Worried? Put it in the God Box at the Limetree, Limerick

One mum’s way of coping with what life threw at her led her daughter on a voyage of discovery, says Áilín Quinlan

After her mother’s death, Mary Lou Quinlan discovered a treasure trove in her wardrobe. Stacked on a top shelf, the little containers of all shapes and sizes were stuffed with tightly-folded scraps of paper. These were the God Boxes. A devout Catholic, Mary Finlayson had started to fill her first God Box in the 1980’s, after retiring with her husband Ray to Florida. While the move was a dream come true for the couple, the immense distance which now lay between them and their adult children – Mary Lou in New York and her son Jack in Philadelphia – left Finlayson anxious.

One day, after hearing Finlayson worry aloud about her kids, a friend suggested that she make a God Box. “It was a very simple idea. When she had a worry, a wish or a prayer she’d grab a pen and a scrap of paper,” Mary Lou explains. The notes were scribbled everywhere; in supermarket queues, restaurants, hotels, on anything from till-receipts to paper towels. She’d date it and begin the note with “Dear God,” and then explain her concern and make a very simple request. After Mary Finlayson died at the age of 82 in May 2006, a few days after suffering a devastating stroke, Mary Lou found around 10 little boxes in her mother’s closet. Inside the boxes were hundreds of tiny folded-up scraps of paper. “ Each scrap carried a simple prayer : ‘Dear God please help Mary Lou sell her house’ or ‘Dear God, please help Mary Lou not to be so stressed.’”

“I found one that said ‘Dear God, please let Mary Lou win that big advertising account. The meeting is at 4pm.’” Now 61, Mary Lou, who worked in the advertising industry for decades and set up a successful firm, Just Ask a Woman, recalls her mother’s caring personality: “She was very loving, very hardworking and full of energy”

Her rules were strict: “She said that if you asked for something and then kept worrying about it, she’d take it back out of the box!” In other words, quips Quinlan, if you as much as intimated that you could handle a situation better than God, your note was coming out of the God Box! “The idea is not to make wishes come true but to get release and comfort. “It was really about accepting what you cannot heal by yourself and give it over to God.” Psychologist Patricia Murray agrees. Sometimes people become enmeshed in an ‘issue’ and don’t let it go, she explains. The first step towards overcoming the fear of letting go is to merely recognise that you are holding on needlessly, she says. It wasn’t until her father Ray was dying of cancer in 2010 that Mary Lou, who describes herself as a 911 Catholic, actually used a God Box herself. “As my Dad was dying I went over to the God Box and I took a piece of paper and wrote “Dear God and Mom, please take him.” In November 2010, Quinlan wrote an article for a national magazine about her mother and the God Boxes. The response was so phenomenal she decided to write a book, which she self-published in 2012. Within three weeks of its launch, The God Box – Sharing My Mother’s Gift of Faith, Love and Letting Go hit the New York Times Bestsellers list and was bought up by a publisher. “So many people have started God Boxes now - I go to a school and kids of all faiths are making God Boxes for their prayers, worries and wishes, and I get messages on Facebook from loads of people saying they are starting God Boxes” Now the powerful one-woman play, The God Box, A Daughter’s Story, which Quinlan acts and which she co-wrote with Martha Wollner, an award-winning playwright and actor, is in Ireland.

• The God Box, A Daughter’s Story will be performed at The Limetree Theatre, Limerick, tomorrow, Saturday June 20. Proceeds in aid of The Irish Hospice Foundation and Milford Care Centre. Find The God Box Project on Facebook.