Where the Catholic Sun Doth Shine

Eating chocolate chips with Jesus

This will be my attempt to "finish" this post. Although, note to self, I should never do "to be continued" posts because, ah, what was I writing about again? 

Ugh. How do I write this without getting all listy and boring? Hmm.

Have you ever said to yourself, "Well! I tried that and it didn't work. Oh well! Moving on!" I mean, I say this about things like, oh, trying to make rounded corners in CSS. Eventually I gave up. Oh well! (Although I bet there's a way to do it NOW. I should check that out.) But I've never said it about anything as large and great as CHURCH. Which was essentially how I was feeling. It wasn't just the spiritual director, it was spirituality. It was church and everything I've tried to do and be with church and anyone who wanted to talk about church and honestly, the new church meeting I'd signed up for could go jump off a bridge for all I cared. 

Oh, that was a particularly rough night, the night I went to the church meeting and tried, again, to express a deep-seated Thing about myself and was, in the face of that vulnerability, condescended to/patronized. And not just your regular old introverted vulnerability, where you are brave enough to open your mouth and you just hope you don't sound like an idiot. This was vulnerable as in: I am telling you something about myself that I KNOW is not right and I KNOW needs heaps of character building, but I am going to tell you anyway, because I am trying out this whole Being Real thing that everyone is always harping about and WOW DID THAT FAIL. And yeah, I know the person in question did not at all mean to condescend/patronize and was just trying to be nice but KISS MY YOU KNOW WHAT, PERSON IN QUESTION! 

Eh. You know that only lasted a week. A week's about as far as I go angry/depression-wise. Then I eat some chocolate chips and try a different thinking route and lighten up. (Just a little.) 

Where was God in all of this? I don't know. When I look back at those weeks I see myself sort of emotionally storming around and Jesus kind of hanging back in the corner with the bag of chocolate chips, watching me, munching, waiting for me to get it out of my system. Like, totally not annoyed or impatient or bored, just passing time.

The first thing that helped was reading a series of blog posts about some dude's personal experience with exorcism. I know. All the pinky-toe-in-the-churchy-water people just flew out of here. But seriously, those were some hands down awesome blog posts and they reminded me that 1) there is stuff out there that doesn't want me to be eating chocolate chips with Jesus and 2) what I do, what I was made to do, what God gifted me to do no matter Catholic, Protestant, winning at church, impactful blogger, supermom or WHAT, is pray against that stuff. These truths I hold self evident. 

So I started to snap out of it. Somehow. The angry, snippy stuff - that isn't me. I realized that if I tried another spiritual director I would have to put on my big girl pants and understand that people are spiritual directors because they see crap about you that you are not so good at recognizing yourself. WHICH IS WHY YOU SEE THEM. 

I realized that while my approach to How To Be Catholic is so off base I even question "How To Be Catholic" is the right term for it, it's a valid struggle AND I would do well to find a spiritual director, if I wanted one, who speaks Three. Because if one more person blows off my hard work I will go on some sort of church meeting RAMPAGE.

I realized, again, for the trillionth time, that I am called to be Catholic. Even if sometimes I don't like it. 

What I can say for this unattractive little episode of mine is that SINCE then, I mean, SINCE I've located Jesus in the pantry and now we are both eating chocolate chips TOGETHER, I am hearing him rather well. Not that I understand everything he's saying. HA. More on that later. 

In which we debrief my appointment with the spiritual director

You will laugh at this, because I have a blog (blogS) but I do not like to talk about myself. Oh, I am an open book. I will tell you anything you like, even the yucky parts. I'm not going to come out and tell you the entire story of Why and How I Have Anxiety, but it's not because I'm trying to hide it. 

But. When I start telling a story about myself or a thing that I am going through or thinking through or whatever, I usually, like, 99% of the time, feel pretty stupid. I start to worry that I am talking too much, for too long. That I am boring. That I am not special. That I am not saying anything profound or important or worth hearing. That another person cannot possibly be interested in these things. That they are thinking I'm ridiculous or idiotic or incredibly stupid. That they can tell I'm trying to sound like I know what I'm talking about, that they can also tell I don't. 

Inevitably, if I have been talking about myself for longer than five minutes, I apologize. For talking too long, for not making sense, for dominating the conversation - whatever. I just have this NEED to acknowledge the self-centeredness, so the other person at least KNOWS that I KNOW I am being self-centered. Which is, in itself, another kind of prideful self-centeredness. 

So at the end of my appointment today when the director put her hands to her cheeks and scrunched up her nose and said, "You've just had this look on your face the whole time, I can't describe it, it just makes me feel... well, I just want you to know that it's okay, you can let it go, you are loved." That's when I decided that no, spiritual direction is not for me. Good bye! Thank you!

Or maybe it was when I realized, maybe halfway through, that this wasn't about sitting in a chair and impressing anyone or being funny or having a great conversation about The Meaning Of Life, no, it's about being challenged and held accountable and giving up one's ego. 

I don't know. I really don't know. 

I want to feel excited and gung ho. But instead I'm sullen and skeptical. I was supposed to figure her out. 

There are other things to say about it, but I am too busy feeling tricked, and battling with myself over what that means. 

I have an appointment

I have an appointment with a Spiritual Director. I'll let you know how it goes. Maybe. I didn't call up my referrals, I just sat down and Googled and for a while there I thought I found an excellent candidate. I Googled further. I found an article all about how this woman had been recently ordained by some group called Womenpriests and now she's celebrating Mass and I thought, "The internet would LOVE this." I mean, it was kind of hard for me to look for someone else, once I thought of all the blog fodder possibilities. 

I am also attempting to set up a Google docs system for my new church committee. If the spiritual director stuff doesn't give me anything write about, surely my internet evangelization attempts will provide a nugget or two. 

What I am trying to remind myself, at this point in the year (in my life? in the stage I am in?) is that God knows exactly who he is dealing with. I can't say the same for myself, about myself, but God knows what he has to work with. What is it my not-Catholic friends like to say? He'll meet me where I'm at. Excellent. 

I am not sure about this spiritual director business, though. It smacks of counseling, though everyone takes great pains to explain that it isn't. And I have absolutely nothing against counseling, having felt at times over the last several years that counseling appointments were the difference between Survival and Utter Destruction. However! It feels silly to be in counseling when nothing counseling-worthy is going on (I speak from experience) and also IT IS PRICEY. When it is the difference between life and death and oh you guys I wish I felt like that was an exaggeration, money is not an issue. It is not an indulgence. But now? 

I don't know. I'm ambivalent. I'm realizing I'm ambivalent towards lots of things right now, which is a very strange place for me to be. 

I'm also coming up on two years of No Significant Anxiety Episodes which seriously blows my mind. I just... I don't know. I have every faith that it will happen again, some day. In the meantime, I never really thought I'd get a break. But here I am, with enough space to look back and think: holy grilled cheese, how did I get through that? Part of me wants to write it all out - how it started, the triggers, all the things I tried to make it stop, the ways it changed when I got pregnant, the things that - I believe - ended it. For now. I can't post those things on the blog, at least not all of them. But I wonder if it would be good for me to do it. 

Like, you know I am all into the ennegram stuff and I'll be reading my type description and then I think to myself: dude, I used to be that way, but then I started dealing with anxiety and I'm the exact opposite. God didn't make anxiety happen to me, but I can't help but think he found a way to use it. Refined by fire much?

And what do I even SAY to a spiritual director when she asks me why I'm there? 

"Uhhhh... I'm not having much luck on my own?"

We'll see.