Our Love Story: Or, The Only Piece of Advice We Are Entitled to Give

Whew! Sorry ya’ll! I have been on an unexpected hiatus because my busy-ness went up from about a level 8 to a level 18 on a scale of one to ten. I have plenty of things to catch up on with you guys, but today is a special day: my third anniversary with my sweetie! As it is a Tuesday and raining cats and dogs outside with terrifying lightening strikes seemingly in our yard, we are waiting until the weekend to do anything special, so I will take a little sec to tell you our little story.

My husband is always telling me “It is us against the world, baby!”

And, I tell ya, that isn’t far from the truth. We have dealt with family feuds on both sides, tackling and nearly eliminating a mountain of debt, the continuing pain of infertility, and major remodeling projects with a house that fights back.  But our marriage has a not-so-secret weapon: a Christ-centered relationship.

I met my husband in November 2010.  I met him online and I am not ashamed of that.  For some reason,  people think that is weird sometimes.  It’s not.  You and I are meeting online right now.

I had to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince.  A lot. I AM ashamed of that.

I had a high-school relationship that spilled over into college and beyond.  This man is the father of my son and is a very good man and a wonderful father. He will even be a very good husband…for someone else.  We were too young and dumb and immature, with problems and obstacles way too big for us to overcome.  We did not have a God-centered relationship, though we both came from good, God-fearing stock.  Anyway, about three weeks before our wedding, this relationship imploded. Badly. I am talking we had third degree burns.  And I was MAD.  I went on some stupid rampage trying to prove a point—that I was desirable and I could have any man I wanted.  Of course,  he didn’t care what I did or didn’t do, so I hurt no one but myself and worse, I hurt my son. My son never really saw the men in and out of my life, but he felt the repercussions from them because I was sad, mad, or just honestly not as good as I could have been as a mom.  I never neglected him and I took very good care of him, but instead of trusting in God to find us someone, if we were indeed to have someone, I went hunting.  And continually got my heart broken, or broke someone else’s heart, and in either case, lost a little more of the person God intended me to be for the person that was out there waiting for me.

After about 5 years of my nonsense, God brought me to my knees.  My heart needed HIM, not a mortal man.  I joined the Catholic Church and fell in love with Him all over again and my heart healed up slowly.  I then prayed for a husband if that was God’s will for me…a real man that would love Him, me and my child. A man that would challenge me and guide me and nurture me, although I had my Savior, and I didn’t need another.

I made a list of criteria…of course the above mentioned was numero uno.  Because my faith was new and so important to me, Mr. Right had to be Catholic. I am not against people marrying outside their faith—that is up to them.  For me to be “equally yoked”, I needed a man that was of the same faith.  Besides, there are plenty of other things to debate about in marriage, and that was one thing I didn’t want to debate about.  Other than that, I had no real specifics other than there be no weird criminal history and preferably he be educated or talented in something.  I liked short, tall, fat, thin, quiet, loud. I trusted that if God wanted to call me to married life, he would work out the specifics that were best suited for me.  In the meantime, I just kept my prayer request in my heart and worked on being the best mom I could be and providing for my son.  I had a good career, bought a house with a big back yard and started my own little home improvements.

Eventually, I went on a free dating website because I was house poor.  It was the best mistake I ever made.  I was on the website a grand total of 48 hours.  I am not bragging, but seriously, after 24 hours, I had 57 emails from men—most of them disgusting creatures.  Rather than weeding through the slough of perverts and douche-bags in my in-box,  I did a quick scan of guys in my area and saw a photo of a tall, thin Latino leaning against a rail with a big boat in the background.  I thought to myself: he has traveled somewhere, so that is cool; he appears pretty handsome; and I sure do like Spanish accents. His religious views said he was Catholic and better and better, he lived within about 30 minutes of me.  So I emailed him a monologue and said I was shutting down my account and he would need to contact me ASAP if he was interested.  He will tell you that the email he received sounded like it was from a neurotic, demanding person…and if that is so, why on earth he responded to it is beyond me. My version is, I knew what I wanted and what I did not, and all others need not apply, and this was a limited-time offer, baby.

He emailed me back the next day and then we exchanged numbers.  He called and to my dismay he did NOT have a Spanish accent…but a perfectly normal American one.  But he was ever so nice…we chatted a while and a few days later agreed to meet up at a Chinese restaurant.  He actually was on his way home from visiting his parents’ farm and smelled…so he stopped at Wal-Mart to freshen up and buy a new shirt. I was in Target in my holey jeans and Chuck Taylors and not at all my normal dressed-to-the-nines first date self.  I quickly bought cheap make-up and fixed my face in the car. He showed up just as I finished applying my lipstick.  I took one look at him and knew…I was going to break his heart and ruin his life.  I was sure of it. I could see that he was a genuine person, an honest person, a simple person….and I was a hot mess, practiced in the conniving and deceitful ways of women.  I prayed a quick prayer that either God would give me the grace to a woman worthy of such a man or make him turn tail and run without me having to chase him off.

So, we had our first date and talked and talked.  I learned he was born in Mexico and immigrated at the age of 3 so that his older brother could attend a school for the blind here.  He had such a fascinating story and spoke so humbly and he was just so damn sweet that I just had to see him again, but I let him take the reins.  For once, I really tried to behave like a lady; and he was always a true gentleman.  He actually courted me, and interestingly, refused to kiss me until our third date. I lingered while he helped me with my coat and made my lips available like Scarlett O’Hara throwing herself at Rhett, but he didn’t take the bait.

He is so sweet and shy!

By and by, after we had been dating about a year, he decided he would move closer and he got a job at the same company I worked for.  It had been pretty much never since I had someone around so often and someone that I actually had to answer to, so I, of course, freaked out and had to break the whole thing off…on his first day at his new job…which was at MY job.  I was at first relieved, for about 3 hours, but I just knew in my heart it wasn’t right. God had given me exactly what I asked for…which doesn’t always happen. God answers all prayers, but they don’t always happen to be exactly what you ask for because what you ask for isn’t always the right thing.  Hubby was devastated because this really was an out of the blue thing.

I don’t remember who called who at this point, but it righted itself in the span of about 3 days and we were suddenly on fast-track because we both knew that we wanted to be with only each other forever.  He proposed on Valentine’s day 2012 and we were married just 4 months later in June.  We had a giant Mexican wedding and were married through the Church.

The night before our wedding, we thought we had a bad omen: we LOST our marriage license. After my Narc Cop BFF tore apart my husband’s car and took out his dash looking for it, my sister in law sent up feverish prayers to Saint Anthony. Our priest solemnly told us there would be no wedding without that paper and my heart nearly exploded. I went home in tears to ransack the house. Since there were boxes everywhere in preparation for his move in, I felt so dismal and overwhelmed. My husband stayed with me to tear apart the house and eventually we found the fated piece of paper in one of his boxes of junk to THROW AWAY in the wee sma’s if the morn. Exhausted, we sheepishly we curled up and slept on the couch, waking up to each other on our wedding morning to a knock on the door from Father Charles. His eyebrows raised, he flicked his cigarette and inquired if he should perform a wedding that afternoon. Still in my pajamas with my husband cowering in the shadows, I told him all was well and we would be there at five-thirty.

Father Charles actually said something on our wedding day that I will never forget.  He looked each of us in the eyes and told us it was our job to make sure the other got to Heaven, and that did not mean for us to kill each other to meet that goal. I cannot say I am an expert on marriage, by any stretch of the imagination, but I can tell you that we both take that statement to heart, though we do our lapses in judgment and downfalls and have come close to trying to kill the other to send them to Heaven prematurely.  Despite the double-whammy of nearly throwing our marriage away, quite literally, and seeing each other prior to the wedding, we have been doing just fine.

I can tell you that the first year was SO hard…learning to live with another person when you are both independent people is very tough.  When you come from very different cultures, it is even tougher.  We both had to learn that you are still YOU, when you become one as man and wife. We finally hit a stride and we have learned how to communicate much better and we have really become one. There is no one I would rather be with and I cannot even picture my life without him.  I have no advice at all to give because we are still “newlyweds” in a sense, except that if you ever hope to make it to a place and a time where you are entitled to give advice to others, you have to have God in the marriage. Bottom line is, I have never been happier, more at peace, and more content, and while we know that the future is scary with unknowns and obstacles are in our path now, if we keep Christ in our relationship and continue to use the example of His love for us and the Church as the center of our marriage, we can at least be assured that at the end of this journey, we will have got each other to Heaven.

Te amo mucho mucho, mi amor. Para siempre!

Marmee Dearest

I realize I am a week late for Mother’s Day, but this has been a very, very, very hard week. My grandmother is under 24 hour Hospice care and I have been by my mother’s side with her as much as possible. It has been the longest week in the history of eternity, I do believe. I have cried myself sick, mended fences, and run the gamut of emotions. I have also learned that my mother is a pearl of very precious price.

I am an oldest daughter, and say what you will, I get the toughest of mama’s love because of it. I know my mama loves me just as much as she loves my sisters, but I guarantee you, swearing an oath on a stack of Bibles, that she is harder on me. I don’t know why this is, exactly, and I have no daughters of my own to prove I will be the same, (except in my imagination and imaginary Paloma already has high standards to live up to) but it is absolutely so. Ask any oldest daughter and she will give you the same story–including my mother, an oldest daughter herself.

My mama, or Marmee, as I affectionately call her after Marmee March, is a wonderful woman with a very kind heart. Her big blue eyes brim over with tears very readily in good times and in bad as she is very hyper-sensitive–a trait I inherited (the sensitivity, not the eyes–mine are little and green). She has the biggest smile this side of the Mississippi and I have always thought her a very beautiful woman. Until lately, however, I have never thought of her as terribly strong. Physically strong, yes. I have seen her run for miles and miles, dig a backyard swimming pool seven feet deep, build a 20 x20 foot wooden deck, and push and pull heavy furniture across the house singlehandedly. To be honest, though, I always thought was a bit of a pushover. She is not, entirely; she is just a nice person that chooses to believe the best out of others, which takes a different kind of strength. Perhaps her hyper-sensitive nature swayed my thinking previously, I am not sure, but it feels like I have only just noticed her strength in recent years. It seemed to me, when I was a kid, that she reserved her strength to “get my goat” all the time, but that isn’t true or fair.

My parents married very young–my mother was just a month over seventeen–and were desperately poor for a long time. Baby after baby came in rapid succession. Although I love my parents deeply, I always thought growing up that they should have waited. I thought it silly of my mother to obey her mother’s request to get married and drop out of high school and get her GED when she was at the top of her class. Maybe if she went to college, we might not be so poor, I thought. Maybe she would be happier. Looking back, I am ashamed at how hard I was on her, as it isn’t necessarily weakness to bend to the will of another. It can take immense strength to obey, and certainly it takes lots of strength learn to live on love and take on an adult role before you are perhaps ready to do so.

My daddy was under immense pressure to care for his wife and expanding family as the sole breadwinner with an electrician’s salary. This, coupled with him being quite young himself, led to a drinking problem. I am a daddy’s girl through and through, but I have a healthy fear and distaste of a drunken man, and wondered why my mother put up with such shenanigans. He never struck any of us, but we had some strategically placed pictures in the house covering up holes in the walls. I thought her weak for staying with a man that had so little self-control, when he came home drunk again on what would have been the last straw for me. Marmee took her vows seriously though, aside from loving him to distraction, and her years of prayer and faith in the marriage brought around a miraculous change in Daddy’s behavior and he quit drinking. I realize that not every marriage is salvageable, particularly if there is addiction and especially if there is abuse involved, and it takes strength to realize that and leave if necessary, but it also takes strength in situations like ours (which didn’t involve either, but was generally stressful and unpleasant) to know when to stick it out and pray for change rather than throw in the towel. I am proud of my mom for her faith, and my parents’ happy marriage is a witness and a model for my own.

Perhaps because she did marry young and had to leave school early, my mother made damn sure her girls went to school and excelled. Nothing less than our absolute best would be tolerated or acceptable. College was expected and obligatory. When I got pregnant as a teenager, I thought my mother would kill me like she always promised she would if I did such a thing, but she practiced the right balance of tough love and nurturing to put me on the right track so that I could become self-sufficient and care for my baby. My mother taught me how to be a mother, and thank heaven I had her give me some hands-on training because I might have been a miserable failure without her.

It is somewhat expected, I guess, that a mother should be an example to her daughter on how to be a wife and a mother, but it is my mother that is teaching me how to be a better daughter that has been her surprising lesson for me. My Mamaw–my mama’s mama–is slowly wasting away with Alzheimer’s Disease. In fact, the Hospice nurse doesn’t expect her to make it through the night. It is not as physically painful as cancer, perhaps, but it is just as heart-wrenching and horrible. Marmee  has faithfully visited her mother every single day, rain or shine, for the past year or so, feeding her lunch (when she used to eat), changing her, bathing her, and generally soothing her. Mamaw has been quite cranky and sometimes downright mean with my mother in a way that she never was when she was in her right mind (can’t say I blame her, either–for being cranky, not for being mean to my mama).  My sweet, sensitive mama tries not to take it personally and just lavishes love and care on Mamaw even when she is at her worst. She has a strength I never hope to HAVE to possess in her care of her mother.

This past week has been a real turning point in the way I view my mother’s love. I have seen her at her most vulnerable and at her strongest. As my grandmother lays in bed practically comatose, my mother has not left her side–for a week. She has been living in a nursing home for a WEEK with her mother, relentlessly praying for a peaceful passing and making sure she is comfortable, with all the general unpleasantness that comes with caring for a person that is on their deathbed. I have had to take turns with my sisters to beg her to eat and practically pry her away to get a shower. She has had perhaps two hours of sleep a night since Mother’s Day, curling up next to her sister on a twin hospital bed in the back corner of the nursing home. It is heartbreaking to see the exhaustion and pain in her eyes, but so inspiring at the same time. She has never looked more beautiful to me.

So, a week late and with nothing to give but my undying love and wholehearted awe, I want to tell my mother how much I love her and admire her strength. She may have been hard on me at times, but she is whipping me into shape because someday I may have to face something as scary and devastating as she has. I pray not, and I certainly hope that nothing ever happens to my mother to make her suffer so horribly as my Mamaw has, but I will always remember to draw from her strength, whatever my lot. Thank you, Marmee for being a shining example of how I should be as a wife, mother, and a daughter. I love YOU a bushel and a peck.

How the Roman Road Leads Us to…Rome

 

When I was in middle school and up until about half-way through high school, my best friend and I would walk the two blocks from our school to our church to join the youth group in “soul-winning” every Wednesday afternoon, which was, in all actuality, a social event for us. We would get to walk somewhere by ourselves, be reunited with the friends we longed to see since Sunday, go on a field trip, have dinner, sing in choir and then have Bible study that night.

The weekly field trip, as it were, was more often than not to a poor or lower-middle class area to go knock on doors and frighten people into Heaven. Armed with little Gideon’s New Testaments, flagged with neon page markers and underlined verses, we waylaid harried mothers in the middle of cooking dinner, children playing kickball in the yard, and fathers just stepping out of the car into the driveway and asked them point-blank if they died this instant would they be in Heaven or Hell. We passed out little pamphlets and invited them to the only truly “Bible believing” church in the area. Many times we were swatted away like flies; sometimes people ignored us even though there were signs of life within the home. I have been guilty of this myself, when I see a Jehovah’s Witness coming up the walk, I have been known to hit the floor and hold my breath until I hear their retreating footsteps. Sometimes, though, people would humor us—they would listen politely and go through the motions of praying the prayer of salvation and then promise they would come to church on Sunday. We would walk away from the house, feeling self-important, to report the number of souls we won to Christ that day to the rest of the group waiting on the bus. It became almost a contest to see who could win the most souls, and it was a special prize if anyone converted a Catholic.

We had a specific tactic–a favorite of all Evangelical Protestants–the Roman Road coupled with the Four Spiritual Laws. Specific verses, plucked out of context, arranged in such a way to scare the living daylights out of anyone that believed them and cause a smirk or sneer of derision out of those that didn’t. In all my years of soul-winning, I cannot recall even one time when I met an unbeliever and convinced them to believe—like, TRULY believe. Later, I would learn this is because I didn’t believe it myself fully, at least not in the context in which they were presented. Even though I doubted their sincerity, I still counted those that humored my efforts as “wins” and kept a little tally on the inside cover of my New Testament.

Until this one day…..suddenly everything seemed so….ridiculous. Almost 20 years later, I can picture the whole thing as vividly as 20 minutes ago.

It was August, which is a time of pure torture in Central Florida. You are never completely dry, your hair is never laying down, and the air is always like that puff of wicked-hotness that blasts you when you open a 400 degree oven. I was wearing a Monica Gellar inspired black and white floral print skirt that touched the toes of my super-trendy black mary-janes (so Clueless, right?). My partner, who I viewed as my arch-nemesis throughout my teenage years because we vied for the same boy’s attention, was wearing a barely legal pencil skirt that juuuuusst touched her knee and her beautiful strawberry-blonde hair lay smoothly down ignoring the 112% humidity. The rickety bus dropped us off in the poorest part of our poor town and we were assigned the right side of the street before it lumbered away. Never saying a word to each other, we plastered welcoming smiles on our faces when we approached each house.

Walking up to a teenage Haitian girl feeding a baby rice on the top step, we introduced ourselves and proceeded to accost the dear with verse after verse pointing to her clear damnation. The girl distractedly fed the baby one rice grain at a time and occasionally nodded in assent. When my partner asked her if she would like to go to Heaven she said yes in a thick accent. She began to pray with her, and I also bowed my head, but kept my eyes open. The young girl wasn’t praying at all, but steadily feeding the baby grains of rice; she even looked side-eyed at me and caught my gaze. “She doesn’t speak English”, I thought, “she has no earthly idea who these creepy white girls are praying over her!”

My partner and I walked back to the bus when it stopped to pick us up and I looked back at the girl, who was continuing to feed the baby. She looked up at me with a completely bemused look before diverting her attentions back to the infant, who began squalling for his dinner to be fed in a proper manner. Back on the bus, my partner triumphantly announced that she led that girl to the Lord as I slid into my seat and propped my knees up on the back of the seat in front of me and pondered what the heck I was doing there.

I started rifling through my memories of each afternoon of soul-winning…and I could not recall ever seeing one face again after my initial contact. I never saw them in church—and buddy, I’d notice if they were because I was there a LOT. I never remembered anyone thanking me or crying or walking away with a new bounce in their step. I felt like a dismal failure as a Christian as I looked forlornly at my tally marks that stood for nothing. I tried to give myself hope—maybe I planted a seed and Christ would water it! Maybe I did…who knows, but I began to feel that maybe the tactic was all wrong, because I cannot remember any of us ever bringing anyone to church from those Wednesday trips, so it wasn’t just my failure. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I never felt a sudden change or even a cozy comfort from my own knowledge of the salvation plan and the day I said the prayer. Why not? It was not the first time, nor the last, the “one and done” doctrine had bothered me—it just felt so incomplete, somehow.

Being a public school kid, I had exposure to outside ideas, which, coupled with my naturally curious mind, marked me as a potential trouble source in my fundamentalist world. I toed the line for many years, wanting acceptance and desiring so badly to have the fire in my heart that I perceived that many of them had, but I was not buying any of it and my skepticism brought suspicion upon myself. As a cocky teenager, my questions got bolder, my remarks got sassier, and my smirk more frequent. It wasn’t long before not only was I uncomfortable around people I knew my whole life, but I was becoming justifiably unwelcome.

It would be years before I felt true fire in my heart, as my journey to the Catholic faith was not an easy Point A to Point B journey. However, after truly discovering Catholicism, I felt an inner glow and peace I had never known, and I feel sure it radiates outside of me—maybe not all of the time because I am human with bad days and good days, but certainly it never goes out and it is genuine. My evangelism and discipleship have changed and I attempt to allow the Holy Spirit to use me to show kindness and work for unity to help bring people closer to Him.

Recently, I have re-visited the Roman Road through Roman eyes. It is hard to argue with the black and white divinely inspired word of God, and indeed, Catholics have no argument against it at all despite what Protestants may think (Catholic friends, check this out for a hearty LOL—my favorite phrase is “The Vatican has redefined many of its keywords”). In fact, Catholics walk further down that Roman Road to the finish line to include the sacraments, instead of taking the first exit off at the end of a prayer.

It may seem more complicated, but it is really not. Catholics believe we are saved through God’s Grace—not works (Ephesians 2: 4-9), as commonly believed by those outside the faith. By accepting the free gift of God’s Grace, we are professing our faith and receiving Him into our heart, but we live our faith through works. Our Baptism, even if done as an infant before we are aware of what it entails, is the opening of the channel of grace and the beginning of our salvation. What we do from there either hinders or increases the flow of grace; the grace is still free and it is always your choice to accept it or throw it away. Our sin separates us from God and blocks the channel of grace that He continually bestows upon us, but confessing it and repenting re-opens the channel so blessings can flow anew. Jesus paid the price for our sin and the grace provided through His mercy enables our faith and works through faith, which are not innately valuable on their own and do not merit us salvation without His grace.

Nothing about the Roman Road implies that it is a “one and done” deal. Yes, we are saved by accepting the grace of God through faith—absolutely. We continue to be saved by grace, through faith, which is lived through works. The saving does start at a moment in time, but it continues on throughout our lives, and does not end at the end of a prayer. Jesus himself makes it very clear in the Sermon on the Mount that faith and works go hand in hand and neither by itself is justification. He continually preached this in his parables, as well, and instilled this in his disciples. This teaching is most clear in the Book of James, “Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man can say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works…Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only…For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also” (James 2:14-18, 24, 26).

That being said, let’s revisit the famed Roman Road:

• Romans 1:18 “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness” —I think all Christians can agree that men deserve God’s righteous wrath for our offenses against Him and against each other, and that men suppress God’s truth and attempt to pervert it for their own purposes.
• Romans 3:10 “As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one.”–I think that is pretty straightforward. Catholics believe we are all born tainted with original sin thanks to our first parents, Adam and Eve, choosing their will above God’s
• Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God”—Again, no argument here.
• Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord”—Yep. Sounds legit to Catholic ears. We deserve death because of our sin, but God gives us the gift of salvation through His Son, and in Him, we are alive forever, even after we shed this earthly body. Catholics believe this better than most, because we profess the communion of saints and practice it.
• Romans 5:8 “But God commendeth His love toward us, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”—True, John 3:16 repeated. God loves us, even when we don’t deserve it, and because He loves us so much, Christ died for us so we can be in full communion with Him again. Mankind continually broke God’s covenant, but instead of killing us, He died instead, to form a new covenant.
• Romans 3:24 “Being justified freely by his grace through redemption that is in Christ Jesus”—Uh…yeah. Grace. We think so, too. We are reading the same thing, after all!
• Romans 10: 9-10, 13 “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart of man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For whosoever call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”—We totally get that, too. We even confess it over and over again at every Mass, every time we pray the Rosary—all the time. We continually ask and pray for salvation.
• Romans 8:30, 35, 38-39 “Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”—We agree, no outside forces of any kind can take us away from the love of God. We, can, however, remove ourselves. God would still love us, but we would be rejecting Him and His grace. Paul was speaking to the early Christians that were being martyred, giving them hope and courage to face whatever might befall them because the reward of heaven would be theirs.

It has always made me squirm when I have confided to my new Catholic friends that the vast majority of evangelical Christians do not consider Catholics true Christians. They are always shocked because they would never say that about a Protestant, though they will wonder sadly why Protestants will reject lovely sacraments, sacramentals, and devotions that bring us only closer to God. Catholics take turns from being genuinely hurt to heartily amused when confronted with what Protestants think Catholics believe. Archbishop Fulton Sheen said it best when he said “There are not over a hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church—which is, of course, quite a different thing.” Protestants, Go ye therefore teaching all nations, baptizing them, and all that, but please read up on the first Church and understand you are preaching to the choir when you knock on a faithful Catholic’s door.

Your sister in Christ,

Janie

 

Why Lord of the Flies is the WORST

At the behest of Jenna @ Call Her Happy, I will tell you a little embarrassing story about me that has no moral, rhyme, or reason. Maybe you will get a smile out of the mortification of a very sensitive teenage girl, but that is about all you will get out of it.

I seriously hate Lord of the Flies. Jenna is reading it despite my admonitions. It is the WORST.BOOK.EVER. written in the English language, outside of anything written by Nicholas Sparks and other nonsensical romance novels. If you haven’t read it, I suppose you should so you can A) understand why it is so awful, B) crawl out from under the rock you have been living under, and C) say something witty at the next fancy-pants cocktail party or art gala you may attend when your toddlers are self-sufficient adults. It has some really deep themes and morals and whatnot, I will give it that, but it is just the worst thing I have ever been forced to read.

And live.

Because I DID live through it, in comedy form.

Once upon a time, in the year 2000, there was a very sweet and shy 17-year-old girl in her senior year of high school. She was quite pretty, but not beautiful. She was well-known, but not popular. She dated a varsity football player, had top grades, and a decent sense of fashion for the era, but she never desired to be noticed and did her best to blend in.

One day, quite unexpectedly, she was nominated for Homecoming Queen. Albeit she was nominated through the National Honor Society, not through any popular sports club or anything, but she was indeed nominated. The girl knew she would not ever win the crown, but for a brief blink of time in her history,she felt that anything was possible.

The Homecoming parade was one of the biggest events at the school, nay, the town. Everyone showed up to cheer the football team on, especially as they were quite a good team that rarely lost a game. Because NHS was a small club, it joined with another group, the AP English class, to build its annual Homecoming float. The girl was also in the AP English class (of course), and it was her favorite class she ever had, so she had no reason to be less than ecstatic, even though the theme of the event was “It’s A Jungle Out There” and the girl loathed leopard print anything (except leopards). The combined group decided upon designing their float around “Lord of the Flies”, which was a book the AP English class recently read and parsed within an inch of their lives. The girl much preferred Disney’s Tarzan, or if they wanted to be really witty, use Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” and do a city-scape of Chicago or a factory. Both ideas were shot down: Tarzan for being too predictable and Sinclair for being too over-the-head of the average citizen redneck of the village. The girl offered up Axl Rose’s rock anthem as a theme, preferring drug-dealers to murderous children with pig heads on sticks, but to no avail.

Part of the tradition of Homecoming is that the kids build the float themselves. The ideas, the execution, all of it must be originated from the kids participating in the event. The fifteen or so teenagers were left to their own devices to construct the float outside of school hours. In school, there was a natural pecking order, but outside of it, lines were blurred. Quiet mice bared their fangs and the higher-ups dug in their heels , or surprisingly acquiesced at times to forge a truce.

The float was eventually crudely crafted from sharp palmetto fronds and bamboo. The kids fashioned spears from long sticks and donned white T-shirts spattered in red paint. Several even smeared war-paint on their cheeks and took turns parading the giant paper-mache pig head like it was a game-winning trophy. The girl’s carefully-hidden daydreams of a crown evaporated as the float made its agonizingly slow circumference of the football field in front of the entire town. She tried to make herself small and hide behind a palmetto leaf, but there was no hiding when her name was announced over the loud-speaker. She bravely waved her best Queen of England wave and held her chin high, thankful her sunburn camouflaged her blushing cheeks.

Their float did not win or even place in the parade. The Tarzan float won.

Of course the girl did not win Homecoming Queen or even make it to the Court. The girl brandishing the pig head won.

The young girl buried the unhappy memory in her yearbook in the back of the guest room closet, only to be relived every time The Lord of the Flies is mentioned.

There you have it. The reason the worst book on the planet is a thousand-fold worse for me. Fifteen years later, and I still am not quite ready to laugh about it. This entire story is verifiable through the Haines City Sr High yearbook of 2000-2001 and through approximately half of my facebook friends.

I am in the center in the clean shirt next to the blood-stained maniac and the girl in the hat.

The girl on the far left won Homecoming Queen. She is a sweet girl despite her fondness of war-paint and severed pig heads. She deserved her crown. I am hiding behind the leaves.

Me at the Homecoming dance lookin’ hawt

The winning Tarzan float.

Beautiful Lessons, Ugly Disease

My Mamaw has always been one of the most precious people in my life.  As her namesake, it is quite fitting that we share many things in common: slanty green eyes, full hour-glass figures, and our love of old southern gospel music are just a few of our shared attributes. We are also both outspoken oldest daughters, with firey tempers and sharp tongues.

While she grew up in the foothills of Arkansas in a dirt-poor family of 15 children living hand-to-mouth, I have lived a life of privilege, by comparison. She literally lived those stories you hear old people tell about walking 5 miles to school up hill, both ways, barefoot in the snow.  Working every day milking dozens of cows, she then herded them to pasture and picked never-ending rows of cotton. Married at 15 to my Papaw, they made their way eventually to Florida to build their family home with their own hands, piece by piece, brick by brick. She likes to say she “handed him the boards and took the cussins”. She endured 11 years of infertility, which she blames on my Papaw’s case of the mumps that “went down on him”, and then raised three children nearly to adulthood when God surprised her with another baby at the age of 44. As long as I have been alive, and pretty much as long as SHE has been alive, she has been taking care of someone…if not her own children, then one of her many brothers or sisters, and finally her grandkids who all worshipped the ground she walked on.

A very queen of cooks, with a specialty in fried chicken and seven layer cake (a southern delicacy with paper thin layers of yellow cake slathered in home-made chocolate frosting), she could make a meal you could smell half a mile away…just follow your nose to her knotty pinewood kitchen and pull up a chair. Aside from cooking, she was a master in other domestic duties, waking up before dawn to clean the house spic and span and work tirelessly all day crocheting or sewing. She maintained a lovely yard, a sanctuary of green grass with overgrown flowerbeds and numerous potted plants beneath the dappled shade of huge live oak trees, and she never shied away from heavy yard work– mowing her own grass, painting her own tin roof, and moving an entire patio of bricks clear across the yard in her sixties and seventies. She was never a real lady; her hands are rough and calloused and her feet look like they never saw shoes in all of their days, she has never been afraid to speak her mind, and she could snore down any man…but she has always been a woman to look up to…a woman I wish I could be.

I miss her so much…too much to think about, so I put it out of my mind most days. I am a terrible, horrible granddaughter to the grandmother I love and adore so much because it hurts me to take care of her. That is the ugly and sad truth and I hate myself for it. Mamaw has Alzheimer’s and she is in her last stages, and my time with her is so short, but I craftily find almost anything else to do than just show her the love I do actually have for her–and I really do love her so much. She doesn’t know me anymore and some days she doesn’t want me to touch her or talk to her too much, if her meds aren’t right or on time, and her once green eyes that crackled with fire are faded gray and stare vacantly more and more, with the little spark of recognition less frequent. She cannot walk, and is very easily unnerved or aggravated–she wants to do something and nothing at all at the same time, and almost nothing pleases her. Any memories she does have are all distorted or manufactured…it is nothing like on TV where the old person relives an actual old memory or confuses you for someone in the past, at least not in her case. I would give almost anything to hear her old stories again, just to hear her talk willingly or laugh, even if it meant mistaking me for an old friend.

I don’t know much about many mental diseases or disorders, but I sort of imagine that in many cases it is like the person is trapped inside their own head. Neurons and pathways just aren’t linking up properly to allow that person to shine through.  Alzheimer’s isn’t like that. Sometimes Alzheimer’s feels like the person is a tire with a slow leak that you cannot find to patch up–the air just keeps escaping, there is no fixing it, and you start to panic. Sometimes it feels like all your really nice, plump, juicy grapes are turning into raisins–dehydrated shells of their former glory, but sweet nonetheless.  Sometimes it feels like Alzheimer’s is more like the person is fading away–like a hologram, static-y and glitch-y like Obi-wan Kenobi relaying a message through R2-D2.

I expressed this to my good friend at church, Arlene, whose mother suffered from dementia. She explained to me that this disease, as ugly as it is, has its beautiful points, too. For one thing, she pointed out, it gives me an opportunity to be a channel of God’s grace and mercy. I have the privilege of being an instrument of God for my fellow human, and my most beloved grandmother especially, in her darkest and final hours. It is always His will that I do this, and I must pray for the courage to do His will over mine. She also expressed to me that this is probably my Mamaw’s purgatory and when her time has come, she will be ready to enter the pearly gates, or be that much closer to it.

Purgatory was not something I struggled with when I was going through my conversion, once I understood what it was, and that it was not a place of torture or punishment, but a purification/glorification process, so it makes sense that an upright, God-fearing woman that committed no major sins that I know of complete her purgatory stint with this disease and have no further ramifications at its end. I know my Mamaw doesn’t specifically believe in purgatory, but I do know that she believes we do our suffering here on earth, and that  suffering comes whether you are a good or bad person because this world is full of toil and trouble…so I think she would actually agree to an extent.

Suffering, too, brings us closer to Jesus. We get a tiny little smidgeon of the suffering He endured for us, and become a little more like Him. James tells us to “count it all joy” when we are faced with trials. Joy? We never ever see that while we go through it, of course. I didn’t understand it entirely when I first read it, but there is a quote in one of my favorite childhood books, Rilla of Ingleside, in which Rilla, who is a teenage girl growing up during WWI with three brothers and a sweetheart overseas in the military, marks the second anniversary of the start of the war with a reflection that she thought before the war started that the past two years would be full of fun. When questioned if she would trade the past two awful years for years of fun, she says, “No. I wouldn’t. It’s strange – isn’t it – They have been two terrible years – and yet I have a queer feeling of thankfulness for them – as if they had brought me something very precious in all their pain.” If I follow God’s command of showing help and mercy to my grandmother, my suffering is not for nothing. Knowing that doesn’t make it any easier, somehow, though.

I have learned, too, through dealing with the effects of this disease that strength comes when we are seemingly at our weakest. My mom, who is certainly earning her saintly crown already with her corporal works of mercy, tends to her mother tirelessly and so devotedly. I know that she is exhausted sometimes, and her sadness is palpable when she leaves Mamaw’s side for the night, but she does count the suffering all joy and treasures every remaining moment with Mamaw. My sweet Mama, who is meek and mild, sensitive and shy, has shown remarkable strength and courage in this losing battle. Oh, that I could be more like her, I think to myself while simultaneously hoping there are no more opportunities to warrant such a show of bravery.

This slow descent into death has given us all a chance to say goodbye, after a fashion. Instead of it being like a hologram of a person, the end of the disease is really most like teleporting, Mr. Spock style–she is fading here, but showing up stronger in the new world.  I know I will cry when Mamaw is gone, but I also know I will be so relieved and happy because her earthly suffering will be over and she is fully in Heaven. My Papaw died unexpectedly for me, when I was a child, and it traumatized me and hurt for so long. Although it isn’t that I love my Mamaw any less than I love him, I know that the pain will be less when she goes. In may ways, it feels like she has been gone for years already…and so slowly that I never noticed her leaving.  My greater sadness will be if I cannot muster up the courage to do as I ought, and let her and Jesus down with my own selfishness.  I love them both too much to be so small-souled and cowardly.

Pray for me, friends. Pray also that my sweet grandmother lives her final days in peace and comfort. Pray most of all that we find a safe, reasonable cure for such an ugly disease.

God bless you.

Lylas!

The day I first laid eyes on my best friend I……hated her.

She was prettier than I and at least as smart because she was in my “Alpha” classes. She had trendy button-fly Bongo jeans and beautiful high cheekbones with creamy skin. All of the 13-year-old boys sat up and took notice of HER…this new girl who came with barely six weeks of school left in the year. I loathed her and I concluded life was NOT fair. No person should be that pretty and smart—at least, not unless it was going to be me. This girl was on my bus to and from school and in virtually every class—it was torture, yet there was nothing at all off-putting about her and she seemed like a perfectly nice person. The skank.

My then-best friend moved up to high school the next year, leaving me alone in 7^th grade with this new girl. I was (am) a naturally shy person and didn’t make friends terribly easily. I was friendly enough and people knew me, but I was quiet and I had strict parents and no after-school activities, so my social contact was limited to between classes and the school bus, basically. New girl was lonely, too, and somehow, Sandy got up the courage to come and talk to me, despite the hate-vibes I was throwing at her, and my life changed forever. It was very literally one of those moments in history where your life actually changes course and nothing is the same after it.

We became almost surgically joined the hip. People that knew us in our youth would always question where the other was if were weren’t together. When we were apart, we wrote long epistles to each other, signing the letters with hearts, BFFs and L.Y.L.A.S. (Love you like a sister, for those you not in the know). We spent hours on the phone every day, even after we spent hours with each other after school gorging on Little Debbies and ramen noodles, drooling over Sonny Corinthos on General Hospital, singing the songs to Grease, or crying over Beaches. We shared mix tapes, clothes, and sometimes even boyfriends. I cried so hard when we received opposite class schedules one year, my mom tried to appease me with a kitten. When her husband married her, I felt a surge of cold anger and jealousy like I have never felt before or since (I have since come to love him to tiny pieces).  I know she doesn’t walk on water or anything, but I sometimes forget.

We don’t really have much in common, though. We never have. In fact, we are so polar opposite on most things that if one of us makes a 180-degree change in personality, the other does as well (subconsciously), so we remain polar opposites. It somehow works for us. In the beginning, she was the curvier one with nice hips and shapely legs and I was the skinny-minny with jutting hip bones and scarecrow legs; now she is quite thin and willowy and I am….er…voluptuous. She is a brunette, I am blonde. She dyes her hair any crazy color she wants, gets piercings and tattoos and I could easily pass for a modern-day Puritan. She was born on Halloween, I was born on Christmas (YES, the actual holidays).   She is talented in almost anything she attempts and is a divine singer…I am mediocre (at best) with any activity, terrified of sports, have no rhythm, and lip sing unless I am at home or in the car (then I sing at the top of my lungs). She is a little out there and I almost always play it safe. She can laugh at herself and I am a crybaby. She is slightly crunchy and a health-conscious vegetarian; I could face plant into french fries if left to my own devices or subsist almost entirely on smoked meats.

She did go through this weird (for her, not weird in general, necessarily) period of being very conservative. She wore only long skirts, listened to only Christian music, and held up signs in front of abortion clinics–a Duggar, basically. While she was in that phase, I went through my wild-child phase of dating 3 guys at once. The tables turned again and we are back to our core selves.

I think we can agree that Jordan Catalano was super hot when he was younger but Brian Krakow grew up to be the sexier man (Yeah, no… changed my mind. If only Jared Leto would clean up, then he would win…she would agree), Mariah Carey could kick Celine Dion’s butt on and off the stage, and Diane Sawyer has an excellent shade of lipstick. We also devour books when we get alone time—though I tend to be more of the classical persuasion—love to garden despite brown thumbs, can scratch a living off a rock, and love to order our kids around because we can. “Because I said so” is the very best phrase ever once you are an adult.

 vs

I haven’t seen my girl in about 8 months, but I never worry about the time that elapses between our trysts. The love is always there and we always have each other in our prayers and hearts and I know that if I need her, she will always listen (and likewise).  We live pretty far apart and have made new friends in our adulthood, but that bond is still there and we can always pick things up where we left off.

It amazes me that God puts the exact people you need in your life, whether you thought you needed them or not, whether you WANTED them or not. Sandy never had to talk to me and I never gave her a reason to, but God knew I needed her, and that she also needed a friend, so He opened her heart and opened my eyes. Christ showed His love for me through her. She loves me in spite of my shortcomings, even when I am mean. She calls me out on my crap. She celebrates with me when something good happens. She cries with me when my heart is broken. She gets a righteous anger when I am wronged. She protects me from people or things that would seek to hurt me. God only knows the person I would be now if I never met her. Whether she knows it or not, I thank Jesus every day for her and her friendship and that He loves me so much He finds more ways to show me through other people.

The more I think about the infinite ways God shows us love, it overwhelms me. It is even more beautiful somehow that He gives us infinite opportunities to walk in His footsteps and be just a little more like Him by allowing us to be channels of His love to others. Simple kind acts all the way up to great sacrifices…you just never know when a kind little gesture may lead to something bigger– in your life, someone else’s, or perhaps cause a chain reaction.

My sweet friend may not have known it at the time or have realized it since, but what her 13-year-old self did for the least of His brethren (me), she did also for Him, which gave not only she and I immeasurable joy, but caused a ripple effect. We both learned valuable lessons with our juvenile friendship that spilled into our other relationships and helped craft us into the people we are and how we treat others. As Mother Teresa once said, “Love is repaid by love alone.”

My Conversion Story–Part Two

If you missed part one, see here.

Reminder: This is my own personal story. I firmly believe God speaks to different people differently and however He chooses to do so. It just so happens that He chooses to speak to me through the Catholic church. I am not here to point out a right or a wrong for everyone, but to tell what was right for ME.

By and by, I started to break away from the church I was raised in and attended a Southern Baptist church with my high school boyfriend and I liked it much better. The atmosphere was much friendlier in general, though I missed some dear people I knew at my old church. I found, though, that it wasn’t just the atmosphere or the people who got to me at my old church…it was the basic principles that were being taught. The questions that plagued me then, plagued me still. The people were sweet, God-fearing people and I have no doubt they are true Christians, but none of that helped me reconcile my questions about the history/science of the world with my faith. I still couldn’t wrap my head around “faith without works is dead” if we only needed faith and not works. I still could not, could NOT understand sola scriptura. Didn’t it actually SAY in John 20:30 that Jesus did many more things not written in this book?

My new church held a debate in the youth group, and if there is one thing I love, it is a challenge. The debate was whether God existed. To be honest, I was at a very low point in my faith and I wasn’t sure at all whether He existed. I accepted the challenge of proving His existence, mostly to prove it to myself. Proving He existed seemed harder than proving He didn’t. I won the debate by a landslide, but it certainly wasn’t hard because who there was going to admit God didn’t exist no matter how good or sucky my points were? At the end, I still wasn’t convinced and I was more upset at the sheep-mindset of the people around me than ever before.

I became pretty jaded and left church altogether for a while, but after my son was born I felt renewed in my personal faith and needed a community to foster it. God DID exist…I could look in my son’s eyes and practically see his soul. I could hear God calling me, wanting a relationship with me, and I was reaching up for Him. “Here am I, Lord!”, just like little Samuel.

I looked for Him everywhere…and I found Him everywhere else that I didn’t bother to search before…the intricacies in the wrinkles of my son’s fingers, the veins in leaves, the vastness of the night sky, the eyes of the poor and suffering. He wasn’t JUST buried in the Good Book. He wasn’t just in the rules and regulations set upon me. And he certainly wasn’t JUST in the only type of Christian or person that I knew.

I found all kinds of people from all walks of life, that had great stories and interesting views, but I didn’t yet find a church home. Some people don’t need a community or a building—lucky them, but I had a deep stirring to know God better and so many questions still. I floated from denomination to denomination, trying on churches like shoes. I went several times to each kind to be sure how I felt about it and I read up on their beliefs. I walked around in those beliefs, trying them out, wearing them in. I really liked the nice Methodists and I suppose the zeal of Pentecostals was certainly inspiring, if it was an exact wrong fit for my introverted self.

I sifted through internet articles and church websites for hours upon hours.   I read tons of books and scoured the bookshelves of libraries and bookstores…and finally I found a book that spoke to ME..written exactly for ME . I have read it about 17 times and it is all marked up, and it never gets old. “Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic” by David Currie really fanned my flames and knocked my socks off. I sure would love to listen to a lecture from that guy in a college course or something, because he sure is very learned.

So, I researched more. I called my dad, who was raised Catholic and I asked why he wasn’t Catholic anymore. “ I wouldn’t say that I am not Catholic…I think you kind of always are…but I met your mom and went to church with her, and then when I didn’t like that, I just stopped going. “ So I asked him if he had anything against Catholics… “Nope. I mean, I wasn’t terribly fond of the nuns that nearly broke my thumb for writing with my left hand when I was little, but nothing against Catholics in general. Whatever floats your boat.”

So, I gathered my courage to go to Mass. I had no Catholic friends and had never seen a mass. The only priests I saw were on TV. I knew Catholics stood up, sat down, knelt down and prayed in unison, but I didn’t know when or how or the words to say. I sat in the back and played “Simon Says”. You know what I noticed immediately? 1: No political or hate-filled speeches about anyone. Nothing about liberals or gays or anything, just a call to love, a call to come to Christ. No one preached AT you, but truth just overflowed and filled my heart. 2: All senses were on board…beautiful windows and murals and vestments, incense, movement, chanting, community prayer. There was too much to take in to nod off in boredom. 3. Bible verses. Lots of them. More than I would normally hear in a month of Sundays. No one brought Bibles with them because large chunks of the OT, NT and the Gospels were written in a book along with Psalms and the week’s prayers…my old, tattered KJV sat sternly beside me unopened, but I checked the verses myself and they were the same. No one pulled a fast one on me. Plus, the priest kissed the Gospel, raised it over his head…it was revered. No one could doubt that Catholics believed the Word of God.

I went to Mass again and again because my holes were healing. I found such a comfort in the familiarity of the Mass—you kind of always know what to expect, but it is still new every time. I memorized the prayers and responses, though I could not officially be one of them. My heart ached when we got to the part about “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof…” because I so desperately wanted Jesus under my roof whether I was worthy or not. The part in the Lord’s prayer about “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us…” really hit me between the eyes…especially the “AS” part. No wonder I couldn’t find Jesus in the other church I attended– no one as forgiving as Jesus forgave us, so they could hardly expect any sort of lasting peace. I also realized I needed to forgive THEM: I felt marginalized and ostracized pretty much my whole life for having opinions, which led to bitterness and pulled me away from God. God was there for them and for me to seek out, but with all the meanness of Judgy McJudgersons, no one could get at Him and His peace.

I devoured more books and then eventually called the priest who was a jolly, funny Irishman that looked just like Mr. Bean. I joined RCIA late because it had already been in session for a few months, but I was like Hermione Granger in the front of the class with my hand raised at every question. Father was so impressed with my zeal that he sought special permission for me to join the flock a little early. I was already Baptized, so I had the choice of jumping right in or waiting until Easter. I decided to go for it…February 14, 2010, Jesus became my “valentine” and I was born again Catholic.

Confirmation and First Communion. My Grandma was my sponsor 🙂

Becoming Catholic has been the single best thing that has ever happened to me. Since then, the Eucharist has sustained me and given me a feeling of true peace—Jesus is under my roof. If, for whatever reason, I missed confession or missed Mass, I got a healthy dose of what some may refer to as Catholic guilt. It wasn’t so much as me feeling guilty (though I did), it was about me just MISSING Jesus. Like I was keeping him at arm’s length and depriving myself of the peace and joy He brings me. As a Baptist, I would miss church because I felt sick, felt tired, was out-of-town or for any myriad of reasons. Whether I went or not didn’t really impact my peace so much because there really wasn’t anything the pastor couldn’t tell me that I didn’t already hear or know before or couldn’t find out for myself and I had no peace to start with. Often, going to church made me feel more wretched than if I had just stayed home. Going to MASS is like giving a big hug to Jesus or like being a little child crawling up into his lap for comfort.

Like I said before, God talks to us in different ways and people are drawn to him through different journeys. This was mine. We don’t all have to be Catholic, though for myself nothing else makes sense for me. I still communicate regularly with my Baptist friends at my old church and I have absolutely nothing but love for them. Very few understand my choice or reasoning, but that is ok. They pray for me, and I for them, and God loves us all. I plan on giving them the shock of their lives when I meet them in Heaven and we will all have a good laugh 😉

My Conversion Story–Part One

This weekend marks my 5th…anniversary? re-birthday?…of becoming a Catholic.  Also, we had seven new Catholic converts at our parish get Confirmed and take First Holy Communion today. This sounds like a perfect time to share my own conversion story 🙂

It is a bit lengthy, I suppose, because one doesn’t just make this journey overnight, so I will break it up into two posts.

I think I have always been a Catholic at heart.  I love the “pomp and circumstance”, the beautiful churches and stained glass windows.  I love that almost every day is a holiday (holy day = holiday) because there is a mass every day, every hour, creating unending praise to our Lord here on Earth. Everlasting Easter.  I love the communion of saints. I never understood, when I was an itty bitty Baptist, why I couldn’t talk to a saint, friend or relative that went on before me and ask them to pray for me, the same way I could ask my mother, pastor or living friends to pray for me.  I mean, were they not “present with the Lord?”

Then, as I did research and came to understand the meaning behind the Eucharist, purgatory, apostolic succession, papal infallibility, etc., my logic was appeased and all of those dark shadows, and frankly, lies I had been told about what Catholics believed vanished from my mind and my heart began to mend. When I found out that science and religion were not mutually exclusive in the Catholic world, I was sold.  Now, before you scoff at that, I am fully aware and have read about the sordid history of the PEOPLE in the Church…but if you read further, you understand those were people, not the Church itself.  It takes far more than an “act of Congress” to make something a LAW in the Catholic church.  There are plenty of things the Church still ponders and considers and has not made an official proclamation into the Church doctrine about, and many wrongs its people have made in the past have been made right by official documentation later. Sometimes, unfortunately, it takes some horrible wrongs of its people before it makes an official proclamation, but I think that is because the Church values free will and personal discernment of the Holy Spirit but when the devil tries to run amok, it has to put its foot down.

My parents were Christian. They did not force church upon us, though.  I mean, they certainly read Bible stories to us and talked about Jesus and whatnot, but they didn’t MAKE me go to Sunday School.  I did it on my own.  My sisters went when they were small, but somewhere along the line, they sort of just…stopped.  They are Christians, too, but they weren’t all gung-ho into the whole church-thing like I was.  I was, like, church militant for a while.

Ennnnnnnniee way…….so I was 7 years old, sitting placidly in my cold metal folding chair in my appropriate length dress, white ruffle socks and white patent leather shoes, being ever so quiet in my attempt to win the “quiet seat prize” of a candy bar, listening intently to my Bible lesson (as an aside, this I LOVE about Baptists…they sure do know their Bible stories).   After the lesson, there was an altar call. My head was obediently bowed, but my eyes were disobediently open, spying the rustlings going on in front of me.

Me, age 7, in my church attire

I greatly admired a lovely 17-year-old Asian girl piano player at my church. She was exotic and beautiful (and she still is) and just the nicest, most angelic looking creature (she still is) and wanted nothing more than to be noticed by her (I still love her). I noticed that when asked if anyone would like to have Jesus come into their hearts, the child would raise his or her hand this angel-girl with black hair so long she could sit on it would lead them by the hand to a corner and whisper with them and then hug them.  Well, that settled it, I needed Jesus in my heart so that I could be loved by that girl. I raised my hand and stumbled over to her corner. She put her hands on my shoulders and looked in my face and asked me if I loved Jesus. Yes, I did. Did I want him in my heart? Of course.  She then laced her fingers in mine and prayed with me and asked me to repeat after her.  She then looked up, with her sweet smile and asked me if I felt him in my heart.  I certainly felt all warm and fuzzy and deliriously happy, but I think it had less to do with Jesus in my heart than with the attention I was receiving from the person I admired most in this world. So I nodded.

Let me preface this next part by saying I love Baptists…and Presbyterians and Lutherans and Episcopalian/Anglicans and Mormons and Buddhists and Taoists and Jews and Muslims and Atheists and all kinds of people…you will get no hate from me.   God calls people in different ways and I think the variety in the world is a beautiful thing.  What I dislike is self-imposed crazy ignorance in people who then run their gator about which they have no knowledge.  No me gusta.  Unfortunately, this kind of thing happens with people from all walks of life and in all faith traditions.  There are fundamentalists everywhere.

Ahem. So I grew and flourished and waxed strong (you like that old school KJV talk, don’t cha? There’s more where that came from) in my new faith.  So I thought.  It really wasn’t too long before lots of questions popped into my inquisitive mind and spilled out of my impertinent mouth. Naturally, I had to know WHY we believed and practiced these things that we “believed”.  Some things sounded like they had reasonable explanations, others not so much.  I never could figure out why someone in shorts would be turned away at the front door.  Or why there could never be an improvement of an English translation of the Bible…I mean, medically we have advanced over putting leaches on people, so is it not possible that the sum of human knowledge gained since 1611, along with the new discoveries of ancient texts, that we may have a better understanding of ancient lexicon?? I digress…

I distinctly remember one Sunday School class in which the teacher said it was such a shame that Whitney Houston did not use her voice for the Lord and that she obviously wasn’t a Christian, or she was a very back-slidden one.  First, it intrigued me that teacher knew who Whitney Houston was and what she sounded like (I lived pretty normally by American standards at home, since I had normal parents…but these cats didn’t, usually, so that is why it intrigued me).  Secondly, I wondered why we had to assume Whitney was not a Christian or was a bad Christian.  We didn’t know her.  And we don’t get to decide.

Me, age 15, posing outside of church

I remember being told time and time again that we had to keep ourselves separate from the world and not mingle with “sinners” so that we wouldn’t become “back-slidden” ourselves, but that we DID have to minister to everyone we met and make sure they knew the path to Heaven (via the Roman Road).  And yet, So-and-so would judge another person for having a baby out-of-wedlock, but would then cheat on her husband.   Unwed mother would then eventually want to get married, but couldn’t get married inside the church, but only outside in a garden or in a “chapel” offsite. You certainly weren’t a good Christian and voting Democrat.  Motes and beams in everyone’s eyes. I am surprised they could blink at all.

I realize this happens in lots of places and probably in some Catholic parishes…but the staggering lack of love that I encountered at the particular church I attended just hurt me.  I already suspected that they assumed Muslims, Jews and Buddhists were going to burn in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, but then I discovered that pretty much anyone that didn’t think like we did was doomed there, too.   The final straw was when a boyfriend I had attempted to make out with me and then later scratched up every CD I owned to “save my soul”.  And all of this was just the tip of the iceberg!

Me and the other black sheep, probably discussing banned topics.  Notice our legs..No, you don’t and you NEVER would.  These girls and I all broke free.

How did one KNOW they were saved?  Like, does a murderer, who asked Jesus in his heart before committing his crime, go to heaven?  Well, if he was a murderer, he probably wasn’t truly a Christian to begin with, they said. So, how do I know? Do I have to wait until I am committing some terrible act to know that I am not? What if I never do commit a terrible act, and that does nothing for me and I still go to hell? How do you explain the Book of James and his talk of faith and works?  If the world was only about 6,000 years old, how to explain dinosaur bones?  Why did Jesus give Peter the “keys to heaven”? Why were Genesis 1 and 2 different, or for that matter other events in the Bible from recorded history?  Why do we believe in the death penalty but not abortion?  I mean, I get babies are innocent and murderers are not, but isn’t the point that WE are NOT God and don’t call the shots?

So, so, so many questions and no answers suited me.  I was curious about what other Christians thought, although I followed suit by knocking on doors with my tiny little Gideon’s New Testament flagged and highlighted clasped in my hands. I “led” people to the Lord while driving myself away from Him. I “re-dedicated” my life numerous times and even tried getting saved again (and again). I read the Bible cover to cover TWICE. God, if He existed, was just NOT there in my heart…and yet…something or someone was calling my name.

For part two, see here.

 

In Which I am Learning “Thy Will” and Not “My Will”

People closest to us know that my husband and I have been wishing, hoping, thinking, and praying for a baby pretty much since the day we were married. Infertility never crossed our minds. My husband is one of 7 kids and pretty much all the women in my family get pregnant if you look at them longingly. We decided to wait about 8 months before truly trying for a baby, but we were always open to it. We wanted to get finances prepped and to build a “home”; besides we were adjusting to being married and with each other all the time and I have a son from another relationship that needed that time, too.

 
So here we are, nearly three years after our marriage and  two years after officially “trying” for a baby…y nada. I have had many moments of doubt and shame. I have had my heart swell up into my throat at the sight of the (many) pregnant women I know or see. My blood almost boils every time I see a new facebook post announcing a pregnancy.  I have cried at the mere sight of an infant at Mass or in the grocery store and have had to clasp my hands together to keep from reaching out to touch random babies. The monthly roller coaster of hope and then absolute despair is almost more than I can take. My husband is also sad, but he does not feel the pain they way I do, I know it (after all, his hormones don’t fluctuate as much), so I try to keep my tears hidden from him, except this morning when he woke me up from a sound sleep in which I was dreaming we had a 3 month old baby boy with his dimples and brown eyes…

 

I have tried every old wives’ tale and swallowed bottles of pre-natal vitamins. I pray almost incessantly and write my prayer request in the book at every church I visit. When we went to Mexico this summer, we visited several churches a day (Puebla has 365 Catholic churches, 1 for every day of the year) and we both knelt and prayed, tied prayer ribbons to the poles outside in the courtyards, walked on our knees to the altar. I have been to see a holistic medicine lady who gave me a ton of herbs which I dutifully took in various forms.  We have tried charts galore and also have thrown them out for spontaneity’s sake. I have lost 40 pounds and started working out more and doing yoga. I have tied to forget about it, but there is no quench for that longing.  There are no known defects for my husband or myself…this is truly, truly an Act of God.

 
I have sobbed to God. “Why me?” or rather, “Why NOT me? We are financially stable, we have a loving home, we can provide for a baby and we WANT one so much!” God doesn’t work like that. His will is not subject to my demands. I have tried bargaining with Him, which is even worse. Although I will probably never understand why babies are born to people that do not want them or cannot care for them, and I will never presume that God loves certain people more than others, I do know that the De Lara family is exactly where God intends us to be right now, so long as we do not attempt to thwart His will by following our own. What I mean by this isn’t necessarily attempting fertility treatments—although there are some treatments that are just too excessive and despite their intention, are not sacred to the right to life. What I mean to say is there are reasons why we are here and if I put my Mary glasses on, I can see them.

 

First, there is obviously a lesson in faith and patience. I just keep praying for God to reveal His will for us, whatever it may be, and trust God does indeed have a plan—which He does. His will could be “not right now, my child” and He is giving us “extra” time to prepare. We have been using this time to pay off our house early, remodel, and build savings. We have certainly been trying to grow spiritually. Perhaps the improvement in our financial situation will enable me to be a stay at home mom and homeschool, or be able to afford Catholic school. Perhaps it will enable us to afford adoption. I DO have faith that His plan, even if it isn’t what I would have chosen, will be what is BEST for us and it will be greater than anything we could have hoped for ourselves.

 
His will could be “you have a different path, my child” and God will give us the financial security to travel and do mission work. Maybe we are meant to help children in some other way, such as becoming foster parents, become volunteers with children’s groups, or the like. I have a an elderly friend at church was unable to have children, but she and her husband were able to travel the world and she helped out with Girl Scouts and Faith Formation with kids. Certainly my teenage pregnancy story could perhaps be useful in helping me help others, and I am meant to do more with young girls making their way in the world.

 
There is another element. I have a condition that causes my blood to coagulate when there is excess estrogen in my body, which means pregnancy can potentially cause blood clots or aneurisms for me. I have only known of 3 other people with something similar—though it is actually not terribly uncommon—and 2 of them are fake: Jennifer Fulweiler at Conversion Diary, Juliette Barnes on Nashville, and Jennifer Lopez’s character in Jersey Girl. Their stories are scary enough, and I already had a pulmonary embolism at the age of 23 (not brought on by pregnancy, but rather from birth control, which is supposed to mimic pregnancy) and I am not keen to repeat the event. I would need daily shots of very expensive medication throughout my entire pregnancy. I have a diabetic friend that I have seen stab herself with needles almost daily at work, but I dunno if it is something I could get used to. I take shots pretty well, but I haven’t had the occasion to stab myself. Because pregnancy can be so much more dangerous for me than most women, maybe God is actually sparing me, especially for the sake of my husband and son.

 
Which brings me to my last point. God could (also) be saying “I have given you the family you were meant to have”. I have a son from a previous relationship. Although I would have (and should have) had him later in life, he has been a source of profound blessings and a channel through which I have received God’s unending grace. I would dearly love to have another baby for any number of reasons (to give Jack a sibling, to give my husband the chance to be a father from the beginning, because I just plain want one), but God has not excluded me from anything. He has already given me so much and I have the hope and promise of His love and grace, and His grace is sufficient. My cup runneth over…and yet, here am I, banging on His door.

 

Our parish priest did a blessing for expectant mothers this weekend and I kept a stiff upper lip, but my husband squeezed my hand because he knew I was only just holding it together.  Some of my friends glanced back at me and gave encouraging smiles.  Inwardly I was just a mess.  It is a difficult thing to explain to women that have never suffered through this problem and worse still to women that don’t have kids by choice or because they are unmarried.  Fertile mothers know what it is to love their babies so much you almost cannot stand it, and they can try to imagine what life is like without them, but they cannot really imagine what it is like to have an almost all-consuming desire for them and have a dwindling hope that they will actually have them.  Women that do not have kids by choice don’t have the all-consuming desire for them right now, so it is difficult for them to understand it.  Young women that are not yet married have rosy hopes and rainbows that they will someday have them.  Most people do sympathize, but no one truly understands it unless they have gone through it.  It is hard to hear well-meaning people come up to us and say maybe we are trying too hard, or I am too stressed about it so I am not getting pregnant, or maybe if I lose more weight, get in better shape, or the like.  Or, my favorite, “when you decide to adopt, you will get pregnant.”

 

I am eternally grateful that I haven’t suffered any miscarriages that I am aware of, though I did read on some medical website that something like 25% of women suffer from one a year without knowing it because it was such an early miscarriage.  No, as far as I know it is a timing and/or plumbing issue, but no real tragedy, which makes me feel guilty for being sad.  Because I did have one baby 13 years ago, I feel even more guilty feeling upset about this because there are many more infertile couples who do not even have that much.  I am so in love with my son and I don’t regret him at all, but the timing was sure off and we both suffered for it.  I am now in an actual perfect time in my life to have a child, in my mind…which is key, “MY” mind.   God is working overtime to smash that word from my vocabulary, it seems.  It is so hard to let go and let Him do His thing, and I must be pretty hard-headed in learning this lesson, because it sure is taking forever.

 

I don’t really have advice for anyone going through this, because Lord knows I have some pretty bad days of it and I just am not in a position to give it out.  The only thing I am qualified to say is God’s will WILL be exactly what you need.  I have to repeat this daily, several times, myself.  I am also qualified to offer you my most sincerest, heartfelt prayers.

Why I Am a Pro-Life Nut

Warning: This is a LONG post, but I hope it is worth it. I would break it up into two, but it needs to be said at once. It is my personal story, about which many people in my past know part of, but don’t know the whole.  Again, it is MY PERSONAL STORY, so you can come away thinking whatever opinion you want to when I am done, but it won’t change my truth.

Funnily enough, when I was a teenager, I was passionately Pro-Choice. I even won a debate about it once and felt all proud and progressive…but God has a way of knocking you on your butt when you get too high and mighty. He bonked me right on the head, I assure you.

There are three reasons I am pro-life.

1: I am a Christian–A Catholic Christian at that, so by default, I believe in respecting life from conception until natural death. That goes for abortion, death penalty, euthanasia…all of it. There are lots of ways to defend the Christian view of it and lots of ways to be attacked by people who disagree.  I am not here to spark that debate today.

2: My husband and I are struggling with infertility. This is a heart-wrenching complex issue, which I will save for another post. Suffice it to say, I would gladly be the next Octo-mom or give birth to a litter of puppies at this point if I could just get pregnant. If I could get around the red tape and just stand at the door of the hospital and take home any unwanted babies, I would. If I could make enough money to pay the exorbitant fees to bureaucrats  to adopt the little orphans of the world, I would. We want a blended family anyway, so our options are open.  I am not without hope that I could be on an episode of “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant” someday and will go to the bathroom and come out with a baby.

3. My son. This is a HUGE reason. I have been between the rock and hard place. I have been at the bottom of the pit of despair. I have been inside Planned Parenthood begging for someone to end my life or my unborn child’s. And God gave me salvation in the form of a brown-eyed morsel of humanity that he entrusted to me…because He intended to.

Today, you will hear about my third reason. I hope to give hope to at least one person out there. If just one girl hears my story and makes the decision to bring her baby into the world, then I would be so glad.

I was your average dumb girl. I mean, I was super-smart in school. I made top grades and behaved myself rather well, but I was dumb. I thought, like every other teenager I have ever met, that I was invincible. Bad things happened to other people, but they wouldn’t happen to me. Even when my best friend got pregnant, I was unfazed. It would not happen to me. Until it did.

Me in high school (in a very weird pose)

My boyfriend and I had been together since I was in 10^th grade. I loved walking around school wearing his letterman jacket and riding in the middle of the bench seat of his truck. I had big plans of attending Florida State. Perfectly perfect teenage life. We had fooled around a little, but honestly, sex was extremely seldom, like maybe 5 times in all three school years…which was more frequent than any girl my age should have been having sex. Anyway, I swear to you, dear reader, I SWEAR it, I knew the very instant I was pregnant. And we actually used protection. Turns out that 1% was me. A sudden fear gripped me and I honestly prayed I would just die rather than tell my parents what had happened.

I was in 12^th grade, about 2 months from graduation. Like, I said, big plans to go to college. I was working at a drug store and stole a pregnancy test… I intended on paying for it, but I had to find out the truth first and I didn’t want anyone to know what I was doing in the meantime. I went into the bathroom at work and took the test and then laid it on the ceramic sink while I huddled in a corner and prayed for 5 minutes. I got up and saw the stupid pink plus sign and immediately threw up. I had convulsions. I pulled myself together and tried to figure out a plan. Do I tell the father? What if he wanted me to keep it? I couldn’t raise a baby! That would mean giving birth, first of all, and I couldn’t be pregnant because I couldn’t tell anyone because my parents would kill me. By my calculations, I was only about 3 weeks pregnant. I looked up pictures on the internet: it didn’t look like anything. It looked like a germ more than anything. I could do it, I could get an abortion.

I called my boyfriend after work and told him. He is a very big, tough guy. He has cried exactly 6 times in his whole life, I think, including when he was a baby. This was one of those times. His fear crippled him, too, and he agreed we should just get it over with and never speak of it ever again. I still wrestled with what I should do, but my fear was winning over my heart. I don’t even remember why, because I was not eating or sleeping well and finals were coming up and prom and all kinds of things that happen at the end of senior year, but we didn’t get to Planned Parenthood for another two and half weeks. After unsuccessfully attempting to terminate the pregnancy with diet pills, I had half convinced myself that I could hide my pregnancy and early enroll into FSU and be 6 hours away from home and my parents would be none the wiser. I would give birth right before Christmas break, give the baby up and go on with my life. I actually knew of 3 girls in high school that hid pregnancies, so this seemed like a viable option. I told you I was dumb.

The afternoon of our secret visit, I was sitting in AP Economics and I suddenly had horrible cramping and rushed to the bathroom. I was bleeding, which scared me instead of relieved me. I had been trying to self-destruct for weeks now and was finally making head-way and here I was getting scared. I called my boyfriend and he picked me up at the edge of the school and we went to the clinic in the next town over. I explained my story to the lady, who clucked her tongue and took me back into a dark, wood-panelled room. She gave me a test and told me to take it in the bathroom. I could barely take the test, I was doubled over in pain and crying. She read the results and then her face turned white and she said I was pregnant, no doubt about it, but she thought I was maybe having an ectopic pregnancy and that I could die without immediate medical attention. To say this horrified me was an understatement. Yes, I had thought of laying down in traffic, but now that I was actually dying, it was a whole different thing.

My boyfriend rushed me to an emergency room, and I could barely stand up. The intake people asked for my parents’ names and insurance…and I begged them to just send me a bill to my boyfriend’s house and I would pay it myself, however long it took. My boyfriend meanwhile called his mother, who showed up looking ready to throttle me, but who ended up soothing me and reassuring me that it would be ok. I waited FOUR hours in the waiting room, crying and nearly passing out from pain and fear. My boyfriend had sneaked off to call my parents, who showed up almost literally breathing fire, and snatched me up in a blanket and laid me down in the backseat of the car. No one said a word. My mother took me to the hospital in our own town and I was immediately seen by a doctor.

“Well, little girl, you are most certainly pregnant. It is not an ectopic pregnancy and you are not having a miscarriage right now. You have a severe UTI and kidney infection, likely caused by the diuretics you swallowed and your stress. We will get you on some antibiotics and hydrate you and you and your baby will live…..would you like to see a picture of your baby?”

He spun the monitor around so I could see and I saw a little, throbbing peanut. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I was six weeks pregnant. My baby had brain function, a heartbeat, movement, ears, blood, and very tiny webby-like hands. I couldn’t see all this, but this was something I was told. In that moment, there is nothing I wanted more in the world than that baby, come what may.

It was weeks before my family would actually talk to me, except my mother. My mom and I have butted heads many a time, but she was just so mother-y exactly when I needed her to be. She expertly helped me sell my beat up old car and get a more “family” type vehicle. She withdrew me from FSU and ordered me to enroll in the local college because giving up my education would do more harm than good. She told me I had to get a better paying job and helped me find a job at a radiologist’s office, which was cool because I could look at my baby almost every day.

My relationship with my boyfriend was becoming more and more strained and my life was certainly nothing like I wanted it to be, but the moment that brown-eyed boy was laid in my arms, all wrapped up like a little Indian pappoose, I knew I had made the right decision in keeping my baby.

My son’s father and I never did get married, but we share 50/50 custody of Jackson. He is, and always will be, very special to me. We have a good co-parenting relationship and have both moved on into healthy adult relationships. My husband is a wonderful step-father and gets along quite well with my ex and his family. I realize I am luckier than most.

3 year old Jackson

It took me six years instead of four, but I completed college with two degrees. I went to school non-stop, even in summer, taking 3 classes at a time each semester during the year and 2 in the summer.  I continued to work, sometimes two jobs at once, to make ends meet. It sucked, and it was hard, and I certainly missed the time I would have had with my little boy, but I did what I had to do.

Now, I know there are horrible stories out there. Girls and women that have been raped. Women living on the streets or girls tossed from foster home to foster home. I know that the economy sucks and babies can be expensive and lots of women are left by dead-beat dads. I cannot speak for everyone and all of the trouble and atrocities they may have endured. There are also some pretty awful women that probably shouldn’t be mothers and are, and my heart bleeds for the babies that should have been given a better opportunity in life—but they are not better off dead, because even they have a purpose which we cannot fathom. Imagine how many great people we have killed legally since 1972–people who may have had the key to curing cancer or AIDS in their tiny little brains, people who may have grown up to be wonderful people of all walks of life.

I cannot judge anyone if they make a decision to terminate a pregnancy. It isn’t my place to.  As a Christian, I am called to admonish a sinner by standing up for what is right and pointing out when something is wrong, but that isn’t the same as judging.  I realize that many, if not most, of the girls and women that find themselves in similar predicaments do not have the kind of mom I have, but that is why it IS my job to be a beacon of hope and a source of love for them. It is my job to spread love one way or the other—either by encouraging a young woman to make a better life for herself and her baby either by finding a way or by giving her baby to a loving home to give it its best chance at life, or by loving a girl or woman past her pain after an abortion and help guide her to the Mother of all mothers (who was also a poor, initially unwed teen mother) who will heal broken hearts, and to her Son, who will hide her in His hands.  This is not accomplished by shaming or by screaming at people holding mean signs, and certainly not by any violence.  Many times, so-called Christians take the wrong route and leave the Christ part out of it.  Shame on them for that, because Christ only calls us to love. He challenged the men that were going to stone the adulterous woman by asking which of them was without sin. He also forgave that poor woman and told her to go and sin no more.  He didn’t condone her actions, but He let her know that she was forgiven and that correcting her path was the way to be healed–“sin no more”.  We cannot help to heal the broken-hearted without forgiveness, and we cannot help to heal our country by condoning sin.

For me, I cannot be pro-choice because I believe so strongly that every little life has a purpose and that God will find a way for you and for that little life, whether to keep you together, or to give you new, separate lives with a second chance. You can always make your own decisions, because ultimately, we all have freewill. However, we are called to make Christ-filled decisions, which means making the decision He would make for us: to do no harm, love unceasingly and trust in God with all our hearts, minds, and souls. He doesn’t forget the ravens, and how much more He loves you.

light of my life