Prayer Wasn’t Enough

Today, my convent memoir—Prayer Wasn’t Enough—becomes available on Amazon. My eldest niece has worked hard to ensure that this happens for me, and I am deeply grateful. She is, as you will appreciate, a blessing in my life. I'm also excited; my stomach continues to somersault!  I’m hoping that this book will enjoy the kind of success that will enable me to self-publish other books in the next few years.

           

Here’s an introduction to the memoir: Despite years of Catholic education, I never once considered becoming a nun. I grew up on a farm with a creek running through it and with the whisper of wind playing the fields. Nuns didn’t go barefoot, pick blackberries, or weed vegetable gardens. I thought their life had to be boring.

Then in college, a transcendent experience changed everything for me. After graduation, eager to pray, I entered a Benedictine convent certain that there I’d become a saint. Except for meals, evening recreation, and communal prayer, I lived in silence. That didn’t faze me: Life was new; perfection seemed possible.

For the eighteen months of the novitiate, during which I was given the name Sister Innocence, I studied The Rule of Saint Benedict, a document nearly 1,500 years old. Daily I gathered with other nuns for prayer and performed the tasks that demanded obedience. Laughter, good will, and a sense of purpose permeated my life as a postulant and then as a novice.

On January 1, 1960, I made first vows and went out on mission to teach. Five months later, I returned to the motherhouse on the verge of a physical and emotional breakdown. As the years passed, I taught, studied, and prayed, but dwelt in confusion as the vow of obedience became increasingly difficult. I wanted all nuns to be perfect; they weren’t. More importantly, I realized I couldn’t will myself into perfection.

In Prayer Wasn’t Enough, I describe my crippling hunger for perfection, my flawed misconception of sanctity, and my emotional immaturity. I also describe my deep love of prayer and how it became a thread that held me to the convent.

That’s the story in a nutshell. I think it will appeal to four groups of readers: those curious about why young women enter the convent; those who have endured their own struggles with perfection; those who have embraced a life committed to someone or something beyond themselves; and those whose dreams for the future have been shaken or derailed.

I hope you will want to read Prayer Wasn't Enough, and if you enjoy it, that you'll tell others about it. Click here to view the paper book. Click here to view the ebook.

Peace.