That Time I Stopped Praying to God

and how Mary found me, right where I was

Vicente Manansala, Madonna of the Slums

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This summer, I couldn’t pray to God.

If this sounds like a big problem for a Catholic writer, it is, but it’s also a big problem for literally any human person.

A number of hard things hit our little family like an avalanche in a way that felt very dire. I’m tempted here to quickly point out that at least we weren’t in Ukraine! or unhoused!! or dying of cancer!!! but hard is hard and my life this year has been hard. (I’ve also been instructed by wise counsel to stop comparing suffering so I’m trying to have the posture of a learner and do so).

I frequently push the Bible in a Year podcast (“I’M A PUSHER, CADY”) on people because it helped me understand the God of the old testament in a whole new way. That God had always scared me more than a little. I’ll take the rosy-cozy Jesus, please, the one who talked about Hell but also a whole lot about love and friendship and promised he’d send me an advocate in the Holy Spirit. Jesus seemed to hug people. God seemed to burn shit up a lot. And while I’m aware that Jesus came from God, and is God, it remains difficult for me to align old testament God with new testament Jesus. Fr. Mike Schmitz does a phenomenal job at uniting the two and painting the entire bible as the tale of salvation history.

But I’m still a little scared of God.

Maybe I should be; maybe a holy fear is a good thing. Or maybe perfect love truly does cast out fear, and my love is far from perfected.

But it was deeper than fear, too.

It was contempt.

I was angry at God for not fixing my suffering, and if that sounds petulant that’s because it is. But God is bigger than my petulance, and it was a true emotion sprung out of a whirlwind of unhealed wounds and a broken spirit. My prayers were eyerolls, angry glares, how-could-you thoughts. I have kids too, I snapped at the Lord once or twice or seventeen times. And I know their limits.

And again, I’m fighting back the urge to rush in with all of the spiritual Godisms. I know All of the Things about God not being an ATM; I know the difference between perfect and permissive wills. I do! But I guess it’s kind of like reading about firefighters vs. becoming one. To know and to experience: it’s just not the same thing.

It was during that time that I finally felt my heart pulled towards someone I’d long wished for a connection with, but never really felt.

Mary.

The Annunciation, John William Waterhouse

Mary: brave warrior, meek hand servant. Mary, who encompasses Christian femininity in all of its complexity and curiosity. Mary, who praises God when faced with extremely difficult circumstances. Mary, who believed in the drought of despair.

Mary, who I’ve always felt a few feet away from.

I guess some people just really like the Rosary, I would think, shrugging. I was more into Jesus, personally. Mother Teresa. Dorothy Day. Even after writing two books on Catholic womanhood and doing all the research and loving Reed of God, I still felt distant from the woman given to be humanity’s mother. Until this very year, I thought that while it was good and lovely that some people felt so close to Mary, it just wasn’t going to be my color of Catholicism, and that was all right.

Until talking to God infuriated me, and I needed to talk to a woman instead.

At the end of the day, there is a common thread among women; even the prickliest among us (hi) are primed to want to connect with one another. I needed feminine guidance and feminine companionship.

And Mary cared, but in a slightly less all-powerful way. She is not God, after all. We do not pray to her; we pray through her, asking for her holy intercession. Mary does not have the power to snap her fingers and make things So. She is the most powerful intercessor, because everyone listens to their mama, but that slight disassociation—that inch of breathing room and distance—suddenly made all the difference.

Lady of Regla, Harmonia Rosalesz

Look at that image. How could you feel contempt for such a being?

The saints have always been one of my favorite guiding lights of the church. And since I know we have many Protestant readers here, a gentle-but-firm reminder that the saints are for you, too. There’s no fence around St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross; no password required to crack open Augustine’s Confessions. Saints are not gods or magicians. They’re simply very holy people who we can take inspiration from, who we believe can pray for us from Heaven.

The macabre of Catholicism has never scared me off. Actually, I kind of love it. One of my favorite churches in the world is St. Bridget’s in Gdansk, Poland. We’re in Poland as you read these words and I hope I’m at that very church, this very moment. It served as a hub for Solidarity activists to meet when communism roamed the streets, and it currently houses not only a stunning amber altar but monuments to St. John Paul 2 and Father Jerzy Popieluszko, the chaplain of the Solidarity movement who was murdered by secret police in 1984. Down a short flight of stairs is a dark, damp crypt, literally called The Crypt of Skulls. (🤘🏻) Behind a metal lattice fence there are relics of St. Bridget, including her jaw. The words memento mori, remember death, are etched across the entire thing. It is extremely goth. It is wickedly cool. It is the kind of thing that makes Protestants look at us funny. But one of the richest parts of our faith is our weighty history, and I love that we celebrate that in a tactile way. St. Bridget’s jaw—there it is, a physical reminder of a luxurious love so grand and dangerous and awe-inspiring. A reminder I can see; I reminder I can almost reach through the gate and touch.

I am making my way back to God, who was never truly far at all. I am unclenching my fists and leaning into grace.

“I so deeply believe that God does answer us, but in the language of presence, in the givenness of his own frail, human Son, in his hands, clothed in countless tangible moments of beauty. He is here, not crashing in with light that makes our tear-sore eyes ache, or with demands that we believe in a list of assertions, he is here, like a star whose tender light cannot be dimmed by a legion of darkness. He is here, like the swell of new buds after winter. He is here like a lullaby sung in the night to a fretful child.” - Sarah Clarkson

I will never forget the way Mary and the saints were there for me during that time. I could not ask God for help one more time, but I could ask St. Joseph to pray for me. I could not beg him for one more small mercy, but I could lean into the writings of St. Faustina. I could not so much as look at him without feeling a toxic hurricane of anger and guilt, but I could feel Mary’s arms around me, the way I hold Tess during the worst of her tantrums and feel her little tears soak my shirt sleeve.

There was a moment earlier in the year where in a conversation thick with despair and darkness, I told a friend I was out of hope. “I’ll hope for you,” he said, very convicted. “That’s what I can do.” I can’t tell you the power of that statement, and the ease it gave my spirit. I could weep, as I type this at the coffee shop, remembering how badly I needed those words said to me. Mary and the saints—they hope for us, and believe when we can’t. What an unearned gift. Samwise couldn’t take the ring from Frodo, but he could scoop him up in his arms, which is exactly what he did, being a friend “here, at the end of all things”.

And this, here, is the beauty of the church. It’s that when you need a friend in your corner, you have thousands. When you need to see someone else who made it through a trying darkness, or someone who resisted society’s norms, or someone who simply lived what Thomas Merton called the rebellion of the saints, it feels like you’re being lifted by a buoy out of an ocean.

God, in his infinite goodness, knows that all we need is him. But our fickle hearts can sometimes benefit from additional support, and he knows that, too. So he gave us the words and wisdom of generations before us. He gave us Therese and Teresa, Gemma and Giana, Kateri and Katharine. And he gave us Mary.

Sometimes a girl just needs her mom, y’know?

Happy Feast of the Assumption. Mom, pray for us!

On My Nightstand 

Here are some things I’ve been reading lately that have made me think!

• My Escape from the Taliban: Harrowing. I can’t imagine having this kind of fortitude.

• The Age of Algorithmic Anxiety: If you needed any further proof that the machines are actually out to get us. Loved this piece on how algorithms are robbing us of truly finding what we enjoy.

• Yearn the Heart: This piece from Laura Fanucci on the sacred stance of vulnerability is beautiful. “Prayer — especially intercession on others’ behalf — feels like yearning the heart forward. Reaching and stretching toward another, aching and longing for their needs, not just my own, raising hands to God in hope or desperation. How much I want this good gift for my friend, my family member, a perfect stranger: to have an answer, a family, a home, a healing, a job, a community, a freedom, a forgiveness.

  We yearn for each other and we yearn for ourselves. This is the movement that keeps us moving forward, stretching toward the source of goodness in God for whom we long.”

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In case you missed these Letters:

• Maybe Jesus Shouldn’t Be Your Job - for everyone

• How Jen Hatmaker Lost the Plot - for subscribers

• Wait, Wasn’t Dorothy Day a Communist? - for subscribers

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• Girl, Arise: A Catholic Feminist’s Invitation to Live Boldly, Love Your Faith and Change the World

• In Full Bloom: Finding the Grit and Grace to Thrive Wherever You’re Planted

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