“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground unperceived by your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid.” Matthew 10:29-31
As I sat at the airport, I overheard a conversation behind me between a man and a woman: “You always have this overwhelming anxiety. You need to stop it.” I felt like turning around and telling the man: “It’s not that easy. If she had a headache you wouldn’t just tell her to stop having a headache. It’s the same when you feel anxious. You can’t just make it go away.”
I have felt that anxiety that paralyzes you a few times in my life. I call it the mother’s jinx because most of the time it’s related to my children. When they were little, I was always anxious that they would get sick or that I would lose them in a mall. Anything in the news relating to a missing child would send my head spinning creating horrific scenarios of things that could befall my kids. When they began to drive, I would literally check for accidents in the areas where I knew they would go through. Then came college and my anxiety hit an all time high. I stopped sleeping an uninterrupted night, and I began to write on my journal day and night as if my own life depended on it. I think in a way it did.
My journal helped me to confront my own emotions. In the middle of the night when the house was quiet because everyone was sleeping, it was just me and my journal. My journal created a refuge that filled me with yearning, nostalgia, and many times with peace, joy and hope. It was much easier to express myself on paper when I didn’t have to worry about anyone else’s opinions or judgment. My journal helped to carry me away from reality. It helped me to ease my fears, and it also made me believe that things would get better. When I wrote, I could disconnect from the world and those around me. Writing gave me something to focus on when the world and the people around me became too overwhelming.
On those long and lonely nights, I also discovered that writing is my favorite way to pray, so I began to write letters to Jesus and Mary through my journal. When I write to them, I can put on paper all my worries, desires and concerns. It was during those nights in solitude that I shared with Jesus my anxiety about becoming the perfect human being that God created me to be, and one night I heard His voice in the silence of my heart telling me that I did not have to be a perfect mother or a perfect wife or a perfect daughter. If I tried my best, that was good enough for Him.
Writing helped me to discover that I had to look at myself through God’s eyes, no one else’s. And the best part of that discovery was that God thinks that I’m amazing. Therefore, who cares if no one else thinks that. The more I saw myself through God’s eyes, the more I wanted to find my true passion. Much of my life had been shaped by other’s expectations of me, so I was curious to find out what God expected of me. It’s hard to get through each day if life has no purpose. I wanted to discover what God’s desire was for me because I felt that it was in that direction where my devotion truly resided.
When I attended my first silent retreat based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola at the end of 2007, I heard God’s voice loud and clear asking me to write. I listened to Him and I obeyed Him. For the first half of 2008, I wrote and wrote, until I realized that I was writing a book. But after writing the first five chapters, I pushed the book to the back burner where it would remain hidden for the next ten years.
Writing continued to be my therapy, but I kept it private. I have always been rather shy. When I was an awkward teenager, sometimes I would wish that I could make myself so small that I could disappear. Therefore, when I heard God telling me to share my writings with the world during my second silent retreat at the end of 2008, I hesitated. Sharing my deepest thoughts would take a certain level of boldness that I knew could only come from God. I prayed and I prayed, and He let me know that it’s the bravest thing to do something when you are scared. And I was petrified.
I started small. First, I shared some of my writings with my Emmaus sisters by email. Then, in 2009, I was inspired to write a Lenten Journey: “48 steps to Easter.” I created a blog and shared one step per day during the Lenten season. I did this again in 2010 and 2012. Finally, in 2015, I was moved to create a permanent blog space, and “Christy’s Meditations” was born. I have been sharing my journal writings with all of you through this medium for the past seven years.
However, the unfinished book kept pulling at me. Every time I went to another silent retreat, and even when I sat alone in my prayer corner, I could hear God’s voice: “When are you going to finish the project that I entrusted to you?” Finally, in 2018, exactly ten years after I started writing it, I unearthed the book from its hiding place. This time, I was determined, and yet it took me another three years to finish it.
In 2021, I was proud and terrified at the same time. I had a finished manuscript. What was the next step? I took it to God in prayer, and He told me once again to push my fears aside. “You have to publish it,” I heard His voice within my heart. Yet, I wanted to believe that it was not His voice, so I kept coming up with all sort of excuses: “I am a nobody, why would anyone want to read a book published by me?” “If the author was someone famous like Scott Hahn or Matthew Kelly, the book will sell, but who’s going to buy a book written by an unknown author?” Yet, I kept hearing God’s voice whispering in my ear: “You are amazing because I created you. Why are you embarrassed of letting people know the real you through your writings? Why do you want to hide my message rather than sharing it with the world? Don’t you trust me?”
I guess at the end of the day, if I’m going to be true to myself and to God, I am afraid of rejection. It takes a lot of guts to put my book out there with the hope that others will find meaning in it, that they will see themselves reflected in that which I wrote, to believe that my voice can have some impact in the fractured world we live in. But without that hope, I may be closing myself to the opportunity of something greater which is to be able to share a message of hope beyond my small community.
I feel like God is leading me to a turning point in my life and in my faith. Even though I feel small, unworthy and very anxious of the path that He is leading me through, He is asking me to trust Him. I can continue living in the comfort of the darkness or walk forward towards the light. He is asking me to let Him guide me so I can become the person that He created, loved and chose for this mission. He is asking me to stop hiding my voice and to allow Him to fulfill in me all that He desires for me.
When I finally decided to say YES to Him, He directed me to an amazing editor who made the book so much better than it was. She has an eagle’s eye which caught every grammatical error and every misspelled word. We spent six months working together until I had a manuscript that I felt was worthy of publication. Now, I just need to find the right publisher that is willing to take a chance on me.
Is it going to be easy to find a home for my book? Probably not. After all, it’s my first book and I read somewhere that it takes a few tries until one finally gets published. But I have to trust that God has a plan because after all, He is the real author of my book. I was just a little pencil in His hand. He directed my thoughts through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. He was the one that pushed me, so I have to trust that He will lead me to the right publisher. And if it doesn’t happen this time, I hope I learn from my mistakes, and that I allow myself the opportunity to recover from them.
I have fulfilled my mission. The outcome is in God’s Hands. But no matter what happens, this experience has drawn me closer to God, and fulfilling His mission has expanded the landscape of my heart. For the first time, in as long as I can remember, I am no longer filled with anxiety or fear, on the contrary, I am filled with hope.
Copyright © 2022 Christy Romero. All rights reserved.
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