Are You a Thomas?
Chapter 2 of “You Shall Be Holy: Reflections on Orthodox Womanhood”
Let us therefore strive to enter that rest… (Hebrews 4:11)
Striving to enter rest…what is that about?
In Chapter One we discussed how God loves us more than anyone else ever will, even potential husbands. As any of you know who have been married, effort comes after the honeymoon, and is required to build a happy marriage. It is the same with us and God. Because God created each of us with our unique quirks and personalities, when we enter into marriage (whether a metaphorical marriage with God, or a regular marriage with a man) we need to learn a new way of life as we navigate being together.
To complicate matters, we are also all affected by ancestral sin1 which acts like baggage weighing us down. God is always calling us and helping us to shed this burden of sin so that we can progress further in holiness. All of this implies effort and striving, with the end result of entering His rest. Today I would like to share some reflections on how that has looked in my life so far.
Like many of you reading this, I have already been striving after God for many years. For as long as I can remember, I have been naturally drawn towards religion and the divine. However, I also have a questioning personality, which has led me to seek after the truth wherever that may lead. Additionally, like some of you as well I am sure, I have struggled with mental health. My first experience of depression was as a young high school student. The depression increased in intensity for about ten years before finally being resolved, which I plan to share more about in Chapter Three. These three characteristics—my draw towards God, my questioning personality, and my struggle with depression—came to a head my sophomore year of college.
As I have mentioned, I grew up Orthodox and attended a Protestant undergraduate college. I had grown up in a cultural context that was overwhelmingly secular, so this marked my first real exposure to the American evangelical church. I was impressed by my new classmates who would ask how they could pray for me, invite me to worship sessions, and share plans for summer missions trips overseas. In comparison, my church felt like a museum—full of ancient prayers, icons, and sacramental rituals that seemed to have little to no relevance for my life and for reality.
My sophomore year, I was studying in Italy. Living abroad at such a young and immature age challenged my mental health even more than it had been. So, I reached out online to an Orthodox youth leader whom I had gotten to know the previous summer. He had converted to Orthodoxy from the evangelical faith that I was becoming so enamored of, caring about this ancient Church enough to enter the field of youth ministry—taking the things we believe and making them more accessible to young adults. As I shared with him about my intellectual and religious questions and my mental health challenges, he offered me an image that I found both comforting and electrifying: the Resurrection Icon.
A daughter of clergy and someone who had been naturally drawn toward church as long as I could remember, I already knew this icon well, but had never before been taught to connect it to my own experience. As a consequence, it had remained something abstract and merely theological. Now, however, the youth leader was helping me to see where I fit into this scene. I was in fact one of the dead souls whom Christ was grasping by the hand. My depression and confusion were a living death: to know that I was not alone in this death, that there was a way out and that Christ had come to destroy this death, was life-changing.
So, it was absolutely the icing on the cake when a few months later, I was able to see with my own eyes this exact icon in real life, in the Chora Church of Istanbul.
To an even greater degree, the icon came to life for me on a trip to Kiev during Holy Week and Pascha (Easter).
I had wanted to be in an Orthodox country for the first time in my life for Pascha, so I arrived in Kiev starting the day before Lazarus Saturday, which is a week before Holy Saturday. I was staying with the sister of a friend I knew from church back home, but she was not a practicing Orthodox and was also busy with work, so I would be attending services alone. I did go to some here and there, but ironically, this was the least engaged I had ever been during Holy Week. I was filled with ambivalence: why didn’t I just become Protestant? It would be so much easier.
That Wednesday, while out to lunch in a tiny Italian restaurant nowhere near the center of town, I heard an American-accented voice clearly call my name. A friend from church back home was sitting in a nearby booth. He had known from my parents that I was there in Kiev, but had no way of knowing that I would be eating lunch in that restaurant that day. We gladly resolved to attend midnight Liturgy on Pascha morning together. It seemed God was providing a friend and companion to help me through the difficult week.
The time came for the midnight Liturgy. My friend and I took a taxi to the packed cathedral and upon entering, were spiritually transported to heaven by the beautiful choir singing the service. Toward the end of the service, when the metropolitan came forward with the chalice for Communion, very few people came forward to receive. We realized that in order to commune, we needed to quickly rush to the front. As I made my way up, an altar server reached down into the crowd, literally pulling me up by the arms to receive Christ’s Body and Blood—as if the Lord Himself were pulling up Eve out of her death.
This was not even the last of the small miracles I experienced that year. I can’t really say that God was answering my prayers, because they weren’t prayers so much as cries of despair—but nonetheless, God heard and answered me in His mercy.
Earlier that year, I had been agonizing over what I felt was the insincerity of praying using a prayer rule.2 Why wasn’t it enough to pray to God in my own words? Why did I have to use someone else’s words that sounded so unnatural?
It turned out that only two blocks from where I was staying in Italy was the local Orthodox Church, and that there was a seminarian intern who had grown up partly in Russia and partly in the exact area of California where I was from. He spoke fluent English and understood my cultural context perfectly. After I had been in Florence about two months, one Sunday he handed me an Orthodox prayer book in English. He told me that a couple visiting from South Africa wanted to give it to me when they saw that I spoke English. (There was a bit more to the story than that, but really not much.) With interest and curiosity, I took the book back to my dorm and opened it. There were, mostly, the same prayers I was used to. The rule was a bit shorter than what I was familiar with, and included only prayers that somehow seemed more accessible to me. It was also a different translation than what I was used to. I didn’t get the impression reading these prayers that I was such a miserable sinner—or rather, that even though I was, what stood out here was not my sinfulness, but God’s immense love for me in the midst of that. A lightbulb had switched on.
The seminarian went on to provide me with book titles that he recommended based on the issues I was expressing: how did this ancient religion make sense today? Why did we preserve these rituals instead of doing things in a way that would be more accessible for contemporary people? The titles he recommended to me were For the Life of the World by Fr. Alexander Schmemann and Courage to Pray by Metropolitan Anthony Bloom. Both of these authors were cradle Orthodox Christians who lived in Western countries in the 20th century: extremely close to my own time, culture and experience. They therefore provided a bridge for me to the ancient tradition of Orthodoxy, doing much to help remove my mental blocks and to grow my understanding of my own faith tradition, especially through their explanations of prayer, sacraments, and all of life being an experience of the Living God.
Today as a wife and mother, I feel far from these memories as a young woman barely out of high school. My life is different now, and in some ways, simpler, but I still remember what it was like to wrestle with God in that way: to beg Him for answers, wondering if He was even there, and then to be swept off my feet by His responses. Nowadays, I have come to see that God is my Father and the Church is my Mother.3 Once we can see and embrace this, it becomes easy to simply submit to the wisdom and the truth found in the Church. But to get there, I had to employ my God-given intelligence and free will, seeking and choosing Him voluntarily. There is good precedent in the Scriptures for asking questions of God in order to best know and do His will: even the Theotokos, before accepting to become the Mother of God, asked the Archangel Gabriel how this could be. The Holy Apostle Thomas is another example of someone whose questioning was rewarded by Christ. (But also, “blessed are they who have not seen and yet believed:” it’s a both/and).
More recently, I engaged in a similar intellectual and spiritual wrestling when I became fascinated by the topic of womanhood. I was desperate to know what it means to be a woman, what the Church has to say on this topic, and why some people think that the Church is sexist. Is it? Here, too, God has answered my questions abundantly, far more satisfactorily and deeply than I deserve. As a result, I have come to a place of peace on this issue and plan to share in upcoming chapters some of what I have learned in this realm, in the hopes it might bless someone else. But for now, I will encourage those of you with questioning minds like mine to bring all your questions to Him so that He can both sanctify and answer them. We need to be honest with ourselves and with Him so that He can make us holy. As Metropolitan Anthony Bloom said: “God can save the sinner you are but not the saint you pretend to be.” We hear again and again in the Divine Liturgy to “commend ourselves, and each other, and all our lives to Christ our God.” This means we must bring Him our whole selves, not bifurcating our lives into “sacred” and “secular” compartments. To do this would be to deny the essential Orthodox doctrine of deification: that we can and must experience the Kingdom of God here and now, in this life. Bringing our questions to God is also the only way that we can get real and lasting answers for them. Having questions is a sign of life, and when we bring them to God and He answers them, this builds our trust and love for Him so that we can more quickly and easily run to Him in the future. Be who He made you to be! Confront your questions, and your sins. Learn to trust Him, and to do so when that’s scary.
What are some practical ways we can do this? Confession comes to mind, but I have much to say about that so I will save it for the next chapter. For now, I will suggest a helpful tool that may be new to any cradle-Orthodox readers, which is prayer journaling. This practice is very helpful for becoming more aware of our own thoughts and internal movements. In this age of distraction, all such opportunities for awareness are a blessing, helping us recollect ourselves before praying to God in other, perhaps more traditional ways, such as a prayer rule or going to church.
I first heard of prayer journaling a little over a year ago, after asking Christian women on social media if any of them had advice on how to journal in a more objective, less self-centered way. I wasn’t thinking of prayer or spiritual journaling, but several of the responses introduced me to this practice. Since then, I have learned more about prayer journaling and my favorite approach is one that I learned about through Sally Clarkson’s writing. The acronym is “ACTS:” Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication. Journaling according to this pattern helps us remind ourselves of the truth, so that we frame our writing in respect and veneration for God, awareness of our sinfulness, and thanksgiving and joy for His goodness, before we complain, vent, and ask Him for what we want and need. It has been a very helpful practice for me, and might help you, too!
Interview with Lisa Rose at
It is my privilege and delight to share a conversation with Lisa Rose, co-author of Patterns for Life: An Orthodox Reflection on Charlotte Mason Education. I first got to know Lisa through the Scholé Sistership, a wonderful resource for classically-minded Christian homeschooling mothers. Then, I read her book, which all Christian parents and educators should read! She also writes here on Substack at Patterns for Life. Lisa is incredibly thoughtful and has already helped me think through our Orthodox tradition on education, especially how Christians should use pagan and non-Christian works. I knew she would have much wisdom to share on how we can struggle well as, with God’s help, we seek to identify and remove the obstacles to our growth in holiness.
You can also listen to our conversation right here!
CATIE: What was your everyday life like as an Orthodox woman in your 20s and 30s? Did you have a strong community of faithful women to support you?
LISA: I got married when I was 23, so for most of my 20s and 30s I was either pregnant or nursing, because I had five kids within the span of nine years, and then I nursed my youngest for a couple years. So it was a long stretch of time, over a decade, where my body was affected by pregnancy hormones, breastfeeding hormones and all of that. So when I look back, it was kind of a blur. It was definitely a stretching and growing kind of time, for sure. My husband worked in hospitality, so he was managing in restaurants, and he had a schedule that made it so he was hardly home, or when he was home he was sleeping because he would have worked the night before. I wasn't a single mom, but I was doing a lot of solo parenting. My own mom tried to help as much as she could, but she was also working. It was a lot... but it was good, also.
I felt very isolated, because there weren't any other women in my parish having children yet, and I'm the oldest in my family, so my siblings took a few years to catch up. I had friends, but they were all far, so we would catch up with phone calls and that kind of thing. I did end up going online a lot and making friends with similar interests, especially as I began to think about homeschooling and education—that's when I really found my people. I prayed for a long time that I would have local friends, because I really just didn't.
When my third daughter was born, I learned how to use one of those big long baby wraps that you tie up in all different ways, and so I joined a baby-wearing forum. On there, I met a gal who was local to me, and in her signature it said that she was Orthodox. And so I said, “oh, I'm Orthodox too!” We found out that we were nearby and we arranged to meet. She and her husband ended up becoming godparents to our youngest two children. That was a really neat thing to have happen. But by that time, I had already had three kids, I was expecting my fourth. That was kind of like a turning point where my prayers started being answered. I had more friends! Then a family who had six boys joined our parish. My oldest son didn't really have any other kids in the parish his age either, but now six boys were here. It was really a neat thing to see the prayers be answered in that way.
CATIE: Before you started seeing the prayers being answered, was it easy for you to have patience or was it frustrating to wait that long?
LISA: I think I was just so busy that I didn't notice the time passing. It was just, one day bleeds into the next, and then, wow! A whole year has gone by.
CATIE: Looking back, do you have any tips for moms who are in that busy season right now with little kids, for not getting burned out?
LISA: I think lowering expectations helps a lot—realizing that this is a season in which you really can't have expectations to be able to do all the things that you're used to doing. You have to expect that you might get a dirty diaper right before you're about to head out the door, or that somebody might throw up while you're riding in the car. You have to build margin into your days so that, especially when you start schooling your oldest child, you have to leave time for all the younger ones to have their tantrums, or be hungry, or need to be put down for a nap. You can't have a school day that's just planned down to the minute, because everything will fall apart, and you'll end up feeling frustrated and discouraged and wondering why you can't do this thing that you had planned. Plans have to be held very loosely in those years. And the perennial advice: enjoy it, because it goes so fast! It really does.
CATIE: That resonates with me—just this weekend, I had some clarity that I need to step back on a couple of things with the second baby coming in a few months. That's a good reminder that it's not a failure to change your mind on being able to do something.
LISA: Right, exactly.
CATIE: Alright, here’s my next question: has receiving God’s love always come naturally to you or did you have to learn it?
LISA: I think both. I had a friend in college who was a new Christian. She was from Korea and had been raised Buddhist, if I’m recalling correctly. Her whole family was Buddhist and they were very upset, actually, when she converted to Christianity, but eventually, thank God, they all converted themselves, so that was really neat. She and I used to talk a lot, and she would tell me all the time how the Holy Spirit would talk to her, like, “The Holy Spirit told me this” and “The Holy Spirit told me that.” And I asked her one day, “how do you hear the Holy Spirit? How do you know that He’s speaking to you?” And she said something to me that I’ll never forget: “you were baptized as a baby. You have always had the Holy Spirit with you, so you don’t know what it’s like to not have Him with you.” And I was like, “yeah, I guess you’re right.” Because I was a baby when I was baptized, and I have never not been in the Church. It was just such a remarkable thing to think about.
But at the same time, I have had to learn how to accept and receive God’s love, how to even truly believe that He does love me, because sometimes that’s hard to believe. We kind of deceive ourselves in all kinds of different ways that we don’t deserve the love, and think “surely I can’t have this or that thing, that would prove God’s love,” and then we find ourselves with all of those things. It’s really amazing to be able to open your eyes and see all the manifestations of His love, because if we are willing to look, it really is there; it’s visible. But if we close our eyes to it—not even deliberately, necessarily—if we’re not used to looking for it, it’s not as easy; it’s more hidden.
CATIE: Would you be able to share a specific example of a time when you did open your eyes and see that [God’s love] was there, when you hadn’t noticed it before?
LISA: Looking back, I can see evidence that I didn’t see at the time. For example, when I got pregnant with my first child, I went to the library, found some books about pregnancy, and through the first book that I found, I found my way to all kinds of other books that have guided my journey towards a lot of the parenting choices, birthing choices, education choices that we made–they all kind of started with that one book that I found on the shelf. It wasn’t even necessarily this amazing book that I think everyone should read—it’s a great book!—but it just happened to be the right thing at the right time, and if I hadn’t found that, then my life would look very different than it does now.
CATIE: What was the book?
LISA: It was called Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife.
CATIE: Very cool. I’ve never heard of it; sounds interesting.
LISA: Yeah, it was just stories of her experiences as a midwife. It was very good.
CATIE: I’m sharing a similar story in this chapter of something that God just gave me, it just happened, I didn’t do anything to make it happen but it proved really significant afterwards.
LISA: Yeah, exactly.
CATIE: So my next question is: What is your general approach when you are struggling? How have you learned over the years to “struggle better” as an Orthodox Christian?
LISA: The way I approach it now is not the same as twenty years ago. I’ve learned over time to accept it. But I have to admit that I still fight it first, and then I remember that hey, I’m supposed to accept this. So my first reaction is always, “no, I don’t want this, take it away, this was not my plan, so don’t send this terrible thing on me.” Sometimes it’s minor things, or it can be bigger things. I’ve learned that suffering and struggle can actually be the times when I’m closest to God, because I have to lean on Him in ways that I don’t need to when everything is going the way I want it to go. So in those desperate cries for help, He’s closer to me in those times than when I feel like I don’t need Him.
“I’ve learned that suffering and struggle can actually be the times when I’m closest to God.”
I’m definitely a work in progress. I don’t just throw my arms open and be like, “yay, suffering! Come on in!” But I have begun to see that that is something to strive for. God willing, in the future I will be able to throw my arms open and just welcome it, but I’m not there yet. But when I can recognize that I’m fighting something, and then just stop and thank God for it instead, I find that immediately, the burden just lightens. The load gets lighter, and I have the strength for whatever I need.
CATIE: Would you be able to share a specific example of a time when you experienced this dynamic you’re describing? For me, it reminds me of the book club we do every July on Convivial Circle. We read through this marriage book which is really good, called The Empowered Wife. [The author] talks about the same kind of dynamic [in the context of marriage]. As wives, we know that our husbands need respect from us; that’s how they feel love—but showing respect can be hard, because it means not being critical when we think we know better, or things like that. She has this really helpful concept of “needless emotional turmoil.” So let’s say you have a husband who [doesn’t often get to] places on time, and so you can either choose to work yourself up and be really frustrated that you’re late someplace, or you can focus on the fact that “this is my husband, I love him, I honor him, and who cares if we’re five minutes late—I’m not going to make a big deal about this.” But that takes humbling, because you have to set aside your plan for always being punctual or five minutes early—that part of you has to be put to death in order for you to show respect and have greater intimacy with the most important person in your life.
LISA: That actually reminds me of something I can talk about. One of my children has a big personality. She’s an absolute joy, but she’s also difficult to parent in the same way that I have parented my other children. And it took me a long time to accept that. I was trying to fit her into a mold, like I had this idea in my head: “this is how she should be, and she is not like this, so I have to fix her.” But when I learned to accept that no, she is of a different mold, she’s not going to be like these other ones, it was immediately like I could relax into knowing who she was, and actually getting to know her for who she is instead of trying to make her into who I thought she should be. And it’s much better to know her as she is, than to have her be some imaginary child that doesn’t even exist. There have been so many little instances in parenting her specifically, and my other kids too, when that theme has come up quite a lot. With five children, it will come up often! When I realized that, it was a big game-changer: it’s not on me to make her be a certain way. God has already made her a certain way, and any problem that I have with it is my problem; it’s not actually her problem. Yeah, I have to hold her to standards, teach her to behave, and civilize her. But when I’m able to embrace the reality that I have instead of what I thought I wanted, things are just so much better. And God is able to help me then, for real. He can give me the tools I need to actually work with the reality that I have, instead of me begging Him for things that I don’t need, because this is not the child that’s really there.
CATIE: I’m connecting the dots: through the process of parenting, there are always going to be struggles, but like you said initially, whenever we have a struggle, it is an opportunity to draw closer to God, because He’s trying to teach us something and bring us closer to Him in a way that we couldn’t do without the struggle.
LISA: Right. One of the things that I probably do the most often, especially when it comes to parenting—I think St. Porphyrios was the one who said, “Talk to God about your children more than you talk to your children about God,” but then it was St. Paisios who said, “when you have a problem, when you’re trying to communicate something to your children and they can’t hear you, like you’re fighting or for whatever reason they can’t understand what you want to communicate, ask the Theotokos to tell them for you. Go to her, and she can speak to their heart. She can calm the situation down, and bring peace and reconciliation.” And really, every single time, every time, she never fails to answer prayer like that. That’s one of the things that I’ve learned to lean into over the years, is just to go to her. She is the best mother, and so if I go to her, she can mother me as well, as I learn how to mother my children.
“That’s one of the things that I’ve learned to lean into over the years, is just to go to the Theotokos. She is the best mother, and so if I go to her, she can mother me as well, as I learn how to mother my children.”
CATIE: That’s so good! Thank you! Alright, so my last question is: has there ever been an issue regarding Orthodoxy or Orthodox tradition, that you didn’t understand at first and had to work through?
LISA: I don’t know that I’ve struggled to accept any of the teachings of Orthodoxy, but one thing that has really grown my faith quite a lot is being in dialogue with some of my Protestant friends. Mostly these are online women, because in my offline circle of friends, everyone is from church and I don’t run into that many Protestants. But these women that I talk to, we’re a very close group of friends and we’ve been talking for years and years. We’ve never met in person, but one thing that I love about our conversations is that no one is afraid to talk theology, to talk about the faith and the differences that we have.
I have learned so much, because growing up, I was told, well, “Protestants think this” and “Protestants believe that.” But by talking to these ladies, I’ve realized that those blanket statements that I had assumed were true, were sometimes only partially true. Or only certain kinds of Protestants think that, and there are others who are just not even close. Like I had no idea that there are Protestants who have any kind of sacramental service, that even believe in the Eucharist—I knew that Catholics did, but I didn’t know that Lutherans also do, and there are others. It’s been really interesting.
And sometimes, the women will challenge me. I remember one of the girls actually asking—we were talking about icons, and she was like, “have you ever asked God what He thinks of icons?” And I was like, “well, no, I just know they’re okay, because they’re part of the Church.” But that question stuck with me, and I was like, “so… what does He think?” And I know the answer, right, like whatever Council that was, the Seventh one?4 So I knew that. But just at that time, the Hawaiian Icon of the Mother of God5 was coming to visit a church in the area. So with that question in my mind, I had the opportunity to go and venerate it.
Not only that, but while I was on my way, we got on the highway to go there, and I took the wrong exit, like I was going home instead of where I needed to go. So that put us back by 15 or 20 minutes. As I was driving, we were almost at the church, and there was a woman walking. She was kind of close, but it was still a far walk for her—she was an older woman. I knew she went to this church, so I pulled into a driveway and I said, “come on, you can ride with us.” She didn’t speak a word of English—she was Romanian—but she saw the cross hanging from my rear view mirror, so she got in and I took her to the church, because I knew she was going to see the icon also. So we got there, and she told one of the women there in Romanian to tell me that she had wanted to see the icon, she didn’t have a ride, and she just left her house and she knew that the Mother of God would get her there. So she just started walking, in faith that she would be able to venerate this icon, and I came and picked her up. She didn’t know my name, I didn’t know her name, but it was such a blessing that I was able to participate in this thing that God was doing for this woman, that I was able to help in that way. And that whole experience just confirmed, “yes, icons are very important, and God loves them, and He sends them to us, especially the miracle-working icons, as a blessing and a help in time of trouble.” Those kinds of experiences have happened a lot. Questions that I didn’t even know I should have, or I would have, have been brought up, and I’ve been shown again and again that this is the true faith. We’ve got it all. It’s really beautiful.
CATIE: That is an amazing story. Connecting the dots with the parenting lesson from St. Paisios, it’s like, we don’t just have God. I feel like that’s the wrong way to phrase that, but we have God, and we have the Theotokos, and the saints, and the icons, and all of that is part of God. He’s given it all to us, and we’re wealthy beyond measure.
Thank you so much, Lisa, for sharing your time and wisdom with us! It’s been an honor and a joy to talk with you.
LISA: Thank you! It was really a pleasure talking to you.
Resources:
Patterns for Life: An Orthodox Reflection on Charlotte Mason Education by Lisa Rose and Laura Wolfe
Parenting Toward the Kingdom: Orthodox Christian Principles of Child-Rearing by Philip Mamalakis
Wounded by Love: The Life and Wisdom of Elder Porphyrios
Spiritual Counsels, Volume IV: Family Life by St. Paisios the Athonite
For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy by Fr. Alexander Schmemann
Courage to Pray by Metropolitan Anthony Bloom
Read previous posts in this series
Introduction to the Series:
What’s Coming Next & Who It’s For
As he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” (1 Peter 1:15-16; cf. Leviticus 11:44)
Chapter One:
No Need to Get Married
All human souls are "feminine" in relation to God, the husband and the lover of each soul.
Read Next
Chapter Three:
Do you have questions about theology? Share them in the comments! We’d also love to hear any other thoughts you had on this chapter or the interview with Lisa!
Also, please share this post with a young Orthodox woman in your life who would be blessed by it!
In Orthodoxy we refer to “ancestral sin” as opposed to “original sin.” The distinction is that we inherit the consequences of Adam and Eve’s sin without their personal guilt. However, in our own lives, each one of us does replicate their sin and therefore incurs our own guilt.
Ancient prayers written by saints and angels, which Orthodox Christians traditionally pray before sleep and upon waking, as part of a spiritual discipline.
“No one can have God as his father who does not have the church as his mother.” —St. Cyprian of Carthage
The Seventh Ecumenical Council in AD 787, also known as the Second Council of Nicea, officially affirmed iconography and the veneration of icons. It is the last ecumenical council to be recognized by both the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches.
The Hawaiian Icon of the Mother of God is a miracle-working, myrrh-streaming icon that travels regularly throughout the United States.
Catie, thank you for this wonderful piece, I loved hearing your own story and reading the interview with Lisa. Discovering that the Mother of God can also be my mother in a real, tangible way is the thing that drew me make towards seeking God and Christ. I grew up in the Protestant tradition (also a pastors kid) and so it was fascinating hearing your perspective on both Orthodoxy and Protestantism. As you know, my husband and I are currently trying to discern where our spiritual home lies, and whether it is with the Roman Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church. I don’t know where we will be led, but this was a reminder to lift our decision up to God and allow Him to lead us. Thank you again, I look forward to the next installment of this series xx
I enjoyed the interview with Lisa Rose very much. The importance of praying the Theotokos and patron saints for all the little, specific things my kids and husband need keeps being presented to me and I am working on that! This interview brought up praying for rides. I don’t drive, so this is often on my mind, especially since our church is planning to build farther away from our house. My tendency is to pray for complete healing so that I can do it all. But maybe it is God’s will to work lots of little miracles in my life, not one huge one. And giving rides to someone who can’t get to church is a service that so many people can do. In fact, an elderly woman who I have offered an arm in the communion line gave me and my kids a ride home from church the other day. It was a blessing to her and us! Thanks again Lisa and Catie.