I have been praying my way through the summer. I start with morning prayers. I say a Morning Offering, an Act of Contrition, an Our Father, a Hail Mary, a Glory Be, a prayer to my Guardian Angel and St. Michael’s prayer. I listen to Catholic morning prayers as I walk to morning Mass. I pray my rosary each day and say Novenas to the Sacred Heart, the Divine Mercy, the Virgin Mary, St. Anthony, St. Jude, St. Rita, St. Bartholomew, and St. Anne.

In my search for morning Catholic prayers on YouTube, I stumbled across the Litany of Humility. My ears pricked up as I listened to it. These are the things from which I need to heal and likely the reasons why my sisters hate me, and the reason that I find myself without many friends. I always had to be the best. Growing up, I needed to be perfect. My mother demanded it. I needed to be the class academic, the thinnest friend and skinniest sister, the prettiest, the most popular, the funniest and the favourite child of my parents. Irish writer, Edna O’Brien said that she herself tried to be her parents’ favorite. She said that every child tries to be that, and it’s normal for a child to want to be the favourite, which makes me feel better about that desire of mine.

The saints say humility is that virtue which is the foundation for all others. Here is the Litany of Humility:

O Jesus! meek and humble of heart, hear me.

From the desire of being esteemed, deliver me, Jesus.

From the desire of being loved, deliver me, Jesus.

From the desire of being extolled, deliver me, Jesus.

From the desire of being honored, deliver me, Jesus.

From the desire of being praised, deliver me, Jesus.

From the desire of being preferred to others, deliver me, Jesus.

From the desire of being consulted, deliver me, Jesus.

From the desire of being approved, deliver me, Jesus.

From the fear of being humiliated, deliver me, Jesus.

From the fear of being despised, deliver me, Jesus.

From the fear of suffering rebukes, deliver me, Jesus.

From the fear of being calumniated, deliver me, Jesus.

From the fear of being forgotten, deliver me, Jesus.

From the fear of being ridiculed, deliver me, Jesus.

From the fear of being wronged, deliver me, Jesus.

From the fear of being suspected, deliver me, Jesus.

That others may be loved more than I, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

That others may be esteemed more than I, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

That, in the opinion of the world, others may increase and I may decrease, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

That others may be chosen and I set aside, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

That others may be praised and I unnoticed, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

That others may be preferred to me in everything, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it. Amen.

What this prayer is asking is that we be delivered of all of these fears and fallen desires based on vanity, pride and inordinate self-love so that only God’s thoughts and approval matter to us. I don’t think I’ll ever get there.

Last night, my right eye puffed up in the way that it has not in some weeks. I am not sure what caused it to puff up last night. I have been fighting a cold, cough and sore throat for three weeks and last night I had a hot water with lemon, whisky and honey as a cold remedy. Maybe that is what puffed out my eye and mouth before bed. I don’t know what else would have caused the inflammation in my face yesterday evening.

Usually, a cold lasts no more than three days, but I am going on a month of feeling unwell. My throat is still sore, and I’m worried that I may have throat cancer. I’m so fed up with feeling sick and praying for health and restoration that today I didn’t do my morning prayer routine. I even skipped going to morning Mass. I stayed home and started packing up the place instead. I find too, when I go to morning Mass, it takes up my day. Mass is at 10 AM. I go for 9 AM to say my rosary and other prayers. I usually then run errands after Mass. Today, I decided instead to get stuck in with my packing, and packing was a whole day affair.

Another reason that I chose to skip Mass today is because I didn’t want to go out with my face looking like this. My rosacea is inflamed today. Coupled with that redness, the pockets of inflammation on the right ride of my face by my eye and mouth makes my face look deformed and old. I didn’t want to put on makeup, and I didn’t want to see anyone. I just started packing. I moved beds down the stairs on my own. I put five tables on the driveway. I noticed that my neighbor was cleaning his van. Unwilling to ask him for help directly, I casually mentioned to him that I had to take the five tables across the road and return them to the school. I hoped he would offer to put them in his van and drive me to the school, but he didn’t. He just nodded his head. One at a time, I lifted each table and walked it over the road to the school without help. I made five separate trips across the road to return the tables that I borrowed from the school last year. Other men saw me carrying them and none offered to help. Chivalry is dead.

Feeling overwhelmed, at one point, I sat on the floor of one of the now empty bedrooms and cried. I told God that I was disappointed in Him. I’ve cut out all sugar and processed foods. I’m drinking water. I am eating fish, fruit and vegetables every day and I am taking daily vitamins. I use special creams. I feel so ugly. I am ugly right now. I’ve come all this way to meet my Scots’ Catholic husband – a dream long held in my heart – and now I am too fat and ugly to meet anyone. Why has God inflicted rosacea and this painful inflammation on me? Is it to help me die unto myself?

After I had a brief cry, and a stern talk with the Almighty, I saw that a colleague from school answered my Facebook post inquiring how I get rid of an old bed. She posted that I should call the Highland Council. I picked up the phone and made arrangements for the Highland Council to take away a filthy, soiled twin bed given to me by an old man at church. I called a local charity shop again to arrange for a pickup for other bits of furniture and they committed to a date as well. The man who was to move me to my new place, raised his price from £550 to £650. In looking for an unrelated number in my texts, I saw an original quote of £390 that was actually from a different chap; I thought they were the same guy. I texted him and asked if we were still on for the move and he said that we were. I was able to cancel the other jerk who kept raising the price on me. I despise men who take advantage of desperate women.

God is in every one of those details. Finding the Facebook post from my friend, calling the Council and arranging for pick up next week, the charity shop calling me back to arrange a suitable collection date, and finding the original man with a van who had signed up to help me in the first place. That was God reaching down to help me up off the floor, and I was able to go on with what I needed to accomplish feeling less alone. Having that in order, made me feel better. That’s when I carried the tables across the road to school. Now, if He would just heal my face, body and spirit. How many more times must I pray that He do so? I’m a broken record at this point. I’m sick of the sound of my prayers.

Years ago, when I was a Catholic high school English teacher, I was speaking to one of my Grade 11 classes about prayer. One of my students said, “Why should we pray? God is going to do what He wants to do anyway?”

I answered him and said there is power in prayer. We must have faith that God hears us and answers, but I really felt that my student made a valid point, and his words and that moment in class remain with me even twenty years later. I have prayed for healing, but I still feel unworthy of love, I still lose my temper, I still curse and feel jealousy, bitterness and resentment. I have prayed for marriage and children, and really believed that God would bring that to me. I’ve been divorced and single for thirty years and it is too late for me to have children of my own. I’ve prayed for peace and healing in my family. There is no sign of reconciliation there either; I’m alone without any family. I’ve prayed for a home in Scotland and marriage to a Scots’ Catholic man, and now my self-esteem is failing as I struggle with my health. I’m annoyed with the loophole Protestant prosperity preachers put in place when prayers go unanswered. They blame the person on his or her knees praying. The reason prayers are not answered is that we just don’t believe enough, they tell us. That may be true. I am not a patient person and I expect to see results sooner rather than later. If God would throw me a bone every so often and give me a ‘yes’ every now and again, it would help to keep my faith and prayers alive. When I pray for others, those prayers are always answered. Friends tell me that I have ‘a hotline to God’. Those individuals that I offer up in prayer find love, marriage, children, employment, and good health. It is just those prayers that I offer for myself that seem to fall on deaf ears. It is a bitter pill to swallow.

Sometimes I want to give up on prayer and the wanting and the asking God for the desires of my heart. We are to believe that He put those desires there, are we not? Where is He then? Where is He? Why are my prayers as yet unanswered? Why? Will He ever answer me with a ‘yes’ or a ‘now’ instead of a ‘no’ or a ‘not yet’? How much longer must I be on my knees begging God for love, home and family? I just can’t do it any more. Instead I say ‘thank you’ to Him and stop wanting anything other than what I have before me. To keep asking after thirty years of barren silence just hurts too much. I’m exhausted hoping for something loving in my life.

I do feel that going to daily morning Mass, as I have been throughout this summer, lends order to my day and it does help to keep me hopeful and to feel less alone. There is power in the Eucharist and power in the rosary. I think I will stop asking God for what I desire and just surrender myself to God’s will for my life. That will be less painful. I will pray for His grace to accept what is – my rosacea and a single, lonely life – rather than hope for anything more. What’s the point of asking and hoping? God is going to do what He wants to do anyway.

Amen.