A November Pilgrimage

I woke up terrified, and sad.

I have been learning to be happy for nearly all of 2024. I’ve had more peace and calm this year than in any other year of my life. Turning forty was the most peaceful birthday ever. Now that I’ve got a car again, I’m driving with virtually no anxiety. I’ve been going to church on Sundays and only having to walk outside for parts of the liturgy, without panic attacks. I’ve been practicing praying at home, building up to perhaps being able to go to confession again.  I thought I’d been cured of the worst parts of my neurosis. But it’s back for the moment. I was panicking all day Thursday.

I was too worried to eat, so I gulped coffee.

I was too sad to stay home, so I went for a drive.

I didn’t have much gas, so I stayed in town. I drove to the little hospital building near my house, because there’s a chapel near the lobby that’s a quiet place to pray in. It doesn’t trigger me like the Adoration chapels at the churches do. It’s just a rectangular room, with a gold box at one end.

When I got to the hospital,  I didn’t feel like praying.

I paced around the neighborhood a bit, remembering.

When I very first came to Steubenville, all the way back in 2006, the dormitories at Franciscan University were so crowded that they sent graduate students to live in the disused nursing school behind this hospital. A shuttle took us to  campus in the morning, and back here at night. It was our own little building behind the hospital itself, but connected. Women stayed on the third floor. The second floor was vacant. Men were on the first. The ground floor was the common room, and the real basement had the kitchen and chapel. You could get in and out by the backdoor, or through the basement door that led to the rest of the hospital. I don’t think it’s used for anything now.

There were signs warning me not to trespass, so I didn’t go up on the porch. I walked around the grounds.

Here was where I first caught the city bus to try and get to Walmart and buy some food to keep in the minifridge. It drove by three times before I realized that I was looking at a bus: not a great big loud vehicle like they had in Columbus, but a little shuttle-sized vehicle half or a third the size. Here was where they cracked all the cascarones, the hollowed-out eggs filled with confetti, to celebrate Easter, and it took forever to sweep up. Here was where my friends and I built a snowman when the big storm hit, and we were snowed in for a day and a half. The girl who lived down the hall kissed the snowman and said “If I have a cold boyfriend I might as well enjoy it!”

We were all so excited, so innocent, so happy. I was thrilled to be away from home for the first time. I had no idea I was yet another human sacrifice to Father Mike Scanlan’s cult of personality, and I’d never recover financially, spiritually or emotionally from all that happened next. I didn’t know all the things that have been revealed since then. I didn’t know the Charismatic Renewal was a cult. I had no idea.

Here was where my mother dropped me off that very first day, saying, “You’re so selfish. You’re so narcissistic. You’re the most selfish person. I just hope this school can do something for you, because we give up.”

After that, I didn’t want to walk around the grounds anymore.

I paced up and down inside the building, in the halls of the outpatient offices, where it wouldn’t be odd for a random woman to be walking. I found the hospital cafeteria where we ate our meals during that snowstorm. That had been on Valentine’s Day. The young man I had a crush on handed me a bag of heart-shaped cookies and said “I love you, Mary. I just want you to know that” in front of the whole table, and I almost blurted out “I love you too!” before I saw another friend’s name on the package. She’d seen him the evening before the snow came in and asked him to give the cookies to me. He’d waited for the most embarrassing moment to do it, for a joke.

In the basement, I found the door to the corridor to “our” building where the dorms used to be: the door was shut and locked, but I peered through the glass at the kitchen and the room where our student chapel had been. That was where some friends forced me to say the Louis DeMontfort Consecration. I was terrified to say the lines asking the Virgin Mary to make me suffer without human consolation, terrified to ask her to think of me as a slave instead of a daughter. I didn’t want to do it. I tried to refuse to do it. I told them I wanted to die.  But they were adamant that it would be good for me, and I wasn’t allowed not to.

The hospital chapel is on the first floor now.

I went in, when I couldn’t think of any other way to put off my visit.

There was the Tabernacle– I think it’s the same one that used to be in the basement. The same one I was kneeling in front of when they forced me to say those prayers.

I sat down without genuflecting first, because I didn’t feel very respectful just then.

I gazed at Him, and He gazed at me.

This is the problem I run into again, and again, and again: I believe. I would be much more comfortable if I didn’t, but I keep coming back to the truth. I believe. I don’t always know if He loves or even remembers me. I can’t always trust that He’s kind instead of wrathful. But I believe.

And what’s more, I don’t want to not believe.

I am not better than the people who lost their faith to the Charismatic Renewal, and don’t believe at all. I’m just different.

But I’m exhausted, and I’m angry.

I scrolled on my phone for a few minutes, not really meaning to be disrespectful, just for something to do with my hands and my eyes. If God really made me who I am on purpose, then God knows I’m autistic and won’t mind some parallel play. I could stim on the phone in His presence, and He wouldn’t mind.

I have come to believe that God– not the noisy, threatening, angry god of the Charismatic Renewal and Steubenville, but the real one– doesn’t mind us very much.

If God really made all of us who we are on purpose, and if God is anyone worth our time, then God should look at every attempt at a prayer with the same rush of happiness I felt when Adrienne first carefully pronounced the syllables “Ma-ma.” God should look at every single move we make towards goodness with all the wonder of a new mother watching her baby take those first steps.  If God is better than we are, then God is only compassionate, only concerned, only loving when we stumble. God is not angry. God is not wrathful. God is not going to send the Three Days of Darkness or damn us all to hell.

If God is love,  God is patient, God is kind. God does not envy, God does not boast, God is not proud. God does not dishonor others, God is not self-seeking, God is not easily angered, God keeps no record of wrongs. God does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. God always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. God never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. The Charismatic Renewal will be consigned to the annals of history, and God will remain unchanged.

I got on my knees for a moment before I left.

I set the phone on the ground between Him and me. I prayed for everyone I met on social media, especially the ones I met through writing about Steubenville.

I told Him that I was still very hurt by this place, and that there were many like me, and we wanted justice. But I also wanted mercy, because I was still afraid that He was angry with me, for breaking like this. I told Him that I hoped Heaven and the Communion of Saints was very different than I feared. I hoped His Church was much bigger, and deeper, and wider than I’d been led to believe, so that we who failed at everything were still considered part of it. I hoped there was a hospital somewhere in the afterlife, where we’d be helped kindly instead of punished until we could stand to be in His presence again.

There didn’t seem to be anything more to say, just then, so I left.

I went home, even more upset and anxious than when I’d left.

I didn’t feel better that day.

But I feel better now.