Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. Psalm 42:5
My absolute biggest lesson these days has been all about ‘embracing my littleness’, not in a looking to others and saying, ‘I am what I am, so just deal with it’ way. But in the ‘I am what I am… Lord, You help me deal with it’, sense. To hand all those things about myself that bug the heck out of me, back to Him. To totally walk in child like Trust, knowing that He’ll guide me and provide the strength for my obedience.
On Day 14 of the Merciful Love consecration prep, we read a bit from a letter that St. Thérèse wrote to her sister in which she writes…
“…what pleases Him is that He sees me loving my littleness and my poverty, the blind hope that I have in His mercy… That is my only treasure… why would this treasure not be yours?”
This is very different from what the world dictates to us. It would have us focusing on all the exterior and superficial manifestations of success. Looking around to see who has it, and breeding jealousy and contempt… or perhaps airs of superiority if it’s an area you excel that others don’t.
And that persistent, nagging littleness, what does the world want us do with that? Well hide it, numb it… or work yourself ragged to get rid of it at any cost, of course.
So what are we to do? Those of us who feel our littleness so strongly? Further in that same letter, St. Thérèse has some advice for us.
“Let us remain then very far from all that sparkles, let us love our littleness, let us love to feel nothing, then we shall be poor in spirit, and Jesus will come to look for us and He will transform us in flames of love.”
Again, it feel like she’s speaking directly to us adhd folks here… all that sparkles? Let us love to feel nothing? You see, by going after all the shiny things, is how we get our dopamine hits, our purported joy in life. But here she is giving us the key we’ve been looking for. She’s saying, STOP it! Stop grabbing and let Jesus feed you. It’ll be SO much better than those fake shiny objects that you’ve been enthralled with. She says that He’ll come look for us and transform us! He will do it. Yes… you must cooperate … but it’ll be by His guidance, His strength, His grace.
In today’s Gospel we read more about the advantage of being childlike…
“At that very moment he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, “I give you praise, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike.”
Luke 10:21