Catholic Hermit: Soulbuster

Am right now too much in physical pain and fatigued to write about this mission of being a soulbuster, real and fascinating a mission as it is.

I've been at it with dealing with souls, after having gone along for month after month with the current caper, ongoing caper, until finally more and more truth gurgled to the surface from the murky, sledge-like cesspool.

On the surface, it has to do with cabinets.  Beneath the surface it has to do with souls--and now there are a couple souls in big trouble, one more dominantly in trouble than the other.  

And so it is that this nothing consecrated Catholic hermit once again has a mission to deal with.  Once again, I did not sense fully nor rightly the soul behind the facade of the person I've been dealing with for over two years.  Ah, yes, Lord--You duped me!

It is that way and has been in various capers requiring soul-busting efforts.  I don't realize what is going on, the Lord camouflages the situations and souls enough so that I do not see through initially and sometimes for awhile.  And why would He dupe me?  Well, He knows accurately enough that I would flee the situation if I saw the sick soul or souls involved.

The longer the interaction continues, the more energy, time, effort, and cost is involved, the more painful the outcomes--the greater the prayer and the reparation drawn out, the more heart and soul expended upon the soul or souls when their darkness vomits forth.

Then He dabs in some amazing encounters with some very good souls, letting me see right into them, into their largess, such as Kim at Home Depot who other people would immediately notice several front teeth missing.  Instead, I was shown her large and magnanimous soul.

Or the call at 3 a.m.--a misdial, and a woman's voice asking if I were awake.  Well, yes, now, but she has a wrong number.  I notice she is calling from the area code far away from whence I came three years ago.  Then she calls back a few minutes later.  Still wrong number, and she apologizes and says she must have gotten the number wrong again.  I don't mind, although once awake at 3 a.m., I cannot easily return to much-needed sleep.  The pain needs medicating, and it takes quite awhile to tame it.

So I see what the Lord wants, for it is the hour of mercy in the middle of the night--3 a.m.  And I marvel at this contact from a stranger, a woman, and consider the situation as a mission for souls.  Either she or the person she is trying to call, needs prayer!  So I begin praying then and there and mull it over as prayer, and consider the Lord's mercy, and even think through the simple refrain of the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, and that prayer of the pilgrim:  Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

In the morning, very tired (pain is fatiguing and often feels as if the body never gets rested) and on the way to civilization to a Home Depot where there is a certain size and type of tile, and enough of it in stock to tile a couple shower surrounds, the 3 a.m. phone call returns to mind.  There is a strong impulse to call that number and say that the person or whoever being called, is being bathed in prayer.

So I do this, and leave a voicemail, explaining while it may seem strange I just want the caller to know I was not at all bothered at being wakened (for I truly was not as I often waken from pain anyway), and say am no longer in that area but far away in a distant desert, but have a sense that she or the person she was trying to reach, needs prayer.  They are getting it!  And I'm happy to do so.

Then on to Home Depot where I encounter the marvelous soul, Kim.

A few hours later when in the Lowe's, dealing with the soulbusting mission which at that point was quite intense, my phone rings.  It is a man calling from that long distance number.  We talk, as I further explain why I felt compelled to call and leave that message.  Sure enough, it was his wife who had placed the call, trying to reach someone she knew as she was quite ill and could not go to work. He was kind of chuckling with amazement.  

Neither of us exchanged names.  No need to do that.  But he laughed and said it was quite something, and once again asked where I was and said where they were, and said his mom might think to pray like that.  Yes, it was something his mom might do, and he was pleased.  Well, his wife got the prayers; and I pray today she is well enough to continue on in her daily life.

These are the fun missions, the ones that leave this hermit with a joy that passes all understanding.  These are the occasions in which I can truly live my rather ironic name of Joyful Hermit.  For much of the time, with the work of souls and of soulbusting, there is so much pain and anguish, so much suffering, so much emotional wounding--that our view of "joy" or being "joyful" would seem as far away from this hermit as I am from getting this hermitage finished.

It is all the further away now, for the truth has gurgled up, finally, and by Jesus doing the work in exposing it after I was fully invested.  The cabinets are so very flawed, and the employees knew it all along, and one honest employee--once away from Don her cabinet partner and away from Keith the cabinet manager with their lies--admitted that this line of cabinets was discontinued because they were flawed, and she had many, many customers who had problems with these cabinets.

That truth does not change the attitude of my adult daughter and her husband who spent a lot of time and energy helping to install these cabinets that then began to have evolving issues.  No, the fact that I would get to the bottom of the deceptions and even start returning the bad cabinets, is not pleasing to them.  They view the world perhaps differently than does a consecrated Catholic hermit who is also in the mission field of soulbusting.  

Just keep them, cover over the issues, hope that a future buyer does not try pulling out the drawers nor looks inside nor notices the warped doors, nor the mismatched cabinet because of more lies and deceptions by the souls in big trouble, those store employees, especially the one whose visage has actually become gray in the last several months.  Grayer and grayer, like some cancer is growing and taking over...or else it is just that the field of my inner vision, the Lord has cleared now that I was fully invested with the clerk and praying for him.

No, the cabinets, at great cost, effort, and suffering on my part, are being returned.  Would my daughter and her husband like to be tricked in a home purchase?  And, above any of that aspect, how could a hermit, espoused to Christ, who has consecrated this hermitage with the name Te Deum House (You, God!), keep that which is filled with lies and deceptions?  Right is always right.

So the more I have to struggle, the longer I must be here, the more cost in paying to have the heavy counter top lifted and then later replaced, the more money spent with loan rising to get cabinets that are not discontinued and faulty--the better the prayers for the souls in big trouble.  

It just works that way, weird as it may seem.  No, me, the hermit, the consecrated soul and heart to Christ's heart and soul, does not like it!  I have wept!  I am tired and in many ways would like to give up.  I wept on the Sabbath when removing the cabinets from the bathroom that took me two days to install perfectly, leveling every which way with shims, bolting into studs and bolting each together at the sides.  

There was the memory of all the delays when the drawers would not function properly, and all the tales from the employees, and more tales from the factory rep, and even how they tried to blame me rather than admit the problems were not just ones I experienced. It was cruel!  I had been cabinet raped; and the pain of that awareness hurt all the more because I had so trusted the cabinet employee all these months and months and had prayed for those who he said were ill or whatever as part of his deception.  Yes, that employee is to me as Judas was to my Beloved.

So, the mission remains as a soulbuster, and this man's soul is now opened to this hermit's full vision,. And while it has taken some tears and some arguing with God about the seeming unfairness, and has taken a whole lot more acceptance of the damage the situation has done with family relationships (and who can blame them in a way, even if this situation was not my fault?)--I am taking it on for what it is, and there are some souls in big trouble, and now I must do all the work and cost and effort as prayer for these souls who are in such big trouble.

It reminds me of the late bishop whose soul was finally and fully shown to me for its deceptions and meanness.  I had then exclaimed to the Lord and to my spiritual father:  This is a soul in big trouble!  Pray for the bishop's soul, for he could be snatched at any time now!  His soul is in trouble!  Sure enough, he was snatched--quickly, surely, taken by surprise to him and others.  Was no surprise to this hermit, though, nor the spiritual father, and we pray for his soul still, wherever is his soul, nearly four years later.

I guess I have just written about the mission of soulbusting.  The Lord did give me the energy now to write about it and share it, for soulbusting is a fine mission--if a painful one, at that.  Few would understand it or believe it, or see how it works.  And most important of all is to recognize that the mission of soulbusting has to do with one's own soul, as well.  For every soul in big trouble out there, once the case is cracked and the reparation is in motion, there is the soulbuster's soul to be considered.  

Am I pleasant and rejoicing about doing all the work and paying the costs in body and finances and emotions and relationships in order to do all for God and for that soul?  Do I do so with faith and strength, and see it from the spiritual view?  Do I still love that soul--can I love that lying, deceptive, hurtful soul?  (He yet makes faces at me when in the store, and other employees circle their wagons around him--until the day I told him we must move forward, and that I have no hard feelings.  What was not right from the beginning was never going to be right.)

It is not easy being a soulbuster for the Lord, to be that type of instrument of God on earth.  I admit this nothing consecrated Catholic hermit is not a struggling soulbuster, for if I were totally agreeable and eager to the tasks, the Lord would not need to dupe me in order to get me fully into the situations with these souls--invested, so to speak, and caring and loving them enough to suffer enough when their souls are fully revealed.

This has happened over and over in my life.  It is kind of the answer to the death experience 28 years ago, between back surgeries, in which I died and was sent back--sent back to rear my children and "to fulfill the mission."  This is the mission part.  It is a painful one, as this hermit's body is filled with pain.  Yet the pain is love at other levels and dimensions, and the Lord gifts the love to the full so that the efforts and the mission may continue, soul after soul.

Today I wash the excess grout off the bathroom floor tile and start to build the box for the recessed shower niche.  True, I've never done these things before, but the Lord is with me, and I pray my way through, and if I get two hours of manual labor in, that is two hours in.  These days, it is offered for the current souls in big trouble with some praises for the great souls I meet along the way.  Gifts and encouragements to us soulbusters, are these large and luminous souls who we encounter from time to time, amidst the souls in big trouble.

God bless His Real Presence in us!  Little children, let us love one another for God Is Love.  (And can we really love, anyway, unless it is God's Love doing the loving?)