I was not raised strongly Catholic, my family and I went to Mass on Christmas...most years. I attended great public schools, with excellent teachers, and received a well rounded education until junior high school when the caliber of the students and staff alike made me search out alternatives to spending my high school career with the same delinquents. Luckily, my parents and I agreed the lofty Jesuit tuition was worth it. Like most girls I started to notice boys around the 6th grade and to my parents' dismay my changing body got the notice right back. I learned quick how to get the attention of the opposite sex, wore shorter and shorter skirts, lower and lower tops, learned the art of flirting, and bought into every magazine boasting a cover of "How to Drive Him Crazy". I was bombarded with messages of what a relationship should be and I couldn't wait to get into one. I had my first boyfriend at age 12 and from then on it was boyfriend after boyfriend after boyfriend. I had relationships to make me feel loved, accepted, beautiful, looked up to with envy. I dated mostly upper classmen, went to every school dance, and led boys on like you wouldn't believe. I liked the attention. I used them, I played them, and ignored their dignity as human beings. And relationship after relationship there was disappointment after heartbreak after boredom because non of these guys could satisfy that deep longing to be loved, content, and feel like a complete human being. I felt they all wanted to take something from me that I didn't want to give up.
And then there was John. I should not have had any interest in dating him, John was clearly shy, not popular, not an upper classmen, I would have nothing to gain with John. But I was fixated on him, so I began to play the game. I passed John notes in class, dressed provocatively, flirted, the whole bag of tricks and nothing seemed to get his attention. Perplexed, I had all but given up on getting John. I knew how to get a guy's attention, but not his, not in the way I wanted anyway, not in the "I have a date lined up for Homecoming" way. I meandered into class right as the bell rang most days, but one day in particular everyone was staring directly at me as if they knew something I did not. I turned around to face the chalkboard to find my obsession writing very largely and artistically, “Mandy, will you go to Homecoming with me?” So I gave a very cool, “sure” and tried to hide my natural emotions from being put on the spot. We dated through high school and college. John was sweet, gentle, not in the least bit pushy and I never felt as though he wanted to take anything from me. John was raised Catholic and attended Mass weekly throughout our college years and I went with him only because it was important to him. I never considered God in my social life and certainly did not want God anywhere near my dating life. I lived as though my religious life and my "actual life" were two separate beings and dating was a purely selfish game with no place in my religious life. I depended on John to fill my needs for love, support, acceptance, reassurance of myself worth, romance, and many other needs, which he did quite well. Our sophomore year at Oregon State University he proposed and I joyfully accepted.
Almost as soon as the wedding planning began, my relationship with my parents began to deteriorate and became a huge source of grief in my life. They let me know pretty plainly they did not think John was a great match for me and wanted me to move back home with them and attend the local Portland State University instead and if I did not they would no longer pay for my schooling. And what did the rebellious twenty year old version of myself do? I stayed right where I was of course and took out ridiculous school loans to do so, I told you I married via the most difficult path possible. John and I were happy together and I was going to fight to be right there next to him. Naturally, after college I had to start paying on huge loans and my career was not turning out to be everything I had hoped for. My happy little life seemed to be crashing down around me. I relied on John to take it all away and make me feel secure. When he couldn't fill my every need, couldn't love me in exactly all the ways I needed that's when I discovered he had big issues of his own he needed to work on and work out and improvements to make. So, once again what did the ignorant, nearly Godless, twenty something year old version of myself do? I threw in the towel of course! I mean, I was getting married to live happily ever after and if John wasn't prepared to give me that why was I getting married? I couldn't take anymore weight on my shoulders and if John couldn't take it from me, what was the point?
 |
| Hanging Lake in Glenwood, CO |
John called to see how I was doing. I tried to sound happy, but he knew me better, he knew I was hurting. He told me all about these missionaries that set up at Oregon State University called the Saint John Society. He told me how they helped him immensely to get over the grief of our relationship ending and his own faults. He wanted to come visit me. I was terrified. I did not want him to see what I had become, how I was living my life. I did everything I could to stop him from coming. But he came anyway. I had hurt him beyond belief, but he chose to love me anyway even if he had to let me go. The week and a half he was in Colorado I saw such a change in him. He was glowing and joyful and confident even though being with me must have been tough. Unlike me, our break up had not broken him. He had God in his life and I was amazed. I wanted the peace he had. I wanted to be happy. The missionaries had showed him what a life in Christ could be. They helped John forgive himself because God had forgiven him. My love for John grew into something so much more than butterflies and a racing heart, into something so much deeper and truer during his visit. I learned some important truths and was able to renounce many lies I believed about relationships in the months after John's visit.
I learned that love is not a feeling, love is not butterflies, or an emotion, love is God. And just like God is a choice, love is a choice. We choose love or we reject love. There is no such thing as “falling in love and out of love”. And I knew God was calling me to marriage with John. In recognizing the call, my irrational, selfish, egotistical, rebellious twenty something year old self grew up a little. In the coming months leading up to the wedding I went on a retreat from the Saint John Society missionaries whom John had come to love, called Fragua. I met my God here on a personal level for the first time in my life during Reconciliation. I felt that deep joy and fulfillment I had been looking for in this personal connection with my savior. It had been so easy to make someone or something else my God and to expect them to behave as God and be all things to me at all times. I had made John my God and that simply was not fair to him and certainly a huge dishonor to God! God was calling to me "Aren't I enough for you?". And slowly, and clumsily I am responding "yes, Lord". John is a human, and like all humans will let me down from time to time, but I have God who is all things to me, fatherly and motherly love, romantic love, He is my friend, and wants to make me beautiful and that is enough for me and this responsibility should never have been placed solely on my human husband.
 |
| Approaching the Alter |
No comments:
Post a Comment