Prayer
The Locked Room
August 30, 2015 | Reflections from some of the nuns
Words from The HeartIf some of us have lived long enough, we can find that there is much in our lives to regret. Mistakes, sins, times when we have let the side down and the constant companion of our own weakness sometimes weigh heavily upon us. My grandmother used to recite a poem for me when I was a child which was called “It Might Have Been”. When she explained what it meant, I found it very sad. We too can look at our own life and wish it had been other than it was especially in regard to our own failings. We can eternally linger in the land of “It Might Have Been”.
These areas become what I call “the locked room (s)” . These are those places into which I do not even give myself admittance let alone God. I try and pretend they are not there and when their memory steals upon me, I run away as fast as I can! I forget that their memory is simply a call from their own loneliness begging me to revisit them, absolve them, understand them and give them peace. Furthermore I do not understand that they are crying out for the God who can heal them.
This is the same God who keeps vigil with me as I refuse to own my own life or rather own it as I want it to be, not as it really is. This is the God who desperately wants admittance to our locked rooms in order to make us whole, in order to give us the joy of living freely and unimpeded by the perceived blackness of our past. Yet He will not force His way in, He waits and is prepared to sit with us forever in our brokenness and denial, if that is what it takes. We forget that part of the blessedness of Jesus’ time on earth was that He transformed our darkness into light, that truly what is frighteningly dark for us, is light for Him, that our locked rooms hold no terror for Him. Gethsemane itself was transformed because He was there. If only we knew deep within us the truth of His Presence, His lone vigil with you and me, and His excellent track record (!), we would open those locked doors, take our courage in our hands, face the pain of memories, put the kettle on and let Jesus repaint the place, refurnish the room, knock a window in the wall to give us a panoramic view of His own loving landscape in our regard, smash down another wall and turn it into a lovely sitting room with a welcoming fire and easy chairs where He could sit and enjoy our company and tell us the story over and over again of His love for us! There is no end to what He would do, if only we would take the risk of trusting Him enough to let Him in …let’s not go on living full of regret for the past, let’s not keep saying “It might have been”.
Sr Hilda Scott osb