Just a month or so ago I noticed that while I believe in the community of saints (that is, I believe that the church is the body of Christ, so the part of the body here on earth – us – is still one with the part of the body in heaven – the saints – and we are thus able to have some type of connection or relationship with them), I didn’t really know much about the any of the saints, and I didn’t have a particular relationship with or devotion to any of them except the Virgin Mary. It felt too contrived to try to pick a saint on my own, so I just registered my thought and moved on. I figured it would be best to let such relationships develop naturally, as my relationship with Mary has.
Well, earlier this year, as you know, kind of for the fun of it and to satisfy my curiosity, I used the random saint generator to find a saint of the year for myself, and was given St. Jude, the patron of hopeless and desperate causes. Interesting, I thought. I didn’t feel a connection, so I again registered it and moved on. I read the book of Jude but that was it.
Then I was hit by postpartum depression and anxiety at full force. It was obviously and drastically worse than the transitional sadness and fatigue I’d had the first couple weeks after Aubade was born; it was a massive effort just to get out of bed, and I felt like all my time and emotional energy was expended just in rolling away the negative thoughts that kept intruding into my mind. I would hear a sound (like a car in the bank parking lot behind our house, or a door opening downstairs) and feel stabbing anxiety pain course through my body in the half second before realizing what it was. And I was starting to build escapist fantasies in the back of my mind, because I just wanted to be at peace and peace felt so unattainable.
Hmm… a situation in which I was left feeling completely hopeless and desperate for help… and a patron saint whose speciality is in interceding for hopeless and desperate causes… maybe, I thought, that random saint generator wasn’t completely random. So, feeling very awkward and not really knowing what to say, I asked St. Jude if he would pray for me in this situation. After all, what is the worst that could happen? Nothing? And at best, he would hear my request and pray for my healing and peace; a saint living in eternity, championing the hopeless and lost, probably is better about consistently praying for his supplicants than the average busy and distracted friend (of course, I might just be extrapolating from my own inconsistent prayer life).
There is of course no way to verify that St. Jude did anything, but I know that I was able to fight my social anxiety enough to go to the new moms’ community after church two weeks ago, and that the only other woman there that week was an experienced mom who encouraged me spiritually and suggested I call my doctor; I know that instead of spinning into a hole of endless research and indecision I actually did call my doctor; I know that my husband and I started praying together every night, which we’ve never done before and which has really comforted and supported me; and I know that the progesterone shots my doctor prescribed, while not completely knocking out the PPD/PPA, have made me much more functional and given back a lot of the joy in my life. In other words, things don’t feel so hopeless anymore. If nothing else, I feel like someone outside of God and my family (namely, St. Jude) cares about me and how I’m doing emotionally and as a mother – that they are standing beside me before God, praying on my behalf.
I still think I’d like to let my relationships with the saints develop slowly and naturally, at their own pace, but I’m very glad that I’ve made the acquaintance of one of them this year so far, and I think I owe him some thanks.
little thoughts 