Talitha Koum - טליתא קומי

Five years into my seminary experience, I was asked to take an extra year to work on some things in my life. Specifically, I was starting to have trouble with some relationships, my interior joy was not abundant. Being told to  take an extra year was rather devastating, but now I see it as one of the most beautiful things that had ever happened to me.

 What I found that year was the joy I had always searched for, and it came through interior healing. Here, I want to point out a common experience in the interior life: often those who pursue holiness seriously will suddenly reach a block, and the only way forward is backward. It is like going to a hotel without a key card; you simply cannot rest in your room until you go back to the reception desk and retrieve a key. So it was with my spiritual life and everything about me; I had to go to my past in order to go forward with my life in the present. I had a lot about my childhood that I never really looked at; there was a lot in me that never grew up. Thus began the counseling, spiritual direction, intense prayer, meetings with priest advisors, and plenty of reflection. It was exactly what I needed.

I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder in Kindergarten, and early elementary school was difficult for me for years, or at least the social part of school. Relationships were extremely difficult because I was so impulsive, and I frequented the naughty bench for recess. My life really took a turn for the better, though, when the continuous love of my Catholic teachers and family finally broke through to me such that I could see goodness in myself. But it was those difficult and painful years before this that I had really pushed away from my memory. That was the Steven I never wanted to think about, but it was the Steven I needed to accept. It was the key card to go forward in my life.

If you want joy in your life, then go back. Painful memories need to be processed and sanctified by the power of Jesus in prayer. So much of our lives we can hide from pain when it needs to be faced and redeemed. Jesus did this to the child in me just as He did for the child in the gospel. He goes into the house of the child we thought dead, but He declares the child is sleeping (Mark 5:39). Then he puts away all distractions to enter that room, takes the child’s hand and says, “Talitha koum!” And the child comes back to life! And that child is hungry once again, perhaps more than physically. The child is spiritually again hungry for communion and joy and all the other things we did not know we hungered for. Allow the Lord to reach out to the dead pains in your past so that He can raise you to life.
 
PS—A great book is Be Healed by Bob Shuchts (Ave Maria Press, 2014). ISBN: ‎978-1594714764