Hello again, people.

So you all know about the issues I've been complaining about, suffering for several years now. Starting the beginning of this year, I started praying with my mother everyday on the phone. She calls me and I her and we say the our father in the morning. I was meditating and felt like God asked me to do that.

I also started going to confession and mass and received communion for the first time in a very long time. Also have slowly been incorporating more and more praying in my day to day life.

It's not very disciplined but I do remember to talk to Jesus directly and ask him questions and for help. It was after such conversations that I felt inspired to ask my mother to pray together for peace in our family (things were fast turning dark there). Sometimes I remember Our lady's request/promise for family peace through the rosary and say that too. I also pray to st. Therese the little flower every day for all my problems. I asked her to be my friend, to help me/remind me see God's goodness like she did.

It occurred to me the other day that a lot of my problems in the past two years began when I started fearing being unpopular/despised/isolated for my religious beliefs and essentially started pretending/lying to avoid that. I have made a quiet act willing to be unpopular once I realized I was going through some kind of ego death that I was fighting desperately to avoid. I realized I feel peace when I am still, open, surrendering and when I make an act of self-denial, like going without salt or some food I feel a craving for. I accepted this ego death by being willing to be unpopular, to be genuinely disliked, go without the people I was unwilling to go without before.

And what has happened, is that a very substantive, almost tangible sense of happiness and "rest" has returned to my soul. I've been waiting for it to disappear but it seems to be there more or less continuously these days. The weird darkness, despair, sadness is just not there. This happiness is more than a state, more than the absence of darkness. I genuinely feel something very substantial, like a real "thing" is there now in my heart that wasn't there, kinda like when you are well satisfied with good food except it seems it's the center of my heart that has eaten, not my stomach! I no longer fear people so much, I feel a strong trust that I'm OK, I'm taken care of, God will take care of me (things).

I thought I should share. St Augustine's saying, "You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless, until they rest in you" it feels like what has happened is along those lines. My heart was restless and now its at peace and happy with a substantial happiness, resting in God.

Rubia

What a beautiful post, St. Rubia. Your peace and at-ease-ness communicate themselves through your words.

What a wonderful update, St. Rubia. Thanks so much for sharing.

Those traditional ways of connecting with God in Christ (prayer, fasting, Sacraments, self-denial) are indeed efficacious, and that peace you feel is the fruit of the Spirit.

Who knows but that maybe the people you were concerned would not accept you as you are might be noticing these changes you describe as well. Your state of being is a kind of "preaching" -- one of the most effective.