I am a little embarrassed to share this with you, but in the years 2009-2015, my spiritual life had such a steep, continuous "ascent" in terms of how close I felt to God, how consistent I was in my prayer and sacramental life, and how much I learned intellectually about my faith that I actually thought, "I have never been this consistent in my spiritual life EVER. Maybe this is what spiritual maturity feels like!"
Now over this same period of time, I burned out - twice. My health took a hit as I started having chronic gastric reflux and other digestive issues. I was on medication daily for several years just to control the acid reflux so that I could sleep at night and not keep falling sick. "Gastric flu" became a regular visitor in my last two years in full-time pastoral ministry.
I was not doing too well in my emotional life either. There were toxic situations at work and in my personal life that overwhelmed me and which I could not navigate without burning bridges or shutting down. Some significant relationships were irretrievably broken down. I was deeply hurt, bewildered as to what had happened, and I recognised that I had hurt others too. And yet, I could not even begin to know what "doing better" would look like because I was at the end of my rope.
Yet in spite of all this, or perhaps in some sense because of all these areas of suffering, my prayer life deepened. I clung to Christ. I did an entire hour of Eurcharistic Adoration practically daily for over a year (which was an all time record for me). I was able to find solace and consolation in prayer even as I "carried my cross" and all of that convinced me that I was becoming truly spiritually mature. Sure I realised I had areas that needed healing and conversion, but I thought that the most important thing - my relationship with God - was doing very well. (Again, as I said, I'm a little embarrassed to share all this - but only a little because I am not ashamed that I was where I was!)
Why would God want to undo someone's identity, or deconstruct someone's faith when it is becoming more and more robust and convicted?
What I did NOT know at the time was that while my spiritual growth was indeed genuine, God was simply building me up for what I now call "The Great Undoing". Or, perhaps in terms that many others are using now, God was preparing me to undergo something I never thought would happen to me - a step-by-step deconstruction of my identity and my understanding of everything I held dear - including my faith.
Why would God want that? If you have not yet experienced this yourself, it would surely be a question on your mind. Why would God want to undo someone's identity, or deconstruct someone's faith when it is becoming more and more robust and convicted? (If you were hoping for an answer, I'm sorry to disappoint you! I'm still living into that answer myself.)
I can tell you how God initiated this process for me. He was actually very kind and gave me a kind of "heads-up" (although I had no idea even with that what was in store for me for the following 8 years). Back in February 2016, I celebrated my 37th birthday by going for an individual Ignatian silent retreat in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I went away for 9 days and it was a time full of consolation. God was very communicative. I was so spiritually nourished that I must have been glowing.
It was during one of those blissful moments I was having in prayer that God gave me an image of a cathedral under construction. It was huge and covered with scaffolding. A lot of work had been done as the walls were already very high - but there was no roof yet, and clearly there was still a lot of work to be done.
As this image came into my imagination, I felt God say to me, "Ann, this construction cannot be completed because there is rot in the foundations. It would not be able to hold the weight of the full building. The only way for us to finish building this cathedral is if we take down everything you see and excavate the foundations. Then we will start again from scratch, but this time, we will build it right, stone by stone, and I will do it with you."
What God was saying to me was that what I longed for - complete union with God and becoming who I truly was - was impossible because there was rot in my "foundations". And that the only way for my desire to be fulfilled was to allow God to take down everything I had worked so hard to build up.
I knew that I was the cathedral that God was showing me in my imagination, and that its construction symbolised not just me but my relationship with God. What God was saying to me was that what I longed for - complete union with God and becoming who I truly was - was impossible because there was rot in my "foundations". And that the only way for my desire to be fulfilled was to allow God to take down everything I had worked so hard to build up (i.e. my spiritual life! All my striving to be a woman after God's heart!) and worse - to go below the surface to what I did not even consicously know existed and to clear everything out and begin from scratch again.
In that moment, my first thought was, "God, you have GOT to be kidding me!" But immediately after that was a deep realisation that the only reason I could have even received this communication from God without feeling utterly betrayed and abandoned by him was because of all the work God and I have done up to that very point. Yes - it had been necessary for me to grow to this point, even with my "faulty foundations", SO THAT I would be ready to embark on this next phase which is quite literally a deconstruction of what had been built up!
Two further significant graces were given to me during that retreat. Firstly - I was given the grace to let go of my desire for "the greatest holiness possible". Instead, I found myself praying for the grace to be content to reach whatever level of holiness God desires for me - in whatever form that may take. (That was a real grace because I had always felt that I needed to do my extreme best to be worthy of love.)
Secondly, on the last day of that retreat, God asked me to make him a promise. He asked me to promise that as we begin this new phase of our journey together, that I would go at the pace of my inner child. He said to me, "Little Ann has been rushed and hurried her entire life, she's always had to run to try and keep up. I want you to promise that you will slow down to HER pace. We will make this journey at the pace that is comfortable and natural for her." I felt greatly moved because nobody had ever SEEN me in such a way. I made that promise.
All my impressive spiritual disciplines began to fall away one by one. The addictions and compulsions I have battled since I was a teenager came surging back and I did not use my brute will to fight them or ask God to help me get rid of them.
That retreat which had been so filled with consolation ended up being the last consolation I received in my spiritual life for a really, really long time. Almost immediately after I returned home to Singapore, things began to change internally for me, even though I had no idea what was happening or why it was happening. All my impressive spiritual disciplines began to fall away one by one. The addictions and compulsions I have battled since I was a teenager came surging back and I did not use my brute will to fight them or ask God to help me get rid of them. Instead, for the first time in my life, I let God be with me (i.e. I did not hide from God) as I "fell".
Pretty soon I recognised a painful truth: that my apparent spiritual maturity and those impressive spiritual disciplines that I had been able to keep up with God's grace had been motivated not by pure love for God but by my need to be very, very good so that God and others will be impressed with me and (hopefully) choose me. Much of the growth in my faith had been driven by my coping mechanisms - by my fear of being rejected. I began to understand what God had been referring to when he mentioned rot in my foundations and why the only way I can complete my interior journey was to let him - the Divine Physician - perform surgery on me.
Locating This Story In My Journey
The events that I shared in this post happened before I started counselling or further in-depth healing work. My resources (beyond the sacraments) for the interior journey up to this retreat had been monthly spiritual direction, spiritual healing retreats, the 19th annotation of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, annual silent retreats, and some psycho-spiritual inner child healing sessions. It was only after this retreat happened in 2016 that God brought me deeper into realising just how deep my wounds went and how disembodied and unintegrated my faith was.
This was how God ushered me fully into Stage 4 of the Stages of Faith according to book, The Critical Journey: Stages in the Life of Faith (refer to my earlier newsletter posts here and here to find out more about this reference).
So much hidden work happened in the subsequent years that is now flowing into what I am putting out here for you through my podcast, YouTube videos, social media and writing. I have undergone so many deaths to old versions of myself that I truly stand before you as God's new creation even as I know that there will surely be even more deaths and resurrections ahead of me.
Reflection
- What was it like for you to read my story in this sharing, dear Pilgrim? Did anything surprise you? Scandalise or shock you?
- What emotions did you feel as you read my sharing? How did those emotions feel in your body - where were they in your body?
- Have you experienced your faith and interior journey so far as an ascent? Have you experienced yourself in the past growing stronger in your faith (however that is defined for you)?
- Have you experienced that lack of integration between your relationship with God and your emotiona/relational and physical life as I did, and thought that there was nothing wrong with the picture?
Related Podcast / YouTube Episodes
- EP 12 | "Am I Regressing?
- EP 20 | Why things get worse before they get better
- EP 31 | Personal Integrity & Authenticity (in Evangelisation)
- EP 52 | Performing vs Living Life Fully
- EP 82 | Timing, Grace and Readiness in the Interior Journey
- EP 127 | Finding Self-Love Amidst Compulsions & Addictions
- EP 132 | Stages of Maturing Faith
I hope you've enjoyed this sharing! This post is the first of many in future where I will be sharing with you experiences of "The Great Undoing" I went through as part of my healing of complex trauma together with God. I hope that by doing so I can normalise such experiences for you as you go through your own experiences of becoming undone.
I am taking a break from my podcast / YouTube until 2025, and very soon I will be taking a break from social media for the rest of the year as well. I will be slower in responding to comments, DMs or emails but as always, I welcome your reflection and sharing of how my content is resonating with YOUR story.
Do subscribe to this newsletter to receive it in your inbox and so that you can add your comments to it on the web version! I'd love for us to open these topics up through a sharing of experiences for fellow pilgrims sharing similar experiences!
I wish you a healing and spacious Advent,
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