A Cinderella Story In Reverse

I had the joy this Spring to hang out with a collection of cheerful 70 year old nuns. Retreats are really important in my life. I discovered the more that I feel like "I can't possibly leave my life" the more urgent need I have for an overnight retreat. This year, I went on a Silent Retreat with my Carmelite Community in March and I expected to find "rest." I had a baby with colic after a high-risk pregnancy. If they passed out Sangria on the beach with Jesus inside a convent, that what I mentally pictured my prayer sessions to be like while I was on Retreat with the King of the World.

Instead, I hung out with the Benedictine Sisters who are all about "Prayer & Work", or Ora et Labora. The Benedictines introduced me to the concept of "resting inside my work." It's a hard concept for me to get because as someone with a sanguine temperament I keep wanting to take frequent breaks on my hard days. What I found, however, is that if I've been good about resting in God when I'm supposed to be resting (i.e. keeping up my Carmelite prayer schedule) then keeping my nose to the grindstone no matter what happens during the working hours of my day can be "restful." 

I think about my life with Christ as a sort of "Cinderella in Reverse" story. I met Christ early in my life. I got super blessed to start receiving him in the Eucharist less than a year after I became a bride. There was this beautiful moment early in my marriage when I started to realize that this affirmation that I was frantically searching for first as a straight A student and then as a workplace star, was already given to me. I was God's "It Girl!" 

Then after falling in love with God, after becoming a princess of the kingdom, He's like "Okay, now go to work scrubbing toilets!" My life is 90% percent about boring, mundane, stupid-to-the-world looking stuff. It's easy for me to get discontent. "Hey God, you said I'm important! Shouldn't I be out doing calls to the sick or something meaningful." 99.9% of the time, The Creator of the Universe says to me, "No, actually I want you to put the allergy pills where your husband can find them easily. Also, your three year old has managed to lose three pairs of shoes inside the house, fix that problem pronto, please." 

It does my heart so good to hang out with the Sisters. The Sisters run a monastery. The run a "retreat center" for the world, where lots of lost souls can find healing in Christ and lots of tired souls can get recharged in Christ. The Sisters are really smart and talented. The Mother Superior has the rare talent of cracking jokes about herself and saying profound things about how to spiritually fight ISIS.

On my best days, I've stopped thinking about my housework as "housework."  Instead, I started thinking about my house as a retreat center. My house is inside the world, but not "of the world." My home is not a Corporate Starbuck's lounge or an impersonal Hotel Lobby. My home not a church, with the formality of the Tabernacle.  My home is a place that is open to my brothers and sisters in Christ, many of whom happen to share my same last name. With the recognition of my home's true function, I've been more brave in inviting really cool people over to my house for dinner. My Cinderella cleaning work helps me become hospitable to others. Learning how to do my hardest tasks "restfully, with God's help" is a gift that I give to myself.

A Capable Wife, Who Can Find?

Today is my 14th Wedding Anniversary. 

On June 2, 2001, I got married in central West Virginia carrying blue cornflowers and yellow freesia in my wedding bouquet. 

At the time, my husband and I were considered weird among our friends. We got engaged 9 months after meeting each other and married each other 18 months after we met. He was 29. I was 26. We both had grad school degrees. We didn't think there was anything weird about meeting the person you'd like to spend your life in our late 20s, but our friends did. 

Marriage was already on its way out.

Today, so many of our really close friends have still never married in their early 40s. We are still the weird ones. (Then we became more Catholic, had lots of kids, moved back to West Virginia, and became really, really weird.)

A few of our really, close big family Catholic friends have gotten divorced.

I know now that finding the right fit in marriage is only 25% of the battle, the rest of the fight is to hold on to what we have no matter what life throws at us.

At age 40, I've seen our life throw us some really scary things.

Through it all, there is just this promise, sometimes one that seems as frail as a cornflower blossom, that we will survive this --together.

My love. Our love. Together for life.

If you asked me what I wanted on my wedding day on June 2, 2002, I would have given you an earful of plans. I wanted  trips to London. I wanted a rental on Beacon Hill in Boston. I wanted a writing desk in a library for me, and a painting studio loft for him. I wanted no kids until after age 30, and even then, only 3.

Now, if you ask me what I want? 

I want some cornflowers on my grave, and I want that image not to be ironic.

I want to take the love that I have for my husband and move it all the way down the playing field of life. There is nothing commonplace about an ordinary marriage these days. 

My Fight With Acedia

I feel myself coming out of this long, slow stupor. It's acedia. It's the sin of spiritual sloth where I feel like there is nothing in my life but a long, dull list of meaningless activities.

Monks and nuns get acedia. So do writers. Stay at home mothers suffer from acedia also.

Acedia affects people who live a life of solitude. Solitude sounds boring but it is so critical for the full development of the human personality. Innovation requires courage and solitude. Healing requires solitude. Growth requires solitude. Even more social virtues like Leadership requires solitude. (A good leader is someone who knows herself and is unafraid of social rejection. That attachment to a strong inner voice and a detachment from what the world thinks is a quality that is best grown in solitude.)

Stillness is often boring. I want the peace that inner stillness brings but I hate doing the work to get there.

At 40, I'm tempted to look around and think "Everyone else is having more fun than me! There has got to be an easier way to live."

The cure for my acedia, is not for me to do less work. I don't need to hire a baby sitter. I don't need to take on a part-time job. I don't need more date nights, or parties, or coffee dates in Georgetown.

The cure for my acedia is to dig deeper into my daily routine and become more present in my work. I need to ask God to restore my youthful enthusiasm for my choice of a lifetime project. I need to glory my small, but "undelegatable" work.

What I found from this prayer for God to help with acedia is a new understanding of my individuality and self-worth.

I don't have to be wild and creative in my choices of writing, or housecleaning, or mothering. My work is already wild and creative because I'm a unique individual doing the work. I do my work for something, or rather, for someone.

When I'm clear about why I'm working each day, the work becomes easy.

There are not enough good, calm, cheerful and supportive homes for young artists to grow up inside the First World, so my husband and I made one.

There are not enough beautiful, clear, and spiritually calm websites out there, so I made one.

There are not enough clean, organic, and fruitful gardens in my town, so my husband and I planted one.

The best garden I plant each day is inside my heart. It's slow work, most days. Yet if I take time to feed myself first each day, I'm shock at how little my daily routine feels like dull work.