The Remedy for Tornadoes of the Soul

Helen Syski finds peace in the advice from Venerable Fulton J. Sheen's book, Peace of Soul.

The kids were finally all in school.

Vacation, illness, travel: it felt like months since I had had a moment to collect my thoughts and order my day … or at least a cup of coffee. Certainly something Very Important was burning on my back burner, because putting something on the back burner had meant it may as well be over a cooking fire in Siberia. I took a deep breath, trying to clear the fuzzy anxiety of all-the-things-I-need-to-take-care-of-but-what-are-they-I-can’t-remember.

As I entered the Adoration Chapel, questions crowded in. Those all-important check-ins were peppered with superfluous chaff. Discerning my involvement with parish ministry and the public school administration swirled with thoughts of milk, frozen chicken and lost puzzle pieces. Reflecting on my children’s souls tumbled with Amazon returns and muddy shoes.

We all know how these mental tornadoes end: I’m a flake. I’m incompetent. I’m a pathetic mom because what I want to be and what I am do not line up.

I took another deep breath and knelt before Jesus in the monstrance to let it all go.

Jesus, take away my fear that listening to you will include a shaping-up speech. Jesus, I want to know what You want of me, that’s why I’m here! And I know I won’t hear Your voice if I’m not willing to hear whatever You have to say!

Despite my best intentions, I braced myself for finding out all the things I’ve been doing wrong.

Then He spoke:

“BE WHERE YOU ARE. FULLY.”

Your kids are in public school. BE THERE.

Your home needs looking after. BE THERE.

Your family needs a nutrition reboot. BE THERE.

You were called to write. BE THERE.

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I am reminded of Fulton Sheen’s book Peace of Soul and his discussion of despair:

It is a desperate desire either to be oneself or to be not oneself; a person wants either to make himself into an absolute, unconditioned being, independent, self-subsistent; or else he wants desperately to get rid of his being, with its limitation, its contingency, and its finiteness. Both these attitudes manifest the eternal revolt of the finite against the infinites: Non serviam. (Peace of Soul, 19)

Wouldn’t it be lovely to always be right, to always know that what you are doing is right, to get to decide what is right yourself? Suddenly there are no wrong decisions, nothing out of your reach. Perfect control, whatever you like. Yet we discover that this control is a fallacy, sooner or later, and our finiteness, our failures, our limitations and dependencies sink us like boulders. Now we want to be as far from our skin as we can. This vacillation wears out our souls. We are at constant war with ourselves.

By such a revolt, the person exposes himself to the awareness of his nothingness and his solitude. Instead of finding a support in the knowledge that he, though contingent, is held in existence by a loving God, he now seeks reliance within himself and, necessarily failing to find it, becomes the victim of dread. For dread is related to an unknown, overwhelming, all powerful something—which may strike when or where one knows not. Dread is everywhere and nowhere, all around us, terrible and indefinite, threatening us with an annihilation that we cannot imagine or even conceive. (19-20)

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What a visceral description of that dread that sits on our hearts. Especially at the 2 AM waking, when our worries and wonderings swirl in our heads.

The remedy?

Though you are nothing, you are held in the hands of a loving God.

This is why we need to be where we are, fully. Where we are is in God’s hands.

“Helen, do you trust Me?” This trust is not that all will go well for me. This trust is that He has me in His hands, that He can make all things new, that He can bring good from anything. That whatever comes, He is with me always to the end of time, that whatever evil I may experience is not the end of the story.

We are never alone, and it was never up to us anyway.

Click to tweet:
Whatever comes, He is with me always to the end of time; whatever evil I may experience is not the end of the story. #CatholicMom

The devil wants us to believe that the crucifixion is the end of Jesus’ story and fixate on our own crosses and crucifixions. But we know that Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, and that He lives and reigns even now.

We now live fully—knowing that being contingent and dependent on God frees us to be ourselves, confident and at peace because we do not rely on ourselves but rather on His grace. It is His love that brought us into existence, His love which sustains us, and His love will write the end of our story.

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