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Gemma Simmonds on things she'd tell her younger self
Gemma Simmonds is a religious sister of the Congregation of Jesus. She began her ministry teaching at secondary level in the UK and went on from there to missionary work among women and street children in Brazil. She trained in Christian spirituality at the Ignatian spirituality centre in Wernersville, USA and this led to work as a retreat giver and spiritual director and as chaplain in the Universities of Cambridge and London. Alongside this she spent 26 years as a volunteer chaplain in Europe’s largest women’s prison. Until 2018 Gemma taught pastoral theology at Heythrop College in the University of London. She now teaches at the Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology in Cambridge.
Gemma has been involved in training others for Christian ministry for nearly 30 years. She is an international speaker and lecturer, a simultaneous translator and a regular broadcaster on religious programmes for the BBC.
We asked her about the advice she’d give her younger self.
‘What I want is mercy, not sacrifice.’
I entered a convent aged 18, full of enthusiasm and a determination to sacrifice everything for God. Our novice mistress told us, “Don’t imagine that you’ve come here for a life of sacrifice. If you want sacrifice, get married and have children!” I had no idea what she meant – I’d just given up home, family, money, career and a ‘normal’ future for this – surely that was the biggest sacrifice? Jesus told us that God is far more interested in compassion and mercy. It took me time to understand the huge generosity of my parents, siblings and friends in the daily self-giving of family life and relationships. The ‘God of little things’ is present to us in the smallest elements of human living.
‘You’re not the Messiah!’
I came very near to total burn-out in my determination to save the world. I needed reminding that that particular job had already been done very effectively by Someone Else… A shame that the reminder came in the form of several years in and out of hospital, so a part of the above advice is also “Listen to your own body – if it hurts, it’s for a reason”. We can’t be compassionate with others if we haven’t learned to be compassionate with ourselves.
‘If you’re “too busy”, you’re too busy…’
I’ve always enjoyed what I do so much that it’s been hard to pace myself and say no to things. But learning to waste time with God has been a great gift. God’s abiding presence in the little moments of everyday life so easily get missed when I’m rushing round trying to be Superwoman. Staying in the moment, taking time to relish the sight and sound, taste and scent and touch of any given moment, the whole feeling of it, has proved the best way to enjoy to the full and recognize whose creation it really is.
‘The show ain’t over till the fat lady sings.’
Several times in my life I’ve suffered what I considered then to be devastating loss. On each occasion I’ve thought I would never recover. So far, each of these losses has opened up unimagined opportunities – possibilities that would not have been thinkable had I stayed as I was. It doesn’t stop life’s losses hurting like fury, but I have learned some of life’s greatest lessons from these dark moments. I’ve also needed to learn to let the losses and hurts go. There’s nothing worse than wasting the present and mortgaging the future in futile regret or resentment about the past. That is a prison we make for ourselves, where we become our own jailers.
‘Count every blessing.’
I have been blessed with a wonderful, loving family and with friendships beyond my deserving. I missed the death of both my parents because I was busy somewhere else. I regret that I never thanked them enough, didn’t tell them often enough how much I loved them and was grateful to them. I’ve lost friends through death or just the inevitable parting of ways that happens in life. If I could have time back I would spend it telling them how precious they have been to me. We don’t get time back, so the time to do this is now.
‘Get on and do what you’ve always wanted to do.’
One of the best things I ever did was go on a workshop where we had to compile a list that began: “I’ve always wanted to …” Then we had to answer the questions: why haven’t I done it, and what would it take for me to do it? I found that time and money was the answer to questions 2 and 3 but, in fac,t what I needed was to give myself permission to try. Over the next five years I went parascending and scuba diving, swam with dolphins, walked the Camino, took up learning the harp and did a PhD. Some were one-offs. Some I tried and decided I didn’t want to do them enough to put in the hard work, but some made a lifetime’s difference. Give yourself permission and stop thinking, “One day…”
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