Disavowed: a woman's journey through three religious communities

Chapters 25 - 32; Afterword and Postscript

CHAPTER 25: LONGSUFFERING

One day, I was talking to one of my InSearch friends who happened to be living in a convent near where I was working.  I'd stop over for lunch once in a while.  I told her that I was beginning to think about transferring to another community after I'd made final vows.  Our community needed me, we were getting so small, I was still almost the youngest member (Toni was about a year younger) and I had a lot of work left in me, but I was seeing that most of the reasonable sisters were either getting older or leaving, and the rest were like Sr. Violet and Sr. Brenda. My friend said, “If I were thinking that way, I don't think I could make final vows.  How can you make perpetual vows to a community when you're thinking of transferring out of it?” 

I took her comment very seriously.  I went to Suzie Q, my junior director, and asked to see a sister for counseling.  Suzie was favorably impressed.  She'd been thinking that a spot of counseling would be just the thing for me, and she knew just the person:  Sr. Patricia.  Uh, no thanks.  What are my other choices?  My other choices were a sister known to all of us at InSearch as Margaret of Scotland, who taught a dense course called Human Integration, and a Sister of St. Joseph who worked at our hospital's counseling center, which was at our Motherhouse.  I chose the sister working at our Motherhouse, and what a good choice I made.  She was patient and non-judgmental, allowing me to express all my stupid ideas until I began to see the stupidity in them myself.  She put up with me, my crazy seriousness and my loony idealism, week in and week out, for over a year.

Now, I prayed and sweated and groaned spiritually:  what should I do?  My inner self said, this is a test.  Persevere with patient fortitude.  Long-suffering.  I told my counselor that the song that expressed my feelings toward the community, a song I used in prayer, was the Marvellettes singing “Forever”.  Forever...you can break my heart, take my love for granted, still I’ll play the part of a fool, just to be with you, forever. I felt that the community was treating me inconsiderately, but I accepted this as a spiritual test. The power of love would prevail.  Like a butterfly, going wherever it pleases and pleasing wherever it goes. (I am such a slow learner.)

 She gently pointed out that perhaps this was an unhealthy attitude.  I shook my head like a bull shaking off flies.  I was certainly bull-headed enough in those days; still am, I guess.  A memory buzzed in my head, something about novices bees-waxing pews.  “Your life belongs to God now.” My mentality was still there, even if my counselor's was not.  My life was at God's disposal.  I had said 'yes'.  I felt 'yes'.  I felt called to persevere.  Forever. I had drawn the stone that said 'long-suffering', patient fortitude.  I was seeing how all these things fit together, as though my whole life was designed to draw me here. Like Job.  Who would win this contest?

I began having some small frictions with Sr. Brenda.  I had already noticed that she would wipe the floor and the dishes with the same towel, and I had discovered her washing her bedroom slippers with the kitchen towels.  I found this unappetizing, on top of living with Violet Ann, who didn't appear to ever wash her hands and whose idea of cooking was to dump canned chicken noodle soup over chicken and heat it in the oven.  I'd had food poisoning in the convent once already. (Sister Amelia thought it was ok to defrost the chicken for dinner in the trunk of the car all day while she was at work.  In August.)  I decided that, in self-defense, since the kitchen was my charge, I would just change the towels frequently and put them away in a bag downstairs until I had a load for the laundry.  One day Sr. Brenda found the bag.  “You are hiding the dish towels from me!”  As though I had hidden some valuable possessions.  Fine, I said, wash them yourself if you want, I don't care anymore.  Another time, I noticed that our vacuum had a deep gash in the cord, exposing the wires inside.  Don't use the vacuum until I put some tape on that, I said.  I'll go get some electrical tape.  Sr. Brenda told me, nonsense, and began vacuuming.  Fine, I said, get electrocuted, if that's what you want.