Time to lose…time of grace and gain

As I began to clean, to throw away, to do inventory of the things in the house, since we decided to leave this mission, I was sad, nostalgic, and dragging my feet with the heaviness of discouragement…. And that’s what I was going through, when I found “Everything has its time” by Joan Chittister, which of course I began to read with interest and in these pages I found a new sense that has allowed me to align myself and enjoy this experience because nothing is bad at all and the loss is a great good that presents itself incognito and with inexhaustible possibilities.

I automatically felt a strong sense of gratitude for all the good things I have experienced here and for how good I have felt: the climate, the nature, the people, the mission, the sisters with whom I shared my life… like a movie, so many beautiful things shared and the amount of learning that this place has provided me.

The author of the book says that loss can be a wonderful and liberating thing. It provides a person with the opportunity to start over in life and shed the debris and accumulations of the years. It says that we carry within us what we need to learn from the past and adapt to the future. I have experienced this, and I know it, but in the face of obfuscation or bleak moments, and resistance to change I began to see that this future was simply empty, and I felt in the air and with a lot of negativities. And like a beautiful and refreshing waterfall I was being told again that “losing something can be the beginning of an exhilarating new world, a whole new life, a whole new way of being”.

I think of how my other sisters of the Province are living this process, in similar circumstances due to the reorganization process that has “taken us out” of our known and “safe” spaces. And perhaps this tongue twister can also say something to you: “Self-knowledge is what happens when we discover that what we cannot do is not the only thing we can do”. Courage, something good and wonderful awaits us.

 Mariana de Jesús Oñate Bayas

Ecuador