Getting my life back

[This is a Part II to the post Putting Our Lives on Hold.]

This weekend will mark my fourth Mother's Day as a mom. It's stunning to think of how much things have changed since that first Mother's Day not that long ago. Three years and two more babies later, I see now that it was the crucible of motherhood that shattered the fragile life philosophy that I learned from the secular world, made me fearlessly seek truth and, ultimately, taught me the true meaning of life. Here are my reflections.


Back when my first child was born, I had a certain amount of angst about being the mother of a baby. It was odd. I loved my son dearly and saw the great importance of shaping another person's life...and yet, there was always this voice in the back of my mind that murmured, "What about my life?" Despite my tremendous love for my child, there was a part of me that felt like I'd hit the pause button on my life the day he was born. The full-time care that babies and toddlers require was so wearying, and I frequently commented to my husband that I couldn't wait until our youngest child went off to elementary school so that I could finally "get my life back!" I felt like there was always a carrot stick hanging in front of my nose, distracting me, promising the glory days to come when I would no longer have little ones around and I could finally get back to really living.

In my mind, the phase of life with babies and toddlers underfoot was drastically different than other phases of life. As I mentioned in my first post on the subject, I assumed that the only way to find fulfillment and meaning in life was to be self-focused. This was the default, the only way to live life to the fullest. Being the mother of little ones was a rare situation in which you were thrust into being temporarily other-focused, and was therefore something to just grit your teeth and endure until it was over and you could get back to the default.

After my second child was born in the midst of painful medical complications, life with little ones got even harder. You'd think that I would have found myself more desperate than ever to move on from this grueling time in my life, and yet, that didn't happen. This was around the time I had started to take a serious look at Christianity, and in the process of reading up on God and what he's revealed to us through his Word and his Church, I started to notice something interesting:

My life as a mother started to make a lot more sense when seen through the teachings of Christianity.

I've said many times before that reading the Christian explanation of why we are here, what we are to do and how we are to live was like reading an articulation of words that had been written on my heart all long -- and this was especially true when it came to motherhood. I increasingly found that my secular, godless worldview offered me no lexicon for describing what was so beautiful about motherhood, and why it was worth it; yet Christianity described it perfectly. I started to find some very interesting answers to that nagging question, "What about my life?"

Christianity was telling me that all those things I yearned for that fueled my self-focused pursuits -- happiness, excitement, security, youthfulness, joy, importance -- were actually yearnings for God, and that I'd never find peace until I sought him. At first that claim sounded crazy, even after I thought it was possible that God might exist. But when I took a hard look at my worldly pre-motherhood life and recalled the travel, the parties, the socializing, the trendy size 8 clothes -- all those things that were supposedly my "real life" that I was so anxious to get back to -- I started to realize something: none of those pursuits ever brought me lasting happiness. In my self-focused life without God there was certainly happiness and joy, yet it was fragile. There was always a feeling of restlessness, a never-ending search for the next big thing. I felt like I couldn't stay still too long, or the happiness might go away.

"OK, I'll bite," I thought after contemplating this for a while. "If I've somehow been groping around for God this whole time and won't be able to truly rest until I find him, how do I go about doing that?"

It was when I got the answer to that question that my entire life -- in particular my life as a mother -- finally made sense.

I discovered that the path to God is the path of agape, of self-giving love. When John wrote in Chapter 4 of his first Epistle, "Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love," he wasn't talking about just any kind of love. I "loved" traveling and sleeping in on weekends and pretty much anything that involved me doing things for me without having to make sacrifices. But that's not the kind of love John was talking about. The kind of love that leads to God, that God is, is agape: self-emptying, other-focused, inconvenient, sometimes-painful love.

When I started to seek God by seeking agape, everything changed. For one thing, the carrot stick disappeared; that siren song of the self-focused glory days to come when I no longer had children in diapers was silenced, the tension gone. My life as a mom of little ones was no longer in such sharp contrast to my future life without young children: either way, I'd be serving others. I found that this was the meaning of life, the secret to lasting happiness, the hidden key that unlocked the mysteries of the spiritual realm that I'd spent my whole life trying to find.

And, ironically, after I came to embrace the idea of a life dedicated to agape, I actually ended up with more time for myself. Because in my secular mindset the other-focusedness of the childbearing years was a temporary situation that you would extricate yourself from as soon as possible, my mentality was to just hold my nose and plow through it. I would have thought that to further embrace selflessness would lead to mental and physical collapse! But what I realized, through Christianity, was that a life of agape is not a life of running yourself ragged. To truly serve God and others to the best of your ability is to humbly accept that you are only human, and that there are limits to what you can do. Using the Rules of Life of religious orders as examples (I once posted the daily schedule of the Missionaries of Charity here), I began to see that it was simply not optional that I regularly find time for rest and prayer. I saw that the other-focused life doesn't mean that you can never take a time for recreation and relaxation -- quite the opposite, in fact. It means that you must regularly take time for recreation and relaxation, but that you put these activities in their proper place, realizing that they're not the meaning of life.

After doing it backwards for so many years, it fit like a glove to live a life that was other-focused for the long term and self-focused in the short term.


As this fourth Mother's Day rolls around and I look at my life with three children in diapers, I find that it's a perfect encapsulation of the mystery of human existence, a testament to that most counterintuitive, most important of all truths: that it is only by going through the discomfort of becoming other-focused that we will find what we're really looking for. To paraphrase the Evangelist John, it is only by knowing agape that we will know God.

I've mentioned before that I'm particularly ill-suited for this job: I'm easily irritated, disorganized, sensitive to noise, introverted, and come from a background of being a spoiled only child where I never had to lift a finger around the house. My daily life is not usually what you would call "pleasurable," at least not in the same way as my pre-kid days. I would almost certainly have reported more days as being overall "fun" or "easy" back when I had a cool career than now. From a secular, self-focused worldview, my life should be worse now than it was before. But it's not. I wouldn't say that "my life is better now," as much as I would say that "my life has started now."

Through Christianity, I understand that that the tension I used to feel about my life as a mother was the tension of resisting God, of fearing that if I emptied myself of ego and selfishness that there'd be nothing there to fill me back up. I finally understand that the life of a mom of little ones is in such sharp contrast to the typical life in our godless, secular culture because it is inherently a life of self-giving love, of being close to God.

The lessons I've learned are objective truths about the human experience, applicable to everyone in every state of life, whether or not they have children. Yet, for me, it took motherhood to teach me these lessons. I am so hard-headed and was so entrenched in my old ways that it took the tidal wave of agape that could only come with a house full of babies to break down layer upon layer of selfishness encrusted with fear, and free me to seek the truth.

Through the beauty of motherhood, I think I now understand what it's all about. And I finally got my life back.

Looking for the tow truck driver

A recent comment I left over at one of my regular reads, A Former Leader's Journey, got me thinking about some of the best advice I've ever received in terms of understanding God's will:


Coming from atheism, the whole concept of there being a personal God who is somehow involved in all that we do was amazing...and intimidating...and confusing. As anyone who has read my 2007 archives knows, for many months I was fascinated with the concept of knowing exactly what God's plans were for all the little details of my life. I looked everywhere for signs: did my invitation to a friend's wedding get lost in the mail because I wasn't supposed to go? Did my computer crash while writing for my blog because God didn't want me to publish that post? Did all the difficulty we had getting to church mean that we should switch parishes? I wanted all the answers NOW, and wanted the world around me to act as a sort of spiritual Ouija board in which God gave me clear Yes's and No's when I asked him questions (that way there'd be no uncertainty and I wouldn't have to mess around with that sticky "childlike trust" thing).

At some point I realized that, unless being a Christian was supposed to make you neurotic, I was probably doing it wrong. So I emailed regular commenter Steve G. and asked him for advice. The details of my question and his answer are here (I highly recommend that you read the whole thing), but the summary is this: I offered him a hypothetical situation in which my car breaks down on the way to an important meeting, and asked how to know the mind of God based on that situation. How do I know if God means the car breaking down to be a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down about the subject matter of my meeting? Or could it be that God is trying to tell me something about my relationship with the person I was planning to meet? Steve G.'s response was not what I expected, not what I was looking for, and not what I wanted. But it was a profound insight, and it changed the way I saw the world. In summary, his answer was:

Maybe it's not about you at all. Maybe it's about the tow truck driver.

He countered with a hypothetical situation in which there is a tow truck driver who is in a bad place in his life and is having a crisis of faith. He takes a call about a woman whose car is broken down on the side of the road. When he gets there he sees a Bible or something on her seat that indicates she's a Christian, strikes up a conversation about faith, and ends up being led back to God through the discussion they have. In other words: I am not the protagonist in that story. I'm just "the Christian woman whose car broke down," a bit player with a small speaking role.

It was this advice that led me to one of the biggest paradigm shifts in my entire conversion: the realization that to be a Christian is not to make God part of your story, but to realize you are part of God's story (that phrasing borrowed from this fascinating post at Purify Your Bride). Up until this point, I would have described my goal as a Christian as "to make God a big part of my story!" To understand that it's not about me, that the story was never mine to being with, was so humbling, so intimidating. What would this mean? How was I supposed to control everything if I didn't even know where God was going with all of this?!

Though Steve G. actually offered the ultimate answer in his response, it took months for it to sink in. I had to learn it on my own, the hard way (as usual), after banging my head against the wall by trying to do it my way a few more times. Eventually I realized that what it means to accept I am part of God's story is to ask in every moment not "What is God trying to tell me with this situation?" but rather, "How can I better know, love and serve God through this situation?" It is to stop reading tea leaves to see what God thinks of all my great, important plans and to realize that my plans are neither great nor important in the grand scheme of things.

Whenever I am tempted to forget this lesson (which is often), whenever I get so mired down in the frustration or difficulty of a situation that I can't imagine how this could possibly be part of God's plan, whenever I get so fixated on my own desires that I fall into thinking of all events in my life as related to them, I remind myself to "look for the tow truck driver." The tow truck driver has become a symbolic reminder for me, a call to put it all in perspective and remember that I have the great honor of being but a small player in the story that God writes. And, sure enough, nine times out of ten when I set my gaze higher and look outside of my own little bubble to see what's going on with the other players on the stage, I find that it is surprisingly obvious that the drama that I find myself in the midst of is actually not about me at all. Indeed, it's usually about the tow truck driver.

Putting our lives on hold

When I first started exploring Christianity, one of the teachings that was most surprising and counter-intuitive to me was the notion that we are called to live other-focused lives.

A product of secular culture, it seemed obvious to me that the way to find fulfillment and meaning in life was to be self-focused (not necessarily selfish, but self-focused). The way I used to see it, serving others was only one of a variety of good and worthy a person might choose to do with his or her free time. By default, you made your life goals based on pursuing personal interests and maximizing comfort; if possible, you would try to find some ways to give back to others, but to do so for any extended period of time would be to put your life on hold.

When I first heard that Christianity taught that our lives are not about ourselves and our own wants, that we are to look to serve God and others before serving ourselves, it was a radically different message than anything I'd ever heard...so radically different, in fact, that it sounded crazy. I resisted it. Wouldn't spending too much time focusing outside of ourselves lead to misery? How were we supposed to accomplish all our big goals and do all those fulfilling things we planned to do if we never optimized around our own desires and wants?

Yet, in the process of resisting this teaching, I began to take a second look at the self-focused philosophy I'd had all my life.

I began to realize that introspecting and focusing on my wants never brought me lasting peace, and that it didn't seem to work for anyone else either. I began to notice that as I started accomplishing some of those big goals that were going to bring me so much fulfillment...I didn't feel as fulfilled as I thought I would. I'd heard before that this Christian teaching about living to serve God and others was not the personal philosophy of the religion's founders, but an objective truth. I'd heard the claim that this, like all the other Christian teachings about moral law and how we are to live, was an articulation of the law that is written onto every human heart by our Creator, a statement of truth about what is best for each individual and for the world as a whole. When I first heard these claims they sounded like so much grandiose religious posturing. Yet more and more I realized that my way wasn't working, and I started to wonder if these Christians might be on to something.

I decided to give it a try. I'd make an effort to spend a whole lot less time searching for meaning and answers within myself, making all my plans for the day, the year, and the rest of my life based on what I felt like doing. Though I would set aside time for prayer and time to myself to recharge my batteries (as religious orders do in their rules of life), I would start to think of my purpose here on earth as nothing more than to serve God and others. Honestly, it kind of sounded like a recipe for misery. But I had learned over and over again that every time I thought I knew better than God and his Church...it turned out that I did not know better than God and his Church. So I gave it a shot.

Almost immediately, I began to see the power of this teaching.

Even with my halting, far-from-perfect efforts, things began to change. For one thing, ironically, I found that everything I sought by focusing on myself and my own needs -- peace, joy, fulfillment, direction, feelings of security about the future -- I began to find only after I stopped looking inward and started looking outward.

The biggest thing I noticed, however, was that to be other-focused is to create an economy of love. Every single time we set our gaze outside of ourselves seek to serve others, whether it's something overt like volunteering at a soup kitchen or something more subtle like simply saying a sincere, kind word to the checker at the grocery store, we add a little bit of love to the world. Through these actions there is more love in the spiritual economy than there was before. The other-focused life is, ultimately, a life of love.


I've been thinking about the power of this teaching a lot lately, noticing how differently I see the world now that I understand that serving God and others is not one of a variety of nice options we might pursue with our free time, but is actually our very purpose for existing.

All of my scattered thoughts on the subject were brought into relief the other day when I had a conversation with an immediate family member (whom I don't want to identify directly). He seemed depressed and uneasy about something, and when I asked him why he said it was about his retirement account. He's deeply distressed that he won't have enough money to afford anything other than a government-run nursing home in his old age. I reminded him that my husband and I would love for him to move in with us when it gets to the point that he doesn't feel comfortable living on his own. We weren't even talking about a situation where he might need intensive medical care, yet he flatly refused to even consider the notion.

"I would never do that to you," he said. "I would never have you put your life on hold like that."

We've had this conversation many times before, yet this time, the first since my conversion to Christianity, I was hit by just what a profoundly sad worldview this reflects. I've always wanted this family member to live with us when he can no longer live on his own, and he's always refused on the same grounds. That part is nothing new. Yet this time I saw clearly that the situation goes beyond an unfortunate refusal of help: it reflects a worldview in which well-meaning people like my relative believe that the best thing they can do for their loved-ones is to not burden them with their presence, where the very meaning of life has been twisted to suck love out of the world.

One of the logical results of the self-focused worldview that is so common in the secular world is that, if we assume that the best use of our lives is the unfettered pursuit of our personal goals and interests, we therefore don't want to get in the way of others doing the same. It creates a situation in which we're all constructing our own little self-sufficient desert islands, not wanting others to get in our way but also not wanting to get in others' way. It leads us to believe that if we were ever to lose our self-sufficiency, our presence would not just be an annoyance but would in fact prevent our loved-ones from fulfilling their very purpose in life.

When I compare my life with the self-focused worldview to my life with the other-focused worldview, the difference is striking. Not that I am anywhere near some saint-like level of always seeking to serve others before myself, but simply understanding that that is the goal, that my own life isn't about me, has changed everything. It's counter-intuitive, it requires sacrifice, and it isn't always the most comfortable path. But it is clear that, truly, this is how we were designed to live. After all these years of trying it my way, it's like I'm finally operating my life according to the instruction manual. And it is ultimately a manual for how to live a life of love, written by he who is Love itself.

Finding God in 5 Steps

I occasionally get emails that say something like this:

I'm what you could call "agnostic." I'm open to the possibility that God might exist. I've even been sort of seeking and have tried praying, but nothing has happened. I'm not any closer to believing in God than I was before, which I take to mean that either God doesn't exist or doesn't care if I know him.

I'm about to give up and just forget about it. I saw in your archives that you were in a similar place a few years ago and wanted to know if you have any advice before I stop what has so far been a futile search for God.

I know exactly how it feels to be in this situation. While it's important to understand that any kind of powerful experiences of God are a gift, that there's not some magic formula we can follow that will guarantee that we'll hear the voice of God or have a major religious experience, there are certain things we can do to make more room in our hearts for God's presence.

Based on lots of reading, advice from trusted friends, and plenty of personal experience of doing it the wrong way, I do have a few tips that might help anyone who feels like their search for God isn't going anywhere. For brevity I titled the post Finding God in 5 Steps, although a more accurate title would be, 5 Things I Learned the Hard Way That I Believe Fostered the Right Disposition for Gaining a Better Understanding of God but Since I'm Just Some Fool With an Internet Connection and Not a Pastor or a Theologian You Should Take This and Everything Else I Write With a Big Grain of Salt. So here it goes:

1. Seek humility first

If you feel stuck in your spiritual search, set aside the search for God per se and seek humility instead. The importance of this step cannot be overstated. Pride is one of the most effective ways to block God out of our lives. Throw all your efforts into becoming a more humble person. For inspiration, read up on people throughout history who were known for their humility. If you're not exactly sure what true humility involves (I definitely wasn't), this is an excellent article that explains that humility is not the same thing as low self esteem or thinking that you're bad.

2. Go on a cynicism fast

Commit to a period of time during which you'll fast from all sources of cynicism: give up watching TV shows and reading websites that make jokes at other people's expense (even if it's about celebrities or politicians); try to change the subject or say something positive if such conversations come up in person; avoid making cynical jokes or comments yourself. You might be surprised at how much this fast will transform your heart.

3. Read the great Christian authors

While a transformation of heart, a turning of the soul toward God, is the most critical step in opening ourselves to God, it's also important to realize that seeking God does not mean setting aside logic and reason; as I mentioned in this post, quite the contrary is true. Asking tough questions and hearing what the great Christian thinkers have said on the matter will only bring you closer to God. Some authors I recommend are C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo (I recommended some specific books that influenced my conversion here).

4. Do the experiment

I believe that God's existence can be "proven" in a certain sense, as long as you understand that God = Love, and what you're trying to prove is Love itself. This is not something you can know about from analyzing data or reading books alone. To get the "proof" that you seek, you must enter the laboratory of your heart, and actually conduct the experiment: live, for a while, as if God did exist. Pray. Follow the Ten Commandments. Show love and kindness to everyone, even your enemies. Read the Bible. Give God the thanks and honor and respect you would show him if he did exist. As Pascal suggested, just try it for a while, and see what happens.

5. Pray frequently

This is by far the most important step. I know, you feel like you're talking to yourself. You don't see the point of it. I was there for a long, long time. But there is no substitution for humbly, regularly turning toward God with an open mind and an open heart. If you're stuck for words, consider reciting something like the Prayer of St. Francis, or just pray, "God, I want to find you. Show me how. I'm listening."


The bottom line is this: seek, and you shall find.

This statement is true. If you understand what it really means to seek (using both your mind and your heart); and if you understand that the finding part doesn't necessarily happen immediately, that you're beginning the long process of building a relationship that will continue to grow and change for the rest of your life, you will find God.

Also, I would be delighted to include anyone in this situation to my prayers. Please feel free to leave a comment (anonymous is fine) if you'd like for me and other readers to pray for you (thanks to Tausign for that suggestion).

Dying to self

Speaking of Christian concepts that used to baffle me, the idea of "dying to self" was high on that list.

This concept was one of the first things I got from reading the New Testament and books by Christian authors, and, honestly, it sounded kind of depressing. There were surely some good things about me, and it seemed a shame to have to get rid of it all. I eventually understood that it is only by dying to self that we show Christ to others, which did make it sound more appealing. But even then I pictured that if all Christians were to completely die to themselves and be perfectly Christ-like, that we'd all basically be identical drones. I thought of all the different talents and personality types out there -- poets, artists, engineers, comedians, etc. -- and it seemed sad to whitewash all those unique characteristics.

I thought this instruction was so odd, in fact, that I would sometimes wonder what kind of weird religion this was that I was exploring here. "How could a good religion tell people that they're bad, that they need to die a death of sorts in order to grow closer to God?" I'd wonder. It was only because I had an overwhelming amount of evidence in favor of this belief system being the box top to life that I was willing to move forward and set aside my concerns for the time being. It was probably one of my first leaps of faith.

Slowly, I began to understand that to die to self was to die to the willful, selfish, sinful parts of ourselves; to let go of our plans and what we want to do based on comfort and convenience. Even this, though, sounded dangerous. The skeptic in me had to wonder: if I attempt to empty myself of all these lifelong tendencies that are supposedly sinful, if I set aside my to-do lists and goals spreadsheets and make no plans for the future, what will be left? Isn't that a recipe for ruin?

I was surprised to find that it was not.

As I slowly began to empty myself of so many of the things that composed life as I knew it -- my plans, my goals, many of my habits, (what I thought were) ingrained personality traits -- I found that I was not left empty. Rather, there was immediately Something there to fill me up, Something whose presence increased as life as I knew it decreased. But there was something else there as well, something that had been lost that I'd never tried to find:

Me.

I've mentioned that in the past I sometimes thought of "finding myself," but I thought of it in terms of finding what I should do with my life, what I should accomplish. It never even occurred to me that there was some other, more pure version of myself than the one I already knew. Perhaps because I never used to believe in the soul, I always figured that the chemical reactions that fired in my brain at any given moment were "me," that there was no one set of chemical reactions that represented my true self more than any other. It's been with some amount of surprise, then, that I've begun to see that the process of dying to self is a process of stripping away layers of sin encrusted with selfishness, and that glowing underneath all those layers is the true, complete version of who I was designed to be -- the real me. That's probably another reason I feel younger these days: the closer I get to God, the closer I get to the original version of myself.

I now see "dying to self" not as something a person does because he thinks he's bad; it's something he does because he knows he's good, and wants to find the Source of all that is good. It's not a whitewashing of unique characteristics, but the shining of Light through them to make them more beautiful and true. Dying to self, I think, is a purging of all that is not love; it's a process of breaking down the walls that block out Love himself; it's a way -- the only way -- of truly finding ourselves.

Getting older...getting younger

My husband and I came across some old photos the other day. It was fun to take a trip down memory lane as we glanced through our pictures from a 2003 vacation, but I was surprisingly caught off guard when he made the passing comment, "We look a lot younger there!" We happened to be looking at a photo of me, and my initial reaction was to think:

I was younger there?

I did a quick double-take and noticed that I was indeed chronologically less old when I stood on that street in Prague. Yes, of course, what was I thinking? This photo was taken five years ago. I was not only younger, but also a few pounds lighter and more "carefree" with fewer responsibilities. And yet, the picture registered as if I were looking at a picture of an older, heavier, more burdened version of myself. How could it be, I wondered, that I could be five years older, fifteen pounds heavier, and have all the responsibilities of a wife and mother who just had her third baby in three years, yet look at this old picture and feel younger, lighter, and more free now than I did then? The one-word answer is this:

God.

Here's the longer answer:

Sometimes I come across old pictures that bring back memories of times of difficulty; usually, as was the case with our 2003 vacation photos, old pictures bring back memories of laughter and love and good friends and good times. But one universal feeling I have when I look at photos from more than a couple years ago, no matter whether they were taken in times of challenge or joy, is a sense that this picture was taken in the wilderness. It's a sense that, regardless of the actual location of the photo, I was standing in a no-man's-land of trouble and even danger; that, unbeknownst to me at the time, I was carrying burdens I didn't need to carry and wandering directionless across rough terrain when there was a marked path waiting for me. To the girl looking back at the camera, I feel like saying something like, "Hang in there."

In the past couple of years since the beginning of my conversion I've gotten a couple more wrinkles, some new gray hairs, and am starting to feel some aches and pains that weren't there before. Technically, I've gotten older. But I've also come to believe in God, and have begun to understand that my only purpose here is to know, love and serve him. And if to be younger is to be more full of life, more willing to love, less burdened by cares and worries, and somehow closer to the beginning of it all, then I am younger now than ever before.

My life on stained glass

Yesterday was only the third or fourth Easter since I came to believe in God. I sat in our church overwhelmed with the joy of someone for whom the Good News is still breaking news.

As I looked around the sanctuary, teeming with life and color, the stained glass windows kept catching my eye. The last time I'd seen them was at night, for the Good Friday service, and the way they now exploded with color in the sunlight made them look like something entirely different than the dark, muted windows I'd seen the night before. That contrast sparked the memory of something...I just couldn't put my finger on what it was.

When the choir began to sign the now-familiar Communion hymn, I became overwhelmed with gratitude on so many different levels; and as I wiped a tear out of my eye, I realized what was familiar to me about the dazzling windows:

Stained glass is designed for light. To look at a stained glass window in the dark is to miss the artist's intent. Its true beauty and full meaning cannot be understood without light pouring through it -- the more light, the better. Even someone beholding a stained glass window for the first time could see that it was crafted by a loving, intelligent hand, and that the artist's sole purpose for creating this object was for it to diffuse light.

My life before God, I realized, was like a stained glass window in the dark. Only now that I have found the Light in which it is meant to be viewed, only now that I understand that the very purpose of my existence is to let as much Light pour through it as possible, do I see it as it was designed to be seen. It is only when I allow Light to shine through the stained glass window of my life that can I see its true, glorious beauty.

Easter Vigil, one year later

How could a reasonable person living in the 21st century actually believe that at the Catholic Mass, bread and wine are truly (like, not symbolically) changed into the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ?

This was one of my biggest stumbling blocks when considering Catholicism (notice that "Christ's real presence in the Eucharist" was conspicuously absent from the "five Catholic teachings that just kinda made sense to me" list). When I first heard that the Church still believes that the Mass makes Christ's one sacrifice at Calvary present here and now, that the bread and wine is seriously turned into the flesh and blood of God himself, I prayerfully thought: "Are you kidding me?" I thought I must be missing something. I'd never heard a more bold, audacious claim made by a modern religion.

There was a part of me that kept hoping I'd find that it was all a misunderstanding, that Catholics were only required to believe that the consecration of the Eucharist was a really, really, really important symbolic event, that all that crazy talk about drinking blood and eating flesh was just some old fashioned superstition that us enlightened modern folks weren't required to believe. I was a lifelong atheist, after all. It was enough of a feat that I even came to believe in God in the first place. It was enough of a leap of faith for me to believe that some miracles might have happened a few times throughout history. But to ask a former militant atheist to believe that a miracle happens at every single Catholic Mass, that bread and wine are actually changed into the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ despite the fact that they look exactly the same...it seemed too much to ask.

It is surprising, then, that as I sit down to write my reflections for this Easter Vigil, when I think about all that has happened in this first year since my husband and I entered the Catholic Church, as I marvel at how different this year has been than any before, I find that there is really only one thing to talk about: the Eucharist.

For my one-year anniversary post I could try to pen a great ode proclaiming my joy at having come to know God on a level I never imagined possible for someone like me; I could write about the challenges we've faced, and the oasis that our newfound faith provided for us when we felt cast out into the desert; I could have my husband do a guest post about the transformation he's seen in me (and in himself) in the past year; I could talk about how my role in Christ's sacrifice is finally real to me; I could say something about how my life is unrecognizable from what it was only a few years ago. But when I started to write on each of those topics, I realized that each one of them -- everything, really -- comes back to the Eucharist.

Though God certainly could work in my life if I didn't receive the Blessed Sacrament (as he did tremendously before I became Catholic), the way he's slowly but steadily infiltrated my body and soul since I began to receive him physically at Communion is something new -- I am united with him now in a way I was not before.

To be honest, I am surprised by this.

When I received my first Communion at Easter Vigil last year I had come to accept that the teaching on the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is true. Or, perhaps more accurately, I was willing to accept on faith that it was not false. I was undoubtedly being led to the Catholic Church, and found its defense of this teaching to be solid and compelling, so I trusted that it was true in some mysterious way, even though I didn't really get it. That was the best I could do, and I never expected to understand it any more than that. Even as the months have rolled by, after receiving Communion week after week, I still don't know how it works. I don't even have a visceral reaction when I first see the consecrated host held above the altar, and don't think I ever felt the Holy Spirit hit me like a ton of bricks the moment the consecrated host was placed on my tongue. And yet, despite the lack of immediate emotions, despite the fact that I can't tell you exactly how it all works...I believe now with all my heart that it is true. I know that I eat the flesh and drink the blood of God at the Mass, and that it is the source of my strength.

I know it for the same reason a baby knows that its mother's milk is the source of its nourishment: the baby can't tell you how the milk is created by the release of prolactin and the cells in the alveoli. He can't tell you about the importance of immunoglobulin IgA and fat-to-water ratios. He couldn't even begin to understand how and why the milk nourishes him if you tried to explain it. He just knows how very much he needs it. He knows that the mysterious substance that his mother gives him is the source of his strength as much as he knows anything at all in his little life. And so it is with me and the Eucharist.

This belief in and love of the Eucharist is the most surprising thing that's ever happened to me. Never in my dreams would I have thought that I could believe such an incredible, outlandish claim. On some occasions I have even taken a step back to look at it all as objectively as possible, to set everything aside and honestly ask myself if this is all in my head, if perhaps I am eating bread and drinking wine at the Mass, but that its great symbolic value has led me to put myself in a different state of mind. And all I can come up with is this:

If this is a symbol, then I am insane.

It's not Tolkien, but that's about the best I can do. The way this Sacrament has slowly transformed my soul and given me a connection to God that I never knew before, the way I could easily move myself to tears at the thought of not being able to receive it, the strength I have drawn from having this direct communion with God...if these things are not real, then nothing is.

As I reflect back on this year and compare it to years past, the whole story of my life comes together in a very simple way: I realize now that my entire conversion process, really, my entire life, was one long search for the Eucharist.

Surrexit Dominus vere, alleluia!

Confession

As soon as I hit Publish I'm going to head out to confession.

In my long road from atheism to Christianity, one of my favorite memories is when I made my first confession, the Wednesday before Easter of last year. When I think back on it I first remember the ethereal chant music that wafted throughout our beautiful church, and the surprising sense of stillness and peace that pervaded the sanctuary, even though there were more than 500 other people there. I remember marveling at the diversity of the crowd: a man in an expensive business suit would be standing next to a young construction worker in muddy workboots, followed by a teenage girl and an elderly lady. We were all so different, yet all united by our beliefs, all there for the same purpose. I remember thinking about all the unpacked boxes that waited for me at home, and how thrilled I was about our much-needed new house. It felt like it was the first day of the rest of my life, and it was.

I don't have time to write much more today, but to celebrate the memory of this wonderful event in my life, here are some posts in which I've shared my experiences with this sacrament:

• A first confession, part I
• A first confession, part II
• Confessing my sins to a priest

Getting out of the boat

Recently I was all excited about doing a little project that I felt pretty certain that God was calling me to do -- the details of what it was don't matter, suffice it to say that it was a small but enjoyable task that I thought would be a wonderful way to show Christ to others. About half way into the undertaking, it became more challenging than I'd anticipated. Then yesterday morning I heard through the grapevine that someone had made a belittling comment about it, expressing some criticism of it in a condescending way that really got under my skin. That was the last straw in making it officially "not fun anymore."

I was exhausted from a busy weekend anyway, and this little comment threw me into a bit of a funk. I was so disappointed that the wind had been taken out of my sails about this endeavor, and thinking about that snowballed into a general malaise. To make myself feel better, during the kids' naptime I drifted off to do what I usually do to mentally run away when the going gets rough: I escaped into a book, surfed the web a little bit and then watched some television. At the time, I didn't feel like that was the right thing to do. These activities were not making me feel more peaceful, and in fact seemed only to serve to make me more unsettled. I felt like what I needed to do was to stop trying to distract myself and step away from the book and the computer and the television and just pray. But I didn't want to. Praying sounded uncomfortable, it sounded like it would take too long, and I wanted to feel good now. So I continued to bury my head in the sand of shallow distractions.

Though I felt somewhat better later, I never did completely pull out of the bad mood yesterday. For the entire day I felt bummed out about that condescending comment, uninspired about the project, and disappointed that God felt distant. I contemplated abandoning my project altogether.

And then, this morning, I saw something that gave me insight into what was going on. I watched a sermon by T.D. Jakes called The Last Night on the Boat, and as soon as I turned it on I knew it was what I needed to hear -- not what I wanted to hear -- but what I needed to hear.

"Where do you go when you're traumatized? Where do you go when things are too much for you?" he asked the audience. "That's your boat."

His sermon was about the symbolism of the boat, how the boat was where Peter and the other disciples felt comfortable and safe, how they wanted to cling to it in times of trouble, how they had to get out of it and leave their lives as fishermen in order to become fishers of men. When the going gets tough, Jakes pointed out, when things start to get painful or uncomfortable in our spiritual journey, we say to ourselves, "I'm going back to what I can control. I'm going back to what I can handle. I'm going back to what I'm good at. I'm going back to what's safe for me."

And in an oratory technique a bit more startling than what I'm used to from my soft-spoken priest, he implored the congregation to "slap somebody and say 'GET OUT OF THAT BOAT'!"

After taking a moment to imagine just how awkwardly I would have carried out that order had I been there in person, I realized that that was exactly what I needed to hear: GET OUT OF THAT BOAT!

What happened with that little project is what's happened over and over again as I've worked to grow closer to God: I know what I'm supposed to do, but when the going gets rough, I run back to the boat. In my case "the boat" is things like seeking other people's approval, trying to get a big thumbs-up from the world in all that I do, wasting time reading uninspiring content on the internet, watching vapid television or finding comfort in certain foods. Those activities are comfortable and provide immediate gratification with little required on my part.

It was interesting to reread the passage that Jakes alluded to in his sermon, Matthew 14:22-33, where Peter sees Jesus walking on the water. Peter says "Lord, if it is you, tell me to come to you on the water." Jesus tells him to come, and he gets out of the boat. He's scared, but he does it anyway. I imagined myself in Peter's shoes, and thought of how differently it would play out given my current attitude: after I came to believe in God I prayed for him to ask me to come to him, i.e. to give me some direction so that I might know he exists, and know what he wants from my life. "Lord, if it is you, tell me to come to you on the water," I basically said. And here's how it played out from there:

JESUS: Come.

ME: Who, me? Are you serious, Lord? To be honest I didn't really expect an answer.

JESUS: Come.

ME: How am I going to be able to walk on water? That's impossible! I can tell you right now that I am going to drown if I set foot outside this boat. It's night time, the water is deep, this is too scary! You cannot possibly be asking me to do this!

JESUS: Come.

ME: Ya know, I'd love to, but now that I'm actually looking at the black abyss of water that stands between you and I, I think I'll just go ahead and stay here in the boat.

As I've said before, my problem is not usually knowing what God wants me to do, but actually doing it. In matters large and small, over and over again I've found that doing the right thing sounds a whole lot more exciting when the idea is first proposed; but when I actually take a look at just what I'm being asked to do, when I look down at the inky water that I'm asked to step out into, I want to run back to what's safe. Sometimes I feel like it's too inconvenient, other times I feel like it's too painful or too scary or just too different than anything I've ever done. Sometimes I think it's impossible. But I'll never get close to God if don't step out of the boat.

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Love and conversion

Growing up in the Bible Belt, I was frequently exposed to the expression "God is Love." I saw it on t-shirts, bumper stickers and the occasional Precious Moments figurine, and figured that I pretty much knew what it meant: it was a shorthand way of describing one of God's characteristics, i.e. "God (that Guy we believe in who's kind of like a dad, only nicer) is love (meaning he's really, really, really loving)." Right?

It is only recently that I realized that I had it wrong. One of the biggest lessons I learned in the conversion process, maybe the biggest lesson I learned in my life, was that the phrase "God is Love" is meant to be taken literally: God is love. God = Love. It's not just some characteristic, but his essence. To paraphrase the Cynical Christian's recent post on a similar subject, when we say "God is love," we're not describing what God is, we're describing what love is -- love is God.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, how this understanding of God and love played such a key role in my conversion. It brings light to three issues in particular that would sometimes perplex me as I walked the long path from atheism to belief:


1. It explains the importance of humility.

When I first began to explore the possibility of God's existence, I approached the endeavor the way one might approach proving that something in the material world exists: I put God under the microscope, so to speak, waiting with arms folded across my chest until proof of his existence was presented to me. Occasionally I would read something about the importance of humility, which I took to mean that one should be open to new data. So I'd make a mental note to make sure that I wasn't closing my mind to any sort of proof God might offer me, and promptly return to sitting and waiting with my arms folded across my chest.

This approach made sense since I thought I was seeking an abstract theoretical concept called "God," and saw myself as involved in a process that should require nothing on my part other than observation of data. Yet I couldn't seem to escape this concept of humility -- and the more I read, the more I realized that all these great Christian thinkers were talking about something much more than just admitting that you don't have all the answers. They were talking about embracing radical, self-abandoning humility. I didn't get it. Did these people have hang-ups or something? Why were they so determined to believe that you had to be humble yourself before you could seek God?

Now that I realize that I was seeking not an impersonal theoretical concept but love, Love itself, it makes sense. I won't get in over my head by trying to fully explain the Christian virtue of humility and get into all the reasons it's important; suffice it to say that I came to see a close connection between love and humility. Even in human relationships, I realized, one does not find love by starting with an overly skeptical, "prove it!" sort of attitude. Love is not something that can be dissected under a microscope; to find it requires emotional involvement on the part of the seeker, a willingness to investigate with the heart in addition to the coldly rational part of the mind. It requires a questioning mind, and a humble heart.

Which brings me to the next thing I realized...


2. It explains why it took me so long to "feel" God's presence.

As anyone who's glanced through the archives to this blog knows, I never used to "feel" God's presence. I eventually came to believe in his existence on an intellectual level, but was disappointed that I didn't feel much on an emotional level. It always seemed like I was talking to myself in prayer, and I often felt a bit jealous that other people seemed to "know" God in a way that I did not.

Part of that might have been due to the normal spiritual dryness that most people experience at some point or another, and part is surely because I'm not a very "touchy feely" type of person. But there was another factor as well, possibly the biggest factor: I didn't understand that God is Love. Once I realized that you could replace the word "God" with the word "Love" in almost any instance, the problem behind a lot of my spiritual struggles became clear. For example:

"I'm seeking God" = "I'm seeking Love"

"I want to experience God" = "I want to experience Love"

"I want to know God" = "I want to know Love"

When I considered the statements on the left side of the equations, each sounded like a nebulous, intellectually difficult endeavor that would require lots of passive contemplation from an armchair; but when I considered the statements on the right side, each sounded like an exciting, intriguing endeavor that would require the active participation of my mind, heart and soul. I might not have felt like I knew much about experiencing God, but I did know a thing or two about experiencing love: I knew that you don't fall in love by reading about it in books. You don't increase the amount of love in your life by sitting back and waiting for others to make the first move.

It was when I stopped asking "How does one experience God?" and started asking "How does one experience Love?" that I began to really feel God working in my life.


3. It explains why I now believe in God with all my heart.

In his conversion story, former atheist John C. Wright likened coming to know God to falling in love. He writes: "It was like falling in love. If you have not been in love, I cannot explain it. If you have, you will raise a glass with me in toast." I can't think of a better summary of what I've experienced.

Back when I wrote my original conversion story I talked a lot about how much more sense the world made to me after seeing it through the lens of Christian teaching. The profound changes I saw based on that understanding alone were enough to convince me that Christianity spoke the truth about God and the world. But in the year and a half since I typed that up, something else has happened as well: my life has been infiltrated by Love. A real, external, palpable force of love has entered my life, a distinct presence that wasn't there before. I don't mean that I just feel happy more often or that I try to be more loving towards others or that I think nice thoughts more than I used to (though all that is true), but that the very Source of those things is now involved, and it's not coming from within me.

I used to think I'd always have doubts about God's existence. I'd been too atheistic in my beliefs for too long, so it would be too much of a change to think in terms of the supernatural. What I didn't anticipate when I made that prediction, however, is that I would find Love. This Love that has ever so slowly become the center of my life is more powerful than anything I've ever known, and to doubt its existence would be to doubt reality.

I could have probably come to deep, unhesitating belief in God much sooner if I'd understood from the beginning that by seeking God, I was ultimately seeking Love.

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Christianity from the eyes of a new convert

At the end of my interview that aired last week, producer Judy Zarick asked me if there was any final thought I'd like to offer to cradle Catholics. I thought it was a great question -- if I could just get one message out there to people who have been Christians all their lives, what would it be? Unfortunately I'm not good at thinking on my feet, but I gave the best answer I could come up with off the top of my head. After I hung up the phone I wished that I could have done a better job of articulating my view of Christianity from the perspective of a new convert.

In the past few weeks since the interview was taped, I've been thinking: how do I explain it? How could I describe to lifelong Christians the way I see the world now that I know what they've known all their lives? I'm not sure if it's something I could really put into words, but here's my best effort:


Let me draw on the Narnia analogy again. A while back I wrote a post about how the way I felt when I discovered that the Christian claims were true was the way I would have felt if I had actually discovered my own portal to Narnia after reading The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe as a child: how exhilarating, how fantastic, how mind-bogglingly glorious it would be to discover that what you thought was a fairy tale was actually quite real, and even more wondrous than you'd imagined. Finding Narnia is not even close to a perfect analogy for finding God, but the part of the experience I think it does convey is the sheer sense of awe and wonder I feel at having found an entire other realm of existence that I didn't know was there before.

So, as a new convert and former atheist, one of the most perplexing things I've encountered is lukewarmness among Christians. It's hard for me to understand. When I've talked to Christians who believe in God but who aren't particularly interested in practicing their faith, I feel the same way I would have felt if I had discovered Narnia and the follow scenario played out:

ME: [Breathlessly running up to friend] Hey! You have GOT to hear this: I discovered Narnia! I found it -- it's ALL REAL. And all I have to do is go into this wardrobe and walk to the back, and I start to feel the cool air of the other world, and--

FRIEND: You mean Narnia, the mystical land where a battle for good and evil rages and you can fight for the forces of good and transform your entire existence while encountering beings that are not of this world? Yeah, we have one of those portals too. Over in the guest room.

ME: Whoa! Why don't you talk about this more often?! Why aren't you jumping for joy about it all the time?

FRIEND: Yeah, you know, I'd love to, but I've got a lot going on right now. I'm super busy at work, and have a million things I need to get done around the house. I'd love to explore it more often, but right now I'm just so busy.

To me, at this point in the conversion process, that example illustrates how it sounds to my hears when I talk to Christians who say that they do believe God but put him on the backburner of their lives.

When I first read the New Testament a couple years ago, one of the lines that stood out most to me was from the third chapter of Revelation, where Christ says: "I wish you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth." Of all the things I read, that really resonated with me. At the time I wasn't sure if I believed in God, but I thought that if these things were to be true -- the Creator of the universe becoming man, performing miracles, telling us what he wants us to do, being tortured to death on our behalf, and then conquering death once and for all by rising from the dead -- how could anyone ever be lukewarm about that? How could it even be possible that someone could acknowledge these things as true but then find worldly pursuits more exciting or interesting? How could a believer not live every day of his or her life overwhelmed with gratitude for what God has done for them, or even just rejoice in the simple fact that they're aware of the existence of God and the spiritual realm in the first place?

Now that the year anniversary of my entrance into the Church approaches, as these truths become more a natural part of life than a staggering new revelation, I see how it can happen. I see that we humans have an amazing power to take anything for granted, that there is nothing so good or so glorious or so beautiful that most of us couldn't become ho-hum about it if we lived with it long enough. We can become bored and ungrateful about anything -- even God. So I write this as much to myself as to anyone else, and say this not as some expert on Christianity but as someone who was once very lost and has only recently been found: let us never forget the magnitude of what we're dealing with here. As we enter the final stretch of preparing ourselves to celebrate Easter, let us always tremble a little bit when we think about just what happened at the Resurrection, and what it would mean for us if it hadn't. And though we may face bad days or spiritual dry spells, let us never view lukewarmness as an acceptable way of life.

As the year anniversary of my conversion comes and goes, and the newness of being a Christian wears off, I hope that I will always work to keep that sense of wonder alive, and to approach my beliefs with the awe of a child who just found Narnia.

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Lent starts now

The other day I was reflecting upon this season of Lent, as it is only the third time I've observed traditional Catholic Lenten practices, and my first since becoming Catholic. I thought about how I find this to be a season with its own simple beauty, how I actually enjoy the opportunity to deny myself worldly comforts in order to focus solely on spiritual nourishment...For about twenty days. And then I'm over it.

I'll give you an example from my weekly grocery store trip. I always go to the store hungry, and sharing a cookie with the kids while we shop is a little pleasure that I really enjoy. For some reason, every single time I have gone to the store during Lent I have forgotten about giving up wheat until I actually had a piece of the crunchy, sugar-crusted cookie in my hand. And each time, I had to make a painful choice. Here's a comparison of my thought process at the beginning of Lent, and then yesterday:

February 12: Mmmmm, this cookie looks delicious! Oh, wait, I gave up wheat for Lent and this has flour in it. Well, as I watch the kids eat it the tiny amount of suffering I experience will be a great opportunity to meditate on Christ's sufferings, not to mention the fact that I could use a little exercise in the willpower department. Indeed, what a wonderful opportunity we have in these sorts of sacrifices to keep the big picture in mind, to detach ourselves from the hollow pleasures of the world.

March 4: Mmmmm, this cookie looks delicious! Wait...oh no...is it STILL Lent?! You have got to be kidding me. Does this never end? I WANT THE HOLLOW PLEASURES OF THE WORLD BACK!

In other words, sometime around the half-way point of Lent, I stopped getting anything out of it. When Ash Wednesday first rolls around, fasting and penance actually sound good to me. First of all, change is always invigorating. It's fun to enter a different season of the year, to break out of the routine and do something new. Also, I often feel mentally and physically bloated after the decadence of the Christmas season, and for selfish reasons alone I look forward to simplifying my eating habits and my life in general. After letting the pendulum swing too far in the direction of gluttony and indulgence during the holidays, it actually sounds refreshing to let the pendulum swing back the other way during Lent.

But then, a few weeks in, the Christmas season long forgotten, nothing about it sounds good for selfish reasons. Concepts like penance and detachment aren't some new and different challenge, they no longer offer an energizing change of pace. I miss the things I've given up, and the rush that comes with doing something new no longer acts as a counterbalance to the discomfort that my little acts of penance cause me.

In some ways, I think of Lent as just now getting started.

Starting this week, I realized that I was at a crossroads: now that the newness of Lent had worn off, I could continue dragging my feet through the season to hold on by my fingernails until Easter when I could finally do the things I want to do again; or I could realize that it is only now that I have an opportunity to fully understand this season. Only now that my opportunities for selfishness are gone can this be a time of lasting conversion, of true detachment and repentance. I can muddle through the next couple of weeks, or I can stop turning away from the discomfort and push through it to see what I find on the other side.

This wouldn't be something I know from personal experience, but I am guessing that when people find Lent to be a truly fruitful time that takes their relationship with God to the next level, it is in the second half of the season that the changes occur. For me, in terms of its potential as a time of deep conversion, Lent starts now.

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Interview with Franciscan Radio

A while back I had the pleasure of discussing my conversion story with Judy Zarick of American Catholic Radio, and it is now available online (program #08-10). Click here to listen online or get it via podcast.

In the interview I talked about some of the details behind the events that led me to consider the possibility of God in the first place, which I haven't yet covered here on the site in much detail. My interview starts about five and a half minutes in, but I highly recommend listening to the whole 30 minute show, which offers great little bite-sized segments about Christianity, the Catholic Church, and incorporating our faith into everyday life. Ever since discovering this weekly broadcast I've enjoyed keeping up with it via podcast.

If anyone is just now finding this blog after hearing the interview, some posts that will fill you in on the rest of my conversion story are this post about why I believe in God and this post about why I became Catholic.

Also, I was thrilled to hear that the Saint of the Day for the program was St. Francis de Sales. To read about the huge impact this great saint's writing has had on my life, check out these posts.

Thanks to Judy and the other folks at Franciscan Radio for having me on the show!

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