Editor’s Note: This is the final column written by Linda E. Kelly for the Catholic Herald prior to her death on May 5 of this year. We thank her family for letting us share her talents and stories with others.
Romans 8:28 assures us that “all things work for good for those who love the Lord.”
Not all things are good, but all things work for good.
In looking back on our lives, we need to search for the hand of God in each and every joyful moment as well as in each and every painful moment.
It’s often very difficult to do.
St. Ignatius of Loyola understood this and required his followers to practice the daily Examen in which you think back on the day and come up with three things to be thankful for, and then, you go back and come up with three more things to be thankful for.
In other words, St. Ignatius taught we need to be thankful for everything because everything, since it works for good, is a gift.
In my life, the gift of the stars has been the greatest gift of all.
A few years ago, when told I had stage 4 renal cell carcinoma (for which there is no cure), I cashed in my teachers’ retirement, my 401(k), and my disability benefits, and bought a remote lake cottage.
God’s grace is like electricity. Our homes, our stores, and most all, the buildings in our modern cities are wired for energy.
The power is always there; the energy is always available to us — all we need to do is plug in.
But, of course, in this fast-paced, noisy, and hectic world, plugging in is easier said than done.
The Linden Lodge is fairly remote and sits in a large wooded lot on the shores of crystal-clear Lake Mildred in Wisconsin’s Northwoods.
With no TV, no nearby neighbors, and no cell phones, it’s much easier to plug in there on a daily basis.
The end of the dock is the perfect place, either at sunrise or sunset, or anytime in between, to sit, to admire the peaceful beauty of nature, to pray, and to plug in.
One night in late July, I was alone at the lake on a warm, star-filled evening.
It was very, very still. After going through the nightly routine of closing windows and covering kayaks, I stopped on the deck, turned around, and glanced up at the sky.
Words are completely inadequate in describing what happened next, but words are all I have to convey what happened next . . . and something profound DID happen.
I glanced up at the sky and suddenly, I was not on the deck anymore, I was not on the Earth anymore. I was somehow instantaneously transported way above the Earth and up into the Heavens, up into that night sky, up into the middle of those stars.
I was among them; I was a part of them, part of something overwhelmingly beautiful, majestic, other-worldly.
But then, after a few seconds, just as suddenly as it began, it ended. I found myself back on the deck, shocked, unable to breathe, unable to move, unable to think.
In his book, Human Being and Becoming, Dr. David G Benner describes it this way: “If you have been very, very attentive, you may have experienced this lightness of being. While it was probably just for an instant, in that moment you glimpsed something of the vastness of the soul’s interior horizon. Perhaps you felt caught up in its spaciousness, awed by its expansiveness. The core of your experience, however, was probably a sense of euphoria and interconnectedness, with overtones of profound well-being, awe, integration, and harmony.”
That’s exactly what happened to me and I cannot begin to tell you what that has meant!
Such a gift! — a gift of hope, a gift of comfort, a gift of blessed assurance of the life to come!
A miraculous gift to help ease the fear of death. A gift I would not have received if I had not been “plugged” in, and I would never have been plugged in at the Linden Lodge had I not first been diagnosed with cancer.
Truly, all things work for good for those who love the Lord!