Did you know that Catholics do not actually believe that angels have a gender? As much as we refer to them as “he” and discuss them as these knightly men, because they do not have bodies, actual Church doctrine is that they do not have gender. It occured to me tonight as I was writing “he” when talking about an angel, that, in a way, that makes them the perfect patron ‘saints’ for those who struggle in some way with gender norms. (Quick note here: technically, angels are not saints because they are not human, however, there are a select few angels who are prayed to like the saints are, and they are often referred to as patron saints.)
I am pretty sure there is no saint that would better understand the feeling that comes with being referred to as a specific gender when you are not that gender than those who have it done so consistently. Granted, they are angels, so they may not care what we humans do, but we don’t know, maybe they do care. What if Michael is actually more feminine than we think of him, and ‘he’ would prefer to be called a ‘she’? Or maybe they would prefer a different pronoun altogether to encompass their body-less androgyny.
So, if you or someone you know is LGBTQ, especially Trans or having any sort of issues with their gender identity, ask the angels for their help. The archangels Michael, Raphael, Gabriel are particularly famous and helpful in need. They are great protectors and friends to have in the spiritual life.
Okay, Who’s the Undercover Catholic at Disney? Catholic Imagery in Frozen 2
A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I watched the live action Beauty and the Beast and were surprised to see the gorgeous Catholic sculpture atop the Disney Castle. My husband said, “Isn’t that Michael the Archangel?” and I had to admit it sure looked like him. Well, I blew it off as just because Beauty and the Beast takes place in an era of Catholicism in France, but now I’m not so sure. Frozen 2 had some definite threads of Catholicism running through it, and now I’m asking, “Who’s the undercover Catholic at Disney?”
WARNING: Obviously there are spoilers ahead, can’t talk about what something means without telling you what it is 😉
There are several major ways that Frozen II echoes Catholicism. I’ll start with the smaller ones that could be accidental, and close with the one that completely blew me away.
1. Discernment of Spirits(Ignatian Spirituality) – One teaching that is constant in the movie is “Do the next right thing.” Various characters give each other and themselves this advice, and then follow it-no matter the circumstances. In the beginning, Elsa is hearing a “call” and she doesn’t know whether it is good or bad. She tries not to listen, but something in her tells her it is right to follow the call, so she does. Later, Anna follows the next right thing even when it seems like all is lost.
Saint Ignatius’ teachings about Discernment of Spirits are all about trying to decide whether your feelings or gut instincts are right or wrong, and when in doubt, he teaches to do the next right thing.
2. Suffering – Of all of the movies I have seen in recent years, I don’t know that I have seen such a beautiful testament to how hard suffering is that also includes a message of hope. It isn’t singularly Catholic to teach this, but the degree to which they teach how to hope even when it feels like everything is hopeless feels pretty Catholic to me.
3. Christ/ Mary Analogy-
This is the one that I was completely blown away and surprised by. As little things kept adding to it, I kept asking myself, “Are they doing this on purpose?”
Note: I called this an analogy and not an allegory, because allegory is usually very specific and exact, but an analogy leaves room for experimenting and playing with ideas.
When the apostles would teach pagans about God, they would discuss the pagan “gods” or “spirits” or whatever group they belonged to, and they would talk about God as above all of them, or if there already was a “god” or “spirit” above all, they would equate God with it. In Frozen II, there is a fifth spirit above fire, air, earth, and water.
That spirit ends up being Elsa, who was sent to repair the relationship between Arendelle(the south) and Northuldra(the north.) She descends into the deep(sounding familiar?) talks to her dead Mother who appears to her, is frozen(killed) and comes back to life, saving Arendelle in the process. (Credit where credit is due here, I did not even notice the Resurrection part of this analogy, that was my hubs.) In order to make her death worth it, Anna convinces the earth giants to break a dam that then bursts forth in rushing water. Elsa then goes to live in the north, but continues to visit Arendelle. It’s a loose analogy, but there are elements of the Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension here. In a way, Elsa is revealed to BE living water. I don’t know where else we have heard that phrase! 😉
Now, my husband picked up most of the Christ analogy, but there was also echoes of Marian spirituality. Anna calls Elsa the bridge to the north, but Elsa tells her it wasn’t just her, Anna was the other side of the bridge. Anna was the one who wept her heart out while we thought Elsa was dead, and Anna helped both lands in Elsa’s absence.
There also may have been echoes of Marian spirituality in Elsa’s character because Mary appeared to several different pagan cultures as a beautiful woman more powerful than their “gods” or “spirits,” very similar to Elsa’s character. Also, in James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, he speaks of Mary as a pale woman in the water, which is what Elsa ends up being. Also, at the end her pale hair down, and pale white dress looked remarkably like Our Lady of Fatima to me, which isn’t a hard piece of evidence, but with the other evidence was kind of interesting.
So there’s my theories about the Catholic background of Frozen II, what do you think? Did you see any other echoes of it? I’m thinking at the very least we have an ex-Catholic working at Disney, or God is inspiring people, or we have a Catholic writer sneaking around the Disney studios, and I don’t have a problem with it!
Pregnancy and Infant Loss Day
Dear Little One,
You were not here very long. Maybe we didn’t know you were you were here at all, or maybe we built a little life all around you. Maybe we had to return the little book we bought to give you, or maybe we cried in your nursery for months after you were gone.
However long you were here for, whether we knew you were here or not, whether we held you or not, you were a part of us. You were a part of our family and you always will be.
We love you, little one.
Mama and Daddy
The Hierarchy of Suffering
This meme has been going around like wildfire lately. It expresses the common idea that the way not to judge others for their struggles is to think that maybe they are not as strong as you are. On the surface, the intention is great. The idea is to encourage people not to judge others’ suffering. Every time I see it though, or hear someone express the idea it visualizes, I get so frustrated about the more subtle issue with this idea.
In the picture, one dog is smaller than the other dog. There’s nothing wrong with that, he’s a Jack Russell terrier, they are meant to be smaller than a Golden Retriever. Of course, the mud comes up much farther on the Jack Russell Terrier than it does on the Golden Retriever because the Golden is taller. In the same way, many people comfort others who compare their struggles to others saying, “Maybe God gave you this cross because you are strong enough to carry it,” “Maybe she just couldn’t handle what you are going through,” and other variants of you-must-be-stronger-than-them-because-their-struggle-is-smaller-than-yours. That’s where I struggle.
There is this idea that there is a hierarchy of suffering. My dislocated elbow is not as intense as my friends breast cancer, my post-partum depression is worse than someone else’s anxiety, etc etc and so on. It leads to a kind of competition about suffering. There are real life consequences to this competition-who gets taken care of in a hospital, who is allowed to talk about their struggles, who doesn’t get judged for being tired, who gets help from friends or the Church. To be fair, we live in a world of limited resources, so to a certain extent this can be avoided, and to a certain extent there is a hierarchy of suffering, no one would argue that a paper cut or a dislocated elbow is as bad as cancer.
However, I do think that the hierarchy of suffering is much more complicated than we might think. There are so many unknown factors that go into suffering that sometimes a seemingly small thing can be monumental and something really big can be nothing. When I had a placental abruption and ended up in the hospital terrified that my baby and I were going to die and then went through a terrifying labor, it was honestly far less terrifying than the experience I had with my dislocated elbow, as ironic as that is. Recovering from the elbow has been actually much more difficult than recovering from what should have been a much more difficult trauma.
The reason for this is that there are countless factors that contribute to how intense pain and suffering feels. Researchers are finding more and more just how many things affect how the brain perceives pain. There are whole industries and books based on all the different ways we can affect the pain in our bodies.
As far as my example above about birth vs. my elbow, there are some big obvious differences. I got a baby out of the equation, not so with my elbow. I did fear for my life in a way I didn’t need to with my elbow. However, I DID fear for my life with my elbow, because I have already been struggling with Post Partum Anxiety that has been debilitating, and I wasn’t struggling with that as intensely during labor. This was not helped by the fact that when I fell I was actively praying, and it seemed like an answer to a prayer, which felt like God was a God of wrath who hated me, sending me into a terrified circle of spiritual crisis that haunted me the whole night, while the doctors and nurses encouraged me with prayer during labor.
Another huge difference is the care I got. When I went to the hospital for my placental abruption, I had been reading Hypnobabies which works really hard on preparing women to communicate with their doctors. Because of that I was able to communicate my anxiety and physical worries in a rational way, and did not feel guilty for forcing doctors and nurses to stop and listen to me if I felt like they were rushing. On top of that though, immediately when I got to the hospital, the nurses attending heard my requests and needs and did their best to meet them, even when they were silly. When I dislocated my elbow, the nurse immediately denied every request I had, rolled her eyes at me, and communicated her annoyance to a doctor who came to help. No other nurses came in contact with me until much later.
I believe the care I got for my elbow is a consequence of exactly what I am discussing in this post. A dislocated or broken elbow is nothing in the grand scheme of things. I am aware of that. I am aware that much much worse things happen to people every day. But the care I got reminded me of that every second of my struggle. Every second I felt reminded me, “you don’t matter because it’s not your femur, it’s not cancer, it’s not blood.”
I was also dehydrated, hungry and away from my baby while breastfeeding. All things I didn’t realize until much later, but that are probably the explanation for the random cold sweats and hormonal shifts that turned into panic attacks that plagued me all night on top of everything else, and probably made the care I got worse because the nurses couldn’t see what was happening so it just looked like anxiety to them.
When I dislocated my elbow, I had a veritable cocktail of things that are known to make pain worse, while during labor I had many that are known to make it better. On the surface and on paper the elbow should be nothing. Anyone comparing the two would have said that labor was worse, but after the traumatic labor I was joyful and relieved and felt invincible; after my elbow I felt that there was no hope in life, angry, and worthless.
My point is that what someone’s suffering looks like on the outside may be nothing compared to what it looks like on the inside. The assumption that someone’s pain is not as intense as yours, or you are just stronger than they are dismisses the fact that you have no idea what is going on in their story. You have no idea what is making their pain worse or better or different than yours. I think it’s comforting to us to feel like our pain is better than someone else’s because then our needs deserve to get validated, but that’s just part of the competition. We need to feel like our pain is enough to be worth taking care of, so we have to put down other peoples because it highlights how bad our own pain is. The problem is that that affects how we take care of the other person, and how we view them, as well as how we describe their problem to others and help them to get help. Their suffering grows and our need to justify our own gets more intense too.
I want to live in a world where we recognize that everyone’s suffering matters. In the Gospel, when Jesus was carrying His cross, about to be murdered in arguably the most monstrous way possible, He stopped to talk to weeping women. He told them not to weep for Him, but for their children. I have heard some say that He is telling them to weep for sins, but the way He says it tells me that isn’t the case. I believe He was genuinely expressing compassion for the suffering that women experience, while He was on the road that we would say is the worst suffering imaginable. I would like a world where everyone does that, where everyone accepts that we are all on an unimaginably and sometimes unbearable journey, where we accept our own suffering and that of others as worthy of healing, no matter what it is, where we acknowledge that our struggles do not make us better or worse than anyone else, just different. Then, we would have a spirit of sorrow for everyone’s tears even if we didn’t understand why it was so hard. We could show the same amount of compassion for someone who had to wait at the DMV as someone who got crushed in a car accident. We could heal all the big hurts and all the little ones too.
Yes, The World Needs God, But Not Like That
A couple of weeks ago, there was a shooting in Texas that just devastated me. A couple days before I watched The Hate You Give, which rocked me as well. Both of these events are on the heels of, and preceding so many horrible tragedies and fearful events happening all over they world lately. I find myself desperate for God’s love to be present in our culture. However, I immediately feel guilty and annoyed at this sentiment, which then makes me feel guilty and annoyed for feeling guilty and annoyed at that. I caught myself thinking at one point, “The world just needs God,” and immediately rolled my eyes at myself. That phrase is one I have heard a thousand times, and it’s one that makes me instantly angry and I disagree with, even though I technically agree with the sentiment.
The problem with the phrase “The World Needs God” is that most people who use this phrase mean it in a very particular way. “The World Needs God” means that the world needs people who believe the same thing I believe, teach the way I teach. Mostly, what it really means is “the world needs people who follow all the rules I believe in.”
In my experience, the people who use this phrase are often the same ones who talk about how “the homosexuals are taking over” and they are going “ruin the family” or are hateful towards mothers who are thinking about abortion, or who are unkind to a woman because her skirt is one inch too short. What they mean by “The World Needs God” has nothing to do with who God is as a person, and everything to do with who they believe He demands every person to be. These are the same people who talk about how the Church is getting smaller and that’s a good thing because all the lukewarm people are being weeded out.
What I mean when I say “The World Needs God” is something very different than the above. What I mean when I say it, is that the world needs UNCONDITIONAL LOVE. The world needs a force of love and acceptance that heals wounds on contact. The world needs tenderness, thoughtfulness, kindness, respect, and love. The world needs something that is more powerful than itself that can radically help people suffering in an unkind world. When I say “The World Needs God” I mean it in a desperate plea for an outpouring of love and mercy that can heal the hurts that are far too big for any one person to heal.
I’ve had many eyes rolled at me for making this distinction. “Oh but rules are important too.” Sure. Yes. How we act is important. But what did Jesus do when He came? Did He come down and look for people doing wrong so He could make them feel bad about themselves every day? Do you think He would’ve been invited to dine with the sinners every night if He had? He talked to people about sin when they hurt others, or when they already knew what they needed to change. Far more than that, He worked miracles in their lives, He touched people, He was kind to people when no one else would be kind to them.
What would the world look like if Christians stopped talking about who doesn’t belong and who’s not good enough and started letting everyone know that God wants them? What if we looked for the abandoned and lonely and told them they were worthy? What if we healed people, touched people, embraced people? What if we were happier with a loud bustling Church than a quiet perfectly fine Mass?
I have seen churches where this happens and it changes everything.
So yes, the world needs God, but not a God who only shames every person who comes to Him. The world needs Jesus who loves people where they are at, and guides them tenderly to their best self.
T.H.U.G.L.I.F.E. Part II: The Babies
Just to clarify; This may not have been what Tupac meant, but this is what keeps coming to me when I think of this line. A post closer to what he meant is in part one.
The
Hate
You
Give
Little
Infants
Fucks
Everyone.
I’m going to write about something I don’t particularly like to write about.
Abortion.
I know, you’re rolling your eyes, so am I every time I read another of these posts.
Oh great, here’s another hateful post talking about how our society are killers, and we are evil.
Look, that’s not fair. Abortion is a very complicated subject because for centuries we were not able to get much information about babies in the womb. Even St. Thomas Aquinas wrote an article that could be used as a defense of abortion. He said that the soul joined the body at birth. Well, if that’s the case, then technically according to the philosophical definition of a human body as a body soul composite, then it wouldn’t really be considered a human until birth.
The problem, for lack of a better word, is that we have a lot more information now. We have seen babies shy away from the instruments used for abortion. We have seen babies born at 21 weeks and LIVE, even if not for long.
I do not believe we are a society of killers, I do not believe that pro-choice people are murderers. I do, however, believe that these children are in pain. I also am starting to believe there are consequences sometimes to actions we don’t understand.
Just some consequences of abortion are:
Struggling in motherhood is not respected or valued in the same way as it could be, because we had the power to end it, so people don’t need to help mothers because they will just condemn them and say they shouldn’t have had a kid in the first place.
There are women who are suffering because they chose not to have their own child, and now their bodies and minds cry out for their baby who is missing. (This is a real struggle that happens to moms who have had abortions, not necessarily all but enough to be a serious suffering that people are enduring.)
There are men who have made children who will never get to meet them.
There are children who know that someone in this world did not want them to exist before they were even born. That is a horrible feeling to grow up with.
Our society is in a social war and constantly talking about the death of children, what does that do to a collective consciousness?
The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everyone.
I don’t think anyone would deny we are a culture in pain. I would not go so far as to say abortion is the only reason, but I don’t think it’s helping the situation. If babies are supposed to be our hope for the future, then what happens when we end then before they begin?
Some Hope for the Way
Lately, I have been struggling, like, a lot. I’ve been sharing that story because I believe in honesty about our struggles, and I believe that sharing our truth helps others who are struggling, but lately I have been trying to make sure I am balancing out those posts with the amazing ways that God is working in my life, to comfort me and help me move forward.
Yesterday, God took me aside to give me some encouragement. I am working hard on writing my screenplays, which is something that I believe God has called me to do, but I have been feeling so hopeless about our future that it has been hard to continue even trying some days. Yesterday, He saw that in me and He filled me.
First thing in the morning, I woke up to see a meditation in my email about God hearing those who pray for a long time. The theme was “it could be tomorrow” and the Bible readings for it were all about people who were promised things by God, suffered for a time and then, received what they were promised. This year, I felt convinced that God would hear my prayers about my film career, and that it was one for me to start working towards it in earnest again, but I’ve been praying for this since I was born. I have suffered being mocked for it, told it was evil, lectured about how God doesn’t care about it, and I left what I believed God wanted me to do because other people didn’t believe me. I felt Him telling me, “Hey, any day now it could happen!” Which really is true, because I’m waiting on a lot of people who are reading my work.
The second thing was an article about Lady Gaga and how she went completely bankrupt without even realizing it. She had to pay for all of these things for her tour and she put it all on credit cards, so she ended up 3 million dollars in debt. The third was another article about a screenwriter who made 5.1 million one year and was homeless the next. Again, the culprit was credit cards and spending money he didn’t have. In addition, he talked about how hard it is to deal with the pretense of wealth in Hollywood.
Both of these were really powerful for me to read because my husband and I have done Dave Ramsey this year, and we have learned a ton about how to manage our money. We are struggling with money in a very emotional way right now, and we have spent a lot of tears. I have learned to over and over again put my financial worries and longings in God’s hands. I have learned that God cares about our financial needs, and that if we put it in His hands, He will take care of us. It will not always be great or what I want it to be, but He will provide. I have also learned how important it is to do well with the money you are given. Film is a business where you may make a ridiculous amount of money one year, and nothing the next, and I believe that God was showing me that if I had made it into film before this year, I would not have taken care of the money well, and we would not have used it the way God really wants it to be used.
I felt so encouraged by all of this, not because God has given me everything I wanted or I know He will and my wait is over, but because He saw me, needing some encouragement, afraid that nothing in my life will ever get better, and He sat with me and talked with me in the best way He could about how wise His timing is, and that I should keep trying and praying.
Opportunity Cost
The hardest lesson I learned while doing Dave Ramsey has to have been his brief mention of “Opportunity Cost.” He mentioned it as if it was a given, but ever since then I have been hung up on it, struggling with what it means. Basically, opportunity cost means that when you spend your money on one thing, you can’t spend it on something else, and vice versa. It’s a silly thing to be so hung up on, but as someone who is low income and struggles with money anxiety, it is really throwing me for a loop.
I keep catching myself about to spend money working myself into a tizzy about how if I spend this money on this now I won’t have it to spend later. This could be a choice between x or y. This paycheck we had a small amount of extra money, and I worked myself into a panic trying to decide whether to pay off debt, go to the doctor, or go to the dentist with it. It is an almost crushing fear that if I make the wrong decision God will never forgive me and we will never have money again, which is ridiculous, but it is the worst of the fears that arise in me. What sucks even more about this, is I’ve done it a couple of times, and ended up wasting the extra money because I couldn’t decide which important thing was most important.
Even writing this it sounds ridiculous. I keep debating if maybe I was too spoiled as a kid. Maybe I didn’t know it but I got everything I wanted, so now I’m incapable of accepting defeat, but to be fair, that’s not how my childhood was, however much the people say millennials are entitled because they got whatever they want, I didn’t. I watched my parents struggle, a lot. I was terrified about money as a kid, so I think it’s more likely that every defeat feels like a promise that there will only be more defeat, and it will never get better. I think what I fight within myself is less the spoiled rich kid and more the savage Scarlett O’Hara turns into when she is fighting to make sure her family never goes hungry again. Who knows which is crueler, one who is fighting for their life, or one who doesn’t know how to fight?
The point is, though, that I am working on learning to be patient as we work the baby steps, and to accept that we are meant to use our money, and it is ok to take the risk that we take every time we spend any. Every time we spend a single penny, we cost ourselves the chance to spend anything else. What I have found is that when my Scrooge takes over(the side of me that hoards and is afraid of letting go) the money doesn’t get spent until my irresponsible side screams her way out and throws the money away on something stupid. Then, I lost the opportunity to give the money to any of the truly important things that it belongs to.
As odd as it sounds, I have found the most effective way of fighting this is to spend some money. While I am in Scrooge mode, I go grocery shopping, or I set some money aside. I practice trust in myself and my decisions, let go of the money, and afterwards I am able to breathe a little better. It’s not irresponsible spending, but something that has to be spent anyway, to give myself the feeling of letting go, but in a responsible way. I’m not sure this is sustainable because sometimes I feel like I should have waited, but for now it works against the hoarding impulse.
The other thing that is really helpful for me is talking to my husband about it. Even if he doesn’t have the right advice at a given time, speaking my concern out loud sounds insane enough that I’m usually able to calm down a little and see what’s happening. But usually my hubby has some great calming words that help me to slow down, take a breath, and make the right decision.
Overall, doing Dave Ramsey is sure ripping up the carpets in my mental fixer upper. He’s opening up closets and caverns and broken pieces I didn’t know were there, or if I knew, I didn’t know how bad they were. I can feel the change happening in me as I try to stick with the baby steps and the intentionality that they require. It’s amazing to see how much money affects your personality and how much working on it can change who you are as a person. It’s humbling in a big way, but I’m hoping it pays off just as big in the long run. ♥️♥️♥️ Baby step 7 here we come!
Ugly Cry, or, My Awakening: The Tension Between Cultivating Joy and Feeling Heard
Lately, I have been feeling like a ping pong ball in my own head. I’m learning a lot about a lot of things, but the problem is they all seem to contradict each other. I am learning how to cultivate joy, but I am also learning how to give myself space to be sad, I am learning about how to let good things in, and bad things out, I am learning about how anger is a secondary emotion, and about whether or not acting it out in some way helps, I am learning about healing, and I am learning about how much hurt can hurt, and I am learning to love and trust myself, and I am learning all of my weak spots all at the same time. I read an article that talked about how ugly real-life awakenings are, and if that’s the truth, it makes a lot of goddamn sense.
I’m so pissed off about this awakening. I’m humiliated and angry and frustrated, oh and presently actually literally sick. I am so aware of every single one of my flaws and yet it seems like every day someone thinks of a new one to add, not that they are even meaning too. I’m as sensitive as a porcelain doll right now because I feel like I’m trying to become this new person and every single move I make could change the world or end it. And to be fair, I don’t blame them, I can’t stand being in my own head anymore than they can stand what a mess I am.
I’m bouncing between all of the things I’m learning at the highest extremes of each trying to figure out who I am and where I stand inside, and just knowing I don’t belong on any of the sides I see. I see flaws everywhere on everything and everyone especially myself, but I am also seeing beauty in a way I haven’t in a long time, and for the first time in a long time, when I see the flaws I am doing something about it, or at least trying to. Sometimes I feel literally on fire because I’m so angry when I see someone else get talked down to, when I see anyone being ganged up on or feeling isolated. I’ve become, possibly a little too much, intense about standing up for the people who feel alone in that particular way.
I want to be a crusader for the lonely, and the misfits. That’s how I see who Christ was, and that’s who I have always wanted to be. I want to heal broken hearts, I want to hold those I can’t heal in my figurative or literal arms, I want to wipe away tears, I want to scream as loud as I can with people who need space to be angry, I want to pull dreams out of people who are afraid to dream, I want to answer despair with hope, I want to dive into their mud and muck and I want them to breathe again.
The problem is, I’m not big enough yet. I feel like a three year old looking at my life and realizing I’m not a grown up, and I keep throwing tantrums that humble me beyond what I thought was possible. I am so deeply angry at fate for whatever it has dealt everyone who is in pain including myself. I don’t want just answers to my problems, I want my answers to be the answers for everyone. I want to revolutionize how the world does life right now, because people are hurting so freaking bad. So the problem is, again, I’m not big enough to do all the things I want to do.
My answer to this, that bothers some people around me, is to complain. To live the truth of my struggle instead of sucking it up and pretending everything is ok. There’s been several articles out lately about society keeps giving “self-care” advice to people who really just need HELP. A prophets/artists job in life is to state the truth, and I am living that curse right now. There are things in our society and culture that are seriously fucked up. There are things in our Church that are horrifying. There are things in our world that are disastrous. I am a ball of positivity sometimes and I love to see the good in people and in the world, but let me tell you, there are some awful things happening right now, and the only space for my positively right now is my all-consuming hunger for helping to change it all, so I write, and sometimes I hate my negative confusing messy scribbles, but I’m not writing them for me. I am writing them for the little girl who wishes she was dead, so she knows she’s not alone. I am writing them for the mom who can’t stand up another day, so she knows someone else is fighting the war with her, I am writing them for the people who think the Church hates them, so they know they matter too. There is beauty in the truth even when the truth is ugly.
I catch myself sometimes feeling like I am trying to excuse the fact that I’m having a hard time. When I do that, I try to just stop writing right there, because it gets insincere real quick. Sometimes, I have to just push through it to get to the other side, and sometimes the other side is excusing the fact that everyone in my situation is having a hard time. I try to write letters for those who are struggling, or write comforting words to them, or write about their struggle, but sometimes it seems like the most powerful way I am able to struggle with someone is to stand with them and say, “Yeah, this fucking sucks. I’m here.” I catch myself defending people from themselves, other people, even myself sometimes, saying, “What you have been through is really hard, it’s ok to have a hard time.”
And ok, that is partially selfish, because when I am sad that’s all I want-my loved ones to see that I’m struggling and accept me through it, but it’s not just selfish, because I think the whole world needs that. Mother Teresa said that the people in America were suffering more than the people starving in Calcutta because they are lonely. That hasn’t changed, if anything, it’s gotten worse, and I believe one reason why is that we have this standard of perfectionism that no one can ever attain, but everyone is expected to, so no one is accepted for who they really are because everyone is so desperately trying to keep their mask on. Even the women who share their makeup free selfies are sometimes hiding how insecure they really are about it, and how scary it is to put themselves out there.
The thing is, that cultivating joy and choosing the good and all of that, do matter. I am not great at them and I am practicing, and failing, a lot, but sometimes, when someone is going through something really hard, just choosing joy isn’t enough. Sometimes the whirlwind of problems are so much that choosing joy seems completely impossible, and the litany of different medical and physical and emotional things that could be wrong with you are so overwhelming that all you know is that you are all wrong. Everyone else is happy and you aren’t, so something is horribly wrong with you. I am here to tell you, it’s okay to have a hard time. It’s even okay to have a hard time if you are STILL having a hard time. Recovery from grief is not an easy process, recovery from abuse takes titanic strength, recovery from addiction takes insane amounts only effort, recovery from anger at fate for what your life looks like seems almost impossible. It is ok to struggle.
If you are reading this, and you are not having a hard time, try to remember a time when you felt completely helpless and powerless, and if that’s never happened in your life, thank God and the people who have made that happen for you. If, though, you are reading this and you are having a hard time, know, you are not alone. We are here for you, all of the other silent people longing to be heard, we are here for you and we love you. It is ok that you are having a hard time, you will see better days. Try to get there, cultivate joy where you can, but let our love hold you while you struggle to get there. You are loved, completely, accepted completely, somewhere, we just have to find the place where we belong. Until then, we love you.
