy at seeing him.

Then the ascension. He was gone again. I was at the church that day, hurting and emotional as a mother. I thought about Jesus’ mother again. She must have known he would go again; as faithful and devoted, she knew he would go to His Father. But, as a woman and mother, it hurt to watch him go again. To get him back and then say goodbye again. I know that she knew and believed she would see him again, and she did, but I wonder how she must have ached and yearned to see him all the rest of the years she was on Earth.

I had never thought about any of this before. I felt like Jesus was pointing me to his mother and needed me to learn from her. I didn’t know what he wanted me to understand. I made it an Advent goal to study his mother and try to grow in my relationship with her and to learn what he wanted me to learn, whatever that was. Honestly, he wants me to learn many things, and it will be a relationship I nurture for the rest of my life.

Another moment came the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I stopped into the church to pray a rosary. I remember at one point looking up. To preface this next part of the story, St. Cecilia is a beautiful Catholic church over 100 years old. It has lovely stained glass windows and a gorgeous station of cross statues adorning the walls. I looked up from my prayer. I was sitting next to a wall about 10 rows behind a statue of Jesus falling under the weight of his cross. I looked into the face of Jesus, and my heart immediately felt a pang of sorrow. I looked away at the pain and then back into his face, and the same pain penetrated my heart. I was so sorry for his suffering. But he seemed to say to me at the moment that love is worth all the pain in the world.

These moments and thoughts have been with me. I think about them often and wonder how he wants them to change my heart.

We took our boys to the neuromuscular clinic last week. Many things were happening that day. It was a new clinic to us, and by the end of that 9-hour day, we would have met 10 or more new specialists, nurses, and other essential persons involved in the care of our sons. It also started very early, and my oldest was tired and stressed about the clinic change and the discussion we were in the midst of. He was hiding behind his mask and pretending not to listen but listening anyway. His behavior felt a little disrespectful to the doctor, but he was also a very teenage boy.

The boys endure some very strong and harsh medications to help them manage their disease. It is so strong that it suppresses some things the body should do independently. Needless to say, we have to manage those things through medicine. We were talking about a change in medication. He needed to have a say. The doctor looked at him and asked if he would rather do option A or option B? My son said, “Whatever my mom thinks is best.”

I’m crying now. My child’s absolute trust in me to make significant, life-changing decisions for him is one of the purest, most overwhelming feelings of love I have ever felt. That piece of my motherhood, the Duchenne mom piece that I never expected and can’t believe I am figuring out how to do, is something I take very seriously. I study, prepare myself to make decisions, take the doctor’s knowledge and experience, my knowledge and experience, the expertise and experience of other parents, my son’s needs and desires, guidance through prayer, and put that all together with my husband and we make the best decisions possible with the information we have. Considering all that, I can’t believe someone trusts me so deeply and naturally. He knows I would never do anything to harm him and that every decision is made to help him.

Trust is not natural to me. Life experiences took that away. I try to be independent and feel in control and safe if I do it alone. Except, that is not how or why we were made. I’m so thankful for the people God put in my life that make trusting easier, but my first tendency is to do it independently.

That’s what all the moments have been for. Jesus wants me to trust him. Jesus wants my trust like he had Mary’s. Jesus wants my trust like I have my sons’. Like Him, I love my children more than words can describe; I love them fiercely. Jesus is love. He wants my absolute trust that just as I do for my children, he is doing for me, only, of course, he does it perfectly.