If you ask for grace to realize who you are, ask also for the courage you will need to do so. To realize who you are, you will have to walk through all the shadows in your inner landscape. It is not easy. You will need to give up all your views about yourself again and again, each time they crystallize into a pattern. You will have to experience and release all the pain in your life. You will have to embrace your death. You will have to bear everything to realize everything. A perfect divine economy.
We live by faith, and if from time to time the veil is parted briefly, it is to encourage us for a specific task or to sustain us through a period we couldn't otherwise endure. But it is faith that we stand most in need of. Why did I let faith die? Faith is the great teacher and molder of hearts, the temperer of souls, as gold is tested in fire. When our other strengths fail, there at the base of our empty souls is a mysterious silent wealth. There at the bottom of the barrel is the real strength, not power or resources, not worldly wisdom or a solid defense system, but rather the will to continue to love and to live in faith by the truth.