HOW I DISCOVERED MY GRANDMOTHERHOOD

Here I am, fulfilling my promise to share with you my experience of this time. As you can see, it hasn´t finished so easily.

After first moments of thinking only about how to accompany Marcela, soon the children and teenagers who were, who are, suffering horrors of trafficking, took their special place in the story. Their testimonies began to arrive and reading them, well, only a really hardened heart could remain impassible. Mine, has just melted. They have become the true center of the story.

During Lent Season 2019 I experienced how I could accompany Jesus in his passion, how I could heal the wounds of his suffering body. It was my special trip to the Holy Land, the Sacred Land, of all suffering bodies of my little brothers and sisters. I felt so privileged for having had this experience that, I swear to you, no other gift could give me more satisfaction.

God gave me the immense gift of being able to touch, and that my touch transmitted healing, serenity, tenderness, consolation. I started being a god-mother of some of them, and soon I became their grand-mother: the grandma with long arms.

Grandma who was dedicating her time, a long time every night, to place her hands in position to caress, to approach with immense tenderness to their little suffering bodies, touching them slowly, with no hurry, surrounding them with her long arms to make them feel protected.

And one day, I got really surprised. I did believe that my prayers were arriving to them. I did believe that it was meaningful, but you can only imagine how it feels when one day, in one of their testimonies, I could read:

The same with all of us, who believe in Jesus: we can believe or not that he was able to walk on the waters, or to heal the sick, or to forgive the sinners. The same with us: we can put our trust only in our strength or we can put all our strengths in what we do unconditionally in Him.

The truth is that we are not gods, and there are many realities that are too much for us.

The truth is that I have experienced in many moments, during past months, that there is this point when we can only trust, this certainty, I would say, that He can open ways in deserts.

You should understand with this testimony, and all others, that there is an immense road open in front of me. Before I entered in Congregation to which I belong, I made an experience, for some months, in a cloister convent. In that moment I should have solved all my doubts about contemplative or active form of life. When I took my decision and was leaving that place, one sister told me: “I believe you have taken a right decision. To give meaning to our prayers here, we need to experience first the pain of the world”. I have never forgotten her words. Today, when I know a little more about the bleeding reality in which many of our brothers and sisters live, I know that my prayer is much filled with meaning, but today I have also discovered that this mission that God entrusted to me can be fulfilled in any place. From my small world, from this little space where I find myself, in a corner of my bench in a chapel, in terrace of my present home, walking in the streets, or while I touch gently a mother to whom I am helping. Great discovery. From my little place where I find myself I touch, welcome, console, protect…

To exercise the grand-motherhood is an art. I invite you to make trial. There is nothing you can lose, on the contrary, I assure you that many good things will happen.

To be continued…

Olga Olano CMT