A Register interview with Sr. Miriam James Heidland, SOLT
Sr. Miriam James Heidland of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity (SOLT) is a nationally-known speaker, author and podcast host who can be heard on the Hallow app. She spoke to those attending the Healing the Whole Person conference at North American Martyrs Parish in Lincoln April 16-18.
Sr. Miriam sat down with Dennis Kellogg, director of communications for the Catholic Diocese of Lincoln, to discuss her own healing journey, the role of women in the Church today and who she thinks is responsible for the growing number of people joining the Catholic Church around the world. What follows is an edited version of that conversation.
Dennis Kellogg, Southern Nebraska Register, director of communications for the Diocese of Lincoln: I’m going to start off with what could be most important to people in Nebraska. You were a Division One volleyball player at the University of Nevada-Reno. So, you should feel right at home here in Nebraska.
Sr. Miriam James Heidland (SOLT), speaker and author: Love your volleyball team. I watch you guys all the time, and I love they sold out the football stadium to watch. That is epic. It’s just neat to see the rise of women’s sports and just the excellence. I went to college so many years ago, and the game is so different now than it was then—all the women are bigger, faster, stronger. I love watching. I love the pursuit of excellence.
SNR: When you were in college playing volleyball, that’s when your transformation towards the Lord started to happen. Can you take us through what it was like before that, and how that transformation came about?
Sr. Miriam: I was born in Texas, but we moved to the Northwest when I was very young. My parents were very faithful. We went to church every Sunday. My parents were wonderful, very faithful people. Prayed a family rosary, went to public school, went to CCD every week, made the sacraments, but I just had never fallen in love with Jesus….
It wasn’t until I went to college that really, my own kind of brokenness began to manifest itself, and I began to realize that I had some pretty Sorrowful Mysteries in my life. I didn’t really know what to do about that, because I didn’t have anybody to talk to about it. But what God did is God sent a Catholic priest into my life, and that priest had been a priest a very long time, and I had never seen anybody love Jesus the way he loved Jesus. And it wasn’t fake. It was authentic.
When we see people loving Christ, there’s something that resonates within us, because we can intuit when it’s legit. And I can intuit to him that he loved Christ, he loved his priesthood, and that man, God bless him, just loved me like a spiritual daughter. And he would tell me the truth, whether I wanted to hear it or not. He would inspire me. He would challenge me. But just watching him witness to his own encounter with Christ was so powerful for me. And so, over the course of several years, just being in relationship with this priest who would come into town and would pray with me and email me, and it was just so helpful for me.
It helped me when I graduated from college to go down to one of our missions in New Mexico, which I would have never done on my own... And so, I had a very slow but also very profound conversion over time that really culminated within the first year I was at the mission in New Mexico.
SNR: Before that conversion, you dealt with some pretty serious things in your life – addiction, sexual assault. Those things that you went through obviously took a lifetime of healing, and I’m sure you’re still healing from them. Do they still affect your life today?
Sr. Miriam: I’ve been on a healing journey for a long time now, and just what I learned about myself and about other people is that all of us have places in our life that are mysteries to us, that are painful…. Every single one of us have things in our life that just bring us to our knees, where it’s very obvious we can’t manage on our own, that we need a savior, which is so difficult for us at times to admit we can’t save ourselves. We all have these places that are very mysterious to us, that bring us into communion with the Lord, that are humbling to us in the best way possible.…
It’s not about fixing problems, it’s about him bringing us into communion. To this day, in my own journey, I have things that still bring me to my knees. I’m like, “Lord, thank you. I need you. I need other people. I need your grace. I need your mercy.”
SNR: You’re in Lincoln as part of the Healing the Whole Person conference with Dr Bob Schuchts. When you go in and talk to these people, you know that every person in that room is wounded. Every person in the world is wounded. So, what is the healing message that you bring?
Sr. Miriam: When we speak about healing at the John Paul II Healing Center, we talk about healing as an ongoing encounter with God’s love and truth that brings us into wholeness and communion. My understanding of that, it’s Gospel living, it’s really Christian discipleship.
If you’ll notice, healing is a very hot topic right now on planet Earth, through brain science, through a lot of different new therapeutic modalities. And I really think that’s a work of the Holy Spirit. And when you distill it all the way down to its essence, it’s an ongoing encounter with God. And so, this is not just the self-help thing. This is not like, “Oh, you do the Dr Bob workbook and you’re going to be fine.” This is about bringing people into an encounter with Jesus.
(Interview continues below)
SNR photos | Natalie Bender
SNR: You are one of the leading voices in the United States for the Catholic Church, and one of the leading women’s voices as well. So, I want to ask you about the role of women in the Church today. Do you think the Church needs to do more in that area?
Sr. Miriam: I think a lot of people have a lot of opinions about what that means. I really do just look at Our Lady... you look at Our Lady with Jesus, and you look at Our Lady at the foot of the cross, and you look at Our Lady with the disciples. You see this beautiful woman whose “yes” to God changed the course of human history. Where Eve said no, Mary said yes. And so, the role of a woman and her feminine genius is to receive another, to nurture another, so they can have the space to be safe, to grow and to pursue their relationship with God....
We need the heart of women at the table. We need the heart of women to be able to provide. We need heart of women to be able to speak the truth and to receive people. That gift of reciprocity of the masculine and the feminine is very important. We’re not talking about an ordained ministry, nothing like that, because Christ is a man, right? So, we see that reserved to men. And rightfully so. And in that, we see the gift of woman, and how she comes alongside and how she blesses, and the Church will always need that.
SNR: You talked about the Church flourishing, and that’s not happening just in the United States, but across the world. Why do you think that is?
Sr. Miriam: I think it’s the work of the Holy Spirit. I don’t know if he’s preparing us for something or just because society is now in such a broken state where we are today, that people are just looking for something that’s true.... All of us are made for truth. We have a homing beacon for truth, whether we want to extinguish that or not. We know it because we’re made in the image and likeness of God.
And so I think it’s also interesting, the advent of technology. What technology is able to do through podcasts, through long-forum discussions, where especially young men are encountering the truth in a way of listening to very intelligent people debate ideas and debate what’s happening in the world, and being able to experience what’s going on, and hear the truth, and people are responding. It’s a work of the Holy Spirit.
SNR: What’s one thing you wish more people knew about Jesus Christ and his Church?
Sr. Miriam: One of my favorite things about Jesus is his kindness, so wonderfully and disarmingly kind, and we’re not used to that. That kindness is not permissiveness, but a kindness that sees us, that understands us, that reverences us, that honors us, that kindness that tells us the truth. And it’s so beautiful to be encountered by him. He’s just so incredibly kind, kinder to me than I am to myself… being surrounded in that kind of love which actually brings us to the truth we’re afraid to face. It’s the kindness of the Lord that leads us to repentance. And that’s one of my favorite things about the Lord.
Listen to the full interview with Sr. Miriam including additional questions and answers on the Catholic Diocese of Lincoln YouTube channel.
