In my season of tears

By Rosemary Campbell

I prided myself on being a good Catholic woman. I attended Mass regularly, sat for hours with the Blessed Sacrament, sang in the choir and taught First Communion but I felt broken.

My life was in shambles. I lost my job just as my husband got ill; he died two days after going into hospice care. I lost myself and my two sons, who were my pride and joy, were now in trouble every week in school. I just did not know what to do. I felt everything in my life was going wrong. The harder life became, the more I got involved in church activities. The more things I said ‘yes’ to in church, the more things that people invited me to. But I kept my personal life private.

How do I tell the ladies in church that my good, good boy child was smoking weed behind the school. You want me to tell people that I can’t go to the nine-churches pilgrimage because I do not have a hundred dollars to spare? How do I explain that I can’t give items for the SVP hamper because I don’t have anything in my cupboards. I just couldn’t. I looked like the epitome of elegance, and it made others feel that my life was together, but when I drove into my driveway I sat in my car and cried because I had nothing in my cupboards, and I held my breath every time I saw a T&TEC Truck pass by in the neighbourhood.

I am in a different space now. The hypocrisy of who I was has never been lost on me. But I later learned that I was not alone. I am not the only good Catholic woman who hides her pain behind closed doors. But it did teach me how to become more observant of the people around me

I found one friend who saw through my one pair of shoes, that saw through my kids’ busted clothes, who understood that I was not spending night and day with the Blessed Sacrament because I was holy but because I was desperately holding on to the hem of His garment. She realised how desperately I needed a miracle.

Her name was Miss Lucy, and she was much older than I was. I remember once she asked me to take her to the grocery and she was buying so many items I saw myself shrinking. I could not afford anything. Her bill was $1500 and we packed half in the trunk and half in the back seat. When I dropped her home, she smiled while coming out of the car and said the things in the trunk were for me. I still remember crying all the way home! God heard my prayers.

One day, I was in Miss Lucy’s home and she had a prayer journal. I opened it and saw that she was praying for me to get a job. One month later I got a new job. I have a hundred stories of how Miss Lucy helped me through the hardest days of my life but most of it was just her being in my life to share my tears with.

As Catholic women, we rarely open our eyes to the pain of others around us. We come to church singing and reading the gospel, but we never really see each other. Many women come to church in deep pain–they suffer the loss of family, loss of income and loss of self. Do you notice? What about you? Do you share your pain? Would you share with the church folks, your hard times and bad times or would you just go along pretending that all is well. How do you spend your season of tears?

I have come to believe that in my season of tears, when I thought that God forgot me, was a time when He was holding me in His arms. When I thought He forgot me …He found me and He helped me.