“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who have lived in a land of deep darkness on them light has shined.”

Is 9:2

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Difficult moments lead to significant spiritual growth and to our joy and freedom.  Yes, from trials to peace, a journey that alters our understanding and experience.  Out of darkness comes light, a great Light.  And since we all know the darkness of personal challenge, we all can know Light and the freedom it brings, the identity it insures for us.

How?  How does this work?

Teresa of Avila, the 16th century Carmelite, shows us how this happens.

Teresa suffered from self-doubt and fears for a long period of her adult life. She often ceded authority to others and held predispositions as to how her prayer life might evolve, how outcomes from prayer might materialize.  While she had an interior sense of what God was communicating to her, she did not trust that understanding, that instinct, that experience.

Her sense of God’s presence in her life and God’s guidance came to her at her most difficult moments – disconsolate moments, moments of abandonment, but she hesitated to be governed by this.  She sensed that God was present but did not trust what she understood God to be asking of her, or what she was called to do from God’s presence.  She did not trust her inner experience, the fruits of her prayer and God’s love.  Rather she doubted and sought the words of others.

Teresa’s liberation came when she stopped trusting others more than God and began to heed what her inner understanding led her to.  In trusting God over others her life changed dramatically, her self-doubt evaporated.

This is, it turns out, the essence of a journey from darkness to Light.  She left the uncertainty of self-reliance and mere mortals to trust in God, and found the peace that is unity with the Father.

Teresa’s movement is available to each of us and is for each of us the state of contentment and peace we seek, the only state of peace we can know.  This is the peace we long for while seeking its presence in all sorts of insufficient sources.

Be as Teresa of Avila.  The path is open to you, just as it was to her.