Prayer is the key Tenderness is the virtue that allows the love in your heart to be expressed through touch, sight, and speech. God is love; therefore, during My time on earth, My love was revealed through the touch of My hands, the gaze of My eyes, and the words I spoke. —The Love Crucified Community, The Simple Path to Union with God (p. 279) I believe that, although there are exceptions, men often feel more at ease with aggressive emotions than with tenderness. Yet there are moments when tenderness emerges—toward children who need protection, or towards the elderly. Much of my monastic journey has been about learning to accept these softer emotions. I am still on that path. At times, it is hard to endure the inner landscape of my own heart. As a late bloomer, I learned early to keep aggression in check—losing fights was not attractive. So, I repressed it, and when repression failed, I endured it. Later, in the Navy and through weightlifting, I became more aware of my aggression, shielded by physical strength. My personality has always been non-threatening, and growing up in a large family taught me how to navigate different temperaments. Life in the monastery deepened my self-awareness and awakened a longing for inner healing. The more I prayed, the more I sensed this need. For years, I spoke little about it, until around age forty, when the strain began to affect my health. Inner healing is slow, as anyone seeking union with God discovers. I uncovered hidden trust issues beyond my reach. The first step was awareness—recognizing how pain, anger, and mistrust could distort life and breed chaos. To love God fully, inner healing is essential. Pain is a wake-up call; ignore it, and life becomes harder. Prayer and my relationship with Christ kept me from self-medicating, though food has always been a struggle. Learning self-love has been the hardest lesson—growing through failure, rising again. God commands us to love ourselves, and the fact that it is a command reveals its difficulty. Breakthroughs often come in dreams or through upheaval—like heart surgery. That crisis exposed my vulnerability and changed me. My heart feels lighter now; I sense love more deeply. It took seventy-six years to reach this point. It is all grace. My part is simple: show up, get up, don’t give up. Slowly, the Holy Spirit works. Progress is slow because, on many levels, I still wrestle with God. Prayer is the key, and trust opens the heart to Christ Jesus. —Br. MD
"-Life in the monastery deepened my self-awareness and awakened a longing for inner healing. The more I prayed, the more I sensed this need. For years, I spoke little about it, until around age forty, when the strain began to affect my health." _________________________________________________________________________ "-Prayer and my relationship with Christ kept me from self-medicating, though food has always been a struggle." It is one thing to become aware of one's woundedness, another to know how to address it. For me, the issue is focused on avoidance: more on kicking the can down the road, rather than self-medicating. _______________________________________________________________________________ Here I am in my 70s; the fundamental issue, though improved hasn't changed; but the lack of time to address it rears it head. Still, the underlying solution doesn't change either, does it? "Prayer is the key, and trust opens the heart to Christ Jesus."
So much truth conveyed here….. I’m in your age group and am just now experiencing tenderness. I was a young teenage girl thug when God called me to the Catholic Church and I made my First Holy Communion. I’m still a work in progress. God has never let me down. Sometimes I have had to spend a lot of time on the back burner, not getting my way. Not being first. Glossed over. But He came through in mighty ways. The old saying, “draw near to God and He will draw near to you” is true.
I hung out in the bakery after school with older kids. My mom’s friend came in and was scandalized by the smoking and profanity. She then went to the grocery store, ran into my mother, and told her what she had just seen in the bakery. My mom was waiting when I got home.
I think a great example of this is Peter’s transformation: he acts impulsively and violently when he strikes Malchus’s ear, yet he does so out of love for his Master. Even so, our Lord rebukes him, warning him about that attitude and its consequences. However, at the end of his life, he is led like a lamb to the slaughter in Rome. Here we see a reflection of sanctification in a man who loved Christ above all things but who nevertheless faltered in certain actions that later opened the way for his interior transformation, increasingly guided toward humility. There is even a homily by a famous Church Father who says that God allowed Peter’s denial so that he would not judge his brothers harshly in the exercise of his ministry. Thus, all the love he genuinely had for Christ was shown more and more through the Christian virtues he developed throughout his ministry, such as humility and mercy toward his brothers.
I have similar experience after my near death last year in the accident. Through it I experienced the love of God for me in a way I never had before. Once one experiences this it changes you.
I am afraid tat at 70 I am still as hard as nails. If I live to be 700 I don't expect this to change. I am even more afraid that I am not altogether sure if this is a bad thing.
I find it weird how generally in life we spend half of it building up and the other half letting go. "Let nothing disturb you, let nothing frighten you, all things are passing away: God never changes. Patience obtains all things; whoever has God lacks nothing; God alone suffices." - St. Teresa of Avila I knew someone early on in my reversion who told me when they were naughty as a child they would be forced to go read scripture by their father. When they were successful with something, they were rewarded by being forced to go read scripture. Lol, reality really is kind of like this.
A lesson I’m finally learning is to wait on the Lord. As in, “patience obtains all things.” When I start to take the reins, I get in trouble.
