I love you. You know that. I’m sorry. You know you’re my dearest daughter.

The words were soothing, forgiving, as I rested a moment in my father’s hug. It had been a long week and a lot of work as we prepared their house to go on the market and my parents to move.

I love you. You know that.

All my failures rushed over me. I hadn’t been able that week to plaster over my own broken humanness with a schedule of prayer and community and work. Instead I saw myself. In the raw. Tired. Unable to rise above the frustrations of the moment. The worry. The fatigue. The sleeplessness.

I love you. You know that.

Yes I knew that. And I forgot.

I had for a moment been more in touch with the anger of not being heard. The stress of needing to get things done. The exhaustion of living through circumstances that bewildered and drained my spirit.

I love you. You know that.

This month we are celebrating days of remembrance that should break our hearts, the practical overflow of an aggressive and toxic culture. They include the International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression, the commemoration of D-Day, the World Day Against Child Labor, the World Elder Abuse Awareness Day, and the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.

But we all have our own experiences, great or small, long or short, of situations and relationships that drag us down and whose toxicity breaks our spirits.

Later that week, as I lay awake before returning to the convent and to my ordinary “sister” schedule, I absorbed what I had seen grow in myself in those short ten days of work at my father’s side:

Vulnerability: It was okay to cry. I was in touch with my vulnerability, my weakness, my feeling of not enough, and it called out love from my dad and my mom. Too often I try to go it alone, to be perfect. What I need instead is to be loved and to grow in a loving tenderness with my own needfulness.

Inner Silence: In a harried and hurried culture such as ours, in which we don’t take the time to “think” with more than our emotions, silence by itself is healing. It lets us reconnect with our deepest spirit. To listen to what is said to us from beyond. Beyond this moment. Beyond this world. Beyond what we can figure out. Beyond ourselves.

Deliverance: The drama of overwrought circumstances can open the door to the enemy to push his way into the whirlpool of our straying thoughts and disturbed emotions. As he enters into our straying thoughts, he stirs up memories and passionate desires, agitating our heart, introducing ideas that drag our spirit down, driving wedges between us and others. The turbulent motion drags us down, and if we are not careful we build on this faulty foundation that seems so real and true, and yet is a delusion suggested by the evil one.

Love: Love conquers everything. Love that says, “I’m sorry.” Love that blesses the other. Love that refuses to remember what angers us and instead occupies the mind with dreams and prayers for the other’s good. Love that waits. Love that sacrifices. Love that waits....

So here are five easy-to-remember steps you can take to preserve your spirit in any situation:

1. Slow down
2. Offer silent blessings instead of judgments
3. Reconnect with your own spirit
4. No matter what choice you need to make, do so from love
5. Bless and do not curse