We’ve all been there.

Our spouse or a trusted friend delivers a slight. An unfair criticism. A passive-aggressive comment seemingly intended to undermine us, to get under our skin. We feel blamed, insulted. It hurts. 

All at once, we experience a familiar rush of emotions: Defensiveness, paralysis, resentment or anger. In the pivotal seconds that follow, we get to decide: What will I say or do next? How will I respond? Will I re-activate the “spin cycle,” an unhealthy and destructive pattern in my relationship?

In the second week of each month, it’s our privilege to explore with you Level 2 of our Trinity House—Person & Relationships. Recently, as we were preparing to give a marriage retreat this coming weekend, we were talking about relationship “spin cycles.” Then one evening, Soren was reading an article by St. Thérèse of Lisieux biographer Heather King (A Shirt of Flame: A Year with St. Thérèse of Lisieux), when some amazing insights leapt off the page.  

King sets the scene with a story from Christmas Eve, 1886, when 13-year-old Thérèse returns home from Mass. King writes:   

“Here’s how it happened: the custom at the time was for the children of the house to leave their empty shoes by the fire for the parents to fill with Christmas candy. Thérèse, the youngest, was the last to keep up the custom.

Upon returning from Mass that night, her usually kind and pious father, uncharacteristically cranky, passed the shoes and remarked, ‘Well, thank heaven, this will be the last year. Thérèse is really getting too old for this.’

Thérèse overheard him. Ordinarily she would have burst into tears and made a scene…  Choking back sobs, she began running upstairs to her room. But at the moment, something changed. Thérèse gathered herself, allowed herself to experience—but not be overwhelmed by—the feelings of hurt, and marched downstairs like an adult to open her presents with gratitude, good cheer, and joy.

The episode marked a turning point. In The Story of a Soul, Thérèse wrote: ‘On that night when He made Himself weak and suffering out of love for me, He made me strong and courageous. He put his armor on me, and since that blessed night I was never defeated in combat.’

She also wrote: ‘On that night of light, the third period of my life began, the most beautiful of them all, the most filled with graces from heaven. I felt a great desire to work for the conversion of sinners, a desire that I had never felt so strongly . . . . In a word, I felt charity enter into my heart, the need to forget myself in order to please others, and ever afterward I was happy!’”

According to King, “Thérèse turned a corner” that night, overcoming her “childhood fear of abandonment and rejection.” King continues, “After that, she never had to insist on her own way because, in a sense, she always got her own way, which was to love and to be loved by God in total freedom.”

Can we see what’s happening in this poignant and powerful scene? The 13-year-old Little Flower can teach us so much. We see a three phase lesson:  

• 1 | The Offense. Thérèse is offended by her father’s words, and begins to enter into a familiar and unhealthy pattern (her tendency to indulge in drama and self-pity).
• 2 | Pause, Stay with the Pain, and Beg for Grace. On the stairs leading to her room, Thérèse ‘gathered herself’ and ‘allowed herself to experience the feelings of hurt,’ all while lifting her heart to God, asking for new grace.  
• 3 | Choose a Better Path. Thérèse, evidently receiving new graces from God in this moment in the stairwell, marches back downstairs with ‘gratitude, good cheer, and joy.’ This ‘night of light’ becomes a decisive turning point for her.  

In our most sacred relationships, how easy it is to diverge from St. Thérèse’s path! Instead of pausing, staying with the pain, and begging for grace, we rush headlong into some self-indulgent version of “fight, flight, or freeze,”only to find that we have closed ourselves off from the moment of grace and the prospect of a better path. It’s the spin-cycle. Rinse and repeat.

What if each of us has our own moment of conversion awaiting us, just around the corner of the next slight or insult that comes our way? What if, after receiving our next offense, we “catch ourselves in the stairwell”? What if, in that painful and quiet moment, we find new grace to turn around, break the cycle, and step across the threshold to the next chapter God has prepared for us? 

“On that night of light, a third period of my life began, the most beautiful of them all…” May the next and most beautiful period of our lives begin soon, by God’s abundant grace!