When We Feel the Grillwork Crumbling

Your response to a recent sharing from our friend Rose has been remarkable.  Only a month after being posted, what she shared about living as a 'cloistered heart' in a large, busy family has become our most viewed post of all time.  It is a well deserved position.  Rose has a lot of wisdom from which we can benefit.

Rose wrote the following in a letter some years ago.  It gives me hope, and reminds me that I don't have to just sit in a muddle of misery when I start to lose sight of my own view through the grille.  

'For several weeks I have felt the world reaching through my grille.  It seemed as though family, home and school were like tentacles groping and grabbing at me.  They tugged at me bit by bit through the open squares of my grille.  Only my soul still clung to the cloister in my heart.  

Yesterday my heart could no longer stand the outside forces.  My grillwork crumbled.  My mind and heart and soul crashed through to the world... I was discouraged.  I wanted to break down in tears.  Everything inside of me hurt.

This morning is a new day.  I have turned my sorrow over to God. My soul longs to return to the cloister of my heart.  I am ready to begin to reconstruct the grille.  I must first put my feelings and opinions, my hurts and emotions aside.  I must bury them all in the Heart of Jesus and let the fire of His love consume them...

It would be easier to return to the cloister in my heart if I could just hide away for a short time to pull myself back together spiritually.  But keeping the cloister in our hearts in the midst of the world and its confusions is what we strive for, so I guess I need to heal my cloister and rebuild my grille in the midst of all that confusion.  

Yesterday and today I have made my start.'   

- from Rose

Painting:  Die Gartenlaube, 1885, in US public domain due to age

For more about the cloistered heart grille, click this line