Where the Catholic Sun Doth Shine

Two things I would like to remember for later

I wish I hadn't read the update on the Powell case last night, but I did, and then... Well. 

But I said a prayer for those little boys and what I heard was "I am a Father to the fatherless." Just over and over in my head and I was so grateful. 

And Elizabeth sent me this, because she totally gets me, and I might have cried a little bit because no one in my offline life would understand this AT ALL. 

Aren't I too old for this?

Confession: I feel bored with church. 

GAK.

I am unclear on WHY I feel bored. Here are my possible reasons/theories:

• It's summer. Summer makes me lazy.
• I was more enthralled by the guest priest from Trinidad than I realized and now everything seems lame in comparison. 
• I keep having conversations with people about Protestant Church and sometimes I feel like I just want to show up at one of THOSE services and sing some good songs and hear some good preaching and go home, the end. 
• It's just one of those Times In My Life. 
• I am not super excited about our experiences at the church near our house, but I don't feel called to stay or leave our current church, in fact I feel nothing about any of it, and this makes me Apathetic and Avoidy.
• I am just REALLY REALLY LAZY and summer has nothing to do with it. 

Hrrrmmm. 

I picture the Strong Catholics in the crowd encouraging me to keep plugging along, it's not about feelings and excitement, everyone has dry spells, blah blah blah. And I feel like they are right, except I am still not HAPPY about it, and I want to sign up for some crazy charismatic retreat where, I don't know, SOMETHING WILL HAPPEN. 

I am bored with nothing happening. 

I was reading something about YA lit the other day and it was talking about how when you're a teenager everything is at an extreme, and you just FEEL everything to the max and it's glorious and wretched at the same time. And then you become a grown up and sometimes you miss the passion and the drama, but you realize (hopefully) that it's better to be a more even-keeled adult... Something like that. I'm not explaining it very well. 

And this was a STUNNINGLY LATE conclusion for me, but I was suddenly all: DUDE! This is why it's so hard to leave a college fellowship. You are used to super highs and major lows and Adult Faith is just, you know, boring. And because it's not so roller coastery you feel like you're doing something wrong, that you've lost something, that you are in the wrong place. (Or is this just me?)

And Adult Faith is not BORING necessarily. Especially when my friends keep telling me stories about Adults who adopt sibling groups from the Congo or lead prayer retreats or still work in college ministry (which, honestly, only makes me feel bad about my nice house and my addiction to Project Runway.) And really it ISN'T boring. I am just in a cranky mood right now. Sorry.

Addictions to Project Runway or not, we're not ALL called to the missions field or the sisterhood or intense adoption situations or even, you know, lectoring at church. But our faith, our relationship with Jesus, it's supposed to be sublime ANYWAY. And I think right now I am just mad at all my regular routes to God because they feel definitely lacking in the sublime. It must be everyone's fault but mine. 

So if I just go to the super liberal Catholic church in the mixed neighborhood, with the gospel choir and the crazy friendly people - THAT will make everything better. If I go to my friends' non-denominational church and sing some good worship songs for an hour - that will make everything better. Maybe if I read a good churchy book (confession: I don't think I have ever made it through a Phillip Yancey/Max Lucado type book in my entire life, and remind me to tell you about the time my summer roommate found out I was going to start DATING OMG and immediately handed me her copy of Elisabeth Elliot's Passion & Purity AND HOW IT TOTALLY WIGGED ME OUT.) 

I don't know. Where is my Big Flashy Sign? Honestly, God must get so irritated with me. But I just don't know right now. I'm not FEELING it. And I am SUCH a feely person. I can't help it. 

The Case for Being Sad

On Wednesday nights during Lent my parish holds a Taize prayer service. All the churchy meetings also take place on Wednesday nights, so if you have a meeting during Lent, you go to the Taize service first (about a half hour) and then head over to your meeting. Everyone finds this very centering and peaceful and devotional, except for me, who sort of hates it. 

I mean, if I haven't made it clear before, I'm just going to come right and say, with no small amount of shame: I don't like Lent. The entire time I've been a thinking adult, and especially the entire time I have been reading Catholics on the internet, I have been trying to get myself to like Lent. Everyone else does! Well, maybe "like" isn't the right word, maybe the right word is "appreciate". I can't even do that. 

So I'm sitting in that Taize service last night being extra super grumpy. MAINLY because my children were DREADFUL all day long and I didn't want to be at church, I wanted to be in a spa. YES I KNOW HOW THAT SOUNDS. Whatever. I'm sitting there and I'm trying, I really am, to Be Present and all that, but it's hard. I just can't. It's dark, it's slow, the music is dirge-like, the cross laid out on the steps before the altar depresses me, I look away from the lit up crucifix, it's just SAD. 

And then it occurs to me: I don't like to be sad. 

What a revelation, eh!? NO ONE likes to be sad. But while everyone else was kissing the cross, I was counting up the times when I've resisted Sad, when I've actively CHOSEN to NOT be sad. Can you do such a thing? I can!

It helps that I've had a relatively charmed life, that nothing in the way of extreme pain or loss or hardship has ever come my way. It's true that I've never had to confront days, weeks, months of Sad, and I don't know how I would handle it. (I'm guessing not well.) But all that aside, just my personality is one of hope and optimism and glass half full, often to an annoying degree. Even when I'm crazy person anxious, I'm not sad so much as worn out and fearful, and even then I always think tomorrow will be better. Depression - what's that? 

If I've ever had a period of prolonged sadness or depression, it happened when I was 15 and moved to a new school. I have droned on and on about this many times, so I won't do it again, but it really was incredibly miserable. I think I even knew at the time that this wasn't ME. I did not GET this way. What was WRONG with me? 

It lasted the entire school year, though I struggled against it the entire time. I did not like myself that way. I was not someone who lapsed into Sadness and couldn't get out. I was better than this. I distinctly remember comparing myself to some of the new kids fresh from the States, who HATED living overseas (or maybe just their new schools) with every fiber of their beings, and made no bones about it. For these kids nothing was worth it, nothing was interesting, nothing here could be as good or better than where they'd been before. There were no malls! No McDonald's! THEY HATED IT! And man, those kids drove me crazy. I couldn't stand them and no way was I even going to REMOTELY resemble them and their crappy attitudes. 

I FORCED myself to like that place. I really did. And you know what? After a while? I liked it. Sometimes I even miss it. How's that for crazy?

I'm thinking about all of this in church, because as far as I can tell, you are supposed to be sad during Lent. I am oh so fully aware that my understanding of the proper Lenten Attitude is elementary at best, that it's possible I have no earthly idea how to BE during this season. Penitent? Chagrined? Resigned? Contrite? Guilty? Ashamed? SAD? 

I don't know how to sit in those feelings. In fact, my clear inability to acknowledge Sad in my life, and my numerous personal vows to stop being sad about certain things, resulted in a handful of Extreme Anxiety Triggers. Once I figured this out I had to teach myself to at least ACKNOWLEDGE the Sad. I couldn't just say I WASN'T sad. Burying feelings led to nothing good, this I knew, so the next best thing is to wave hello at the sad and then punt it as far as possible from the premises. That's kind of where I am now. Years and years later I am only capable of very short moments of "Dude, life kinda SUCKS right now, I wonder how my little self is handling all of this", and then it's right back to Handling It.

So what should I BE in a Lenten Taize service? I know how to be in confession, but this is forty straight days of confession. Ish. I don't know. Oh, the lament of the poorly catechized. I feel like I am supposed to be sad, but I know the ending. Right? It's not a sad ending! ARGH.

I have a feeling this is the stupidest thing you will read on the internet all year. OH WELL. THIS is how dumb I am, so go at it. WHAT AM I MISSING? Or is my resentment at having to be sad covering up something else, like, say, a massive lack of humility? Ugh, if that's the case I will have to think about this another day. I may not be sad, but I AM tired enough to sleep until Easter. 

 

I think this is probably the hundredth post I've written on this topic, MY APOLOGIES

I just called my dad for advice about a Career Prospect, asking him to "talk me into it". I thought for sure he would, since it had to do with The Internet and Social Media and all those things my dad thinks I can get paid for one day, by virtue of my Mommyblogging Experience. But a half hour later he had firmly talked me out of it, and not at all in a frustrating "here's what I think you should do" sort of way, but a "well, have you thought of this? and this?" sort of way. Turns out I hadn't thought of those things, and for what feels like the dozenth time since I became a SAHM, I am choosing not to do anything but. 

Not like it was a total real deal where I could have started earning a paycheck tomorrow, but it had potential and I thought it would work. For me it was a like a big blinking neon sign screaming HERE'S A Way For You To Feel Relevant! HERE'S Something To Make You Legitimate When Your Kids Are In Preschool Three Days A Week! It was work in writing and social media, with people I know and understand and trust, who trust and respect me, and (bonus!) who are very very far away meaning I wouldn't have a boss breathing down my neck. In other words: IDEAL. 

Except, after talking to my dad, it was clear it wasn't. I'm so glad I called him. 

How many times will God need to remind me that I am already where I need to be? How many Writing! and Social Media! jobs have I applied for and failed to get? How many part time local jobs have I considered, only to come to my senses at the last minute? And all this, from someone who HATED WORKING! 

Some days I think I will always be conflicted about my vocation (my current one, at least) and that part of my Inner Self that believes I am worthless unless my output, my effort, my results, my JOB can be quantified and measured and, ideally, applauded? I want an A, a raise, a promotion, a letter of recommendation, a note from a client to a boss lauding my efforts. I know I'm a good mom, but no one is here to see, and the only people benefiting from my work can't even read.

I think God wants to break this in me, though it's been nearly four years and I don't feel he's made any progress. I am still a big fan of the enneagram, as you know, and I feel like this Worth stuff is the one big bastion of Threeness that the anxiety didn't burn down. I thought it had, for a while, since I am clearly not interested in careers, I don't care about earning a lot of money, I don't want to climb any ladders and I cannot stand having anyone tell me how to do my job. I don't WANT a real job and I KNOW how blessed I am to not need one. Being a SAHM is the first job I've ever loved doing, but MAN if I don't wish someone was around to say, "Good work on handling the meltdown in the library! A few more successes like that one and we'll be promoting you to Super Mom!"

It's also a fear, a nagging worry, that if I don't set my sight on some out-of-the-home job or type of work, I'll be phased out. I'll be too far behind, though that sounds silly since I have nothing to be behind ON. I don't want to find myself cleaning the house while the kids are in grade school, rushing home from soccer and the grocery store and rushing out again to the PTA meeting, just because those were the only things left for me. Would it be so horrible? I never pictured being a SAHM either, to be honest. Maybe I'll love it, but who knows? I need other options, an idea, a Plan. I need to make sure something can happen. 

If I had as much faith in God as I say I do, I wouldn't be trying to make anything happen. I could still be interested in the random job opportunity here and there, but not as a way to feel worthy, not as a way to legitimize my mere existence. It has been made abundantly clear, through the kind words of friends and family, through coincidence and circumstance, through the clear preferences Phillip and I have for our family duties - abundantly clear that I am where I need to be. Where I am blessed to be. And I really mean it when I say I'm happy here, and I most certainly do not want to be doing anything else. 

Unless something intriguing pops up on the greener side, and I wonder all over again if I need to be reaching for more. 

At the kitchen table while Phillip is out with friends

Last week I applied for a freelance writing gig - writing copy for a fake Groupon site. I really wanted it. I was excited about extra money. Mostly I was excited about the prospect of telling people I was a writer. 

I know, I know. Really, I know. And it's not that blogging isn't writing or that paid blogging isn't writing or that writing a novel isn't writing - but for me? In my head? In my skewed perspective of the world? In my understanding of my place in it? Those things don't say that I am A Writer. Which is what I most want to be in the entire universe. 

But hey, if fake Groupon hired me to write "quirky" copy for their daily deals and paid me a surprising amount per pop, THAT'S something I wouldn't be embarrassed to talk about. "Yeah, I stay home with my kids and do some writing on the side." Like it would legitimize me. Or something. 

It's so much about what other people think. No, what I think other people think.

Anyway. Since the sample copy I wrote was not the copy they used in today's deal, I'm pretty sure I didn't get the gig. Which: fine. It's certainly not the first time I didn't get a job. Not the first time I've felt jealous or bummed out or wondered what I did wrong. 

But I'm pretty sure it's the first time God has used such a circumstance to spell out what's going on in my spiritual life. Which, frankly, kind of sucks. I don't like it. LEAVE ME ALONE, SPIRITUAL LIFE. 

Basically, what I hear God telling me in the middle of Earning Extra Money Failure is: I still love you. 

Well, you are saying to yourselves. You are saying: we should hope so! He is GOD. That's what he DOES. And you're right, I know you're right, the part of me that processes things in a rational intellectual manner totally gets it. 

But there's another part of me that's all, "WHY?"

No really. Why? I'm nothing special. I'm not a good enough writer to write stupid ad copy for fake Groupon. My novel sucks. My blog posts are stupid and boring and pointless. Even my paid blogging gig is sort of a joke. Why did I ever think I could do this? Be this? Pull this off? 

And it doesn't stop there. As a mother I'm completely lacking in creativity and energy, not to mention patience and compassion. As a wife I'm pretty subpar. I'm a terrible housekeeper. I'm not a great cook. That one time I let down a friend was so devastating it's pretty much erased any pride I had in that department.

And as a Catholic? A Christian? HA HA HA. 

Now, you know that I can't think all these things and still manage to get up in the morning. No, I have an extremely optimistic sort of personality and I work hard. I am HOPEFUL that if I keep writing my novel will stop sucking. I'm HOPEFUL that if I keep trying out those recipes from Martha Stewart Every Day Food I will stumble upon The Recipe that will mean I can invite friends over for dinner. I'm HOPEFUL that one day my kids will reach an age or a stage or maybe I will find a patience tree in my backyard and I'll turn into the mom I wish I could be. Oh yes, I certainly keep on going. I can work hard. I can earn it. I can strive harder. Days like today, where I feel useless and insignificant and one-of-the-crowd, are truly the exception. 

But I feel like God is saying that my optimism doesn't matter. My optimism doesn't even make it better. It's the fact that he loves me even if my novel stinks. Even if I am not special at anything. Even if I cannot distinguish myself in any way. Even if I think myself distinguished in something, only to bomb, fail, hurt someone else's feelings, lose. 

That I am worthy. Even dirty and broken and sinful: I am worthy. 

I keep trying, you know. I'm not really sure what the threshold is for Being Loved. For Writing, I suppose, it's landing a gig with fake Groupon. I wish it were so easy with God. Although, again, he reminds me: there is no threshold. You are missing the point. Please, let's sit down, let's have a glass of wine, listen to me... 

Even as I'm writing this I sense Jesus on the other side of the table, his chin in his hand, watching me. Amused. (Jesus, when I sense him, is always amused.) I feel like he's saying, "Yes, write it all out, write it till you think you have a grip on it, then come sit with me, come be with me, feel loved by me." 

I just don't know if I could I write enough. 

Out out damn spot

I thought I might come here tonight and post one of my Unpublished Works Of Brilliance, but no, I come here tonight to say: God? I am so tired. 

I can't decide if I'm a One on the enneagram (The Perfectionist) or a Three (The Performer). And honestly, what keeps me coming back to One is my pursuit of holiness. Well, that's how I'd like to think of it, but in reality it might just be my pursuit of the being the Best Rule Follower. 

If you are a Catholic there are a lot of rules. Lots of Catholics choose to ignore some or most of the rules. We call them Salad Bar Catholics. And I, having made a conscious decision to stay and be Catholic, want to be Catholic. I don't want to pick and choose. I want to believe and follow everything. If something doesn't sound right to me, I'm obligated to investigate, find out why the church says what it says. Be open, trust, think. 

Certain things have taken me a long time. Certain things I am only getting now. And other things I'm not sure I'll ever get, but I haven't closed myself off from the possibility. 

Most of the time I come to a conclusion about what's true and what's not. If becoming convicted about something requires a change in my life (and, let's face it, it usually does) I have a number of ways of ignoring that conviction. I stop reading or talking about it or otherwise educating myself. I stop doing something, but I don't start doing something else. I rationalize it - change is for other people. I don't need to change because I have all these other things I'm dealing with. Sometimes I can break out of these cycles like a normal person, other times I have horrible paralyzing anxiety meltdowns. 

I would prefer to do it the simple way. 

But tonight I don't know if there is a simple way. Tonight I feel like I've done my best. I've tried. I prayed. I did what I could. And it still sucks. It's still hard. It's still... why me? I mean, doesn't God know I can just convert to the church-that-meets-in-a-movie-theater and not deal with this stuff anymore? 

We used to have a nun at my church and she used to say being Catholic was in your blood. Also, I am possibly a One, which means my guilt complex runs at a completely different frequency than the rest of humanity. 

I keep scrubbing and scrubbing at the dirty spots and as soon as one disappears, another takes its place.

FYI

You have no idea how many posts I've written for the Catholic Blog, and then deleted, or saved as drafts. They infringe too much on someone else's privacy (coughPhillipcough) or I've lost the fire by the reread (I ALWAYS reread here) or I'm not confident in my stance or I'm just plain anxious to expose myself somehow. One of you once emailed to say something like, "Um, we KNOW it's a churchy blog, it's not like we'll be SURPRISED if you SAY CHURCHY THINGS." But it still feels... impolite. This is my living room, or maybe the smaller, more formally-decorated sitting area off my every day living room, and I would love for everyone to sit down and put their feet on the coffee table and have second pieces of cake. I thought I could write about things in a way that made everyone feel welcome, regardless, but every time I write something I seriously doubt myself on that front. I get SO uncomfortable and there are already so many other people who AREN'T, and who do this WELL. Not me. This is not my gig. This is not what I do. It feels out of [blog] character to be staunch and firm on something (even though I am about certain things, amongst a certain real life set). It feels silly to write about things I hear in prayer when so many of you don't believe you hear ANYTHING in prayer. 

I know what a lot of you would say to that. I still feel weird. I don't know. 

I feel pointless and and maybe a little ridiculous, yet I don't exactly feel like I should close up shop. 

So. I have no clue what I'm trying to say, but I did want to post SOMETHING. I wrote this whole big post about Life Lists and really, I got rather passionate about the whole thing, and then I read it again and I was all, "Oh Self. You sound like a religious tract. Delete! Delete!" 

For a while I thought maybe I should just start writing on a Topic. See where that went. Blah blah blah. But many of my Topics mean writing about people other than me, which is not really allowed. 

I left this in draft again... and then today I got a comment on the third baby post and I thought, "huh, that's weird" and then I saw that Arwen linked to me and then a bunch of people came over and read it (I swear, I wouldn't have a single reader if it weren't for Arwen) and now I'm thinking, "huh. Maybe I should try to find something to say again."

So. That's where I'm at. 

Pray that I might have the grace

Right before we went to Holy Thursday Mass we went to the new house and dropped off some boxes. It was supposed to be a quick trip, but I spent at least a half hour wandering up and down the stairs and sitting on my heels in the downstairs playroom, trying to make a decision about who was going to sleep where. I have changed my mind nine million times and I just don't feel settled. It's driving me nuts. I would normally say that figuring out How We Should Arrange The Furniture is one of the strings to my bow (has anyone else read The Bagthorpe Saga?)

BUT ANYWAY. I couldn't decide and it was making me Rather Grumpy and that is how I went to church. Mad. Annoyed with Phillip for not having a solution. Frustrated. 

We picked up our neighbor and went to church (the kids are with my parents) and my Rather Grumpy self scowled at the altar. I was not, shall we say, FEELING IT. And of course I felt tremendously guilty. It's HOLY THURSDAY. It's HOLY WEEK. And all I've been doing is packing and moving and refreshing Craigslist for dressers and kitchen tables. 

I sat there feeling guilty and grumpy and wondering who was going to be singled out for feet washing and it occurred to me that I was probably going to sit through the entire service thinking about curtains. I've never been good at focusing at church in the first place, and there was no chance of it happening tonight. None! And I was very upfront about this with God. I was all, "Look. I realize this is Holy Thursday. But you have been privy to my thoughts all day and you KNOW how messed up it is in there and it's not like I'm ruining a particularly observant Lent or anything. Okay? So I'm just going to sit here and think about curtains." 

Which I did, for a few minutes. But then I started to feel more guilty. Say what you will about guilt, but for me it's an excellent motivator. I changed my tune. "God," I said, "I KNOW I shouldn't be thinking about curtains, but I WANT to think about curtains and I honestly don't know how to change what I WANT, especially when there is feet washing to avoid." 

I don't know how it happened, but after a good five minutes of saying "I know I should want to, but I don't want to" I felt like... maybe? Maybe I didn't need to think about curtains for the next hour or so? It would be okay if I didn't? I COULD think about something else? I mean, it wasn't like I was magically turned into Super Devout Girl who would then go write a profound and moving Holy Thursday blog post on her website that night. Unfortch. 

So Holy Thursday was... long, as it always is. ("One hour and forty-five minutes!" our scandalized neighbor hissed as we left the procession to the adoration chapel, LIKE WE ALWAYS DO BECAUSE OF OUR NEIGHBOR, and got in the car.) It was awkward. They changed up the way they washed feet this year - I think anyone could approach the feet washing stations and participate? Instead of walking around handpicking people from the pews? But it took a while for me to figure this out and in between was a whole bunch of awkward. And I used to be on the liturgy committee (I know, that is still hilarious) so I can JUST IMAGINE what will be said at the next meeting! To be a fly on the wall! 

Being me, I was unable not to Mentally Comment on all of this stuff. But I was listening and paying attention and only thinking about curtains for thirty-second spurts. And then, a while into the feet washing, the choir started singing a capella: 

Will you let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you?
Pray that I might have the grace to let you be my servant, too.

We are pilgrims on a journey, we are trav’lers on the road.
We are here to help each other walk the mile and bear the load.

I will hold the Christ-light for you in the night time of your fear.
I will hold my hand out to you, speak the peace you long to hear.

I will weep when you are weeping, when you laugh I'll laugh with you.
I will share your joy and sorrow till we've seen this journey through.

When we sing to God in heaven, we shall find such harmony,
born of all we've known together of Christ's love and agony.

Will you let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you?
Pray that I might have the grace to let you be my servant too.

I cry every time they sing this song, usually during Communion, but last night was especially teary. The voices were so clear and melded together, it reminded me of In This Heart by Sinead O'Connor, another song that makes me cry. 

Anyway, the choir starts in with this song and I am just there. I am THERE. I am not thinking about curtains. Well maybe I do a little later on, but I'm not in that moment. I am thinking about this Lenten season and the fact that I sold and rented a house within it, that my husband left us for a week in the middle of it and all the things I've struggled with that I'm only beginning to name. I thought of the many hundred ways I have not let my husband be a servant to me and I cried some more. 

I cried again when the choir started some Latin thing during the final procession (am obvious sucker for a capella) and tried not to feel unChristian and uncharitable to my neighbor who looked like she might die if she had to stand there one more minute (WHICH WAS HARD). We took her home, we went out to dinner (don't YOU at 9pm on Holy Thursday) and then we went back for adoration. (I was on the liturgy committee, and therefore have firsthand knowledge of the Intense Frustration that comes with no one showing up for the last hour of adoration. I was doing a DUTY.) 

They had some rosaries (and, thank goodness, a rosary cheat sheet) sitting outside the adoration chapel and I picked one up because I am the Queen Of Mind Wandering. There were only two other people there, people I know and have talked to at length about Spiritual Stuff, and it was just NICE. Candlelight, quiet, the big gold Eucharist cage, my husband, beads to help me focus. Perhaps I didn't ruin Holy Thursday after all. 

I have so much more to say about Lent, so much more to say about servanthood, but I have to go think about curtains. 

Meant to be?

What do you think of the whole 'if it's meant to be, it's meant to be' mentality? Is it the same as the 'if it's God's will' kind of thinking? 

I don't know how many times we've said "if it's meant to be" during the whole selling-the-house thing. We started saying it before we ever put it on the market, and we're still saying it, now that we're searching for rental house. There are so many variables in the process that you can't be sure or depend on anything. For example, our buyers have till Monday night to respond to the house inspection in writing. The inspection took place Saturday morning, but as of this writing - Monday at 2:30 - no response. I feel reasonably sure that we'll hear from them before the deadline, but the truth is we don't know. We don't know SO MANY THINGS. 

We didn't know that our house would get an offer so soon. We hoped, even though we knew we shouldn't hope, and then it DID and your mind goes sort of crazy. IT'S MEANT TO BE! Who are the buyers? The only buyers I happened to see and "recognize", in some dorky overly sentimental way? IT'S MEANT TO BE! We got an offer the DAY my St. Joseph statue arrives from Amazon.com? IT'S MEANT TO BE! You can be sure if we'd sold this house in time to put an offer on the old lady house I sort of fell in love with from a few posts back, I'd think that was meant to be too. 

So my house. We sold it. Is it meant to be? Is it time for us to go? Did something other than us decide that and make it happen? We haven't found a rental house yet, so obviously it's not meant to be. Until maybe Friday, when I find The Perfect House, and then IT'S MEANT TO BE!

Honestly, though, I try very hard not to be a Meant To Be-er. It rubs me the wrong way, especially when people say it in reference to relationships. I don't believe in soul mates - I think that idea sort of denigrates the hard work of loving another person. Perhaps I just don't like the idea that my choices and decisions don't matter. Or they only matter to the extent that something or someone is just going to happen anyway. 

In college I sat in my dorm's dining hall watching a band, keeping one eye glued to the cute Chinese guy playing saxaphone. I only barely knew who he was, but I couldn't stop wondering about him. A friend of mine suggested that maybe I was being called to pray for him, so I did, incessantly, and here I am, eleven years later, sitting across from a wedding photo of me and the cute Chinese guy. I really do think I was supposed to marry Phillip Cheung. It goes against my whole PHILOSOPHY of CHOOSING, but I can't help it. Was it meant to be? 

As a Christian, I translate "meant to be" into "God's will". I don't know if that's correct. Or maybe sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. And who am I to claim I know what God's will is! I get especially confused when we're throwing 'meant to be' and 'God's will' around in situations where there is no clearly defined poorer choice or circumstance. Would it be a bummer to not sell my house and have to live here another year? Yes. But at this point I can almost guarantee you that my house is a lot nicer than all the available rental houses in my price point. Poor me having to stay another year in my pretty new-ish house!

Also, does God really care where I live? I think he does. But really? REALLY?

CLEARLY this post is going nowhere and I have another rental house to go see which, at this point, just means another dingy bathroom in which to shudder. LATER.

In honor of Mardi Gras, a pity party

Well, if the other blog is anything to go by, I think we can safely say that so far 2010 is The Year Of Feeling Sorry For Myself. 

I was trying to step outside of my head for a bit today, because even in the midst of the moping, I am fully aware that I'm being ridiculous. I mean, I think there's definite truth in all the things that are getting me down lately. I'm not making them up. I'm not [always] blowing them out of proportion. Things HAVE been hard. Still, this moody funk is getting out of hand. My daily dose of perspective is not working. 

I read a blog post today by a woman who 1) lives in a two-bedroom apartment with three children, a husband and a dog and 2) is nine million times holier than me. It was enough perspective for the rest of the year. I finished it feeling irritated with myself and wondering, for the nine millionth time, what is wrong with me. Why can't I be holy too? And peaceful and grateful and NOT SORRY FOR MYSELF? 

I realize, with annoyance, that Lent is coming quick. HOW APROPOS, I say to God. HOW CONVENIENT. 

I am not good at Lent. It's another one of those topics on which the Catholic Bloggers reveal their collective brilliance, leaving me with a confused and panicked inferiority complex. I give something up (sometimes) and remember not to eat meat on Fridays (sometimes) and go about life as usual. I've made the attempt at the daily devotional or the weekly Lenten gatherings at church. One time I tried to read a Proper Lenten Book, but I have yet to feel like Lent is more than forty days of gloom and suffering. I am very much bogged down in the suffering. 

But today I sat in my car in the mall parking lot, asking God if THIS time can be different. Rather than trudging through, could I grow instead? Could I learn something? Could I muster up some discipline? 

I know I am down. I know I have so much to be grateful for. The one should flow into the other, making me a wiser, better person. Someone who isn't writing sob story blog post after sob story blog post. But I feel like I'm missing something. I feel like God is holding this other part of the puzzle and I want to know what it looks like. I'm missing some element of grace or understanding or peace. Something that says yes, this is a difficult place, but I am here.

I know I can't just wake up holy. UNFORTCH. What a bummer. 

In the meantime... what? What can I do to make this Lent different from the others? What should I give up? What should I do instead? What are YOU doing? I am not above copycatting you. 

I feel like I'm usually pretty good at Sucking It Up and Moving On - sometimes in-advisably so, if my anxiety track record is anything to go on. (Sometimes, I have learned, you should deal with things first, THEN suck them up. Otherwise you get a big sucked up pile of Issues floating around in your chemically imbalanced head.) But THIS time... I don't feel like there's anything I can change, no endpoint, no one to blame. It's just the way things are, and how they'll be until Phillip is done with school. And I don't know what to do with that. 

Lent's gotta teach me a thing or two, that's what I'm thinking.