I am that idiot on the cell phone

I wrote the following on an old blog a few years ago, as part of a post in which I awarded myself the Cell Phone User of the Year Award, and announced to the people of the world how they too could be worthy of such a prize:

Do not stare at your phone and let it ring while deciding whether or not to answer it. Every cell phone has a button that you can press to make it stop ringing without answering it. Usually it's the End button. Use it. And by the way, why is this such a difficult decision? I always see people stare at their LCD for anywhere from 10 to 20 seconds while deciding whether or not to answer the call. What is on these people's screens? A riddle? Mine just shows the name or number of whoever is calling me, thus making my decision about whether or not to take the call instantaneous.

Also, contrary to popular belief, hitting the Talk button on your mobile phone does not magically transport you into another dimension where the people around you can no longer see or hear you. If you simply cannot have your conversation without yelling into your phone, maybe you should just wait to take that call until you're somewhere removed from polite society.

(I should note that this was a pre-conversion post, back when being uncharitable was not just a goal but a lifestyle.)

Anyhoo, over the past couple of years God has answered some half-hearted prayer I said way back at the beginning of my conversion process: from the "be careful what you ask for in prayer" files, I asked God for humility, and to be able to see my life through his eyes. I've since seen that all the characteristics that were pet peeves that I decried in other people, I have myself. I've learned that I have no time for criticizing others for being prideful, grouchy, slothful, uninformed, narrow-minded, disorganized or judgmental, because I am the worst of all. I might even drive slow in the left lane sometimes. But there is one thing, one act at the very pinnacle of annoying things that can be done, that I do not do: I am not a bad cell phone user.

So I thought.

Yesterday my mom and I took the kids to a crowded outlet mall. I was sitting on a bench, very distracted by trying to sooth a fussy baby while juggling purses and burp cloths and bags. My cell phone rang, and I couldn't remember how to silence the ringer on this new phone so I let it ring loudly while I squinted to see who was calling. It turned out to be a good friend I needed to talk to, so I answered it. I couldn't hear her very well, but we chatted for a while anyway. I'd occasionally nod to all the people who looked over to admire the cuteness of my baby.

As I took the phone away from my ear at the end of the call, I realized: I had been shouting into my cell phone. People weren't looking over here to admire the baby but to get a look at just what fool was announcing her playdate plans to the entire mall.

It was in this moment that I realized: if I can be a rude cell phone user, there is no annoying thing that I can't do. I think this makes it official that I can never complain about other people's annoying habits ever again.

The seven words that give hope to suffering

Yesterday I was catching up on some blog reading and came across a blogger who did a post in remembrance of Holodomor, the great Ukrainian famine of 1932-33 (found via BlogWatch). For her post she translated the writings of some Ukrainian bloggers who wrote on the topic.

I wasn't prepared for what I read. First of all, I am ashamed to admit that I was not that familiar with Holodomor. I had some awareness that many people in that area of the world died of hunger around that time, but that was the extent of my knowledge. But to find out the details, and to read those stories recounted by the bloggers whose grandparents lived through it, was just shattering. One Ukrainian writes:

Old men and women spoke calmly about [raskulachivaniye - persecution of kulaks, collectivization], about the war, about DneproGES [Dnipro Hydroelectric Station] construction. No big deal, they were saying, it was tough, but it was a long time ago, and tears and grief tend to get erased from memory.

But as soon as you asked them a question about the Holodomor of 1932-33, these ancient men and women, who had seen lots of horrors, began to cry. Just cry. Some refused to talk - they had no energy to tell anything about it.

Of course Holodomor is not by any means the only large-scale tragedy to have happened to civilization -- many more occurred even in the same century. Maybe it was that I never heard much about this in history classes, that we live in a world where even a tragedy of that scale could get lost in the mix of all the other terrible things that happened in those years; maybe it was the personal tales that put a "face" to the suffering; maybe it was that quite a few of the stories involved parents mistreating their own children; or maybe it was the fact that the entire situation, this mass starvation of millions of people, was caused and perpetuated by a government. It was probably all of the above. But, whatever it was that jolted me out of my detached mode of reading words about historical events and into the mode of a mother, a daughter, a fellow human being whose heart ached terribly for the men, women, children and babies who faced such unimaginable suffering and evil...it left me in a sort of spiritual paralysis.

Since becoming a Christian I've read and prayed and thought a lot about suffering, so I tried to analyze the situation based on the knowledge I've gained from reading the great Christian scholars and their works on the subject. But it wasn't working. Just as I would begin to recall what C.S. Lewis or St. Augustine had to say about it, the thought of all the children who lived during Holodomor would come to mind, which would remind me that the Holocaust happened just shortly after that, which would remind me of all the stories my dad told about his friends who died terrible deaths in Vietnam, which would remind me of the current AIDS crisis in Africa...it was too much to think about. I thought about praying for the people involved but couldn't even really do that because bringing any of these topics to mind just overwhelmed me with sorrow. I have three little kids to take care of, and thinking about this was making me feel so down that it was impacting my ability to function, so I decided to just forget about it for now.

I tried to, anyway. It didn't really work. Shutting all of these horrors out of my mind, not even spending much time praying for the people involved because that would mean thinking about it, did not feel like the right response, especially as a Christian.

So last night as I knelt beside my bed to pray, I asked God to show me what to do. I knew that putting my head in the sand was not the right response, but I just couldn't think clearly enough to know how to even begin to pray about suffering at this kind of catastrophic level, to understand how we as Christians are supposed to have even a shred of hope in the face of such tremendous evil.

This angst was still with me in the back of my mind when I went to pick my husband's car up from the mechanic's shop this afternoon. As soon as I turned the key in the ignition, I hear the beautiful, familiar sound of a mournful yet hopeful violin piece, and I heard the serene voice of one of my great heroes, Fr. Benedict Groeschel, say:

You must keep your eyes on the risen Christ at all times, or life will seem to be just a bitter joke.

Unbeknownst to me, my husband must have borrowed my rosary CD and left it in his car. I've listened to it, this introduction to the Glorious Mysteries in particular, so many times; yet it was like hearing it for the first time as I started it from the beginning, and wiped tears from my eyes as I heard:

No rosary, no meditation on the life of Christ, is complete, or even makes sense, without pausing to think about and to pray about the events that took place beginning early Easter morning. The glorious Resurrection and the absolute triumph of Christ makes all of these events comprehensible, livable, for those who are still walking in the valley of tears.

You must keep your eyes on the risen Christ at all times, or life will seem to be just a bitter joke.

In the Glorious Mysteries we have not only Christ's victories in this world, but the coming of the Holy Spirit, and the promise of eternal life. The Christian life only makes sense when we keep before us the glorious and eternal mystery that we celebrate at the end of the rosary.

Yes. Of course.

I believe that hearing that line as soon as I started the car was God's answer to the question I posed in prayer. Whether or not it was a direct response to my prayer, it is certainly the answer to the question.

I came to believe not too long ago that Jesus probably did rise from the dead like the Christians claim; and now that I have lived as a Christian myself, and seen God's work in my own life as well as the lives of those around me, I am certain it is true. And that's really all that matters. In the face of suffering in our fallen world, it's not even necessary to do too much complicated theological analysis, because the only important question is this: did the crucified Christ rise from the dead? Did the Resurrection happen? Because, if it did, then we know that there is eternal life, and that all the terrible events of this finite world will be but a blip in comparison to an eternity with God. We know that the epic saga of human history has a happy ending.


I realize I'm talking about concepts here that most Christians probably mastered sometime around the third grade. But I thought I'd share anyway since this disarmingly simple truth has shown me how I can think about, pray about, and hopefully one day actively help those who experience great suffering, without succumbing to despair in the process: I don't need to analyze it or even fully understand all of the how's and why's behind all that is wrong with the world. I don't need to sift through all the words in the weighty tomes about religion and human suffering. I need to remember only those seven words that mark the turning point of all of history and shine a floodlight of hope into the darkness of our fallen world: "He is not here; he has risen."

Communion with God

We went to Mass this weekend, as usual. I realized as I was getting ready to go that I've been to Mass every single weekend since we entered the Church at Easter -- even when I was exhausted, even when I wasn't feeling well, even five days after our third baby in three years was born. More strikingly, I realized that I almost always look forward to it. Of all the things that have changed in my life since becoming Catholic, this is one of the biggest.


As a child, I never once went to church with my parents. Occasionally I'd tag along with a friend if I'd spent the night at her house, but I can count on my hands the number of times I even did that. The concept of weekends as fun free time was firmly entrenched in my mind. So when I first started to think that Christianity might be true, the idea of regularly going to church was unappealing.

I finally took that painful first step of scheduling my weekends around attending church service. I didn't understand why going out to a church was necessary, why getting together with some Christian friends and talking about God wouldn't suffice, but figured that I was probably just missing something and kept going anyway. And as we started going to Sunday services more regularly, I found myself longing for something, but I didn't know what it was. Part of it was that I hoped to find a community of likeminded people since I didn't know many other Christians, but there was something else as well. There was something deeper I desired but couldn't quite articulate.

Sometimes I found it, even though I didn't even know what "it" was. When I would go to a service where the pastor gave a stirring sermon, when Bible verses were read that miraculously addressed the exact issues I was struggling with, when I met people who glowed with love and friendliness, I felt it. It was something very subtle yet very powerful. Unfortunately, however, those experiences were hit or miss.

Eventually I came to understand that going to church is not about me and what I get out of it, so I resolved to go regularly out of respect and obedience. The yearning for that mysterious "it" was still there all the while. Sometimes I experienced it, oftentimes I didn't. To be honest, I didn't usually look forward to Sunday mornings, joking once with my husband that I was at my least Christ-like when we were getting everyone ready to go to church. Sometimes I didn't go at all; in most cases it was because I was legitimately not feeling well, though I'd secretly be relieved that I could stay home. But on the days that I went to church and I experienced "it", I'd wish I could go every day.

So when I had that realization this weekend that I actually go to church every Sunday now, even when I don't really feel up to it, and that I actually look forward to it, I realized that something big has changed. But what? What is different these days?

When I figured out the answer to that question it all came together: I now look forward to going to church every Sunday because I've found "it." That mysterious something that my heart desired from the beginning of my efforts at churchgoing, is now there every time. And I finally realized what "it" is: communion with God.

I believe that those various experiences at church that were so powerful, so difficult to describe, were experiences of God himself. Something from outside of the material world was present on those occasions -- I couldn't prove it on paper, but I knew it in my heart. I'd experienced the transforming power of contact with God himself.

Thinking of this, it was immediately clear where this recent love of going to church came from: the Catholic Mass is not hit or miss. I can now experience "it", communion with God, every Sunday. Even if the pastor's homily is lackluster or the music is bad or the Bible readings are confusing or the people aren't friendly, by receiving the Eucharist I still commune with God. Every time.

Honestly, I didn't expect this to happen. The idea of God making himself truly present in what appears to be bread and wine has always been kind of overwhelming to me. Though I came to believe the claim of the real presence, it's not something I ever understood on an intellectual level, so in the months leading up to Easter Vigil I didn't spend much time thinking about what receiving Holy Communion would be like. And, when I first tasted the consecrated Host on my tongue, it wasn't any sort of thunder-and-lightning moment (as I wrote about here).

But yesterday, as I thought back over the past few months, wondering why I so suddenly began to approach the doors of our church not just with a sense of duty and obedience but with feelings of joy and undeserved privilege and honor, I realized that it was because of the Eucharist. It was with great gratitude that I realized that I will now always be able to experience "it" for the rest of my life -- no matter where I am in the world, no matter what the circumstances, if I can find a Catholic church I am guaranteed that amazing, mysterious experience I always so desperately wanted: communion with God.

Happy Thanksgiving

Pictures from a lovely day at my 93-year-old grandfather's house:

I hope everyone had a wonderful day.

Temper control

Abigail and I were recently corresponding about the subject of anger. I don't know whether it's my background as a spoiled only child or my Irish genes or my naturally selfish disposition, but I think that the majority of my day-to-day sins involve getting disproportionately angry and frustrated when things don't go my way.

For example: the other day I was in a desperate hurry to get out of the house, my two toddlers were fussy, the baby was crying, and I needed to print something before I could leave. I hit "Print" on the document, ready to snatch the paper as soon as it fell into the tray, and...nothing. I waited. Nothing. Not only would the printer not print, but there wasn't even an error message so that I could diagnose the problem. I was furious. I eventually gave up and stormed around the house, shutting the kitchen cabinets extra hard, slamming my purse onto the kitchen counter, and indulging in other childish behaviors. I'm sure I made my kids miserable with my grouchy temperament, and it certainly did nothing for my soul to fly around in such a state of disquiet and agitation.

Shortly after this incident I received Abigail's email bringing up the topic of dealing with anger in daily life (which she also wrote about here). It was a wakeup call that this is an area of my life that I need to work on right now: having three kids ages three and under often puts me in situations where I feel out of control and things aren't going my way, so it would be a great service to my family (and my soul) to learn to adapt a more serene disposition in the face of frustrating events.

But how?

I thought I recalled St. Francis de Sales saying something about this in his amazing Introduction to the Devout Life, so I got my copy off the bookshelf to review. I opened it to a random page and my eyes immediately fell on a paragraph discussing the control of anger. (Dear God: point taken.) The great spiritual director writes:

It is better to attempt to find a way to live without anger than to pretend to make a moderate, discreet use of it. When we find ourselves surprised into anger through our own imperfections and frailty, it is better to drive it away quickly than to start a discussion with it. If we give it ever so little time, it will become mistress of the place, like the serpent that easily draws in his body where it can once get in its head.

When I first read this it struck me as impossible. I thought back to the printer incident, muttering something along the lines of, "How am I supposed to not be angry when my printer won't print and WON'T EVEN GIVE ME A FREAKING ERROR MESSAGE?!?!" Surely my anger in this incident was completely justified, even if my actions were out of line. So it once again seemed like St. Francis was speaking directly to me when he wrote:

[Anger] is nourished by a thousand false pretexts; there never was an angry man who thought his anger was unjust.

Hmm. So it sounds like step one is to stop justifying my feelings, to silence that voice in my head that assures me that anyone would feel angry in such a frustrating situation and that my feelings are completely justified. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't, but I wouldn't be able to properly discern the truth in the heat of the moment anyway, so I might as well banish that line of thinking altogether.

Next, St. Francis recommends that we work on meekness as a counter-balance to tendencies toward anger:

[W]hen we find that we have been aroused to anger we must call for God's help like the apostles when they were tossed about by the wind and storm waters...Prayers directed against present and pressing anger must always be said calmly and peaceably and not violently. [...]

Correct the fault right away by an act of meekness toward the person you were angry with. It is a sovereign remedy against lying to contradict the untruth on the spot as soon as we see we have told one. So also we must repair our anger instantly by a contrary act of meekness. [...]

[W]hen your mind is tranquil and without any cause for anger, build up a stock of meekness and mildness. Speak all your words and do all your actions, whether little or great, in the mildest way you can.

He then exhorts us to seek a calm state of mind, even when (perhaps especially when) we find ourselves in a state of anger:

[A]t the first attack you must immediately muster your forces, not violently and tumultuously but mildly yet seriously. Among the crowds in certain senate chambers and parliaments we see ushers crying, "Quiet there!" thus making more noise than those they want to silence. So too it often happens that by trying violently to restrain our anger, we stir up more trouble within our heart than the wrath excited before. [...]

When overcome by anger [many people] become angry at being angry, disturbed at being disturbed, and vexed at being vexed. By such means they keep their hearts drenched and steeped in passions. [...]

We must be sorry for our faults, but in a calm, settled, firm way.

In the short time that I've been trying to apply St. Francis' ideas to my own behavior, I think it is actually his wisdom from the chapter on temptation has been of the most help to me. He writes of dealing with any kind of temptation, whether it's to anger or lust or gluttony or anything else:

Temptation to a certain sin, to any sin whatsoever, might last throughout our whole life, yet it can never make us displeasing to God's Majesty provided we do not take pleasure in it and give consent to it. The reason is that when we are tempted we are not active but passive and inasmuch as we do not take pleasure in it we cannot incur any guilt. [...]

Never think of yourself as overcome as long as [temptations] are displeasing to you, keeping clearly in mind the difference between feeling temptation and consenting to it...Our soul does not always have the power not to feel the temptation but it can always refuse to consent to it. Therefore, no matter how long a temptation lasts it cannot harm us so long as it displeases us.

With Thanksgiving coming up and lots of friends and family around, I've had plenty of opportunities to feel frustrated. Maybe this one person didn't follow my directions about what food to give the toddlers, my children were misbehaving, and someone gave me some unsolicited parenting advice. What would typically happen in these types of situations is that as soon as I felt upset, I'd feel like I'd lost. "Well, there I go again, getting upset about little things!" I'd think in defeat, huffing around and making sure everyone knew of my displeasure.

Yet this advice makes me realize that, when those familiar emotions of frustration or anger or exasperation arise, I haven't lost yet. As long as I don't indulge in them -- walking around with an inner dialogue about how annoying it all is, shutting doors and cabinets extra hard, wallowing in a "woe is me" mentality -- I have won. Even if the feeling is still there, if I reject it with calm displeasure and refuse to allow it to impact my thoughts or actions, good has won out.


I thought I'd share this since it's sometimes interest to hear what others struggle with and what is helpful to them in overcoming it. Also, since big family holiday gatherings like Thanksgiving are sometimes stressful, I thought that these excerpts from St. Francis de Sales might be helpful to some people this week. :)

Why I'm a better person now that I'm a Christian

A reader writes in response to this post:

How sad to see that you abandoned reason for faith. would it not be even better if you started living your life as if it mattered in it's own right and not just so that you could get into a special heavenly club. I think doing good for no other reason then such a selfish desire is despicable.

The Atheocracy had a similar take in response to this post, and various commenters have made statements along these lines throughout the history of this blog.

I see where they're coming from. I too used to level those claims at Christians: when I heard people say things like, "I'm a better person since I found God," it struck me as selfish. Why not be a good person either way? Why does it take some "God" and perhaps the carrot stick of an eternal payoff to motivate you to do good things?

But now that I'm one of those people who bores others with my own talk of being a better person since becoming a Christian, I see statements like that in a different light. I have a new perspective that resulted from the conversion of heart that accompanied my intellectual conversion.

I think that I am a much better wife, mother, friend, daughter, and person than I used to be before I was religious (and word on the street is that my friends and family would agree). The reason for that isn't as simple as wanting to go to heaven and avoid hell. In case anyone's interested, I'll explain what I think is responsible for the changes in my life, my actions, and my heart. I don't speak for all Christians (or atheists) here, this is just my personal perspective:


What's right and wrong is very clear now
I tried to be a good person when I was an atheist. I generally attempted to do what was right and not to do what was wrong. The problem was, there was a lot of gray area there. For example, I believed that it was right to be kind to others. It seemed like a pretty clear, straightforward rule. It only took a few spats with friends or disagreements with classmates, however, for "be kind to others" to sort of drift into "be kind to others unless they're total schmucks." There was a fine, blurry line between justifiable and unjustifiable rudeness, and it tended to move depending on the extent to which my pride had been wounded.

That's just one example, but there are countless matters on which the distinction between right and wrong was not clear in all circumstances, and the discernment of where to draw the line was clouded by my unparalleled selfishness and laziness. As I wrote about in more detail here, some deep instinct told me that such a thing is true right and true wrong did exist -- independent of each person's subjective experience and opinions -- and when I read about what God supposedly is and what he supposedly wants from us as laid out in the Catholic Catechism, it smacked of truth. I believed that the details of what's right and what's wrong as laid out Catholic doctrine were an articulation of the natural law that's written on the human heart, that comes from a source outside of the material world.

So, even early on in the conversion process when I didn't "feel" God or have super strong beliefs, simply having such a clear description of what's right and what's wrong really aided my efforts to "do the right thing", and helped me keep myself in check when I was tempted to tell myself a story about why some bad thing I was doing was not actually bad at all.


It is about heaven...sort of
I do want to go to heaven. Unfortunately, I am not spiritually mature enough to really conceive of what exactly heaven is. I know that to be "in heaven" is to be with God in some way, and that God is the source of perfectly pure love, joy, and goodness. I know that to be "in hell" is to be separated from God for eternity. One certainly sounds better than the other. But these concepts -- "heaven," "hell," "eternity" -- are still vague enough in my mind that they don't motivate me on a gut level. So while I know on an intellectual level that I want to go to heaven and stay out of hell, I have never avoided doing something bad because of the thought, "If I do that I might go to hell!"

There is a very big motivator, however, that is related to the concept of heaven: I don't want to reject God. In the past few years I have slowly (very slowly) begun to recognize and feel God's love more and more in my soul. I've come to believe the Christian claim that God not only loves each of us, but is the ultimate source of love. When I turn away from him by doing something unkind or selfish -- even a relatively small act or thought -- I realize now that it is a tragic rejection of love itself.


Something within me has fundamentally changed
Back in college a professor asked us to come up our personal motto, a short phrase that summarized our outlook on life. With a smirk I realized that the best I could come up with was, "People suck."

Even going back to early childhood, a salient characteristic of my personality was the ease with which I became irritated with the people around me. Though I was usually empathetic to people in difficult situations and was mostly nice to friends and family members, I did not have any kind of fundamental love for "other people" as a general concept -- and I certainly did not feel (or show) love for my enemies. I once counseled a friend who'd been hurt that "forgiveness is for suckers," I firmly held on to grudges, openly criticized anyone and everyone who I found annoying, and amused myself with thoughts of getting revenge on people who had wronged me.

But then, a funny thing happened on the way to becoming a Christian: ever so slowly, I stopped being so irritated with the people around me. In fact, I started to feel love for them.

As I wrote about here, I never intended for this to happen. Once I thought that God might exist and Christianity might be true I started going through the motions of praying and occasionally going to church, just to see if anything would happen. I was kind of hoping that maybe God would give me some cool sign like he did with Constantine or that I'd have some awesome vision that explained all the mysteries of life or something. To my slight disappointment, none of that happened.

What I didn't see at the time, however, is that something much bigger was happening. A blazing symbol in the sky or a mysterious vision I could have written off as perhaps having to do with that second glass of wine or just not getting enough sleep at night. But what God did instead, though a much slower process, is far more convincing, and far more powerful: he fundamentally changed my heart.

I don't know exactly when it happened, but one day I woke up and realized that I had a love for my fellow human beings that didn't used to be there. I never thought that things like cynicism, biting sarcasm, and criticism of others were wrong, and I never intended to change those areas of my personality...yet I found that the longer I was involved in Christianity the less room there was in my heart for them. They were slowly edged out by profound peace, joy, and love.

Now that I'm a Christian, I work hard at becoming a better person -- being kind to others, helping people in need, forgiving those who have wronged me, putting others first -- not out of eagerness for an eternal payoff, but out of love.


I have help
Until recently I never understood the concept of "grace". I'd heard people throw around the term but never really knew what it meant. It was when I began contemplating how much life had changed since getting involved in Christianity, how different my actions and even my thoughts were, that I realized: I cannot do this. I cannot be patient with that one family member, sincerely wish the best for that person who insulted me, or sacrifice something I desire for the benefit of someone who won't even appreciate it. That's just not me.

It was when I realized this that the concept of God's grace clicked with me. Truly, it is only by a power outside of myself, by grace, that any of this has happened.


To be clear, I don't meant to imply in any way that I am some perfectly selfless, loving, giving person now that I'm a Christian -- I am FAR from it. I'm also not saying that you have to be a Christian to be a good person. My point is only that I am a better person than I used to be, and I'm a whole lot more motivated than I used to be to continue to improve. Not out of a desire for a payoff, but out of love.

Turning the other cheek

Last month I was walking through a department store and happened to pass a sitting area that had a television tuned to a news channel. Unfortunately, I walked by just as the announcer was recounting something that happened to a four-year-old girl, something so horrific that it made me feel ill (it's the same story I referenced in this post). The little girl lived, but what she went through was truly hell on earth. I continued to think of her hours, days, even weeks after I heard her story. I still think of her every now and then and wonder how she's doing.

Meanwhile, a couple days after I heard this story, someone was really rude to me. The details of how I know this person and what happened don't matter; suffice it to say that my perception was that her actions were not only extremely rude but undeserved, uncharitable, unreasonable, unkind, and just completely out of line. I responded with hostility in the form of defensive sarcasm, and then proceeded to share some uncharitable and unkind opinions of my own about this woman with my husband, mother, mother-in-law and pretty much anyone else who would listen. Somewhere in the back of my mind was the thought that maybe I should be turning the other cheek since I now claim to be a Christian, but that was overshadowed by an indignant feeling that if put into words went something like, "I don't think there's anything wrong with the way I'm responding -- after all, she was SO MEAN and SO UNFAIR. If I'm being nasty here it's ultimately her fault."

A while later, around the time I was walking around composing the "fantasy passive-aggressive email that I would just LOVE to send to this woman" in my head, the little girl from the news came to mind. Completely out of the blue, it occurred to me that one day that little toddler who'd lived through such unthinkable events will grow up. She'll be an adult. Maybe I'll even run into her at the grocery store. I thought of how I would treat her, how I would be sure to show her the utmost kindness to try to add some amount of love to her life, even if it were just in the form of a passing smile. No matter what the premise was for our interaction -- even if she cut me off in traffic or stole my parking spot, even if she were to do something "SO MEAN" or "SO UNFAIR" -- I would respond with charity and forgiveness. I would turn the other cheek.

It was interesting to realize that, just as I was in the midst of very much not turning the other cheek in my current situation. Yet when I thought about some hypothetical future interaction with the little girl from the news, it brought into relief the fact that there would just never be a good reason to be nasty or hostile to her. The severity of the events she'd been through startled me into realizing that any unkind thing I did or said to her, even if it were a reaction to something she'd done first, would just be lashing out because of wounded pride. Not only would it not solve anything, but it would add to the suffering she'd already experienced in her life.

That brought me to my current situation: had the woman who was recently rude to me not suffered? Surely she hadn't been through anything as terrible as the little girl on the news; yet I bet if I were to see a highlight reel of the bad events in her life I would have overwhelming empathy for her too. I bet I wouldn't want to add to the suffering she'd already experienced, no matter what. I bet I'd be willing to turn the other cheek.

I thought of all the other times I'd reacted to unkindness with more unkindness. The combative nurse at my doctor's office, the unhelpful customer service rep at my insurance company, the condescending mom at the playgroup -- I'd been uncharitable and unkind in my reactions to all of these people...yet for all I know they were some of the children whose terrible stories I saw on the news 15 years ago. Maybe I heard of the events in their lives and shook my head in sorrow, wishing that I could do even just one small thing to make their lives better.


Thinking about all this made me realize that I had always mentally compartmentalized people into two different groups: the people who live through horrible tragedy who I hear about on the news, and the people who I interact with in my daily life. The people on the news had almost theoretical status: they were people who I will never actually meet but, if I hypothetically were to meet them, I'd be extra motivated to be as perfectly Christ-like as possible, no matter what, so that I didn't add to the suffering they'd seen in their lives. However, the thinking went, I don't actually know anyone like that.

But of course I do. I might not know many people who have experienced events as extreme as that of the little girl on the news, but everyone has suffered. We all live in this fallen world together, and because of that we have all experienced hurt, loss, cruelty, abuse and pain, to some extent or another. Everyone I'll ever interact with has had something bad happen to them. And when inevitable misunderstandings and altercations arise, if I respond to unkindness with unkindness, to scorn with scorn, the only result is that I am adding to the suffering they experience in this life, and to the total amount of suffering in the world.

Unfortunately, it's very unlikely that I will respond like Christ to all interactions from here on out. I do hope I'm able to keep this lesson in mind, though. I hope that next time I come across some tale of tragedy on the news, when I think, "My God, these sorts of things are so terrible, if only there were something I could do!", I hope I remember that there is some small thing I can do: though I won't ever be able to completely erase all the suffering from the world, I can start by not adding to it.

A lot can change in five years

Last night for some light reading I flipped through a book I originally read back in 2002, David Sedaris' hilarious collection of essays called Me Talk Pretty One Day. I came across his essay in which he describes some students in his French class trying to explain Easter with their very rudimentary French vocabulary. I remembered it well from the first time I read it, but this time it struck me differently. I saw it from a different angle and "got" the humor a bit more, but I couldn't put my finger on exactly why. Then I realized: in 2002 I'd never heard of the Resurrection.

I suppose I'd probably heard the word used in reference to Christianity, but I didn't know that Christians believed that Jesus rose from the dead, and I definitely didn't know that that's what Easter was about (I only realized it had something to do with the Crucifixion when I got to college -- I seriously always thought that the Easter Bunny was the central figure to Easter). It's hard to believe that someone could grow up in this country and even spend many years in the Bible Belt and not get that but, unless I'm misremembering something, it's true. I doubt that hearing this claim would have changed my beliefs or piqued my interest at all, but it's an interesting testament to my former determination to tune out my Christian neighbors when they started talking about their religion!

Sometimes it's hard to believe how much my life has changed in five years.

Five Catholic teachings that just kinda made sense to me

When I began exploring religion my husband followed my search, and he ended up converting to Catholicism at the same time I did. Since he was raised Baptist, it was interesting to compare our different perspectives on the whole thing, particularly when our research led us in the direction of Rome. When we started reading up on the Catholic Church, there were some teachings that made sense to me right away that he needed to look into more before it made sense to him, and vice versa. We were discussing this again the other night and he suggested that some people might find it interesting to read a post about my impressions of Catholic beliefs, coming from my background of lifelong atheism.

I don't have any better ideas for something to post about today, so here it is. In what will probably be a failed attempt at brevity I'll keep it to five things, and for the sake of interesting discussion I'll choose some of the things that I didn't struggle with that I sometimes hear other converts say were sticking points for them.

Without further ado, here five Catholic teachings that just kinda made sense to me from day one:


1. Purgatory

I don't know if I could have ever believed that Christianity was true without the concept of Purgatory.

As I've mentioned before, when I was younger I had some bad experiences with Christians. I'm sure I was as much to blame as they were but, either way, I was on the receiving end of no small amount of unkindness in the name of Christianity. Frequently these same Christians would say with confidence that they were definitely going to heaven. It just didn't sound right to me. I knew enough to know that God was supposed to be great and loving and heaven was supposed to be a really nice place, but if all these people who had been so mean here on earth could go directly heaven when they died (me included), I wasn't interested in spending eternity there. At the same time, being mean to people wasn't exactly the worst thing in the world, and while it didn't appeal to reason that a just God would let people into heaven with that kind of behavior, it also didn't seem reasonable that he should send them to hell for it either.

This is why Purgatory really made sense to me. Once I understood heaven as the place of perfect goodness, perfect joy, perfect love, I could see that allowing a soul that harbored even a small amount of animosity or unkindness or hate would taint the whole environment, like allowing someone with dirty feet to step into perfectly pure water. Yet surely God wouldn't send us to hell for, metaphorically speaking, having a little dirt on our feet. So I could easily believe that a just God would allow for some sort of purification process in the afterlife for those who didn't purify their souls quite enough in their time here on earth.

Some people, of course, probably do use their time on earth wisely, to purify themselves enough during this life to be able to go directly to God when they die. Which brings me to the next thing that really resonated with me...


2. The communion of saints

All my life I'd noticed that many cultures throughout the world have a belief that we can have some limited contact with those who have died before us, and that those souls are probably aware of what is happening down here on earth. I'd heard many stories of people believing that a deceased grandmother or uncle or brother was "watching out for them". And, once I believed that we have eternal souls that live on after our bodily death, it seemed that some form of communication like that was certainly possible.

So when I read that the Catholic Church teaches that we can have contact with anyone who is already in heaven, that we can ask them to pray for us just like we can ask our neighbors here on earth to pray for us, it was a no-brainer. It sounded right from the moment I read it.

Also, on a practical level, the longer I'm a Christian the more I see the need for solid spiritual role models. Of course Jesus is the ultimate role model, but in my great laziness it used to be easy to fall into a mentality of, "Well, Jesus was divine, so a regular person like me could never come all that close to being perfect like he was. What I'm doing right now is probably as good as I can expect to do." Yet every time I'd fall into this spiritual apathy or complacency, it only took about five minutes of reading about the lives of the saints to inspire me with wonder at the amazing things that ordinary people can do through Christ, and to re-commit to growing in faith and holiness (St. Monica, St. Frances of Rome and St. Teresa of Avila are some of my favorites). As with many other things, it was as if the Catholic Church anticipated my needs before I even knew they were there.


3. Veneration of Mary

It took me a while to even begin to wrap my mind around the concept that God exists. After I began to think that all this crazy Christianity stuff might have something to it, I walked around in a daze for a while, having to completely re-think my entire existence and the world around me. The concept of God and his power was a bit overwhelming, and I realized that my limited intellect could hardly begin to understand his greatness.

As I was thinking about this, at some point the thought popped into my head: so if God made himself a man like the Christians say he did, that means...that means that God, the Creator of the entire universe, chose his own mom. Whoa! "I want to know more about her," I immediately thought.

Once I thought through all this, it never really occurred to me not to venerate Mary. I wanted to know as much as possible about the woman who God saw fit to be his human mother. Also, per point #2, it seemed like she would probably have a special love for those of us still here on earth, and was probably praying for us and watching over us in some way. So, needless to say, when I read about the Catholic emphasis on Mary I had no problem with it at all.


4. The belief that non-Catholics and non-Christians could go to heaven

Once I began to understand a bit more about the Judeo-Christian concept of God, I could not believe that a just God would bar entry to heaven to people who didn't know about him or his church through no fault of their own. I didn't think I would ever be able to be a Christian if I were required to believe that. So when I started reading the Catholic Catechism and came across stuff like section 847 here, it removed a major roadblock to faith. Not much more to say on that one.


5. Sacred Tradition

One thing that is absent from the topics above is any discussion of whether or not the teachings above are Biblical. In the beginning, that's not the metric I used for evaluating whether or not these concepts were likely to be valid, for a couple of reasons. First, I just could not make sense of any discussions about the Biblical basis for these claims. Catholic authors and non-Catholic authors each offered a bunch of Bible verses to support their claims about the truth or falsehood of Catholic teaching and, honestly, neither case jumped out to me as obviously right or wrong. Even after I'd read the New Testament, I could see both sides. Also, I hadn't yet read the entire Bible cover to cover so for all I knew there was some verse hidden somewhere that cleared it all up that neither side was telling me about. I was so confused.

My other problem was that, coming from a background of atheism, I wasn't sure that I even believed that the Bible was the inspired word of God. All my life it had been just another book to me and, though I liked what I was seeing of Christianity and was really trying to open my mind, I was having a hard time believing that God was the ultimate author of these texts. The four Gospels did sound like the authors were telling the truth, and the epistles were very interesting, but there were a lot of things I didn't understand. As I wrote about here, whenever I read the Bible I was left with lots of big questions, and there seemed to be as many answers out there as there were Christians. I just didn't know what to do.

Meanwhile, the more I looked into the Catholic Church the more it seemed to be, to use G.K. Chesterton's phrase, a "truth-telling thing". Reading about its beliefs was like having the natural law that's written on the human heart poured out into actual words. I saw behind these teachings something far more wise than humans, a force that understood us better than we understand ourselves.

So when I read of the Catholic concept of Sacred Tradition, the notion that God uses this one church to act as a sort of divinely-guided Supreme Court that always speaks the truth on matters of doctrine and morals, a lot of things fell into place. For one thing, it explained how this church could have such deep wisdom behind its beliefs -- it had seemed so incredible and unlikely that a group of people could come up with insights this great and keeping them going for 2,000 years, so in a way I wasn't surprised to hear the theory that this church and its teachings didn't come from people at all.

It explained how Christianity was able to flourish before the "Bible" as we know it today was created, how the early Christians knew what books to include in the canon in the first place, how illiterate people could grow in faith, etc.

It also made my struggles with the Bible disappear. Based on my difficulties knowing how to correctly interpret it and how to know it was the inspired word of God when it didn't even say so itself, it immediately sounded plausible that this static word of God was meant to go hand in hand with the teachings of a living church.


These five teachings, as well as a few others, allowed the pieces of the puzzle to fall into place so that I could put my heart into giving Christianity a try. I'd known from the beginning that I would never be able to know for sure whether or not God exists and Christianity is true by simply reading books. At some point, I was going to have to put my heart into it. In the beginning that just wasn't possible -- I had more questions than I had answers, and way too many concerns about Christianity to approach it with anything other than an arms-folded-across-my-chest skepticism.

But the more I read about the Catholic Church's beliefs, the more my skepticism melted into interest, my cynicism turned to curiosity. I'd found so many good answers to all my tough questions -- logical, reasonable answers -- that I was ready to give it a try. Though I still had doubts and major spiritual dryness, I found the ideas of this church compelling enough to bet it all that what it said was true. I would take a leap of faith. I would change my life to do what the Catholic Church said I should do, in hopes that it would lead me closer to God.

As I've said before, the results were more amazing than I could have ever imagined.


Anyway, I apologize that this post doesn't even begin to do justice to these huge theological concepts -- volumes of books have been written about each of them, so I probably butchered their explanation by trying to fit it all into a blog post. Please keep in mind the same disclaimer applies to this post as to everything else I write: I'm just a fool with an internet connection who likes to talk about how and why I believe in God after years of atheism -- I'm no scholar or theologian, so take everything I say with a grain of salt. :)

Weekly favorites

Some of my favorite items from my links blog, in case anyone out there is insane enough not to check it every minute of every day:

• A quick and easy way to make your pictures pop with Photoshop
  
  
• Historical Christian's beautiful post about why she became a Catholic
  
  
• A touching story behind the first 40 Days for Life campaign
  
  
• Babies and other "God-type" things
  

See more great stuff here!

Planning to do great things for God

While I still have Finding God's Will For You out on my desk from my recent post I thought I'd share one of the main points I took away from the book, a concept that has changed my life.

When I first sat down to read this book back in late July, I was in "nesting mode" for the impending arrival of my third baby. Now, what "nesting mode" means for me is probably different than what it means for other people. I think that, for most women, it means that they get their houses all cleaned up and organized before the new baby comes. For me, it means sitting around and drawing up grand plans that will take my house from plain and cluttered to something fit for a spread in Architectural Digest in about three weeks. My plans are so grand that when I go to start the work I end up shuffling around in an unfocused daze, hopping from one to-do item to the next, working hard but having only unfinished projects to show for my effort.

So as I sat in bed one July night, a pile of clothes stacked on the floor in the corner from an unfinished closet reorganization attempt and a stack of boxes at the foot of my bed for a storage project that never got off the ground, it once again felt like St. Francis de Sales was talking directly to me when I started reading. In discussing how to determine which "inspirations" are from God and which are from a more malevolent force, he writes:

We should not want to practice many exercises at the same time and all of a sudden. The enemy often tries to make us attempt and start many projects so that we will be overwhelmed with too many tasks, and therefore achieve nothing and leave everything unfinished. Sometimes he even suggests we undertake some excellent work that he foresees we will never accomplish. This is to distract us from the prosecution of some less excellent work that we would have easily completed. [...]

Very often...the evil one deludes us, and to distract us from achieving some good, he proposes another that seems better.

It only took a quick glance around my bedroom to see that this was advice that I really needed to hear. Not that any one unfinished household project was a big deal, but in total they spoke of a life of distraction and disorder, as well as a certain level of sloth -- when a project got challenging and required discipline and hard work to carry it through, I would suddenly be "inspired" by a far better, more valuable task that I could go start.

St. Francis continues:

Just as a shrub that is often transplanted cannot take root and, as a result, cannot come to maturity and yield the desired fruit, so the soul that transplants its heart from plan to plan cannot profit or gain proper growth in perfection, since perfection does not consist in beginnings but in accomplishments. [...]

Possession of a little treasure actually found is worth more than expectation of a greater one we must still go out to seek. An inspiration urging us to give up some true good we already posses in order to pursue a future better good is suspect.

Until I read this it had never occurred to me that a spiritual attack could come in the form of a suggestion of a good plan. I assumed that as long as I wasn't being tempted to do anything sinful that I must be on the right path. But then, thinking of my recent attempts at regular prayer, it was glaringly obvious that suggestions of good -- even great -- things could be dangerous hindrances to spiritual growth.

For example, for months I had been planning to incorporate daily prayer into my routine. Each night I thought about praying before bed, but my circumstances were never "good enough". The only prayer I could muster tonight would be a quick, sleepy, rushed endeavor, so I should really wait until tomorrow, when I'll have everything under control to have time to pray a full Rosary. And, really, I should have a special place in the house to pray to put me in a properly reverent state of mind -- how uninspired would my prayers be if I simply said them while lying in bed! In fact, I should designate a separate area for prayer in my room, complete with a table for a Bible and a prayer book, candles, maybe even a kneeler! I wonder if I could find a cheap kneeler online? And maybe some incense...

And so on and so on. Meanwhile, no actual praying was getting done.

Now, I don't know whether that was an actual spiritual attack or not, but I do know that my planning to do great things to glorify God in prayer were not actually glorifying God. I was just wasting time. And I was surprised at how hard it was to change.

Inspired by this advice, I decided that every night I will simply kneel down at the side of my bed, cross myself, and say a quick prayer. If I am able to do more, I will. But I will at least do that. It's not as much as I'd like to do, there are so many "better" options, but at least it will get done. Simple enough, right? Not for me. Every single night I still hear myself think something like, "Kneeling down at the side of the bed? That's for children! The real way to show respect for God would be to go downstairs to the office, light a candle, read from the Bible for a few moments, then spend at least thirty minutes in deep prayer. Now, of course, there's not time for that tonight. Maybe you could just do it tomorrow..."

It's been surprisingly difficult to silence this voice that always suggests "better" options for growing in my newfound faith. But, when I have been able to stop planning and just do it, the results have been great. Almost every night I do kneel down and say a very quick, very imperfect prayer, and I have received very noticeable grace from it. The past few weeks have been difficult ones in terms of sleep deprivation and the usual challenges that go with having a three-year-old, a one-year-old and a two-month-old, yet I have felt closer to God than at almost any other point. I think a large part of it is from following St. Francis' advice and simply keeping my head down and getting things done, even if they're only very small and humble tasks, even when I'm strongly tempted to wander off to do something "better".

As I kneel to say my little prayer, even though it's not long enough or serious enough; as I put that stack of books on the shelf, even though I haven't had time to create that grand Master Plan for Book Shelf Categorization; as I clean up the house before my husband comes home, even though it's still pretty messy, I realize that this is how you glorify God. As Mother Teresa once said in her famous quote, God doesn't expect us to do great things in life, only small things with great love.

Drawing a picture of the sun

The other day I was sitting outside with the kids, watching them scribble on the side of the house with colored sidewalk chalk. It was a beautiful, sunny day, with a mild breeze to offer some cool relief from the warmth of the sun. As I sat on the steps to the deck and surveyed the world around me, I felt a deep sense of satisfaction, peace, and gratitude.

Inspired by the joy that bubbled within me, I picked up a coral-colored piece of chalk and drew a picture of the sun on the side of the house. The bright color cut through the dingy gray concrete to produce what struck me as a very happy image. I sat back and admired my artwork. I didn't intend to show it to anyone else, and was in fact pretty sure that nobody else would ever see it since busy little hands with lots of chalk hovered nearby. But that didn't matter. I just wanted to do it, regardless of whether or not anyone else would ever see it.

Why do we do things like this?

I used to wonder about stuff like that when I was an atheist. Why would the human animal, a collection of chemical reactions produced by blind evolution alone, different from gnats and snails only in terms of complexity, feel such deep satisfaction in making a series of marks that represents the star that's about 93 million miles away from our planet? For that matter, why would he feel "awe" at the atoms that make up the material world around him in the first place? (Especially at things like mountain ranges that only make survival more difficult -- it seems like he should have evolved to loath such a sight.) And, most perplexing of all, why would he ever feel grateful when observing his planet? Humans typically only feel that emotion when something has been given to them by another intelligent being. Why does the human animal feel "grateful" when he observes the "beauty" of the world around him? What evolutionary process led to this odd instinct?

After thinking about this sort of thing and occasionally discussing it with friends, I came up with some answers that offered some explanation for these feelings and behaviors. But they never quite sounded accurate. I always felt like there was something missing from these answers, that they had that hollow ring of a theory that contains some truth but is missing detail and depth.

Now, of course, I see what was missing.

I felt awe at creation because it has a Creator, its beauty evidence of the Source of all beauty. I could see the glory of my normal, day-to-day environment (a place that if I were a mere animal I should see only as a means to an end for survival) because it reveals something of God, and because I know deep inside that this is not my real home, and that I'll only be in this place for a while. And my desire to pick up a piece of chalk to give an outlet to my joy and wonder in the form of a picture of the sun came from that yearning we all have for the sacramental (to use the term loosely), those things that bring the realities of that unseen realm of which we're all aware here into the material world for us to see and hear and touch. And that spontaneous, instinctive feeling of gratitude for my life and the world around me came, of course, for the same reason I feel grateful about anything else: because something has been given to me, probably undeserved, by someone else.

That little drawing was just one of many examples of how much more life makes sense to me now that I am a Christian. I still think that the universe is made of atoms and that we are creatures who feel sensations through the firing of neurons in our brains, who demonstrate certain behaviors that we came by because evolutionary processes selected for them in our species. But now I know why we feel "awe" at the "beauty" of our environment. And now I know why we draw pictures of the sun.

Keeping the big picture in mind

I was looking through the stack of books on my desk for something to post about today, and I came across a passage in one of my favorite books that I thought was perfect in light of my last post (and others like it).

I recently read Finding God's Will For You by St. Francis de Sales. The wisdom that St. Francis offers in this classic text is so straightforward and yet so profound, so simple yet so life-changing. His calm, reasonable tone is exactly what a scattered, overly analytical person like myself needs for spiritual growth.

When I picked up the book this afternoon I immediately came across a section I'd starred that was a great reminder that fixating on details and minor points can not only be unproductive, but can be a big hindrance to spiritual growth. St. Francis writes:

[There is] a troublesome temptation that sometimes come to souls who have a great desire to follow in all things what best accords with God's will. On every occasion the enemy puts them in doubt as to whether it is God's will for them to do one thing rather than another. For example, they ask whether it is God's will for them to dine with a certain friend or not to dine with him; whether they should wear gray clothes or black; whether they should fast on Friday or Saturday...In this way they waste a great deal of time.

Does he know me?! Oh, wait, this was written like 400 years ago. It sure does sound familiar though! He goes on to say:

While busying and perplexing themselves to discover what is better, they needlessly lose opportunities to do many good deeds. The accomplishment of such deeds would be more to God's glory than the distinction between the good and the better -- with which they amuse themselves -- could ever be. [...]

[W]e do not have to weigh all kinds of little actions to learn if some have greater value than others. Frequently there is even a certain superstition in wanting to make such an examination. [...]

It is not giving good service to a master to spend as much time thinking about what is to be done as in doing what is required. We should measure out our attention according to the importance of what we undertake. [...]

Choice of vocation, plans for some affair of great importance, a work requiring a long time or some very great expenditure of money, change of residence, choice of associates, and such similar things require that we think seriously as to what best accords with God's will. But in little daily actions, in which even a mistake is neither of consequence, nor beyond repair, what need is there for us to...give them much attention?

That second to last paragraph is sort of a summary of my life: spending as much time thinking about doing stuff as actually doing stuff. Wait...that's not right. It's more like a quarter of my time thinking about it, a quarter of my time talking about it, (maybe another quarter used to blog about it) then a quarter of my time actually doing it.

Anyway, St. Francis de Sales ends by reminding us that, not surprisingly, it's ultimately about quietly, humbly, prayerfully going about our lives and keeping the big picture in mind:

Even in important matters, we must be very humble and not think of finding God's will by force of scrutiny and subtle discussion. After we have implored the light of the Holy Spirit, applied our thought to search for His good pleasure, taken counsel with our [spiritual] director and perhaps with two or three other spiritual persons, we must come to a resolution and decision in the name of God. After that we must not call our choice in doubt, but devoutly, peacefully, and firmly keep and sustain it.

This is exactly the kind of advice people like me need to hear. I think that because of my tendency to be more of a numbers person, the kind of person who prefers an Excel spreadsheet to reality, the whole "seeking God's will" thing is really nerve-racking. Where is my checklist? Where is the Gantt chart with my deadlines and task breakdowns? How am I supposed to know if I'm on target without some quantitative measure of my accomplishments towards the goal?

The answer is, of course, that it's not for me to know. And why should I? There would be no point in God revealing his plan for my life since I wouldn't even be able to begin to comprehend how it fits into his overall plan for creation. I think it comes down to the same thing I touched on in this post, that I know so well intellectually but have a hard time putting into practice: God's will is this moment, right now. There's not much of point in wasting energy over-analyzing whether you got here through good choices or bad choices or worrying about what God has in store for you for next week or next year. Just pray, seek humility, and stay close to God. If you do that, he'll push you back on course if you get off track. He'll lead you where he wants you to go.

Do I have to ask for stuff in prayer?

[UPDATE BELOW]

...Or can I just give thanks to God and then sit in silence?

I'm still relatively new to the whole concept of praying -- until a couple years ago I'd never said a prayer in my life. So my prayers are, well, awkward. They sound more like I'm reading a legal contract than like I'm communicating with the Creator of the universe. I generally follow the A.C.T.S. model (Adoration / Confession / Thanksgiving / Supplication), and it's the whole "S" part of it where I tend to get hung up.

Last night, for example, after praising God, expressing regret for my sins and giving thanks for my blessings, I wanted to pray for a good outcome for our car that just went into the mechanic's shop since we've already spent a lot of money on repairs. It went something like this:

Lord, I would like to ask for a miracle: that whatever caused the minivan to go completely dead be only a minor, inexpensive repair. (Oh, and how great was I at offering up that whole situation where I finally got all the fussy kids strapped into their carseats only to hear that click-click-click sound when I tried to start the car? I didn't even curse!...Not out loud, anyway.)

But, as always, I am open to whatever your will is in t