Tag: marriage

A New Year’s Resolution for Singles

When I was 17, I was desperate to be married. I figured I’d have to wait until I graduated from college, but I was, as I would have told you emphatically, ready to be married.

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha! Ha.

When I was 23, already the single friend in my very Catholic crowd, I was even more desperate to be married. I’d read The Good News about Sex and Marriage and seen It’s a Wonderful Life and I knew exactly what marriage was. I used to pray, telling God that I was ready but that I understood that my husband might not be yet.

Sigh.

I’m sure some people who get married at 17 are ready.1 And plenty of people who get married at 23 do just fine. I was probably as ready as most. But I wonder sometimes what my life would be if I had.

I’d have a passel of kids—4 or 5, if my friends are any indication. My life would be frantically busy, leaving little time for the Lord. I wouldn’t be consumed with zeal for souls—that was trained into me in my years as a spiritual mother. I wouldn’t have much sympathy for sin or stupid drama—I learned that from loving my spiritual children. And I wouldn’t pray. Not with any regularity, anyway. Not beyond the rote.2

Then again, maybe I would. Maybe I would have progressed much faster with a partner. But ten years ago, I had absolutely no concept of the need for silent prayer and evangelization. It was the convent and the classroom that taught me those. Getting married young is a beautiful thing and I hope to God that all of you who are married are growing every day in piety and virtue. But if you’re not yet married, consider this: maybe what you need to become the spouse you ought to be is these (interminable) years alone.

I’ve taken to thinking of single life as a sort of novitiate. When you’re in religious life, you start with several years of training. Newbies—novices—are pulled even further away from the world, given fewer responsibilities and more time for prayer. They do very little work and have extra chapel time. They’re thrown into prayer so that when they withdraw a little from the cloister to re-enter the world as active religious or vowed contemplatives with more responsibilities, they’re grounded.

What if that’s how we treated the single years? You have tons of free time. The world says to use it to have all the fun possible, or at least to work extra and build up your savings account. But what if you used that time as an opportunity for increased prayer? Most childless single people, if they’re being honest with themselves, could make a holy hour every day. If you live in a major city, you can almost certainly get to daily Mass. Your commute is perfect for spiritual podcasts. Your bedroom can be a little cell, a place of silence. You could even plug your phone in somewhere other than your bedside table and spend your first waking moments with a book of the lives of the Saints or some quiet time with the day’s Gospel reading.

If you sucked the marrow out of your single life by using it to become a man or woman of deep prayer, marriage wouldn’t end that. I know that marriage is hard and kids take up every free moment and all the busy ones, too. But a person doesn’t go from an hour a day of prayer to nothing. Maybe you cut the Office or drop daily Mass to once a week. Maybe you pray the Rosary in fits and starts throughout the day instead of first thing in the morning. But if you’ve spent years scheduling your life around prayer, you’re going to go into marriage planning to pray.

Cecilia prayingI used to say there was no way I could pray as much as I need if I got married. And while I’m under no illusions that it’s easy to find time when you’re married with kids, I know that–by God’s grace–we could make it work. I could drop the Office and the Chaplet. I could cut back on spiritual reading. If I really look at what I need, it’s possible. If I go into marriage saying, “I need daily Mass and a half hour of silence with Jesus every day,” we’ll plan around it. We’ll get a house near a church with decent Mass times. We’ll make sure my husband can be home to relieve me before they lock the church or we’ll get a key or we’ll find an adoration chapel or I’ll learn to get up early or something. People make these sacrifices for things that matter and if prayer is what matters in our marriage, we’ll make it happen.

It’s the same with apostolic zeal. You can’t spend 5 years trying with everything you have to love kids closer to Jesus or feed the poor or welcome the immigrant and then just cut that off. It’ll take a different form, sure, but it’ll still be an essential part of your life. I know because I’ve seen it in countless couples whose marriages are for the Church and the world. It can be done.

And relationships. If you spend years cultivating soul-friends, you’re not going to drop them because you’ve said “I do.” You’re going to have people who challenge you and encourage you, people you can invite into your family and people who will invite you into theirs. You’ll have community, not just friends, and marriages thrive on community.

What this means is a marriage that’s focused on prayer—both individually and as a couple—on service to the world, and on Christian fellowship. Which is, I think, exactly what marriage should be.

Bride groom excitedI see plenty of these things in couples that got married the day after college graduation. Evidently, they did their novitiate while I was having every possible conversation with every possible person on campus. Or maybe they needed to do their novitiate together. Or maybe they didn’t figure it out until later in their marriage and really struggled for a while. But I think many would agree that if they had lived their single life more intentionally for the Lord, it would have blessed their marriage dramatically.

So to you who are single, whether lamentably or intentionally, let me issue a challenge for the New Year: restructure your life around Jesus. Resolve to be all for him. Try making one resolution for each of three categories:

  1. Prayer. Be honest, you’ve got the time. Unless you’re a first year teacher, you could probably even swing a daily holy hour. You could certainly do more than what you’re doing now. Ask yourself what you would do if you were a saint and then do that.
  2. Service. Teach a catechism class. Sort donations for refugees. Invite people to Mass with you. Be a missionary. Be pro-life. Serve your Church. Do something.
  3. Community. I get that most of your old friends are married with kids–believe me, I get that–and often that means that your schedules and interests don’t line up the way they did. So find a Catholic young adult group. Or join a group that isn’t focused on your demographic. Figure out a way to have fellowship with friends whose lives are pinned down by board books and lullabies at 7pm. Find one good friend to meet up with for a serious talk every month. Being single can destroy you if your longing for love isn’t met by your community but community doesn’t generally just happen to people. Go out and find it.

Figure out what matters most and live for that. Schedule in prayer time. Find a way to serve the world. Seek friends who are living for Christ and be intentional in the way you spend time together. Set a base-line for your life that would make Pier Giorgio Frassati proud. Then if the Lord ends up calling you to marriage, you and your beloved can approach your life together with the knowledge that without prayer, service, and the love of a community, you will starve.

Maybe the reason you’re still single is that the Lord is holding out hope that you’ll be so much more than you are right now. Marriage was designed to make saints, but it’s not magic. Live a novitiate now, and you’ll have some raw materials to bring to the table.

  1. Somewhere. In some foreign country? [↩]
  2. This is me. It’s probably not you. Self-reflection, not an accusation. [↩]

Love Means Going through the Motions

She was seven years old that summer, the second summer she and her sisters came to live with me. Seven years old and still throwing the tantrums she’d thrown when she was three, tantrums so long and so violent I worried for her safety. I was at my wits’ end with that little one. I’ve known some tough kids, but this one took the cake. And I prayed for her and I prayed about her and it occurred to me that maybe she was lashing out because she needed attention. She’s a physical touch girl through and through, so I sat her down and talked with her about how maybe if we snuggled more it would help her to calm down. And I made her a promise:

“No matter how much trouble you’re in, if you can ask me for a snuggle, we’ll take a time out together and snuggle. Because I love you and I want you to know that.”

It’s a great idea. Trouble is, she really wanted me to prove that I loved her. So she’d push and push and push me until I was almost at my breaking point, then she’d look up with a glint of pure malice in her eyes and ask me to snuggle her.

And I would bite back every objection, every bit of justified rage, every shred of pride. I would take a deep breath and hold her and stroke her hair and murmur to her how I loved her.

I wanted to drop kick her.

As I sat there telling her how much I loved her, I wanted to scream and throw her out of the house. I wanted to be done with this child.1 I didn’t feel lovey. Not one bit.

And I don’t think I ever loved her more.

I didn’t like her much in the moment.2 I didn’t want to tell her I loved her or how sweet and good she was. I wanted to show her everything she was doing wrong. I wanted to fix her attitude and make her compliant so that all our lives could have a little peace in them. I wanted to change her. There was nothing there that the world would call love.

But that’s when I loved her the most. Not because I felt lovey feelings but because I chose to love her.

If you’ve been in any kind of relationship for more than 6 days–or seen Frozen–you know that love is sacrifice. It doesn’t just require sacrifice, it IS sacrifice. Love isn’t a feeling, it’s a choice. And as wonderful as romantic feelings or maternal feelings are, they aren’t love. Love isn’t really love, I think, until it’s hard. That’s when it finally stops being about us.

This is why marriage is indissoluble: because it’s hard and the hard is good. That’s what kills our selfishness and makes us more like Christ. This is why babies are awful. Because as wonderful as they are, we might love them only for our own sake. When they’re colicky or teething or doing stranger danger and a sleep regression at the same time, that’s when we die to ourselves to live for them. That’s real love.

And I think that kind of love means sometimes you do what you don’t feel because you wish you felt it. It means stopping for a real kiss goodbye in the chaos of the morning routine. It means compliments on a job poorly done but well meant. It means murmuring soft words to a screaming child who you’d rather leave by the side of the road than spend the next 16 years–the next lifetime–nurturing.

It’s not being fake. You’re not doing what you don’t mean, you’re doing what you don’t feel. You’re saying or touching or smiling exactly what you want to mean. You go through the motions and that going through the motions is a powerful act of love and a step back toward the feelings you wish you had.

But you knew that. You learned about the whole “fake it till you make it” thing when you were stressing out about looking cool at your first dance.

Do you know it’s true of prayer, too? Not just that it gets easier as you just suck it up and do it. It’s actually especially pleasing to God when you just suck it up and do it.

For weeks now, I’ve been struggling in prayer. I’m always good about praying, but I’m not good at it and lately it’s been dragging me down. I’ll give an impassioned talk about how amazing God is and then go stare at a tabernacle and feel nothing, think nothing, get nothing.

So I keep sitting there before the Lord. And I keep saying this same thing:

Jesus, I wish I loved you as much as I pretend to love you.

Over and over I’ve sat there thinking how amazing my prayer life would be if I really felt all the things I pretend to feel. They’re not lies, just vestiges of things I’ve felt before. Things I really feel when I’m talking about them, maybe, but not things I feel when it’s just me and him. And I wonder what it would be like to feel those things all the time.

Jesus, I wish I loved you as much as I pretend to love you.

For weeks I prayed that prayer, not petitioning so much as stewing, until he told me:

You do.3 You act like you would act if you felt it. Not perfectly, of course, but you show up. Every day you show up, just the same as you would if you really enjoyed it. You go through the motions not because you’re getting something out of it but because you’re giving me something. You’re giving me yourself even when it feels I’m giving nothing back. You aren’t pretending you love me. You really love me.

You don’t have to get butterflies every time you receive. You don’t have to be totally focused in prayer. You don’t have to be zealous like Francis Xavier or humble like Thomas Aquinas4 or brave like Catherine of Alexandria. There were probably days when Francis wasn’t zealous like Francis and Catherine quaked with fear. Sanctity isn’t a measure of how you feel but of what you choose to do.

I’ve never been more proud of my little sister than on the countless occasions I’ve seen her speak sweetly to a wild, raging toddler. I know she doesn’t feel lovey in that moment but she chooses to act like she loves them. When she does that, she loves more truly than if she were rapturous at the thought of another moment with her cherubs because she is choosing love rather than being driven by her feelings.

I think the Lord feels the same about us. I think that when prayer is boring or faith is hard or NFP seems like it will be the death of you that’s the moment when heaven rejoices at your small victories in finishing the rosary or speaking truth or whatever seems so hollow and fake right now.

I guess all I’m saying is if you’re trying, even a little bit, the Lord is pleased with you. He sees your brokenness and sin and complete inability to love him well. But he sees that you try and the desire to please him does please him.

The best thing Thomas Merton ever wrote.
The best thing Thomas Merton ever wrote.

That little girl–now a big tough high schooler who still likes to cuddle–didn’t need me to feel good about her. She needed me to love her even when I didn’t feel good. In the end, that’s what she was looking for: someone who would love her when she was unlovable. Maybe God withholds the feelings we so long for to teach us to love him when he doesn’t seem lovable.

Keep on going through the motions. Do what you wish you wanted to do as though you wanted to do it–with God and with friends and with in-laws and with spouses and kids–and trust that you are enough. All he wants is your effort–he’ll bring it to perfection. Don’t let your inadequacies stop you. You are enough.

 

  1. There’s a reason parents come in twos. It is HARD to raise kids–especially defiant ones–without backup or relief or someone to talk things over with. If God calls me to have kids, I sure hope he gives me a husband to go along with them. [↩]
  2. Though oxytocin’s a powerful thing, and I’m a physical touch person myself, so it did help a little. [↩]
  3. I don’t hear voices in prayer. Some people do and that’s awesome. But I’m just going to paraphrase the sense I got in prayer. Don’t get all excited and think I’m a mystic or something. [↩]
  4. Have you read The Quiet Light by Louis de Wohl? I love all his books but this one was incredible. [↩]

How Marriage Makes Saints

Not that I don't have a blast at weddings. Yes, that's me headbanging and playing the shovel.
Not that I don’t have a blast at weddings. Yes, that’s me headbanging and playing the shovel.1

I thought I was done with weddings. And then my students started getting married, and now wedding season has begun all over again. Seriously, I have 6 weddings and two ordinations in the next 8 months. I hope they’re not expecting gifts….

Soon after one of my kids got engaged, we were talking about how exciting it all is. She looked at me with 22-year-old, doe-eyed, twitterpated optimism, and asked, “You know what I’m most excited about?”

The cynic in me steeled myself for some saccharine answer like “Waking up every morning with my best friend” or “Falling more in love every day of my life!” A good answer, but one that was unaware of the difficulties of real love.

“When we’re married, we won’t be able to hide from each other. Think how much we’ll grow!”

I’d like to take credit for that answer. After all, I did teach her apologetics in 2009. But she may have taught me more in that one statement than I did in 9 months of essay tests and notebook checks.

This is a power couple. They’re good-looking, intelligent, successful, outgoing. The world is their oyster. They should be focused on a Pinterest-perfect wedding and a honeymoon to make their Instagram followers jealous. But instead, they’re focused on holiness and how marriage will transform them and make them saints. Shoot.

It got me thinking. I don’t meet a lot of married couples whose approach to their marriage seems to be that it’s intended to sanctify them. At best, people tell me that marriage is really really hard and suffering makes you holy, so marriage makes you holy. On rare occasion,2 I’ll meet a couple that’s intentional about praying together. Not just praying as a family or showing up at Mass together, but honest-to-goodness, bare-your-soul-before-God-and-your-spouse praying together. More often, couples (good, holy, faithful couples) tell me that praying together is too intimate. God help us who live in a society where physical intimacy is shared with anyone we find moderately attractive but spiritual intimacy has no place in marriage!

Toddlers=redemptive suffering.
Toddlers = redemptive suffering.

But while redemptive suffering and communal prayer are essential elements of Christian marriage, I think even those two aren’t enough. Marriage doesn’t make you holy just because your spouse is a thorn in your side or a prayer partner. Marriage makes you holy because it strips you bare before another soul and asks you both to challenge and encourage each other. It’s that accountability that makes saints.

So I’m going to go out on a limb again and give advice I have no business giving.3 Go ahead and discount anything that’s tinged by my unmarried optimism and adjust as needed.

Here’s what couples need: a couple’s examen of consciousness. Make a commitment that once a week4 you’ll get together just the two of you.5 Start by praying together—Mass or a rosary or adoration or whatever but also from-the-heart, awkward, intimate prayers. And then get real. Each of you go over the last week, talking about where you feel you failed in charity. Point out the times you got angry, the times you were lazy—not just in your marriage, but throughout your life. Mention the ways God helped you grow this week and thank God for the many blessings he poured out on you. Talk through the frustrations you endured and try to figure out together how those things are working for good. And listen. As you share the ways you fell, ask your spouse if there’s anything you didn’t notice. Listen when he points out both your faults and your victories. Ask her what you did that made it harder for her to love well. Process the advice he gives you and the strategies she suggests.

Bride groom excitedThen switch and talk through your spouse’s week. Listen more than you talk, but speak when you must. Console and challenge and encourage. Speak hard truths, but speak them gently and with reverence.6 Ask (and grant) forgiveness. Thank each other. Ask the Holy Spirit to guard your tongue, that you might speak truth in love. Ask the Holy Spirit to guard your ears, that you might hear God’s truth. Ask the Holy Spirit to open your heart, that you might become holy.

Maybe some of you do this daily. But I imagine that more of you are living lives of quiet desperation, that the deep, intimate conversations of your courtship have disappeared under the weight of trivialities and exhaustion. So when your partner upsets you, you bite your lip and bury your frustration over and over and over until it explodes in unmerited rage that just causes him to close up. Or you try to say something each time and it comes across as nagging. You decide you’ll just be a martyr but you martyr her instead by your frigid response. When you speak, she takes offense and when you’re silent he doesn’t change.

But what if you had permission to correct each other? What if once a week, there was a peace accord, a free pass to examine your own conscience and encourage the other to grow? What if you were vulnerable before each other? What if you talked about little problems while they were still little? What if you saw your temper through her eyes? What if you saw your sullenness through his? What sins could you wipe away before they became habits that hardened around your stony heart?

grandparentsAnd what if you were affirming each other as well? Balancing correction with congratulations? Taking the time to point out your pride in his patience or your pleasure in her hard work? Our herculean efforts often go unnoticed in the chaos of life and that lack of recognition becomes one more stone in the walls we build between us. What if every week you told him how marvelous he is? What if every week you told her how glad you are that she’s the mother of your children? What if you stopped letting life live you and started living like you’re saints?

It might be too much to jump into if you’ve got years of resentments and wounds built up.7 But you could start by praying together and affirming each other once a week and go from there. If you’re early in your marriage, you could amp up communication now; if it’s been 50 years, you could start talking about the things that have been swept under the rug since the Nixon administration. Figure out the formula that works for you, but start looking at marriage like its purpose is to make you a saint. Marriage isn’t sanctifying simply because it’s hard. What accomplishes the miracle of holiness in marriage is two people fighting together to become saints.

Obviously, I’ve never tried this. In fact, I don’t know anyone who has. Maybe it’s a ridiculous idea. All I know is I can’t get it out of my head in prayer and it sure isn’t doing me any good rattling around in there. Maybe it’s for one of you. Give it a shot for a few months, then tell me how it’s going. I figure prayer, communication, and the pursuit of holiness can’t hurt, anyway.

Also, kiss more.

 

While we’re on the subject, can I recommend my favorite books on marriage? I just reread Alice von Hildebrand’s By Love Refined and it’s just as good as I’d remembered. Note: it’s subtitled Letters to a Young Bride but is NOT written exclusively for women. It’s a book about love and sacrifice and it’s simply-written in short chapters—a perfect book to read together! Fulton Sheen’s Three to Get Married is (as I recall) not quite so simple but fantastic all the same. And it gives me hope that people can write well about things of which they have no personal experience….

Also, I fleshed out some of these thoughts in a talk I gave in Tennessee. Listen to it here:

  1. Sober [↩]
  2. So rare it’s really quite disheartening. [↩]
  3. See also Advice to Priests and 5 Rules for Fathers of Daughters [↩]
  4. Or every day or once a month. [↩]
  5. Pick a time when you’re generally not too stressed or distracted or exhausted and when you won’t feel rushed. Get a babysitter if you have to. Your marriage is worth the investment. [↩]
  6. Be very careful how you phrase things. Try “What was going on Tuesday night when you wouldn’t talk to Therese?” instead of “Have you forgotten what a baby you were Tuesday night?” “I feel as though this was a hard week for you to speak charitably about your coworkers” instead of “You were quite the gossip.” “I know you didn’t mean anything by it, but I was pretty upset when you joked that I was fat” instead of “Calling me fat was a total jerk move, don’t you think?” [↩]
  7. If this is the case, please, please don’t be too proud to consider therapy. Sometimes all we need is for someone to help us find a common vocabulary and we can take it from there. [↩]