The Battle Plan - Part II

(This is the continuation of a post about giving the perfect gift.  You can find strategies #1 and 2 here.)

Strategy #3: Don’t Start the Process

The human body is really amazing and if you understand how it works, you can keep yourself out of a great deal of trouble and temptation.  The marital act (sexual relations) doesn’t just happen out of the blue.  There is a whole array of steps leading up to it.  As you progress along the first, second, third, fourth steps and beyond, you’re preparing your body for the final step. 

So, if you aren’t going to follow through with that final step until marriage, don’t start the process to begin with!  As per strategy #2, the sexual act is being reserved for marriage.  But that’s not the only thing that should wait until the honeymoon. 

Any physical affection of a sexual nature—anything that “starts the process”—should also go on hold. 

“This is too hard!” you might think.  Well, in many ways, no.  It’s harder to keep frustrating your body by giving it a taste and then snuffing it all out.  By starting but never finishing the process, you will be continually tempting yourself.  It will be incredibly hard to keep putting on the breaks.  You may ultimately arrive at a place in the process where you’ve passed the point of no return, so to speak. 

Don’t put yourself in that kind of predicament.  The best idea is to have another conversation with your beloved (you are going to be working very hard on emotional intimacy now!).  Talk about what “starts the process” for both of you.  Delineate what crosses the line from pure, innocent affection and affection of a sexual nature.  In our relationship, Chris and I quickly realized that even something like kissing could start the process for us—the kiss’s duration, intensity, and even the frequency of our kisses all mattered. 

This was our “litmus test”: if you can do it in front of your parents, no problem.  If you can’t…then don’t do it at all—don’t start the process.

Again, love is sacrifice.  Sacrifice these acts of physical pleasure for the good of your beloved.  You wouldn’t want to leave your beloved dangling on the edge of a cliff, for fear he or she may have a fatal fall.  Similarly, don’t place your beloved in temptation by engaging in physical affection of a sexual nature.  No, it might not be the sexual act itself, but it may well lead to that and—as mentioned before—such a thing could be deadly for your relationship and for your souls.

 Strategy #4: Set Clear, Explicit Guidelines Beforehand

When you’re incredibly attracted to someone and are being physically affectionate (by this, I don’t mean sexual relations, as per strategy #2 that is now being reserved for marriage), it’s really hard to think clearly.  Don’t wait until you are kissing to first start wondering how far is too far. 

Ideally, when you first begin a relationship, you should have a conversation with your beloved about what is and is not physically acceptable between the two of you. 

It’s never too late to have such a discussion, however, and no time is too soon to do so, if it hasn’t happened yet.  It’s a conversation you’ll need to repeat and revisit.  There may be something you do to your beloved that sends him or her to step #4, much further along in the process than you want to be.  Find out what that is and wait until your honeymoon to do that again. 

Be very clear when doing this.  For example, I mentioned above that kissing was at times a problem for Chris and me.  So, to keep our kisses outside the “step” process, we decided we would kiss no more than five times/day and each kiss wouldn’t last more than five seconds.  No passionate kissing here—not until the honeymoon.  Sound extreme?  When you love someone, you go to extremes to ensure their well-being. 

We also found that writing down our guidelines was quite helpful.  Doing so made them concrete and enabled us to reread them, as well as add to them as new issues came up.  After making our list, we each signed the bottom to make them official.

The Battle Plan - Part I

Any army advancing into battle needs to have a strategy, a plan of action.  If you want to give the perfect gift, you need to be prepared to fight for it.  Engrained habits, physical desires, the longing for pleasure—these are on the offensive, to keep you from obtaining your goal. 

The strategy is to form good, healthy, truly loving habits; to tame one’s physical desires under the direction of reason and to develop firm self-control; and to redirect your longing for pleasure into the sacrificial love of willing what is best for your beloved.

Before we go into a detailed battle plan, let’s first revisit the perfect gift  Here is the “cliff notes” version of my previous post.

•     In a relationship between a man and woman, their desire for unity and attraction to one another urges them to give of themselves physically.
•     Love is sacrifice: willing what is best for your beloved.  If you truly love your beloved, you will give him or her the perfect gift: reserving the physical gift of yourself until the permanent, exclusive, and complete relationship that is marriage.
•     Physical relations, when they occur outside of marriage and thus outside of the loving sacrifice marriage entails, lead the man and woman to use each other for pleasure.  Outside of marriage, love can easily become lust.
•     Sexual relations are bad marital preparation.  They train the man and woman to expect instant gratification.  There is little practice of the self-control and self-denial that are necessary for marriage and for raising children.  Also, physical intimacy often masks voids in the relationship (such as little spiritual or emotional intimacy, both of which are key for a successful marriage).
•     Outside of marriage, sexual relations constitute a mortal or deadly sin, capable of completely separating one from God.  In the Catholic Church, the bodies of the husband and wife are holy and the marital act completes the sacrament of matrimony.  The marital act is part of a beautiful plan for love and life, but outside of this plan, sexual relations divide a man and woman from each other…and from God.   

So, how does one go about giving the perfect gift—waiting until marriage to give yourself physically to your beloved?  When you are dating someone, how do you know what is and is not appropriate when it comes to physical affection?

Strategy #1: Enlist Your Ally…Or Start Asking Really Serious Questions

It takes two to tango.  If you’re going to give the perfect gift, you are going to need an ally.  Well, more than one, but we’ll get to that later.  You are going to need to sit down and have a chat with your beloved because, let’s face it, you both need to be on the same page with this if it’s going to work. 

Here is what you need to know: will your boyfriend or girlfriend help you reserve sexual relations for marriage?

Remember that emotional intimacy?  If you and your beloved have it, this conversation shouldn’t be too difficult, because you feel open and comfortable talking about deep and serious issues together.  If you don’t have emotional intimacy, well, now is a good time to start developing it. 

Perhaps, dear reader, you are thinking to yourself, “I could never even bring this up with my beloved.”  Why is that?  Do you think your beloved would laugh at the proposition?  Would he or she think you crazy?  But if giving the perfect gift is better for your relationship, for your marriage, for your soul…why should it be funny or crazy?  At the very least, seeing how it would be important to you, would your beloved have the respect and love for you to listen with an open mind in an effort to understand your position? 

Love is sacrifice.  So here’s the issue in a nutshell: Is your beloved willing to sacrifice physical pleasure out of love for you?

This raises many more questions.  If your beloved doesn’t agree to waiting until marriage…why not?  Does he or she value your body more than your whole self?  This sounds more like lust than love.  Does your beloved lack the self-control required to give the perfect gift?  If so, this also isn’t a good sign.  In marriage, you want a husband or wife you can depend upon and whom you can trust will be strong in times of great difficulty.  If your beloved doesn’t have control over his or her physical desires under good conditions, can you trust he or she will be faithful to you when the road gets rocky?

I know—these questions can be scary and very serious.  But if your relationship with your beloved matters to you, the answers to these questions should matter, too.  They will highlight areas where your relationship needs work and healing.  You can’t fix something if you never realize that it is broken.  In some cases, these answers may lead someone to question whether the relationship should even continue.  This is difficult, but even worse is staying in a bad relationship or making a lifelong vow to the wrong person.

Strategy #2: Quit, Cold Turkey

So let’s say you and your beloved have a long chat and you jointly agree to embark on the most worthy pursuit of giving each other the perfect gift.  This is wonderful!  Start from the beginning—open a whole new chapter to your relationship.  It is going to be hard, but if you persevere and if you try, I promise you that your relationship is going to transform and you will be free to love each other in a way that was impossible before. 

The biggest step is stopping what might have become habitual in your relationship, perhaps even a physical addiction.  The first step: stop being physically intimate.  If your hand were in flames, you wouldn’t stand there, pondering what you should do; you would yank it out of the fire immediately.  If you’re having sexual relations, but not married, your relationship is in danger.  Get out of enemy territory! 

So, simple and straightforward: the sexual act will take place only when it can rightly be called the marital act.

The Perfect Gift

I was in love with him--so deeply, completely in love.

My boyfriend and I had been in a relationship for a short time, but I felt like I had always known him.  He occupied my thoughts almost always and I counted the hours until I could hear his voice or see his face.  I had thought I had known love before him, but I had been so wrong; those were only shadows of what was to come.  With him, it was so different.  It was true love.

Perhaps you can relate.  Maybe you find yourself captivated by your true love.

When your heart is taken by true love, it's only natural that this love seeks a way to express itself.  The feelings are overwhelming and no matter how many times you exclaim, "I love you!" the words never seem to convey what lies in the depth of your heart, how deeply you have been touched by this other being.

And so, true love seeks expression.  It's not enough to feel it inside, bubbling and growing within you.  It must burst forth in some conveyable manner to let your beloved know exactly how much you truly love him or her.

What is the perfect gift, then, to give your beloved?  Mere objects will not do.  No, material gifts fall too short.  Roses, chocolate, jewelry--these never fully express true love.

When in the throes of love, I think all men and women reach an identical conclusion.  The only gift that could possibly express your feelings is the gift of yourself.  True love compels you to desire oneness with your beloved; nothing but this closeness, this physical unity of two becoming one, can fully express your love.

Could there be a greater physical expression of love than sexual union?  Could there be a greater gift than physically giving yourself to your beloved?  Is there a more intimate or more perfect way to communicate your love?

Chris and I met online and it was several weeks until we actually saw each other in person.  That first date, though simplistic at a first glance, was epic and, as he hugged me goodbye, I felt it: a spark, the fire of love igniting in my heart.

As our relationship grew, so did our love and our desire to express that love to each other.  In my mind, I returned to those questions...could there be a greater physical expression of love than sexual union?  What greater gift could I give to my boyfriend than the very gift of myself?

He and I both knew the answer.  It's been affirmed in my mind a million times and the truth of it resounds in my heart.

Yes, there is a more perfect gift.  Yes, there is something greater, something infinitely greater that you can give your beloved.

The perfect gift?  It is indeed a giving of yourself physically, but it is more specific than that.  It's the physical gift of yourself that is permanent, exclusive, and complete.  It's saying, "I love you so much, that I am going to wait to give myself to you until I can do so for forever."

Chris and I decided to wait to be physically intimate until we were married.  It was an easy decision; at times, it was very difficult to live.  But we did it and, if could I go back, I would make the same decision, again and again and again.

Why?  Why does it matter so much: whether before or after marriage?

Our heart seeks to express itself physically.  That's why we have body language.  My husband knows right away when I am upset--not by my words, but by my facial expression.  My body expresses what my heart feels.

What does the sexual act express?  It shows that two people have become one, have given themselves completely and totally to one another in the most intimate way possible.

So when the sexual act takes place outside of marriage, what is happening is, in fact, a contradiction.  The man and woman haven't given themselves completely to each other in the permanent commitment that is marriage.  They aren't "one."  True, they may be in a committed relationship.  But I've been in relationships before.  Relationships are not permanent.  All it takes is one person to decide to leave.  It's happened to me before, both as the one left behind and as the one leaving.  There is nothing that substantially binds the two together: no ties of family, commitment before society, or religious or moral bond.

In premarital sexual relations, the language of the body speaks lies.

As I have written before, love is, in a word, sacrifice.  It is the conscious willing of the good for your beloved, even if that requires suffering (however great) on your part.  It is the giving of yourself--when it is easy to do so and when it is hard.

It’s hard to love someone to the point of sacrifice if, whenever your beloved hurts or angers you, you can freely and easily pick up and leave that person.

Marriage entails much sacrifice.  When you enter marriage, you sacrifice some of your freedoms.  No longer are you free to leave your boyfriend or girlfriend whenever you wish.  No longer are you free to end the relationship and date other people.  You surrender this freedom: you sacrifice it for the good of your beloved.

A permanent, complete gift is always, always better than one given on a loan.

What is the opposite of love?  You may instinctively think, "Hate."  But if love is sacrifice, then the opposite of love is exploitation: making your beloved suffer for your own gain.

The sexual act can be a powerful expression of undying love, but when it occurs outside of its rightful place (marriage), instead of self-sacrificing love of the other, the man and woman will begin to use each other.  At our wedding, Chris and I permanently and completely gave ourselves to each other, before God and our friends and family.  That night, our first night together, there was no notion that either of us was using the other for pleasure.  He had given himself to me in the vow he had spoken: he was my husband for the rest of my life.   Now he was expressing that gift of himself physically.

Within marriage, every time a husband and wife engage in this marital act, they are in fact, renewing their vows.  They are saying, "I do" again and again and again.  "I love you and I give myself completely to you."  Outside of marriage, because that lifelong commitment has not been made, the sexual act becomes devalued and becomes a mere pleasure.  The man and woman begin to see each other as a means to feel good.  True love is truly sacrifice.  Where there is no sacrifice, but rather use, there is no love.

So perhaps what I say rings true for you in cases where a person has multiple and many partners and treats the whole enterprise as a rather fun activity, along the lines of (but much better than) watching a movie or kicking back a beer.  

But what about a man and woman in an exclusive, committed relationship?  They truly love each other, right?  Why can't they express it physically? Why wait?

True love involves always desiring what is best for your beloved.  Yes, you could give your beloved a gift that seems pretty good (physical intimacy before marriage). But this gift, even if it doesn’t seem like it, doesn’t put your beloved first, but instead places many strains your relationship. 

You will come to see that when you truly want what is best for your beloved, you will reserve the greater gift: sexual relations within a marriage that is permanent and exclusive.

In short, sexual relations outside of marriage will hurt--not help--your relationship.  Physical intimacy is, of course, rather easy to achieve.  But, clearly, it isn't the only form of intimacy.  A couple can become emotionally and even spiritual intimate, but this is much harder (and takes longer) to develop.  The problem is that when two people, uncommitted to each other through marriage, have sexual relations, they have found physical intimacy. But this intimacy can easily mask a fatal void.  

Emotional and spiritual intimacy take a great deal of time and effort to grow and blossom; physical intimacy is a matter of brief few moments.  Yet, a couple that is far more physically intimate than emotionally and spiritually will not last the trials of a long-term relationship (not less parenthood!).  This is why the divorce rates among those who did not wait until marriage to have relations are so very high.  

You may know your boyfriend or girlfriend physically, but how well do you really know this person emotionally or spiritually?  The heart can be a scary place: we can all keep dark secrets locked in there, vices and personal flaws we don't like to think about.  Don't wait until after marriage to really get to know your loved one.

Giving into the desire for sexual relations before marriage also prepares you badly for married life because it provides instant physical gratification, at will.  It doesn’t prepare anyone for the self-control required of a good marriage.  Marriage is not easy: it’s a big and routine sacrifice.  It doesn’t come naturally to always put the good of your spouse (and children) before your own wants and needs.  If you are both used to feeling good whenever you want to feel good, you’ll find it that much harder to swallow your pride (and what you want) in favor of a greater good.

And many times, it is really, really hard to choose the greater good, when that lesser good is so appealing.  Chris and I decided to wait until marriage for physical intimacy, but it was a battle to do so.  I am being precise when I say a “battle.”  It's not for the faint of heart.  But, then again, neither is marriage (or any other glorious yet demanding endeavor).  

Dating and engagement are both training ground for your lifelong (and challenging) vocation.  Train yourself before marriage to develop self-control.  If you can routinely deny yourself in little things, when the time comes for much bigger self-denial for your beloved, you will be ready to do so.  Every marathon runner began by making that short run just a little longer.

I would be greatly remiss to leave out one final point.  You see, premarital relations negatively affect more than just the relationship with your beloved. 

We aren’t mere physical bodies ambling about the earth.  Each one of us also has a soul.  And what we do with our bodies—good or evil—will inevitably affect our soul.  Sexual relations before marriage weaken and harm the relationship between man and woman, but even worse, they can destroy the relationship between man and God. 

I could cite many sociological reasons and statistics for waiting until marriage, but the strongest reason is a spiritual one: having sexual relations outside of marriage (fornication) is a mortal or deadly sin—the most severe kind of wrong doing, which completely separates one from God.

Just imagine a plant, separated from any form of light.  Without the sustenance and energy it receives from sunlight, the plant will inevitably die.  God is the source of light for your soul.  So when you become separated from the source light, which happens with serious sin, the life of the soul will begin to starve.  But perhaps the scariest thing is that, once accustomed to the darkness, you don’t really notice it anymore.  It looks normal.  That’s why playing with this kind of fire is so downright dangerous.    

But the question remains: why are sexual relations outside of marriage really that seriously wrong—deadly even?

It’s helpful to consider what happens when two people are married.  For Catholics, this is a sacrament and two things are necessary for it.  The first is the vows spoken by the woman and man.  And the second?  It is the physical component: the bodies of the couple themselves.  In fact, the sacrament that takes place on the wedding day isn’t completely fulfilled until the newly married husband and wife engage in the marital act—sexual relations. 

Our bodies are holy; our bodies are the stuff of the sacrament.  Sexual relations are sacred…they are the completion of the marital sacrament. 

Outside of marriage, a man and woman engaging in sexual relations are taking something sacred and misusing it.  Our bodies are so precious and personal—a true gift to us—that it’s a big deal to misuse them.  The druggie who hallows out his frame from repeated overdosing fails to use his body well and it becomes serious.  That’s what deadly sins can do to us.

Never forget that sexual relations have a beautiful purpose and are part of a powerful plan for our lives and our love.  But to stray away from this plan, the man and woman not only start to distance themselves from each another, but (even worse) build a wall between themselves and the Creator of their lives and their love. 

Misplaced sexual relations will ultimately make you lose that strong relationship with your beloved.  But be careful, for you could even lose your very soul.

My wedding night was the most amazing night of my life because Chris and I gave each other the perfect gift: the total, exclusive, and permanent gift of ourselves.  That daily sacrifice of waiting until marriage produced an indescribable joy in our hearts: it was so worth it!

Let me say: this has been a very difficult post for me to write.  I don't want my words to hurt anyone, especially any family and friends who may not agree with what I have said.  Instead, I really want to see those I love happy.  The reality about dating, marriage, and sexual relations resounds so strongly in my heart and in my experience that it deeply hurts me to see those I care about hampering their efforts to give and experience love.  

I want you, dear reader, to know the indescribable joy of giving the perfect gift. 

If anything resonated in your heart from this post, but you just don't know how to turn ideals into reality, tomorrow I will be writing about how to practically and concretely implement this awesome way of loving.  As I said, it's a constant battle.  But don't worry--you won't be defenseless.

Dragons

There are so many reasons why I love Lent.  

The word Lent means “spring.”  Typically this liturgical season begins in February, during the dark, snowy, cold days of winter.  Yet, as the forty days progress, we journey spiritually and, yes, even physically to a new rebirth: spring.  All of creation comes to life again.

My daughter, father, and I went for a stroll around our house this afternoon.  It is a beautiful, sunny day, but there is a little wind.  Most days I would say, “Oh, it’s too cold to go outside”–as though we don’t own coats, hats, and mittens that would all perfectly suffice to keep us warm.  Excuses, excuses.

I’m in the midst of reading the most gripping book called Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child.  It’s simultaneously eye-opening and disturbing because there are things I may do so naturally with our daughter, just because it’s the norm of our society today or the way I experienced things, that have the terrible side effect of impairing the incredible gift of imagination.

Imagination is so critical.  To be able to transport yourself to another place or time, to envision a way things could be better, to dream of an unlimited number of “what ifs…”  To contemplate what is good, what is beautiful, what is real.  To imagine that this world might not be all that exists, that there might be something greater beyond the tangible, physical things around us…that maybe, just perhaps, those created elements in our world are only signposts to an even greater Good, an everlasting Truth.

At a party last weekend, three-year-old Isaac approached me with a concerned, wide-eyed look on his face.  With utmost seriousness, a Dorito clenched in his hand, he stated, “The dragon hit me right here,” gesturing to side of his face.  ”Oh, no!” I exclaimed.  ”Where is the dragon?”  Without a second’s hesitation, he pointed: the overhead fan.

What an incredible gift!  How is it that, what once came so simply to us, gradually becomes so hard?  When does a fan stop being a fire-breathing, scaly, ferocious dragon and become…a fan?

Perhaps, in part, it has to do with our setting.  At least, that’s what I have read so far in my book.

Do you realize that, for the first time in human history, men and women spend the majority of their time indoors?  That really hit me when I read it for the first time.  Sure, we have the Internet, the Wii, Ipods, etc., etc.  But what are we missing?  

As we walked about this afternoon, we discovered a thousand little stories being told all around us: the bird chirping nearby, the little trail a mouse dug through the grass, the tree stump that would make an excellent seat or table for a tea party, the daffodils lining the side of the house.  There were fluffy clouds set against a deep blue sky, just begging the viewer to call out shapes to identify them.

All this fodder for the imagination!  What was the mouse looking for when he dug his trail?  What kind of tree did we find, and what will its blossoms look like once they bloom?  What lessons the outdoors hold for us–reminders of perseverance, of hope…that even the harshest winter does not stop the coming of new life.

Our daughter was captivated by it all.  She heard the bird and promptly echoed its call with one of her own.  We basked in the sun and breathed deeply the crisp, fresh air.

I want her to see the dragon.  And, even more, I want her to imagine what is most beautiful, most true, most good.  Faith, hope, and love–these three do require a little imagination sometimes.  Looking at my neighbor and seeing the face of Christ is hard to do when your imagination has been deadened by primetime television, Youtube, and texting.

So I’ve made a resolution: spend time outdoors, even if it’s just fifteen minutes.  Spring is coming; gone now is my reasoning that it’s winter and too cold for the baby to be outdoors.  Bundle her up, get her out, and feed that imagination.

And she’ll teach me again, what I once knew myself–I will see the dragons, too.

Marriage is a Crucifixion

A few years ago, I was with a couple of friends who were having a conversation.  The one was in a relationship with a man and was sharing her deep longing for him to propose and for them to finally be married.  The other woman, a charismatic Filipino married two plus years, proclaimed, “Marriage is a crucifixion!”

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A newlywed at the time, I was a bit surprised, if not a little concerned, by her declaration.  Marriage–a crucifixion?  I remember wondering to myself if things really got that bad once the honeymoon phase was over.

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Fast forward two years and now I see exactly what my wise friend meant.  To say that marriage is a crucifixion isn’t equating marriage with drudgery and punishment.  No, quite the contrary: marriage, when fully lived out as it is intended to be, is one of the most profound expressions of love.

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Marriage is all about crucifying your own personal interests, desires, ambitions…basically, your self-will.  You take all that you have and give it to your beloved.  You give your espoused your entire self out of love; you sacrifice yourself for him or her.  This goes from the menial to the extreme: from ironing his shirt to seeing him or her through a critical illness.

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That is what the marital act is all about, too: it is a permanent, total self-giving to your spouse.  When a husband and wife are both 100% giving to the other, marriage transforms into a powerful expression of love.

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The beauty of it all is that crucifixion leads to resurrection: crucifixion leads to new life.  The marital act, as a total self-giving, brings forth the new life of children. When a husband and wife put each other before their own self-interests, the marriage blossoms with joyful life.

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Crucifixion is hard sometimes, but it is necessary.  It’s hard to deny yourself and put your spouse first, particularly during those times when you must deny your pride, your hurt, your anger, your impatience.  Yet, when you do so, new life of reconciliation, forgiveness, empathy, and love will flow from your act of sacrifice.

Love Thy Neighbor

We have a lovely neighbor named Louise who lives across the street. She’s a gray-haired, broadly smiling old lady who is frequently spotted watering her geraniums by the back porch or pulling out of her driveway in a cherry red car. She’s amiable, always waving to us when we pass by, and was particularly helpful in directing us to a great garage sale a few weeks ago.

I like Louise.

The directive, “Love thy neighbor,” never really hit home to me until fairly recently. I understood how we should love the poor, the outcast, the people we really don’t care for all that much.

But loving thy neighbor in the most literal sense of the word has become one of my personal greatest challenges.

You see, we share a house. We are renting a lovely, one hundred year home that has three floors for three different tenants. Floor #1 is a non-issue: quiet college student who must be pretty studious, as she’s not home all that much and when she is, we don’t hear a peep from her. She’s kind of like Louise. I like her.

Floor #2 is us.

Floor #3 is trouble. I don’t like them. At all.

What makes matters worse is that we share a common door and staircase with them. So their comings and goings (and those of the dozen or so friends who seem to visit them on a fairly daily basis) are very apparent to us.

So why don’t I like them? It hits at the very bones of what I’m striving to do here. Pax et bonum! A home full of peace and goodness: that’s my mission!

Alas, Floor #3 is a thorn in my side. How in heaven’s name can I foster peace when they are throwing a raucous party at 1 AM? How can I promote goodness when I am stewing in anger, resentful that their yelling/laughing/obscenity shouting is keeping me awake during the early hours of the day?

Charity doesn’t mean being a pushover. We’ve taken various measures to try to keep their antics at a more reasonable level (ex: calling the police during a revelry last weekend).

Charity does, however, necessitate loving them. Ugh! Loving them? My mind rattles off a dozen reasons why every ounce of me should not love them. And should I forget, our kitchen ceiling—wet from when they irresponsibly let their water overrun—is a ready reminder of the grudge I should hold against them.

Yet…yes, even those electric guitar playing, dreadlocks-wearing neighbors…even them I must love.

How? That’s what I asked my husband, who didn’t seem quite as perturbed and unsettled as I. He asked me to put myself in their shoes. All night parties. Rock music (and not very wholesome rock music at that). Obscenities. Dubious behavior.

Do they know the joy that we have? You know, the joy that springs forth from a heart that’s close to the very source of peace and goodness?

While I don’t know for certain what exactly transpires on that third floor (and, thank you, I’d rather never know the details), I highly suspect that, no, they don’t experience at all the joy that we do.

And for that, I am truly sorry for them. So I’m not certain, but perhaps maybe that’s where love can begin.

Hope In Sadness

On Friday, February 3 a beautiful five-year-old girl named Madeline (Maddie) was diagnosed with an untreatable tumor in her brainstem.  This past Wednesday morning, five short days later, she passed away.

While I have friends who knew Maddie and are close to her family, I myself never had the privilege of meeting her.  Nevertheless, the lack of a formal introduction didn’t keep this little girl from touching my heart and influencing my life.

Maybe it’s because I am a mother now and have my own little girl, but Maddie’s story has occupied my mind ever since I first heard of her sad diagnosis.  It’s the kind of heartbreaking news that just leaves one absolutely confounded.  Why?  Why such tragedy and sadness, especially so sudden and so unexpected, for one so young and innocent?

On Wednesday morning I visited a nearby church and sat before Our Lord, thinking about Maddie.  I had just learned of her passing before I left the house.

As I knelt there, I prayed for her and for her family and friends.  And I reflected about what this little girl reminded me..

Her life reminded me that I need to always keep a broad perspective, to have an eternal view.  It’s so easy for me to forget that I wasn’t made for this world; I was made for a heavenly world.  This earth is just a passageway, not a final destination.  There is so much more beyond what we can see and experience here.  What comes next is unexperienced and foreign and so it slips out of our minds.  But it’s real–more real than this world even–and every day we should keep this eternal perspective.

Maddie’s story is scary in many ways.  It scared me at least.  As a mother, I have experienced a whole new kind of love.  The way I love our daughter is unlike any other love I have known.  The thing with love, however, is that it makes you very perceptible to suffering.  Should your loved one experience pain, you feel it, too.  Love makes us vulnerable.  I sat with our daughter, watching her sleep and thinking of Maddie.  What if something happened to our daughter?  What if she were diagnosed with a terminal, untreatable illness?

Maddie helped me remember: our children are not our own.  My daughter doesn’t really belong to me; she belongs to God.  Just as I do, as we all do.  In a way, we can think of our children as precious gifts, on loan to us from God.  He bestows them upon us and, while we are on this temporary place called earth, we have the job of helping each other grow in virtue to become the men and women we are supposed to be, the kind of people who, through God’s grace, could one day inhabit a heavenly homeland.  ”Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).

If you saw a picture of Maddie, such as the one on her website, you see a broad-smiling, beautiful girl.  I am sure her parents were struggling with seeing her in pain.  I thought to myself how tragic that she should know such sadness in her young life.  And that’s certainly true–it is so sad.  But, as I prayed this morning, I thought there is something more than happiness.  I want our daughter to be happy, but I should want something more for her than this.

I want a happy daughter, but even more, I want a holy daughter.  I want a daughter who lives her life in communion with God, who loves Him who is Love itself and who reflects this Truth and Life in her words and deeds.  This is what Maddie’s parents, God bless them, did.  This past weekend, by special permission from the bishop, Maddie celebrated her First Holy Communion and was Confirmed.  She was, and is, a holy girl.  These parents did their best to make her days, even those when she was so ill, happy.  But they didn’t neglect the greater responsibility–to help her be holy, to prepare her soul for her Father in heaven.

This five-year-old girl, weak and frail from an untreatable condition, demonstrated to me something else of immense power: the mobilization of the Body of Christ, the Church.  There is a passage in the Acts of the Apostles that says the early Church “held all things in common.”  This refers to sharing earthly goods, such as food and shelter.  But I think it applied to spiritual goods, too.

The Church today held in common the pain and suffering of Maddie and her family.  Now, perhaps I spend too much time on Facebook and that’s why I witnessed this, but the outpouring of love, prayer, concern, and support for little Maddie was overwhelming.  There was a part of the Body of Christ suffering and hurt; we all felt it as though it were our own family and we all reached out because it was the most natural, instinctive thing to do.  Perhaps because, in a very real way, Maddie’s family is our family.

We are not alone.  Do you know what the shortest verse in the Bible is?  John 11:35.  ”And Jesus wept.”  Maybe it’s so short to make a point, to make us realize the significance of this brief passage.  Jesus wept at the death of His dear friend, Lazarus.  He knows our sadness and heartache.  He walks side-by-side with those experiencing loss…because He knows it, too.  He is close to us who suffer…because He suffered, more than anyone ever could.

And herein lies the greatest lesson Maddie helped me remember.  It all comes back to this–it has to.  There is always hope.  Death is never the final answer, but merely a transition.  From death, God brings life.  St. Francis referred to “Sister Death” because, for the one with faith, it isn’t the termination of everything.  There is a line during the Mass for the Dead that says “life is changed, not ended.”

For Maddie, life is changed.  While I have no ecclesiastical authority to definitively affirm this, I can say that dear Maddie, as one under the age of reason and having just received Holy Communion and Confirmation, was free of all original and personal sin.  So, I feel quite confident to believe her life has changed in a way more beautiful, profound, and incredibly blissful than we could even imagine.

The hope that belongs to those with faith is a priceless treasure.

Dear Maddie, I’m sorry that we never met.  But thank you for all that you reminded me and taught me of throughout these past few days.  I pray for your friends and family who mourn your passing.  May they know the consoling, healing, loving touch of God, who is with them in this time of sadness.  I hope, one day, we may all join you in our true homeland.