Mary Lou and You Too
Do you ever feel like what you have gone through or who you are makes you not enough? Perhaps, you feel like your wounds are too painful. Your personality is too much. Your race, gender, or sexuality, is too shameful. Your past is too dark. Your sins are too grave. You are damaged goods and nothing more.
If you have ever felt that way or are currently feeling this way, you are not alone.
I want to tell you about a woman named Mary Lou Williams who also struggled with some of these insecurities. I came across her story in my search to feel more connected to Black Catholics.
As a Black Catholic myself and someone who also has struggled with some of these insecurities, I used to believe that I did not belong in the Catholic Church. At times, it felt like I was the only one who looked like me and the entire congregation knew I didn’t belong. I remember thinking that being Black meant I couldn’t be like the great Saints and Catholics I loved. People like St. Therese of Lisieux, Mother Teresa (now St. Teresa of Calcutta), and St. John Paul II. I thought that my love for rap music, art, dancing, Black movies and my curvy figure, brown skin, and big curly hair made me not good enough for the Church and Sainthood. I was different therefore unworthy.
Reading about Mary Lou Williams, encouraged me to look more compassionately towards myself and use who I am, including the gifts and talents God has given me for His glory.
Born in 1910, Mary Lou Williams grew up in Atlanta, Georgia and became a Jazz pianist and composer. As she climbed the ladder of success, her fame grew and she was able to work with many jazz giants such as Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman. While on tour in Paris in 1954, she became increasingly depressed. Mary Lou was experiencing an existential crisis. She wrestled with the woman she believed she was and the life she was living. She looked at her career as a musician and became convinced that being a musician made her not good enough for the spiritual life.
She came to the conclusion that in order to be close to God and live a more spiritual life she would have to denounce parts of herself. So after leaving Paris and coming back to the States, she rejected Jazz and lived a more quiet and religious life. On one hand, it was very pious of her. She wanted to be more virtuous and associated jazz music with sin but on the other hand she failed to see that who she is and what she loves doesn’t make her unworthy. She didn’t need to reject her passion in order to live virtuously or become overly religious in order to be more loved by God.
It wasn’t until she discovered Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in her neighborhood in Harlem, that she began to see this truth. While there, she met two priests who became influential on her spiritual quest. They got to know her and helped her to see that she did not need to denounce the gifts God has given her. They told her she could integrate her artistry with her faith. She could change the actions that did not give her meaning and purpose, but she did not have to change herself, a Black, brilliant composer and musician who loved helping people through her music.
Mary Lou Williams could integrate who she is with what she loves, and feels called to pursue. She was not unworthy. Mary Lou Williams was good enough.
Mary Lou took their words to heart and soon after went back to composing and playing her music. She also became Catholic and dedicated a big portion of her life to composing music for the Catholic Church, including the famous “Hymn for St. Martin de Porres” (a Black saint) which was played as a dedication to his heroic life.
If Mary Lou never came to this awareness, she most likely would have hid her gifts and talents. She probably would have believed for the rest of her life that there is something about her that isn’t good enough and the Church would have missed out on all that she is and all the good that came with her.
Thankfully this wasn’t the case but unfortunately, many of us do not come to this awareness and the Church misses out. Many of us hold onto negative beliefs about ourselves that keep us from being who we are and using the gifts and talents God has given us. We remain hidden, we pursue things that seem more “worthy,” we become obsessed with trying to be “perfect” or “good enough,” or we self-sabotage so that we never get to experience anything good (or not for very long).
For some of us, we might be able to use our gifts and talents, and integrate our passions with our faith, but we hold onto a looming threat over our heads that we are imposters and soon will be discovered for who we really are.
In any case, these beliefs keep us from living the way God intended for each of us. It keeps us living in the illusion that we are somehow not enough and therefore, undeserving of the life that God has prepared for each of us.
In order to best shatter this illusion and these negative beliefs, we have to be willing to see that we have gifts and talents worth pursuing. We have a light worth illuminating. We have passions and interests worth integrating. We have to be willing to show up authentically, wholeheartedly and unapologetically. We have to trust that all that makes us who we are is exactly who we are meant to be, and exactly what the Church needs.
Therefore, in the words of Mary Lou Williams, “Anything you are shows up in your music- jazz is whatever you are, playing yourself, being yourself, and letting your thoughts come through.”
In the same way, anything you are shows up in all that you do- life is about being whoever you are, using whatever you have been blessed with, and letting your heart come through.
Don’t for a second fall into the trap of believing you are not enough. You are so much more.
Want to read more about Mary Lou’s life? Check out these articles.