NOTHING BUT A WALKING STICK…God’s personal providence for me

March is upon us and my husband and I have just returned from a lovely visit to California where we spent precious time with both of our grandsons and their parents. My heart is so full. In a session with my spiritual director before leaving on this trip, she commented to me: “take nothing with you”, encouraging me to stay wide open to the possibilities, to let God provide, and to simply receive. Her words stayed with me on our visit and proved to be very valuable. God, in fact, did provide all that we needed, in abundance.

After returning from this very blessed trip, a friend of mine sent me a reflection that her young adult daughter had recently written. Her daughter is a novice in the process of entering a religious community. The reflection is titled Nothing but a Walking Stick. I found it to be such a moving piece by a young woman who has walked away from the world and is walking toward God—devoted to walking with God and learning from Him. A wonderful example for all of us as we enter the liturgical season of Lent. I’d like to share it with you all this month. Thank you, Sr. Magdalene Marie of the Good Shepherd, CFR Novice.

Halfway through my 4th grade year, my dad got a new job in Oklahoma. As we prepared to leave Texas, movers came and packed up most of our belongings and the five of us kids were given instruction about the number of personal items we could bring in our minivan in the interest of breathing room and sanity. I filled my bag with “what I couldn’t live without for a few weeks” and, at age 10, that looked like a dozen books, a stuffed bear, and nothing else. Priorities. It was only upon finishing about half of the books during the drive that I pondered my decision with mild concern, realizing my pile of short chapter books wouldn’t entertain or sustain me for long in the total unknown to come.

“He instructed them to take nothing for the journey but a walking stick” (Mark 6:8).

“Nothing but a walking stick?!” This was my honest reaction when I listened again to the Gospel reading about Jesus sending forth His new disciples at Mass recently.  Maybe in that moment, as I pondered all the necessities of a human heart suddenly catapulted among completely unknown places and faces, a walking stick felt as helpful to me as a pile of 4th grade chapter books – mostly unhelpful! I thought and prayed about how I might feel and respond as a disciple sent out with nothing but a walking stick so early on in my walk with Jesus. As I imagined myself in the scene and started speaking with Him as though I was one of the Twelve, my conversation began something like this:

 “Come on, Jesus! I have just tasted the sweetness of being with you and my life makes sense now. And now that I’ve started this whole strenuous, wandering nomad lifestyle with you, I’m realizing I’m kind of a mess and really weak! You want to send these aching muscles, blistered heels, and little heart out on mission…and with nothing but a walking stick?”

 And even as I said these words to Jesus, I felt that He helped me hear just how different that walking stick was from a pile of books. The distinction being particularly this:  One was chosen in my naïve, blind humanity.  The other given by One who knows me and my need completely.

Jesus knew that the Father would provide so totally for His disciples amid those unknown places and faces to the point that they would literally want for nothing. But oh how tenderly this little detail of a walking stick perhaps reveals precisely the fact that He has already seen any weakness, soreness, insecurity – and He is providing exactly the support that is needed. It’s not that the Father couldn’t just do something about all of those sensitive places as well, maybe soothing or even just suddenly healing it all. He could! Those disciples had already seen enough to know that! But with the giving of a walking stick comes the chance for a precious communion of knowing and being known. A going forth with a tangible souvenir that preaches first to the disciple that “He has seen me and upheld me even before I knew to ask”; hands holding a reminder that daily whispers, “He has called me to know, love, and serve Him in all of my humanity.” I imagine that when the disciples returned to Jesus, supported but also strengthened along the way, they had a new understanding of His Heart and of how littleness and need were precisely what revealed it to them day after day.

Little by little, I too am beginning to see that sometimes it’s my weakness meeting a walking stick (in the form of His seeing, knowing, loving Presence and oh-so-personal Providence) that does more wonders for opening me up to the Truth of His Love than what I thought I needed ever could.

O Jesus, give us eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to know that all you give is all we need!