Ascent and Descent: A Decade of Discipleship

And finally 2019 slows down. Uni is done for the year. Work is done for the year. Soup kitchen is done for the year. Choir (carols, Christmas masses, rehearsals et al.) is done for the year. My best friend and my boyfriend are both overseas. There are no more Christmas presents to be bought. There are no more meetings to be squished in. There are no more things left on the 2019 to do list (except three books to finish reading so they can technically qualify for the ‘books I read in 2019’ list, but whatever).

The end of the decade lazily approaches, and I’m grateful for these long, lazy days of looking back on what has been.

At the start of this decade, I was thirteen years old. I had a mouthful of braces and a head full of house plans (cottages and castles alike). I studied hard, sang often, and took myself entirely too seriously most of the time. 

The 2010s brought four years of high school, two years of NET, three years of a Bachelor’s degree, and one of a Master’s. The 2010s brought me to the foot of the Cross for the first time and turned me into a disciple, little bit by little bit. The 2010s saw me grow up (mostly). 

This decade was the slow and beautiful process of falling in love with Jesus, of finding community and discovering gifts and passions, of quietly beginning to join my heart to another person’s. It was the process of becoming an adult in life skills and in faith.

And yet this decade was also made up of two distinct seasons: the Joyful mysteries and the Sorrowful mysteries. Five years' ascent into the Joy of the Gospel; five years' descent into the Passion and Tomb.

Over the last few days, I've been unravelling those two sets of mysteries in my prayer time, seeking to surrender everything back to the One who has brought me life through it all. 

~~~

From the elation of that first encounter with Jesus in March 2010, to the satisfying conclusion of my first year of NET at the end of 2014, I was on a spiritual high. Each discovery was filled with power and beauty; every talk or homily I heard came alive with the sweet mystery of the Christ I was coming to know. I felt confident of where God was calling me, and empowered as a disciple with the skills I needed to carry out that mission. 

I received the Word of God and gave it my Fiat. I joined with friends, dear sisters in Christ, to glorify the joy of the new life growing within me. I brought forth that life and began to share the light of Christ with others. I was obedient to the norms of my newfound faith. I found Jesus exactly where He said he would be: in His Father's house. 

Joy came easily in those first five years of my personal faith journey. I had lived a blessed life with few struggles or shadows, and responding to God in gratitude felt like the most natural thing in the world. 

2015 brought the first doubts. My second year of NET led me and my teammates into a difficult mission field. We struggled the whole year to share the joy of the Gospel, and seldom glimpsed fruits from our ministry. My prayer life deepened, carving into more spaces in my soul and character as I became aware of my inadequacy, my temptations, my fear of failure. In the process, Catholicism became something three-dimensional, because a third dimension was demanded of me. I could no longer be a caricature of joy, but had to incorporate my sorrows and limitations too.

The three years of my BA were filled with light and colour in many ways - but their spiritual undertone was also one of increasing confusion and seasons of desolation. Several of my friends had major struggles with mental health that I felt incapable of speaking Truth into. My classmates and lecturers alike ridiculed the Church, and as heavy debates entered the public arena I felt less and less proud of the way Christians were behaving. In the pews of different parishes, I found both apathy and bitterness - but more ominously I found weariness. These were people who had tried hard and were on their last legs of spiritual energy. My dream of becoming a parish youth minister, once realised, brought with it strange anxieties and the sense of trying to swim upstream in a tsunami. The Catholicism I was in love with seemed far away, replaced by something that was political, antagonistic, exhausted, and exhausting. 

In the midst of this, I was trying desperately to work out what the Lord wanted from me. I was certain it had to be religious life - entering an order and giving my whole life to the service of God and others felt like the only logical extension of my love for Him. But none of the orders I discerned felt right, none of the apostolates I attempted to pursue fell into place. I cried many tears of frustration, sick of chasing dead ends and feeling like a terrible disciple. 

In April 2018, the Lord spoke into my discernment battle with perfect clarity. At Jamberoo Abbey, I tasted the unity with Him I longed for - only to hear Him ask me to leave the mountaintop and descend with Him into the darkness and fragility of human life in the middle of the world. I couldn't make mess and fleshiness peripheral or push it away - I had to learn to make it transparent, to see through it to the God who chose Incarnation. 

The sweet ecstasy of that retreat sustained me for a while, and gave me enough certainty in His will to begin pursuing a relationship with the best man I’ve ever known. My confidence ebbed and flowed, though, and the voice of the Accuser repeatedly threw at me the lie that God could never love me as a girlfriend, wife, or mother. I felt like the core of my identity (‘girl discerning religious life’) had been shattered. Jesus tasked me with discovering new definitions of generosity, love, sacrifice, and holiness, and little-by-little I began to see the mysterious beauty of ordinary life. 

My dad’s initial cancer diagnosis in late 2017, and the discovery of its recurrence and metastasis last Halloween shook me to my foundations. The prognosis was ‘incurable’ and life expectancy unknown but limited. Nothing felt certain and the future no longer seemed a comforting thing to contemplate. I wanted to pray for a miracle, but realised I had no faith that one could occur. I felt so bitter at my own inability to believe or hope. Dad started immunotherapy treatments in December 2018, and I prepared for the possibility that I would stay in New Zealand for 2019 as we waited for good - or bad - news. 

Then, the unexpected. As the New Year dawned, Dad stopped coughing. His CT scan showed dramatic improvement. The oncologist told us that the ridiculous, the miraculous, was in fact happening. The cancer was reversing. 

And so 2019 stumbled to its feet. I made half-hearted plans to return to Brisbane, begin studying my Masters, and look for a job that would pay the bills without demanding huge emotional input from me. A part-time administration role in the Episcopal Offices landed on my doorstep, and I gratefully accepted a job that didn’t quite feel like a mission field, but a ‘mission that underpinned mission’. 

My inner life seldom felt glamorous this year. I prayed every day, and didn't necessarily struggle to hear Jesus' voice speaking gently into my daily circumstances. But I felt adrift from passion and purpose, uncertain what my identity was meant to be. I doubted, over and over again, whether I had made the right decisions in coming back to Brisbane, in pursuing further study, in working an administration job, in stepping back from active ministry. I found that I had to die to myself again and again - unlearning the Kate who had it all together, the Kate who was intensely driven and delighted in so many things, the Kate I had been proud to be. 2019 led me into the darkness and quiet of Jesus' own tomb, and I meditated again and again on what it meant to wait for Resurrection. 

My sorrowful mysteries were not heartbreaking in obvious ways. I did not suffer as many people in the world have suffered and are suffering. But the last five years have symbolised for me the message of descent, suffering, and death that is so integral a part of our faith. 

In tiny ways, I have tasted Jesus' own agony in the garden, his flagellation and mockery. I have felt the weight of the Cross, of Christianity itself, on my back, and learned to commend my life into the Father's hands when I can no longer sustain it myself. I have rested in the black unknowing of shroud and tomb, not knowing what dawn will look like, but trusting in His promises. 

I think in some ways we're all living the Mysteries on various timelines. The Rosary, the Liturgical Year, the Gospels themselves - these are the story of our own inner life of Birth, Death and Resurrection. They're our journey with Christ from joy to sorrow to glory and back again. 

~~~

For me it feels important to end this decade well. The 2010s were my first decade of adult decision-making, and my first decade of discipleship. Looking back, there are a few regrets and disappointments, but a great many more things that I am grateful for and in awe of. I have learned so much, loved so many people and places and things, and flourished from daily contact with the One who loves me most.

Over the last few days, I've been revisiting a decade of memories with Jesus. We've talked through the golden moments of friendship and adventure and romance and tasting the Divine. We've talked about the lingering hurts and fears. The disappointments I never came to peace with. The things I have resented about who I am. The opportunities I hoped for that never precipitated. The struggles that still feel dominant. 

I've let Him speak tenderly to all the girls I've been over the last ten years: the overachiever, the manic pixie dream Catholic, the discerner, the attempter of free-spiritedness, the various pale imitations of other people's identities. The writer who doesn't write often enough or well enough. The friend who doesn't come through for her friends. The singer who clogs up in front of a microphone. The Catholic who neglects daily Masses, avoids Confession, is afraid to share her faith with the antagonistic and the apathetic. The one who cries too often, thinks too much, worries about things that have nothing to do with her. I've brought them all to the foot of the Cross and let them be naked without shame before Him.

Because at the end of the day He loves all of them. He loves all of me. The most essential, unadorned, stripped back Kate, as well as all of the versions I've tried to be. He sees the real Kate and cherishes her and finds her worthy of being His eternally.

He is still God, at the end of this decade. God without beginning or end. I can exhale and let go of all that I'm carrying - disappointments, regrets, expectations about what could have or should have been - and simply say 'Fiat'. I can drop it here, and not look for it again in 2020.

I am so grateful for the life He has given me. Every day is revelation. Every day is another step closer to heaven. And in surrendering every memory and every hope to Him, I find myself gather up into Him, into a unified whole that can be held tightly in His arms and released back into the world with new faith, hope, and love.

I truly do believe I'm on the brink of my Glorious mysteries. Sweetness and suffering and surrender are giving way to a new season - one that will make no sense whatsoever, one that will reveal the strange ways of God. A season where the Glory all belongs to Him. 

And so the mysteries ebb and flow.

And so the decade draws to a close.

And so my life is in His hands once more.

And there I find my Home. 

~~~

Sweet friend, if I can give you any encouragement between now and 2020, let it be this:

Take time to let Him speak tenderly to you. He wants to lead you into the desert, free from distraction and doubt, and allure your heart again. He has come so that you may have abundant life. 

Let Him heal and seal the wounds of this decade. Surrender to Him when He asks you to leave something behind in the 2010s. Let it go. Let Him show you what to take forward into the 2020s. 

Tell Him your disappointments. Tell Him your fears. Tell Him what you are grateful for. Tell Him what you learned. Tell Him what you hope for. Tell Him who you resolve to be.

Resolve to be His. It's the New Year's resolution - the New Decade resolution - that will make all the difference.

AMDG