Five years ago when I began my journey with Ignatius as an Ignatian Associate, I walked into a convent and sat down in a chair across from a woman I had somehow been “assigned to.” She appeared, I hate to say, as your typical elderly nun: gray thinning hair, a little frail,casual pants suit, almost grandmotherly. My first thoughts were, “This is a Spiritual Director?” and prepared myself for the trite phrases I often heard from the nuns I had as teachers growing up. They were nice, but 4th grade religion teachers just don’t have a lot of depth to them, so I projected this would feel about the same. It felt like a cross between therapy and confession.

At the time I barely had any semblance of a regular prayer life, so going to talk to someone about my relationship with God would be a rather short conversation I assumed. She’d tell me I needed to pray more, I’d nod guiltily and with any luck I’d be out of there in 20 minutes. Kind of like going to the dentist when you know you don’t floss.An hour later, my world was rocked. Turns out this “little old nun” was anything but that. She had lived and worked for years in Jamaica, been a social justice advocate on the front lines, and, get this, was a healing touch practitioner—she literally has the energy of life flowing through her. But even beyond who she was, my world was rocked by what she said, or maybe what she didn’t say. Gone were all the old platitudes I expected. She didn’t talk about what I should do or shouldn’t do, in fact, she told me to avoid “shoulds” at all cost. Instead, she just asked me questions about how things felt, what I wanted, and where that came from. Faith went from being something that came from the outside in to something that comes from the inside trying to get out.

Over the years I have walked with my spiritual director, she has seen me through two job discernments and my struggles with living in poverty in the third world, marriage issues, parenting issues, and lots of faith issues. And while each time I sit in that chair she offers me new insights, I hear the voice of God repeated through hers again and again and again, “Lisa, be gentle with yourself.” “Lisa, sit with that for a while.”"Lisa, breath.” I find it is neither therapy nor confession, for she doesn’t try to define what is wrong with me and solve it or absolve me from my wrong doings. Instead she helps me stay on a Path to which I have been called. She gently holds up a mirror and asks what I see, reassuring me all the time that there is so much beauty there if I look with my heart. The trust it takes to share the depths of your soul and intimate prayer with God with another person is greater than the trust one would place in an open heart surgeon. Yet both are skilled professionals with the job of unclogging the blockages to our source of Life.

Most importantly, she doesn’t do it for me. She reminds me that my prayer is between me and God.  In the years before Vatican II, the priest was the intermediary for everyone. My mom told me how she would go to church, sit, stand, have no idea what was being said even. But some how, whatever the priest had done, “saved” her. Even in the next generation, I think many of us would prefer to just pay someone to do the hard work for us. But the hard work of spirituality, the opening of the heart, changing of the attitudes and habits, the commitment to practice and prayer, the awareness in the moment, the desire to serve God, is all on me. Only I can do that. And yet, my spiritual director will tell me there is nothing I have to do, I just have to be open and trust that God will do the hard work. I just have to get me, my fears, baggage, insecurities, out of the way and the connection to God’s love is already there.

So here’s to the Spiritual Directors who ensure that we keep walking on our Path, but never wander aimlessly. Thank you for helping us keep that connection open. Thank you for holding our hearts.

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