Sometimes I find myself reflecting on the person I was before I met my husband and had a zillion kids (okay okay, only 4 so far). I was a girl with great drive and focus (how else could I write a 20 page term paper, 5 take-homes and 2 essays all in one weekend, powered only by orange juice, mac and cheese, and ramen noodles?), with a plan for my own life that, at the time, looked very dazzling. I was well on my way to completing my BA with the intention of doing my MA at the same school and my PhD at a Pontifical University in Rome (dream big or don't bother!). I was going to travel the world, experience new things, teach and be taught. I was going to find fulfilment in a world that was waiting just on the other side of a few more papers and exams. In the back of my mind, I also had a dream of becoming a Nun, and living out all my dreams wearing some sort of fabulous habit, veil and all. Joining a religious order would fulfil my deep religious yearnings and desire to serve others, while giving me a chance to serve my own ideal as educated world traveller.
Looking back, I doubt that if I had been given a glimpse of my life today, I would have said yes, and dived in head first. I'm relatively sure that I would have outright said no! When the opportunity to be part of a new religious community in my own city arose, I said YES before I even had a chance to consider what it was I was doing. I already had a sense of what that life would look like and what my challenges would be. If my 20 something (well, early 20 something) self had any sense of the daily challenges of my current life, I have a feeling I would have been overcome with intense fear and run the opposite direction. Possibly screaming. Back then, I had no idea what I was truly capable of. I had in my heart the desire to be a mother, but along with that I had the deep sense that I wasn't chosen for that life because I wasn't equipped for it. I simply was made to be a nun, solitary and stoic. (And seriously, I really do know that that's not a qualification for a "good" nun. My Sisters from the Franciscans are the most loving, giving women I've ever met. Stoic is not a word I'd even think to apply to those gorgeous ladies!)
When I pictured myself as a mother, it was with a feeling that I had no patience, no knowledge of babies, and that I physically could not endure labour. Being a mother to me also meant being married. And you see, I was not the marrying type, unless you count marrying Jesus. I couldn't picture myself a suitable wife to anyone, with all my solitary habits and eccentricities, my inability to be emotionally intimate with even my closest friends. The women I was nearly 10 years ago would not have been able to answer the call to the life I live now. She would have been scared, and perhaps rightly so.
The truth is that that girl is still there, part of me every day, but I'm also so much more. I'm glad that God didn't give me any real insight into what my life would be. I didn't one day wake up a wife and mother, and certainly not a mother of one preschooler, two rowdy toddlers, and one very sweet but demanding baby. God built me up, little by little. He showed me my talents, and gave me new ones. He gave me a friend, taught me how to share my struggles and emotional baggage with him, then made him my husband. He gave me one child, let me adjust, then another, then another, then another. At each stage, God waited until I was ready, then gave me a little more. Oftentimes it felt like each new pregnancy would be too much, but then I would find myself surprised as I came out of the fog of new babyness that I was not just surviving, but joyful (most days). If we reach out for God's hand, He won't let us sink, even if we feel like we're drowning some days.
I'm glad that I never had a sense of what my life would look like today. God didn't give me a chance to scare myself out of it. I can't imagine my life any other way, nor do I want to. When I gave my life up to God, He took that life and has made more out of it than I ever could have imagined.
Showing posts with label Nun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nun. Show all posts
Saturday, 12 May 2012
Friday, 5 August 2011
I Knew She Was a Girl
I knew before I was married or even pregnant that my first child would be a girl. I knew her face. I knew her joy and her smile.
When I was still a nun I had an experience which to this day still leaves my faithful soul in awe. One Saturday afternoon, after our formation classes as a community, we were all just hanging out at the Sisters' convent house out in a small harbour town. Out of nowhere two very dear friends of mine dropped in with their daughter. In retrospect she must have been 7 or 8 months by her size and the confidant crawl she had going. Their small family left me with a feeling of joy but when they left I felt a sudden deep feeling of longing. It was as though for the first time I realized I would never be a mother so long as I stayed with the nuns. I'd always believed I was fine with that. In my mind I had decided I would be like a spiritual mother, praying for all the lost souls and my students when I eventually become a teacher. Cuddling with that little baby girl had opened up a wound in my heart I had never realized was there.
When my friends left it was time for Adoration in our small chapel. We had the whole community with us that day so I ended up sitting on the radiator while trying to muster myself to pray. I remember how uncomfortable I was and how distracted I felt by my realization that I would never be a mother. After about 20 minutes of this I was about to leave the room to get some air when all of a sudden a wave of peace washed over me. As I looked up at the Blessed Sacrament a strange vision came before my eyes. I saw clearly an image of a woman sitting with a child in her lap. Not just a child, a little girl with reddish hair that had a cute curl around the fringe, big blue eyes and the most joyful smile I'd ever seen. The woman was me. I was wearing nondescript clothes but it wasn't my religious habit. I was sitting with this painfully beautiful child in my arms with a look of perfect joy. She and I were rocking in this very particular Boston rocker. The stain, the shape everything stuck in my memory as though it was essential to the scene. As I looked closer I noticed a man's hand on my shoulder in this vision. My mind travelled up and in the vision I saw a very familiar face. With a flush the vision fell away and I found myself weeping in our tiny chapel, my hands clutching the uncomfortable radiator. I ended up leaving the room to have a quiet moment in one of our side rooms, shaken by my vision of a life that I still felt I could never have.
Was this a calling or a gift of realization of what motherhood could have been had I been led along another path? I couldn't allow myself to see the vision as cruel even as I tied my rope around my grey habit the next morning, counting the three knots symbolizing poverty, chastity and obedience. All good things deserve sacrifice and I knew religious life included the sacrifice of physical motherhood. I still couldn't help being haunted by the clear vision given to me, though I pushed it aside as I struggled on in this beautifully difficult community life.
Flash forward more than a year later. I'd left religious life not long after that day in the chapel and was married less than a year later. Two days after Christmas I was in my in-laws bathroom staring at this strange scientific creation with its code of colours and lines. Two lines to be exact. I let out a choked laugh and then ran across the hall with the tiny stick tucked behind my back. Pregnant. We were pregnant. I was pregnant. The girl who thought she'd never be a mother. A beautiful joke on me by a God who always has a better plan. O was convinced right away that this new life (that made me very nauseous) was a girl. Everyone found my conviction laughable except my husband.
Fast forward to our 3rd Christmas as a married couple. In my lap sits a buoyant and joyful little girl with pretty strawberry-blonde hair, smiling in the glow of her loving extended family. Behind me stands my husband with his hand on my shoulder. We're sitting in a particularly beautiful Boston rocker. It had been a gift by my father-in-law to his wife when she was pregnant with their first child, my brother-in-law, on the occasion of her first mother's day just before they became parents. I can't help but smile as I know this moment was mine before I knew the truth of it. This day was planned for me before I believed in any of the details. Every detail down to whose hand was on my shoulder was exactly right. I knew in that moment how good it was to really trust, to really give in to a plan greater than my own.
And that's how I knew my first child was a girl before I was even pregnant.
When I was still a nun I had an experience which to this day still leaves my faithful soul in awe. One Saturday afternoon, after our formation classes as a community, we were all just hanging out at the Sisters' convent house out in a small harbour town. Out of nowhere two very dear friends of mine dropped in with their daughter. In retrospect she must have been 7 or 8 months by her size and the confidant crawl she had going. Their small family left me with a feeling of joy but when they left I felt a sudden deep feeling of longing. It was as though for the first time I realized I would never be a mother so long as I stayed with the nuns. I'd always believed I was fine with that. In my mind I had decided I would be like a spiritual mother, praying for all the lost souls and my students when I eventually become a teacher. Cuddling with that little baby girl had opened up a wound in my heart I had never realized was there.
When my friends left it was time for Adoration in our small chapel. We had the whole community with us that day so I ended up sitting on the radiator while trying to muster myself to pray. I remember how uncomfortable I was and how distracted I felt by my realization that I would never be a mother. After about 20 minutes of this I was about to leave the room to get some air when all of a sudden a wave of peace washed over me. As I looked up at the Blessed Sacrament a strange vision came before my eyes. I saw clearly an image of a woman sitting with a child in her lap. Not just a child, a little girl with reddish hair that had a cute curl around the fringe, big blue eyes and the most joyful smile I'd ever seen. The woman was me. I was wearing nondescript clothes but it wasn't my religious habit. I was sitting with this painfully beautiful child in my arms with a look of perfect joy. She and I were rocking in this very particular Boston rocker. The stain, the shape everything stuck in my memory as though it was essential to the scene. As I looked closer I noticed a man's hand on my shoulder in this vision. My mind travelled up and in the vision I saw a very familiar face. With a flush the vision fell away and I found myself weeping in our tiny chapel, my hands clutching the uncomfortable radiator. I ended up leaving the room to have a quiet moment in one of our side rooms, shaken by my vision of a life that I still felt I could never have.
Was this a calling or a gift of realization of what motherhood could have been had I been led along another path? I couldn't allow myself to see the vision as cruel even as I tied my rope around my grey habit the next morning, counting the three knots symbolizing poverty, chastity and obedience. All good things deserve sacrifice and I knew religious life included the sacrifice of physical motherhood. I still couldn't help being haunted by the clear vision given to me, though I pushed it aside as I struggled on in this beautifully difficult community life.
Flash forward more than a year later. I'd left religious life not long after that day in the chapel and was married less than a year later. Two days after Christmas I was in my in-laws bathroom staring at this strange scientific creation with its code of colours and lines. Two lines to be exact. I let out a choked laugh and then ran across the hall with the tiny stick tucked behind my back. Pregnant. We were pregnant. I was pregnant. The girl who thought she'd never be a mother. A beautiful joke on me by a God who always has a better plan. O was convinced right away that this new life (that made me very nauseous) was a girl. Everyone found my conviction laughable except my husband.
Fast forward to our 3rd Christmas as a married couple. In my lap sits a buoyant and joyful little girl with pretty strawberry-blonde hair, smiling in the glow of her loving extended family. Behind me stands my husband with his hand on my shoulder. We're sitting in a particularly beautiful Boston rocker. It had been a gift by my father-in-law to his wife when she was pregnant with their first child, my brother-in-law, on the occasion of her first mother's day just before they became parents. I can't help but smile as I know this moment was mine before I knew the truth of it. This day was planned for me before I believed in any of the details. Every detail down to whose hand was on my shoulder was exactly right. I knew in that moment how good it was to really trust, to really give in to a plan greater than my own.
And that's how I knew my first child was a girl before I was even pregnant.
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