In my 70s I started to search out a whole new life for myself. Disabilities had taken the fun out of dysfunctional and I just kept living and maintaining, always feeling like I was running behind the bus trying to catch up in every area of my life. Frustration was dogging me day and night. I was always behind in my housekeeping and I was diagnosed with Major Depression and Anxiety Disorder.
Finally I had had enough to do me. I wasn't living; I was existing. From time to time Henry David Thoreau's thought came to me; "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation" and I knew exactly what he meant and the determination grew in my heart and mind to "figure it out." I worked at it at first by fits and starts because I really didn't know where to begin and I'd become very set in my ways. I started this the summer before my 70th birthday.
I wasn't only frustrated with my home life but with my spiritual life as well. Years ago when I lived in Savannah, Georgia I had begun in formation with the Discalced Carmelites. My son in law was in a bad accident back then and I had been disabled by what Social Security deamed "catastrophic injury."
The day that Wendell was seriously injured I knew I needed to leave Savannah where I'd lived for 9 years and come back to Coshocton, Ohio to help my daughter with her sons, Michael 4 and Matthew 2. I came back the next day and stayed with them. When Wendell came home from the hospital he was in a hospital bed in the living room for a good while. After Christmas I got an apartment and went back to Savannah to get my furniture. In January I flew back and my furniture came in the moving van. I came to a smaller apartment and I had pared down some but there was still a glut of furniture in my home. I felt smothered and even though it was quiet here, I somehow felt chaotic and jumpy. I loved living by myself but it wasn't the peaceful life I'd assumed it would be.
There was no Carmelite order in this small town and there was no third order of any kind here. I read a lot of books about the Carmelites, the Franciscans, the Benedictines and liked aspects of all of them and I really wanted to do something about it but I couldn't make up my mind. I kept on with my reading off and on for a number of years but at this point in my life I thought it was time to stop waffling and do something. By that time I realized, "I AM a Benedictine" and so I took the first steps to, as my friend Phyllis said, "become what you already are." I decided to associate with St Vincent's Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania and by summer the plans had been made for my investiture as an Oblate Novice of St. Benedict. I picked the date - June 27, 2009, my 70th birthday.
To be continued....
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