All you need is a blessed gaze
strangers’ unexpected gesture healing power
For some time, I have been sheltering into the arms of Christian prayers and meditation.
I was looking for peace to my restless soul.
I have lost my way and I felt useless.
I was mumbling about my life. All the time. To discover I have been staying behind. Crystal.
I was just a mother struggling to come back being someone who was working and loving what was doing.
But I did not want anybody over me. I wanted to be the manager of my life. And it was hard.
I was looking for freedom and it turned out into uncertainty.
Vagueness of days to create every day.
I was going out my comfort zone and I was scared. I needed to be consoled because I did not know who I was any more.
And then, the aura of the blessing wrapped me. Push me doing these little rituals of taking communion, every day. And If not, I started missing it. And still, I was fighting to find a way out, and still I did not feel in peace.
I decided to try to stop striving and abandon myself to be accepted as I came out.
So every morning, after driving my daughter at school, I started dressing up this new clothes on me: to go to the mass, sit, listen, make communion, and come out with a little more piece of relief and serenity.
The ingredients to make me bear my day.
The day I met her was really a hard one.
I wake up with my mind in a mess. As a fly running around into a pot.
Confused. Angry. With. Myself. Because I still did not understand the way, my way to figure this mess out and I did not know how to do.
When you think you can’t do it, you hide yourself with a secret desire someone is going to watch you, someone is going to see you.
So that day, I went to the mass, as usual.
I sat and a lady came by my side to sit.
While the service was going on, I started crying. Silently. I put on my sunglasses. No tissues inside my bag.
And I did not how, I did not who turned his head before, but my face turned toward the lady next to me:
“ I see you are sad. Come on! Come on! I’ll pray for you.” She said
I nodded my head whispering: “Thank you”.
“My name is Margherita. What’s yours?
“Tiziana”.
She tightened my hand twice. And her hand was soft and warm.
A perfect stranger has seen me, noticed my sadness. My burden.
They say only Jesus can see you. I mean, your heart.
And you hope to feel His gaze throughout people’s gaze.
That hard and suspended morning I felt it.
At the end of the service, Margherita turned to me saying:
“Sorry … but it’s since some time, I have been seeing you…I know it’s hard…I see you writing…Maybe, one day you will tell me your story. Pray for me. I’ll pray for you”.
“Thank you Margherita. Yes, it’s hard. Your gesture is precious to me”. I smiled to her.
Then, I came out. Stop crying. In peace. To write my morning story down.
Margherita deserves it and so do I.
