St Therese and Docility

 St. Therese was such a wonderful example of docility.  At the beginning of this Lent journey 2016, I was struggling with my own sense of docility.  It was so bad that even when reading some of Therese's writings about her life, I would find myself asking, 'Why didn't she do something about this? Why didn't she speak up about an insult or hurt?"

  I have spent much more time this Lent reading the writings of Therese as well as several other Lenten materials including the "Rediscover Jesus" book by Matthew Kelly and today it finally hit me. I've been missing docility. Matt Kelly describes in his book that Docility means to be listening deeply to the promptings of the Holy  Spirit; to be coachable, to listen to the voice of God especially in times of decision.  But I've not been doing that very well.

  Oh I have prayed asking for help, trying to listen. But many times my own pride, feeling insulted by someone's criticism, holding on to hurt feelings to assuage my guilt over things I may say, has really gotten in the way of me being a docile person.

  My husband and I joke about receiving those moments of revelation in life, when you finally 'get' something God is trying to tell you, as receiving a 'Golden Two by Four" in the forehead.  We rub our foreheads and laugh and say, whoops, guess I was supposed to get that one better."

  This Lent God has graciously seen fit to supply me with some of those Golden 2 x 4's. I'm embarrassed to admit it's taken several bumps to my head to help me understand that all my self pity and anger about things aren't solving any issues in my life.  I need to be more docile. I need to listen better to the Holy Spirit.

  Matt Kelly says, "We all have a distorted view of reality. We don't see things as they really are: we don't see ourselves as we really are. We have blind spots, biases, and prejudices.  Jesus wants to liberate us from all these and help us to see things as they really are, to see ourselves as we really are."

  It hurts to admit when your pride has caused you to fall down, once again... and again...and again. But before I feel so horribly unworthy of Jesus, to feel that there is no way to say I'm sorry enough for falling again...I see Jesus fall during the Stations of the Cross. Not once, not twice, but three times.  Not because of His pride, but to remind me of my pride and how I must get up again and again and again and keep trying to be better.  Accepting docility is accepting that we will keep messing up and knowing we need to keeping listening over and over.

    The humbleness we learn from being docile helps us each time not to sink so low. God loves us and gives us chance after chance and as long as we keep getting up, picking up our cross, we are on the right road, following in Jesus footsteps on our own way to  Calvary and the salvation that awaits us in heaven!