Life Lessons
When I was a young girl living at Our Lady of Grace Academy, my evenings ended with a light tap on my bedroom door. Every night, as faithful and as welcome as a gentle rain, I found Sister Harriet Woehler standing there waiting to tell me good-night and to make the Sign of the Cross on my forehead.
Her presence was calm and soothing. It was just what I needed as I settled down for the night, a teenager living a long way from my family’s home in Indianapolis.
I lived at the Benedictine monastery in Beech Grove for four years, arriving there every Sunday night and leaving on Friday afternoons.
The boarders had daily jobs, which we performed after school. They included cleaning the classrooms, and sweeping the long halls and stairwells. Before we could leave for the weekends, our work had to be inspected.
We also had to have our bedrooms checked. If you didn’t get an okay from Sister Harriet you had to redo it. I tried to do it well because I didn’t want my dad to have to wait.
The life lessons that I learned at the academy were invaluable, and they have stayed with me for 50 years. My head and my heart were filled with good things during those years, and I wasn’t even aware of most of them at the time.
It took me years to understand why I cleaned my house before every family vacation. I scoured it — almost to the point of preparing for an inspection from a Benedictine sister. I still clean before I leave town because the habit is hard to break, but now I understand the “why” of it. And of course, it’s wonderful to walk into a clean house after I return home, when I am very tired and have loads of dirty laundry.
I started thinking recently about the things we learn when we are young, and how we accept them as truth. Things about the ways to do things in a home. More importantly, about the way we treat people.
Sometimes it’s important to take a step back and try to figure out why we are doing things a certain way. Then we can decide if we want to continue doing those things in the same way or if we want to try something new.
It can be scary to venture off the familiar path, but sometimes that’s what we need to do. There’s also a wonderful feeling when you have assessed the familiar, and decided that’s exactly where you want to be.
Proverbs 22:6 reminds us to “train the young in the way they should go” because “even when old, they will not swerve from it.”
I think that’s what the Benedictine sisters were trying to do with the academy girls at Our Lady of Grace those many years ago. They wanted to shape us into ladies of grace, and they often told us so. They worked really hard to help us find our way, and I’m very appreciative for what they did in my life.
Besides, it’s always great to head out of town leaving a clean house behind me!
