This is something that has been on my mind lately. I was at a place in my life where I felt God’s grace. I was happy and devout in my vocation as a wife/mother. I felt such a sense of Grace, and I think that it was in part because of cooperation with God’s will, using NFP.
My husband, son and I were buying fall flowers to plant in the beds while me daugher was at preschool. when we got into the car, NPR was on and someone had just called the station saying that something hit the World Trade Center. We immediately began praying and while we listened to the radio I began paying the rosary with my fingers. By the time we got home another plane hit the second tower. We watched it live on tv. I continued to pray the rosary with my fingers the whole time. They said there were two planes that were off the radar and speculated that they were hi-jacked. One hit the pentagon. My husband left for my daughter’s preschool and I took my baby son outside to let him play in the sandbox while I prayed the rosary on my fingers. Suddenly I felt transported. I could see everything happening on a plane. I was asking my grandfather to pray with me, I had a strong sense of the holy family and the need for these people to have the strength of the holy family. I heard myself praying for them to take the plane down into a field. “Take over the plane, take it down into a field” I was saying that over and over. I was watchign these people and felt like I was saying the “Our Father” with them. I watched a strength and resolve come over them. I watched many of them change from fear to action. I prayed for all their souls, I prayed for forgiveness of their sins. I knew the plane crashed and then it was over. This probably went on for at least a half an hour. I went into the house a few minutes later and they were saying that a plane went down in PA. I knew that it went down into a field because I watched it happen. I felt peace, and continued to pray. I know at that moment, when I believe I had a vision, that the saints and prayers of the faithful were in unison. I sometimes wonder if other people saw the same thing while they were praying. I had never had anything happen like that before. It took me into a deeper conversion as a result.
Here is the problem. Months later I was plagued with intrusive thoughts that it was my prayers that helped kill those people. I was also plagued with thoughts that It was my imagination, or that I was feeling pride in that experience and started beating myself up emotinally. At the time I felt total peace, but later I found myself avoiding praying the rosary because the thought of having a prayer experience like that again was taxing. I found myself feeling anxious and depressed and my prayer has not been as intense. I talked a little about what happened that day with my mom because I know she has had similar “visions” while praying. She told me that she had the same reaction later, the sense that she was afraid of it happening again. As far as I know the last time it happened to her she was praying in the 80’s and saw a campsite being flooded. She pushed the thoughts away because they were awful and then found out that evening that a dam broke onto a state park and flooded campers. I think she was plagued with the same thougths later of “I’m not going to do this again.” and started avoiding such deep prayer.
Here’s the thing, I recently realized that I have gone from having a comforting and deep spiritual prayer life, to it becoming an intense and powerful experience with God the communion of saints, including those on Earth. Then, after that experience I slowly let it slip. I was in prayer group and the list of people I was praying for suddenly seemed a mile long. I started putting it off, afraid of having another intense vision if I prayed too deeply.
The thing that is bothering me about this is I am afraid that God was calling me to pray in this way and I ran from it. The only thing I can think to do is to force myself to pray and pray hard. I am afriad that I turned away from the Holy Spirit because I was too spiritually weak to heed this call to prayer and now I need to mend it.
