Sanatio in Radice

Met with Fr. Silva (my spiritual director) yesterday evening. I just laid it all out to him. Family memories, weight, Don's resignation, unexpected reactions stemming from mom's passing. All my feelings and confusion and fears of this week since Monday. The roller coaster ride that has left me feeling so out of harmony. I've been striving towards balance and harmony, an awareness of where life might be taking me, and I completely lost it this week and was left with nothing but questions.

What is human maturity but a ripening, an act of preparing for and engaging in a full life. The meaning of "full life" is as individual as the person who is paying attention to this process. Like losing weight, maturing to your full potential is a process. Honest efforts reveal layers of hard work to get through. It's step by step (so obvious) but each step is so loaded with challenges, it is no wonder most people fail in their weight loss efforts. Or, where maturity is concerned, slip into their comfort zone and stay there.

It takes a lot to free yourself from fears and hurts that are so deeply buried that you don't even know they are there. If these invisible agents of failure are lurking out of sight, how can one even KNOW to dig or, if one knows, then where?

Taking a sharp turn here now -- I struggled with God for years. Now, I'm no Ignatius or Augustine; my struggle with Him has been more like a child struggling with a parent. For me, it was something like:

- Struggle with God/Parent
- Go with the flow of what is around me.
- Focus entirely on children. Try to give them the tools for freedom that I could not use for
myself. Of course, this can end up being something like the blind leading the blind.
- Elder care done out of love, obligation, duty, guilt, the desire to fix/save
- To somehow deliver a happiness in later years that eluded the parent earlier.

But I find that as my struggle with God stopped and I started to surrender; understanding and freedom started taking root. Harmony and balance were in sight, albeit just a pinprick of light far away but clearly in view.

The wrestling with God/parents has been freeing and ripening but the journey is actually just starting. Like a maze, there are paths which will turn out to be dead ends or will lead me through twists and turns. But these twin processes of weight loss and spiritual growth are necessary processes. There are many layers to be uncovered, examined and then fitted into the puzzle of a free life and clarity of purpose and the ability to remember, with love, those who are gone now. It will be a love without blinders, love with the full knowledge of who they were and who they were NOT. To discover this is freeing and provides focus. It is the heart of spiritual life.

It is Sanatio in Radice , a cleansing, a healing at the root.