This line in the prayer has changed meanings over the last 4 years to me. When I first heard it I didn\’t really have an emotional connection to this line at all and for a couple years after that I thought of it as, let us see the brokenness and sin that You see in us. Let us see that ugliness so we know our need for Your redemption. A very traditionally \”guilty Catholic\” perspective I suppose. This is a reflection of how I viewed myself and still do to a certain extent. One of my struggles have never ever feeling good enough and sometimes, I won\’t lie, I have resented the Church for perpetuating those feelings of hopelessness. Then something changed. At the advice of a good friend, I went on a retreat put on by the Schoenstatt University Women and experienced something I had never really experienced before. I know a lot of people have a lot of different opinions about Schoenstatt and there are a myriad of emotions associated with it, but for me it was a way to view my faith in a different light. It was an approach to faith from an organic and self-affirming way. Instead of feeling bad about not being good enough, it was one of the first times when I felt like the Church supported who I was and not what I should be. That\’s something I had been struggling with for years and all of a sudden I was surrounded by a group of women who said, it\’s ok to feel this way, it\’s good that you are this way, what do you specifically have to offer the world. It is just a much more personal approach to faith than I had ever been given before. So Let us see ourselves as you see us became more of a celebration of self-education to me. God, allow me to see the gifts and blessings you have given me so I can share them with the world. So that\’s where I was. Now, I recognize this as more of a calling than a statement. I am called to see myself as He sees me, but how am I to know what he sees if I cannot see myself clearly. Something I have been struggling a lot with lately is not truly being my own. I don\’t feel like I have complete ownership of myself, that I never have been able to be myself completely and therefore can\’t see who I am clearly in order to see myself as God sees me. It explains a lot about what\’s going on in my life right now from my romantic decisions to changing my degree program. There has been no deliberateness because there has been no clarity in who I am. This is something that I am hoping to change with time.
\”Will you love the \’you\’ inside if I but call your name? Will you quell the fear inside and never be the same?\” – The Summons