The Healing Journey

March 15, 2026

Almost 20 years ago, Sue lost her 22-year-old son Ben, when he was killed by a drunk driver as he crossed 57th Street in Manhattan. She endured tremendous grief, and throughout the years of healing, she realized God was sending her many messages and graces. “My realization of what God was doing was evolving, and I needed to let it unfold,” she said. “But I knew God was doing something, and I needed to pause to understand what He was telling me… what was He teaching me?” She said this prayer by the Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., best expresses her understanding of our need to trust that God is forming us in this uncomfortable state of suspension… we are incomplete… we must be patient and learn to live in this space… with God.

Patient Trust

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ

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