About a month or so ago I had a difficult conversation with someone who shared a hard fact. This fact is this: people who once loved me and wanted to be with me no longer do. The reason they no longer want to be with me is that I am 'too in to your religion'.
You have no idea how much that hurt.
This is nothing really new in terms of information. I have been rejected by former Catholics and Non-Catholics before this and it hurt then too. These people, however, were very special and to get this information was like being punched in the stomach by an MMA fighter (that is the right term, right?). My breath was sucked out of me. I felt physical pain in my mid section. My brain raced with thoughts and I cried myself to sleep for a week.
It really, really hurt.
As the hurt wore off it was replaced with anger. How dare they, after all I have done for them? They will be back when they want something. I will never speak to them again. The heck with them. Who needs them?
Gradually the anger faded. It was replaced with sorrow - genuine sorrow for what might have been in my life and what was the actual reality of my life.
The sorrow is fading now too - and the acceptance that this really is the Will of God hit me about the same time as the Pope was getting ready to make his announcement about renouncing the ministry of the Bishop of Rome.
I have written many times about my character defect - the huge one - that allows me to place the needs and wants of other people above the needs and wants of God. I have struggled with my attachments here on earth because it is difficult to walk this path alone. Little things crop up. Things like the notice from CalPers I received that my long-term care insurance is going to go up 85% which means I will have to let it go - and that was one of my safeguards against being alone as I age. The fear of being that little old lady all alone in the house at the end of the block who lives with an ancient Scottish terrier and 19 cats is one that has a basis in reality. When my Mom gets sick, she has me. When I am 91 and I get sick? I will have God and no one else.
Which is wonderfully spiritually groovy but translates into having no one to help you get in and out of the bathtub so you end up being the STINKY little old lady alone in the house at the end of the block...well, you get the rest.
I suppose the fear never really leaves. What happens, I suspect, is it lessens just as the other emotions lessened from being handed this news. I suspect that this has propelled me into deeper spiritual communion with my Lord and my Savior. I suspect that this has pushed me even closer to His Church.
I suspect this has given me even more reason to be Catholic Out Loud.
What do you think?
1 comment:
In the end, humans will fail me. I ask too much and they can't deliver, or they take on things that don't belong to them. I remember a dream I had when I first got cleaned up. I was in a featureless white room. I couldn’t see a thing; no contrast. After a while my hearing came back, and I could hear a rhythmic noise, very regular. Then slowly over what seemed like hours the contrast started to return, and I could see that I was in a room. It was a hospital room, and the noise was the ventilator inflating my lungs with air. No one came in, ever. All the stuff I thought was important was worthless. I just wanted someone in there with me.
I have experienced the same types of things as you, since 2003 when I started the RCIA process. I have been criticized for “getting too close” to the Church, counseled that “those people don’t know you like we do,” and the like. Never once did I make either the Church or the Program choose, or set down a line in the sand. Some people are in fear of my recovery because I have gone “over the edge” with this “church stuff.” I have shared some extraordinary spiritual experiences that I have had in the last year with some trusted friends. Some treat me like a spiritual imbecile, humor me, look at me like a cocker spaniel, or are concerned for my sanity. At first I was indignant, wanting to say “hey! Isn’t this what we were told to do? Develop our relationship with our higher power?” My meetings or commitments have not changed, and to be truthful, if they did so what? Walk in my shoes or pack sand.
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