Meeting Jesus in the Garden

Meeting Jesus in the Garden

About 4 years ago I had the most beautiful encounter with Christ. I was in the depths of a loneliness that physically hurt.  I remember laying on the couch as my 4 year old daughter watched TV and a dam that I had built to ignore what I was feeling broke. Both the emotional and physical pain in my chest was intense, and as I laid there crying talking to Jesus about it offering up this pain, I felt a profound connection to Christ at that point as if I was by his side in the Garden of Gethsemane.

All through lent that year I was in this internal battle...it was not a serene and happy lent for me... About two months before lent I had a dream...A friend of mine brought me a boyfriend (literally she brought someone for me)  a very attractive and nice guy...in the dream my friend told me he was for me but I was in denial that he would ever like me so I just pretended not to be interested...and then my friend told me what's wrong with you be nice...so I was and we hit it off...well at one point in the dream the guy (i never caught his name haha), my friend, and others were sitting on a hill for a picnic or something then these teenagers started throwing rocks at us so the guy got up and wanted to talk to the kids because he wanted to try and help them...well everyone ran away but he stayed and then disappeared...he may have been hurt by the kids, (at least that what it felt like) I'm not sure but he was gone and then I work up.

Before this dream occurred I had my first session with my spiritual director (SD) and he had me meditate on a scripture passage John 8:2-11evrryday. (read it the throwing of stones will make much more sense) When I read that scripture I had to picture myself as the woman who was going to be stoned and think of everyone in my life who would want to throw the stones at me. Then I had to imagine Jesus talking to me and loving me the way he loved the woman.

So I made some connections from the dream 1. stones came from my meditation 2. I had these feelings that I did not deserve a good man because of the life I lived in the past, but not only did I feel undeserving of love from a human I later realized that I also felt like Christ couldn't love me either.

So the next time I spoke with my SD I told him about the dream and he asked if I was lonely, and it was weird because I really hadn't thought about that in a really long time...I had felt like I was just in a state that I was content with... but when faced with this question I knew that was not the truth. I told him that I guess I was but I don't think about it. But here is where the problem lay. I believe  there was this issue laying deep with in me but I chose to ignore it.

So after that session I thought a little bit about loneliness but I had a life to live so I pushed the thought out of my head. Once you are on the path with Christ you will find that even if you are a master at denial Christ will fight for you and bring yucky things to the forefront in order that you might come closer to him. So,  a few weeks later I was driving a guest speaker to his next speaking engagement. As we spoke and joked around I told him a bit about my past and then he asked "do you think you are called to marriage?" This hit a bit of a chord with me and caught me off guard but I had a quick answer, "I think so" I told him "I've been waiting for it since I was a little girl"... Then the speaker asked if there were any possibilities where I lived and asked if I felt like I needed to leave to find someone.

We eventually arrived (I say eventually because we had a bit of an adventure going the wrong direction and almost being lost) at his next event. But days later that conversation was still bothering me. It got me thinking more about the fact that I am a single mother and that I really was lonely.

I fought it all through that lent trying to deny it but it pretty much tore me up...I was a crying mess at the end... Then my spiritual director posted something on facebook....

SD:OK, I am going to come clean today. My biggest fault is that I am "too nice." What I mean by that is that I complement too much, I like people too much, I am too interested in them and people just don't know how to handle someone who complements, is excited about their life and cares. So, if I complement you, ask you how many people are in your family, it is not because I am prying, I am praying.Oh, and I will just try to act like I don't quite care as much as I do, OK?

Now there were some really good comments going on but I'm skipping over those because this is what got to me:

SD: ...this concept has been on my mind in prayer. When thinking about the selflessness of Jesus, it is what i try to live, often fail, but cannot help but think that the loneliness of the Garden of Gethsemane had to be horribly intense. Here he was, about to give himself up and know that he would be brutally treated by his own creation. All this week, when I was before the Blessed Sacrament, I began to think about this loneliness/betrayal/abandonment of Christ. It reminded me of how often I want to love others, but don't because they cannot accept that I don't want anything. I don't want power. I don't want sex. I don't want money. I don't want really anything but for them to know that they are beautiful in the eyes of God. Maybe not beautiful, maybe excellent, or good at what they do, or something like that, that is what I mean. The mercy of his sorrowful passion is so immense that he is not coming to condemn us, but give us enough love that we would go and sin no more.This is an incredibly deep mystery (that and why I get into theological discussions on facebook my day off!). If you look at how the people around us cannot accept love when it is given in innocence, then how could we accept Christ as something other than a law giver or a "Lord" in the sense, almost, of a dark lord that hovers over us waiting to condemn us. Tis, I think is what it means, when it says that we have already condemned ourselves. We reject love because we don't think love is comprehensible...

So as you have read there's some pretty deep stuff there, but the part that really got to me was "I cannot help but think that the loneliness of the Garden of Gethsemane had to be horribly intense. Here he was, about to give himself up and know that he would be brutally treated by his own creation. All this week, when I was before the Blessed Sacrament, I began to think about this loneliness/betrayal/abandonment of Christ."

With this reflection by my SD about the loneliness the lord must have felt at Gethsemane well I suddenly felt this profound connection to Jesus..That night that the loneliness was at a level that I felt pain in my chest (was the night of the post) I started to talk to Jesus about it, and when I offered it up and saw and felt a connection between my loneliness and his...I was able at that moment, tears and all, to feel joy amidst the pain...

My forty days in the desert doing battle with myself, facing myself and the truth of what I was feeling ended in an evening of pain and tears...but the most amazing part was that I was not alone...I mentioned that I felt like I was in the Garden with Jesus...but the truth is I was on a couch and Jesus was sitting there with me.

Four year later guess what...I'm still single. And you know what there are still some really lonely days and nights...but what gets me through those nights??...well honestly sometimes I succumb to the depths of sadness and eat a pint of Ben and Jerry's...but on good nights the ones I don't end up regretting I pray...I take out my rosary, I read my bible, I play with my daughter, or I do something for someone else.

I've never felt that exact same feeling as I did that first night I faced the truth about how I really felt. But it helps to remind me that in the  depths of our pain and sadness there is only one who could truly understand what we are going through...God made flesh, who suffered terrible loneliness and excruciating pain for both the loss of all his friends in the sight of adversity and also the physical pain of the cross... and that God loves me more then I could ever imagine...