I have a friend who’s one of those people endowed/cursed with a native helpfulness. As a medical professional, she knows that such an impulse is useful. As a friend, mother, spouse, she’s learned that it’s not always so. It can get in the way of another’s self-respect, or someone’s struggle to develop of a healthy ego, among other hurtful things. Unbridled, it can become the addiction called “enabling” and do great harm. But my friend is old enough and experienced enough to know that. So, when she decided to get credentialed in spiritual guidance, I thought it was probably a good thing.

It turned out to be a very good thing. I consulted her a while back about an ongoing problem. I know it’s not unusual; in fact, I believe it afflicts us all to some degree at some time or other. However, left untreated, it can become soul-destroying acedia, when spiritual dryness can lead to an aversion to prayer—even to the entire subject of faith and the practice of faith. She responded with three words of advice: Just show up.

If you can’t meditate, set aside the time and go through the motions anyway. If you can’t concentrate on the mysteries of the rosary, say it anyway. If Mass is dry, dull, banal, tedious, attend anyway.

What do you do if you’re not sure you believe any more? What do you do when you feel the weight of doubt, the fatigue of boredom, the loss of meaning, even the death of love? Analyzing, agonizing—nothing helps. Everything that matters deeply to you has abandoned you. Finally, you’re left with the stark realization that you can’t fix it. Two choices are before you then: Go under, sink, give in, surrender to the current of despair, which you know is stronger than you are anyway.

Or you can Just Show Up. Eventually, you discover that one thing has not abandoned you: your will. You can still choose. You can, in the absence of all certainty or desire, choose by your own will to show up anyway. Then other discoveries follow—like how to love back. It’s an act of the will, not an emotional indulgence. And it’s thankless, anonymous, and personally ungratifying. And you discover that you really can handle just being one of the nameless ninety-and-nine left alone while he attends to the one who is lost and not yet found. (Weren’t you once the lost one yourself?) You discover a capability you didn’t know you had—fidelity. And then still another—obedience. And so on—just by showing up, nothing more.