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LightHearted Musings - Nothing I Can’t Handle
Posted by Dr. Molly Roberts on August 28th, 2008
I know God won’t give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish he didn’t trust me so much.
–Mother Teresa
I chose this quote for a very special reason. When Mother Teresa died, news came about the crisis of faith that dogged her for several decades. Soon after she went to India to minister to the poor and forgotten, she stopped hearing the Divine guidance that she had always heard up to that time. She felt separate from her God, like she no longer had Spirit walking with her in her life. She struggled with this separation privately while being a paragon of faith in the public’s eye. Her comment about wishing God didn’t trust her so much has a whole new meaning when viewed from this perspective, and I have even more respect for her now than I did before.
Her ability to carry on without any spiritual feedback must have been quite a daunting task, and her determination to keep going is a testament to her fortitude and faith. I have to wonder, though, what would have happened if she had taken this out of the shadow of her life and faced it more directly. Could she have found that spiritual connection again, that connection that had given her so much life, guidance and joy?
In 1999, I had an injury to my neck that paralyzed my arms for a while and caused great pain for several years afterward. I got quite an education in Spirit during that time, and I recognized myself in Mother Teresa’s words.
Before then, I had always felt like I was surrounded by Spirit. It was as natural a feeling as wearing clothes, wrapped in loving energy from some force connected to but outside of myself. I felt eternally nurtured by this, and my communication with the Divine felt like a personal conversation between friends.
When I injured my neck, though, I found that the incredible screaming pain I was dealing with day in and day out simply drowned out my spiritual connection. All of a sudden, I felt like I was on my own, and it was truly the most lonely experience of my life. I had always assumed that I would be able to rely on Spirit when the going got tough, and yet, here I was in the most painful experience of my life, and Spirit was nowhere to be found. I remember hearing myself quote Jesus’ words on the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
I found it hard to articulate this experience with others, and much of this internal torment was dealt with in the privacy of my own psyche. Many others who have come to see me in my practice have related to this feeling of being abandoned by Spirit at the worst of times. It is such a personal experience that many never talk about it, making it even more of a lonely time for them.
Several months into my ordeal with partial paralysis and pain, I discovered Shamanic healing techniques purely by synchronicity. I went to a one-hour lecture on the subject that ended in a short, 10-minute journey that was life-changing for me. A Shamanic journey is a deep meditative technique that very quickly gets you out of your head and into your heart and opens you to healing and new insights.
During my first journey, Spirit came back in full force, saying that I now understood pain and despair on a deep level that I never could have gotten to without having fully experienced it. This would be helpful both in my healing work and in my own personal growth. I was told that I was never far from Spirit, especially during the worst of times. My shamanic pursuits since then have given me additional tools to help me tap in whenever I need a boost from Spirit or need to gain insight into the challenges of my life. Shamanism was clearly the next step in my spiritual evolution, though I am aware that others will find their own unique solutions. I was able to find a new dialogue with the Divine, one that sent me on the most powerful internal growth experience of my life. I can now truthfully say that it was all worth the journey.
Mother Teresa’s difficulties leave me with a lot of questions. I wonder what would have happened if Mother Teresa had been more open about her spiritual difficulties during her life? What if this had been something she could have explored within herself without worrying about how the whole world was going to react? What kind of impact would her struggle have had on those who are dealing with the same struggle in their own lives? I wonder what would have happened if she had gone for a full physical and nutritional work-up to make sure her biochemistry wasn’t creating a block in her spiritual channels.
What if she had explored other avenues for finding communication with her spiritual guidance instead of relying on the prayer that was no longer working for her those last 40 years of her life? I’m not talking about her changing religions, since there are several forms of meditation and spiritual communication within the Catholic Church that might have been helpful to her. Though I have great respect for her life journey and dedication, I wonder if she gave up on her ability to tap into her spiritual connection too soon, without exploring every possible channel to the Divine. Instead of God trusting her to press on, might God have been trusting her to keep searching?
These are strange things to hear myself saying about an icon like Mother Teresa, but her struggle does, after all, highlight her humanity. I can’t answer these questions for her and it isn’t my place to try, but the questions themselves are worthy ones to ask. If you are struggling with a loss of spiritual connection of your own, then these questions may have meaning to you as well - how would you like to answer them?
Dr. Molly
Dr. Molly, that was a great column! It uplifted me. I agree that Mother Teresa might have been able to find some answers to her pain…the point of life is to keep growing, searching, exploring. We learn so much that way, which is, I think, the point!
Comment by Dawn Norton — September 2, 2008 @ 1:46 pm
I did not know about Mother Theresa stuggless, but the quotation mad me laugh. I find it is important to explore and I find that although I would not like to repeat hardships and struggless, I wouln’t be without thir lessons.
Comment by Halina — September 2, 2008 @ 6:14 pm
Please correct the name to Mother Teresa.
Comment by Marcia Scupin — September 15, 2008 @ 10:41 pm
Thanks, Marcia, for the spelling correction - I think I caught them all but let me know if I missed a “Theresa” along the way.
Comment by Dr. Molly Roberts — September 15, 2008 @ 11:41 pm