Today when my boyfriend I went on a road trip we stopped by the National Shrine Grotto of Lourdes at Mount Saint Mary's. Places like this always make me feel...well...resistant but then I even up weepy in spite of myself. I grew up Catholic and I know I'm supposed to feel a certain way and if I feel anything that isn't cynical coming on I try to suppress it. You can say I was determined to not have a spiritual awakening.
Maybe I don't want to call it a spiritual awakening but I could call it a simple solution. We visited this place before and when I told my Al Anon sponsor about it she said, "That is where I gave (my alcoholic) to God."
Well, there were some prayer kneeling benches in front of this area with the Mary statue surrounded by water and my boyfriend, being the spiritual guy that he is, plunked down on the wet velvet to meditate on his own thoughts. As usual, I settled in next to him to patiently wait until he was done, not having any spiritual thoughts of my own. Or, rather, resisting them.
I decided to be a good Al Anonic and say a quick prayer for my creative and money issues--after all I had been discussing them at length with my boyfriend on the trip up. I remembered what my sponsor said about her alcoholic and realized that it was that simple--I should just give these issues to God. A powerful, but simple realization and of course, I was so busy struggling that I never even bothered to think of it. And, despite my resistance I left wet kneed and weepy.
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