God answering another prayer

Story Time an answered prayer, and my first expereince with Mary's intercession..

I have never really been drawn to Mary.

I know that might sound strange coming from a Catholic woman, but it’s true. I’ve said the rosary. During Lent, I think about how much she must have been hurting while watching her Son suffer. During Advent, I think about how young & scared she must have been when the angel appeared to her & her entire life changed.

But I’ve never really gone to her.

I’ve never consistently asked for her intercession. I’ve never felt that deep connection to her that I’ve heard so many Catholic women talk about. I honestly have no idea why. It just wasn’t something I naturally did.

Then about 4 weeks ago, I had this really strong feeling that I needed to start praying to Mary.

It wasn’t dramatic like when I heard God speak to me for the first time. I wasn’t in church or at Adoration. I didn’t hear a voice. It was just this persistent feeling of, okay… start praying to Mary.

And I was like, okay, whatever 😂 I’m not going to ignore it. I’ll try.

So around July 5th, I started saying the rosary every single morning. Not occasionally or when I remembered.... just intentionally every morning.

I didn’t know why I suddenly felt pulled to do it. I didn’t know what it was preparing me for. I just started.

Then recently, I was at a Catholic moms playdate & I confided in a few of the women about something I had been struggling with. It was a big decision that affected our entire family, not just me, & I had been carrying the weight of it for a while.

I’m still not used to being part of a circle of women where the advice is, “Pray on it.”

Not, “Have you talked to your therapist?”

Not, “Have you talked to your husband?”

Not immediately trying to analyze it, solve it or give me a list of practical steps.

Their answer pointed me toward God. *CRYING actually*

And even writing that makes me teary, b/c I feel like this is something I have missed for so much of motherhood. I am so grateful for the path that has led me into friendships where I can share the real things I’m carrying & have other women remind me to bring them to God.

So I left that Tuesday afternoon thinking, okay. Okay. I’m going to pray on this.

That following Friday, I went to Adoration.

And if you’ve read any of my past blogs or posts, you know I’ve been going through what I would call a spiritually dry period...... I couldn’t feel God.

I knew He was there. I believed He was there. But I couldn’t feel Him the way I had before.

For a while, that really bothered me. I kept wondering what I was doing wrong or why prayer suddenly felt so quiet. Eventually, I started realizing that faith cannot only be built on a feeling. Maybe this quiet period was not God leaving me. Maybe it was an invitation to trust Him more deeply, even when I didn’t feel anything.

So since Easter, I had continued going to Adoration & continued praying, but a lot of my prayers were what Father Mike calls procedural prayers....The prayers with structure. The prayers we are taught as Catholics. Novenas. The rosary. Prayers that already have words when you don’t have your own.

I kept putting one foot in front of the other and showing up.

I kept letting God know that I knew He was there. I kept thanking Him for being there, even though I didn’t have answers, solutions or any evidence that the particular hardships we were facing were about to get easier, but that Friday, after the moms had encouraged me to pray about this decision, I moved into more personal prayer.

I think Father Mike calls it praying with posture. I got down on my knees at Adoration for the whole hour.

I started with gratitude, the way Jeff Cavins has talked about praying. First, gratitude. Then, “Teach me,” where I open the Bible, read whatever I open it to, and let it transform and teach me... Lately, I’ve been reading Job. Then surrender, where I try to hand over every single thing I’m holding onto.

And I told God exactly where I was... crying of course. I said, “You were so clear with me last summer. You made it so clear that we needed to get married. It was loud & I felt confident. I knew what You were asking me to do.”

And then I said, “I feel weak right now, Lord. I need an answer. I cannot make this decision on my own. The weight of carrying it is exhausting me.” I asked Him to make it clear.

Then I left church.

Less than 3 hours later, my mom showed up on my doorstep.

Without knowing what I had just prayed about, or knowing what I had said in Adoration & w/o knowing the exact thing I was struggling to decide, she brought up the situation & told me a very specific way she could help us.

I remember looking at her & saying, “That is so random that you’re bringing this up, b/c I was literally just praying about this in Adoration.”

And she said, “Well, there’s your answer.”

And I was like… oh... b/c the thing is, that wasn’t the answer I wanted 😂

I have a very hard time asking for help. I have a very hard time relying on other people, even my own parents. My parents helped me so much through my addiction & in the beginning of my sobriety that there is still this part of me that believes needing help makes me weak.

My ego likes being able to say I did it by myself.

So I was basically like, okay, God… that is not the answer I wanted. I wanted the answer to be, “You can do this completely on your own. Everything is going to be fine. You won’t have to depend on anyone.” That was the reassurance I wanted.

But I had asked Him for an answer, & within hours, He had worked through my mom to give me one.

The next morning, Saturday, I got on the treadmill & started saying my daily rosary.

I prayed it specifically for this decision. I asked Mary to intercede with Jesus for me. I asked for clarity. & peace.. which is funny to me now, b/c unless I'm in control of the situation I never feel at peace... this is my constant struggle.. letting go, and letting God... ANYWAY I asked for help knowing if the answer I had received was truly the direction we were supposed to go.

During the 2nd decade, the entire house seemed to go quiet. I don’t know how else to explain it.Nothing around me had actually changed, but everything felt still. My body felt peaceful and mind stopped racing (this never happens.. prayer really is the best medicine). I suddenly felt completely confident in the answer.

It was different from the time I felt God tell me, “Get married,” while I was sitting directly in front of the monstrance. This time, I was on a treadmill in my house, saying the rosary... kids coming in and out asking for me to do things in the middle of my prayers that I have told them "either join in or get out" LOL.... But the peace was so strong and it settled over my entire body.

I thought, oh my gosh… this is my answer again..

This was also the first time I felt like I truly experienced the power of Mary’s intercession.

I had felt drawn to start praying the rosary weeks earlier, before I even knew how much I was going to need it. I had spent weeks building this habit of going to Mary every morning, & then in the middle of a decision that felt too heavy for me, that regular daily rosary became the place where God gave me peace.

I shared this with Jon b/c this was an us decision, not a me decision, so I shared what had happened & then gave him time to sit with it... (Duration of how long i let him sit with it is up for debate. God moves quickly..) I share these big God moments with him, but I also understand that he sometimes need time to process, especially when the direction you feel God leading you toward appears to be the harder path. The answer we were receiving would not necessarily make our lives easier.

It will actually make life more difficult during a season that is already difficult, And from a completely human perspective, it was like… why would we choose to pile more onto ourselves right now? So we left it at, “We’ll keep talking about it.”

Then Monday morning came. Before church, I got on my Instagram stories & shared pieces of what had been happening. I didn’t share the private details of the decision, but I shared that I felt God had answered me. I shared b/c I think the ways God works need to be talked about. People need hope that He is listening to them too, even when they are in a spiritually dry period. Even when prayer feels quiet. Even when they have been showing up & feel like nothing is happening.

But me being human, I was still second-guessing everything. I hate this about myself sometimes. I can receive answer after answer & still ask God for one more.

I felt confident in what He had shown me, but I wanted reassurance from Him like a good father reassures his child. I wanted Him to say, “Yes. You heard Me. You’re doing the right thing. Keep going.”

So right before we left for church, I literally stopped while I was brushing my teeth & prayed.I basically said, “God, I believe this is the answer. I feel confident in what You’ve shown me. But I would really love for You to reassure me.”

Then we went to Mass & one of the first things our pastor said during the homily was about whether we are actually listening to the word of God.

He talked about how our hearts can become so full of human things that we are led away from what God is saying... & I knew immediately what my human things were.

My doubt, fear, pride, my desire to choose the easier path, the discomfort with relying on other people + my need to know exactly how everything will work before I say yes.

Then Father Davis said, “The word can only take root when your heart is ready to hear what God has to say.”

I’m laughing even typing this b/c… what? You guys are laughing too, right?

He went on to talk about how when the seed falls on a heart that is receptive, it will reap fruit, and he ended by asking whether we are ready to receive God’s word with trust & obedience.

At that point I was like, okay 😂 Like I looked at Jon and started laughing.

Adoration.

My mom showing up less than 3 hours later with the exact practical help I hadn’t asked her for.

The intense peace during the second decade of the rosary.

&&& now a homily directly challenging me to stop filling my heart with human doubt & trust what God had already said.

How many more answers was I going to ask Him for before I was willing to obey?

I’m still learning.. it's so stupid..

I’m learning how to pray before I panic, how to accept help without believing it makes me weak, that sometimes God’s answer is not the one that protects my pride, that His direction does not always lead toward the easiest path & I’m learning that spiritual dryness does not mean He is absent.

I spent months showing up with procedural prayers, putting one foot in front of the other & trusting that God was there even when I couldn’t feel Him.

Then, when I finally came to Him exhausted & asked Him to make the path clear, He answered through my mom, through the rosary, through the peace in my body & through the words of our pastor. Somehow, in the middle of all of it, Mary became part of the story too.

I had never really gone to her before...Now I understand why women do.

So maybe this is your reminder not to immediately dismiss those little feelings or nudges.

We live in such a noisy world. There are so many opinions, so much information & so many voices telling us what we should do that we end up questioning ourselves when something inside of us feels clear.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve learned that sometimes those feelings can be God speaking to us. Not every thought or feeling is automatically from God, of course, which is why we bring it into prayer, ask for discernment & pay attention to whether it produces peace, trust & brings us closer to Him.

But I also think we can become so afraid of getting it wrong that we ignore the ways He may already be answering us.

Prayer is us talking to God & sometimes our intuition, that quiet nudge we can’t explain, can be God talking back.

Lean into it. Pray about it. Ask Him to make it clearer. Ask Mary to intercede for you. Then leave enough quiet in your life to actually hear the answer.

Sometimes we aren’t waiting for God to speak... sometimes He has already spoken, & we’re questioning ourselves so loudly that we can’t hear Him. This is literally me all the time.

Every time I look up at the cross, I still use Mother Olga’s words:

“Empty me. Fill me. Use me.”

I repeatedly ask Him to empty me of my disbelief, my doubt & my inability to fully trust Him.

Fill me with so much faith & so much confidence in You that when You answer me, I don’t blink an eye.

Then use me to share, without blinking, who You are & what You do.

Empty me of everything that gets in the way.

Fill me with more of You.

Then use me.

Empty me. Fill me. Use me.

That is one prayer I will always pass on.