New Year's Eve

Tomorrow is a holy day of obligation and I'm totally going to go. I'm 28 years old and have only gone once, when I was in college. It's odd because by that time I had pretty much lapsed in terms of my church attendance, but for some reason I felt that it was very important to drag my hung-over self to Mass that morning. I don't remember much except the feeling of misery and the knowledge that if I took any Communion wine I'd probably hurl.

Mike and I didn't go last year because he had an asthma attack after midnight which was pretty severe. I think he had a respiratory infection at the time too...anyway, he spent New Year's Day in bed and I stayed home to watch over him.

I've always thought that it was rather cruel to have a holy day of obligation after a late-night celebration like New Year's Eve. But I suppose it's another situation where you have to make a choice that's right either for your secular life or your religious life.

At least this year the pregnancy will make that choice easier. No partying, and certainly no drinking. Making it to Mass by 10 AM won't be tough this year.

Questions

I regularly read Ask Metafilter. I was going to post this question anonymously, but chickened out.

I’m a good Roman Catholic woman who decided to eschew her birth control pills in favor of Natural Family Planning. I was never really happy with my pills and their side effects, and I also found the idea of my husband being so involved with, accepting of, and intimately familiar with my body and its processes quite a turn-on (I grew up with a lot of body shame issues).

So we gave it a shot. I got pregnant within six months. One night we were on a vacation, in a hotel, it was at the very end of the “don’t have sex” period, and we thought we could take a chance and have it turn out okay. We were wrong.

Now, don’t get me wrong. After we got over our initial shock we were very happy, and I’d never want anything to go wrong with this pregnancy or my baby. However…before when my husband and I would have sex it was entirely recreational. It was about me and my husband having fun and being in love. This experience has been a crash course reminder that sex is actually for procreation…whenever we get intimate now, I just keep thinking, Oh yeah, this is how babies are made.

Maybe it’s because I’m still pregnant and still very much the victim of my own hormones, but I feel like sex will never be the fun, carefree, loving experience it once was. Now it feels like an obligation, and I’m afraid that later it’ll feel like the consequences of another pregnancy are too dire to really enjoy the experience.

I really want to shift the focus of sex off of procreation and onto recreation, but I don’t know how. If anyone can give me advice about recapturing the fun of sex without suggesting that I change birth control methods or bashing my religious beliefs I would really appreciate it. I like sex too much to never enjoy it again!

I guess part of the reason I didn't do it because I figured I'd get two types of responses:

a) people telling me to just go back to the pills anyway

b) people telling me that if I was really Catholic I'd just resign myself to having a zillion kids

I guess if having a zillion kids is in my future, that's what it is. I'm certainly grateful for the one I'm gestating, perhaps I'd be thrilled to pop out ten more. But right now sex seems like more of a risk than a romp, and I'm not sure that it'll feel any less risky after my pregnancy.

I guess I'm worried that if I approach my friends about this problem, they'll have the same reaction...just change your birth control. If I ask someone who's more religious, they'll tell me to just accept it. And if I ask my priest...cripes, how weird would that be. I can just imagine him sitting there thinking, Wow, you can't have sex whenever you want it. How incredibly rough for you.

I guess I just miss the carefree attitude I used to have. I guess if I tried to embrace God's fate for me more fully I wouldn't feel the need to worry so much. Or maybe if I took a class in NFP at the local Catholic hospital (yes, they do have them!) I'd feel confident enough in it again to feel comfortable.

I also feel weird talking about it, as if I complain too much about the way I feel God will take away my baby because I'm ungrateful. I want to just re-iterate a thousand times that I'm intensely grateful for the son I'm carrying and I don't want anyone to think otherwise. I'd be devastated if something happened to him and I pray every day that if it's God's will he'll be born alive and healthy. Although judging by the state of the world today, God doesn't automatically take things away just because you're ungrateful for them. And not thinking about it out of fear isn't going to help me address the problem. I need to be honest about how I'm feeling if I'm going to figure things out and do what's right for me, my husband, and our religion.

My husband says to wait until the pregnancy hormones die down and then see how I feel. I guess he's right. We've got another four months and 22 days before I can get knocked up again. We have time to work it out.

Help

This is a hard thing to explain.

My pregnancy was, of course, unplanned. The way my husband put it was, “We bet against the house and the house won.” We knew we were having sex at a time that was a little risky, but we figured we’d be safe. One time can’t get you pregnant, right? We were on vacation for the first time in a long time, staying in a nice hotel we’d probably never visit again, and had just attended a beautiful wedding. We’d probably be okay.

Well, no. A few weeks later we found out that one time can get you pregnant. I should have known…after all, we tell that to the girls I work with all the time. We went from dismayed and scared to happy and excited pretty quickly, and now I wouldn’t trade this pregnancy and this baby for anything. I pray every night and at church every Sunday that my child comes into the world all right.

However. That doesn’t erase the fact that we weren’t planning and weren’t ready for a baby. We’re making strides quickly, but financially we’re far from set. My husband and I had decided to pour a lot of our income into our debts, and we were making great headway in paying off our student loans, credit card bills, and my car loan. We only had a few grand in the bank, but our debt was shrinking at a nice rate. I still think that this is the best plan for two adults with reliable cars and good health insurance. It’s not the best plan for a couple expecting a baby. I worry quite a bit that the costs of the delivery and the costs of a new baby will deplete our savings almost immediately and I’ll have to pawn stuff or something. It’s not a likely scenario, and my husband and I are doing everything we can to make our situation better, but I still worry that we won’t have enough money for a baby.

At this point I’d love to do the clichéd Catholic thing…just smile and say, “I know God will provide.” But I feel like I can’t.

I got into this situation because of my misjudgment. Conceiving now was my fault. I feel like I should deal with the consequences alone. I feel like it’s a cop out to just sit back and expect God to take care of me. Whenever I think this I feel so guilty, as if I’m calling my child a mistake. I know he’s not a mistake. I don’t regret getting pregnant and I don’t want anything to stop the pregnancy. I’d be devastated if anything happened. However…I also feel like I don’t deserve God’s help the way another couple might…a couple who planned their pregnancy, who had their lives and finances in order, a couple who had been married for a longer time and had carefully considered the ramifications of pregnancy and decided it was what God wanted them to do. Mike and I didn’t do any of that. We took a chance and it turned out differently than we thought it would. I just feel like I don’t deserve God’s help as much as someone else might.

But then, that begs the question, do any of us deserve God’s help? I suppose we don’t. And yet, He helps us every day. I know He’s helped me before and I probably don’t deserve what He’s given me. Can any of us really, confidently say “God will provide” as if we deserve it? Or do we just count on the fact that He loves us enough to help us whether we’ve followed His wishes or whether we’ve screwed up?

It’s something to think about.

Throughout my pregnancy my prayer has been, “Lord, let Your will be done during this pregnancy, and if it is Your will, please, please let me have this baby.” I suppose after the child is born I’ll pray, “Lord, let Your will be done to my child, and let us provide for our baby in the way that is best for Your plan.”

I think that’ll work.

Word Cloud

This word cloud makes this journal appear more interesting than it actually is.


Tricky!

I wound up being saved from my All Saint's Day conundrum when our parish offered a Mass of Anticipation on Wednesday night. They usually have their Wednesday Mass at night so I guess they just lumped it in with the All Saint's Day festivities. Anyway I'm glad they did it because the only other solution I could think of would be for me to go church in Racine at 7 PM while Mike went here in Milwaukee at 6 PM since Racine is closer to where I work and I could make it there in time. I'm glad we didn't have to split up...I like going to church with him and hate going alone.

Today in church something embarrassing happened. After the homily when everyone stands up I got extremely lightheaded but mistook the sensation for the start of morning sickness, so I started to go downstairs where the bathrooms are so I could throw up. Unfortunately I figured out it was lightheadedness when I was at the top of the stairs and my vision clouded over. I made it down the stairs okay but I guess I must have stumbled on the last one because I fell down onto the landing* and crashed against the door. Mike said it made a big enough bang to be heard in the church, and that some people went over to look but nobody came down to help. Thanks guys. Although I suppose the sight of a clumsy twenty-something isn't as alarming as the sight of a fallen seventy-year-old. Perhaps they thought I was just hungover. Anyway, I did learn that all the stand up, sit down, kneel, stand, kneel, etc. that goes on in a Catholic Mass can be tricky for a pregnant lady. I'll have to be more careful next Sunday.




* This was different from fainting because in fainting you lose consciousness and fall on your back. I fell on my elbows and knees and knew what was happening.

Musings

Getting to Mass has been more difficult lately because of the morning sickness. I get it all day, but mostly in the morning and evenings, so it's tough to get there. This morning Mike and I were walking up the sidewalk to church and I groaned, "Oh, I don't feel good."

"We can go to church later," he said.

"No, that wouldn't be any better," I replied.

"We could go home and watch Mass on TV," he said. "Or Mass on the internet."

"No, we can't do that!" I exclaimed. "I need to bless the baby!"

Ever since I found out I was pregnant I've been doing this. I always enter the church and dip my fingers in the holy water to make the sign of the cross, and then I take the excess moisture on my fingertips and make a tiny sign of the cross over my belly where I estimate the baby is.

I do realize that the holy water is supposed to remind me of baptism, and the kid hasn't been baptized yet. However, it does make me feel better. So far nobody has noticed me doing this, but I kind of wonder what remarks I'll get if anyone ever does. I wonder if it's even allowed. But then again, Catholics do believe that life begins at conception. Why can't holy water begin there too?

--------------

Lately I've been thinking a lot about why my birth control failed. Now, don't think at all that I regret getting pregnant...there's nothing I want more than a healthy pregnancy that results in a healthy baby. But when you make a plan and it turns out so differently than how you planned it would, I think it's natural to look back and try to figure out why.

Here's the thing I learned about Natural Family Planning...there is no fudge factor. With other birth control methods, there's a little wiggle room. You can have sex without a condom once and you might not get pregnant. You can forget a birth control pill or two and not get pregnant. But with NFP...man. Those days you can't have sex are the days you WILL get pregnant. Not might get pregnant. WILL GET PREGNANT. Even on your least fertile day, you're still fertile. So if you try and fudge it like I did you'll just wind up like I did...pregnant.

So yeah. I still think it's a great method for birth control, and I want to try it again after my cycles go back to normal. But I'm sure as heck going to take it a little more seriously.

Obligations

Recently the school district where I work had planned to hold a meeting this evening. The meeting would have been two hours long and would take place after school. They gave us a grand total of three days' notice. Needless to say, everyone was upset, and when the teachers' union started grumbling they rescheduled the meeting for November 1st so everyone would have time to plan to be there.

Yeah. November 1st. All Saint's Day. A Holy Day of Obligation for Catholics.

I was pretty upset because I actually go to Mass during Holy Days of Obligation. I've only missed one since Mike and I got serious about going back to church during our engagement. It was January 1st this year, and that's because Mike was sick with a respiratory infection. This was before his asthma was controlled, so he sat in bed the whole day wheezing and puffing on his inhaler. I was afraid to leave him alone, and wanted to be around in case he needed to go to the hospital. I know you're excused from church if you're sick, but I'm not sure if that counts for caring for a sick spouse too. Anyway, I'm pretty faithful about going, just like I'm faithful about showing up to Mass every Sunday.

I'm not sure what rights I have as far as my religious observance. The meeting ends at 5:45, and Mass begins at my church at 6 PM. That's problematic since I have an hour-long commute. I suppose they could tell me to just go to church in the city where I work, or find a Mass that starts at 7 PM in a different city. But I really want to go to my church with my husband. There are three versions of the meeting going on at three different times, and while I'm supposed to go to the latest meeting I suppose I could ask to go to the earliest. I don't know.

I guess there's two reasons that I'm hesitant to to play the religious observance card. First of all, I've done quite a bit of complaining this year already about my work conditions, and I've had to call in sick once already because of morning sickness. I'll have to call in sick again next week to go to my first OB appointment too. I feel like I'm not in a position to ask for more favors. But the other reason is, I know that not too many Catholics make a big deal about the Holy Days of Obligation. Most other Catholics in my department will just shrug and skip Mass without a second thought. I'm really afraid of seeming like I'm looking for things to complain about.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure if I have any rights at all as far as religious observance goes. I know my students do, but I'm not sure if I, as an employee, have any.

I have to figure this out. I want to go to Mass for sure...I just need to figure out a way.

Ugh...

I got my blood test results back, and they're not the greatest.

Anyway, if you want to follow the saga of my testings I'm posting it in my regular blog, which can be found here. It's just getting to tough to post in two places.

Just so you know...

...I took two more urine tests at the doctor's yesterday, and it turns out that I am pregnant. Just five weeks along, but pregnant. I'm awaiting my blood results to see my hormone levels.

Thanks for the prayers :)

Courage under fire

I guess it's sort of ironic that the night after I compose a long post touting the virtues of NFP as birth control, I found myself pregnant. Yep...two ClearBlue Digitals told me what my chart couldn't...I was with child.

Unfortunately the next day I went to a little walk-in clinic at the mall for an official doctor's pregnancy test, and they disagreed. While my urine tests were positive, theirs was negative. The nurse that was running the place didn't have an explanation for me, but when I came home my mom's Googling skills did...it seemed an awful lot like a chemical pregnancy.

Now, I got the news of the negative result and the potential chemical pregnancy just as I was getting over the initial fear and shock of my unexpected result, and I was getting quite happy and excited. So this has been quite the blow. I've spent a lot of time crying.

Mike and I went to church this morning. I'm not sure if I've ever talked about it here, but I really dislike going to church when I'm feeling depressed. One of our priests is really upbeat and keeps informing us that God loves us and has plans for us, so when I show up seriously miserable I end up leaving not only seriously miserable, but also feeling like a terrible, non-trusting Catholic.

The whole situation sort of hit me on the way to church so I was struggling with my tears as we walked in. I have a theory that church is an emotional place for lots of people, so nobody will bother you if you cry discreetly. So I did. I kept my face averted and let the tears flow quietly as I listened to the young woman sitting behind us announce to her friends that she was pregnant and due in February, as we sang the opening hymn and said the opening prayers, and as we went through the readings.

Our priest is also very funny, so when he began his homily my tears dried up and I looked up for the first time that Mass. I was doing well until he finished by saying, "Always know that God loves you and has a fabulous plan for your life," and then told a story about a young couple who had a baby and it died ten minutes after birth. After that I felt a little queasy, so I told Mike that I was going to sit in the car for a little bit.

As I walked out I felt something, and sighed angrily. I was bleeding. I couldn't believe this...I was having a miscarriage during Mass. I went out to my car, tears streaking my face. When I got there I rolled up the windows for privacy, slid down in my seat, and quickly unbuttoned my jeans so I could check out how much blood there was.

There was...none.

I sat back in my seat, surprised. I leaned against the window so I could mull over the homily.

The thing is, when people say that God has a plan so everyone leads an amazing life, I'm not so sure that it's true. Or, at least, it doesn't work out that way. My job is proof positive of that. Every day I see kids who have seen more pain and trouble in their 15 years than some people have seen in a lifetime. And some of them are good, churchgoing kids too. Also, just because your life is amazing overall doesn't mean that you don't have rough patches. Even Jesus was dreading His time on the cross. Having faith doesn't mean you're immune to pain. And isn't it natural to fear pain?

On the other hand, being fearful of the bad things doesn't mean that you don't have faith, or that you don't want to go along with God's plan. Wanting one thing doesn't mean you won't do something else. If that was the case I'd never get to work because I'd be sleeping in all the time. If it's God's plan for me to have a miscarriage, obviously that will happen. I want to keep being pregnant, but I'll accept His plan through my tears.

At that point I bowed my head and prayed:

Dear Lord, help me to follow Your plan.
Let Your will be done despite my protests.
Work your plan through my unwilling hands, and let your path be trod by my unwilling feet.
Dear God, if You can, give me courage during this time.
If You can, comfort me as I cry.
And let me know that Your plan will ultimately lead to the greater good.

After that I felt it again. Bleeding. With a sigh I scrunched down in my seat and checked again.

Still nothing.

I straightened up, feeling like I'd learned a lesson.

I have an appointment at my regular gynecologist's office on Monday afternoon to get a pregnancy test. So we'll see what happens then. I hope I can get through it no matter what.

Reasons for NFP

A few days ago Faithful Catholic suggested that I stop NFP not only because I’m frustrated right now, but also because it’s based on bad theology. He says that condemning birth control is the same as condemning same-sex relationships…it’s all condemning any type of sex that won’t result in a conception.

Now, I don’t know much about theology so I’m not about to debate it. And I know I’ve never gotten much of anywhere trying to convince someone of my moral beliefs. The people who say they’ve learned from me are the ones who saw what I did, not what I said. If someone wants to be encouraged or inspired by how I act or what I do, fine. But I don’t preach and I don’t really listen when other people preach or debate me either. Instead, I’m going to provide a list of reasons why NFP is good aside from the Catholic mandate that we should do it.

1. It’s equal responsibility birth control. If we slip up, then both of us slip up. I taught Mike how to read my chart and I keep it posted inside the door of our medicine cabinet in the bathroom. We both know when we should have sex and when we shouldn’t, so if an accident does happen we’ll deal with it together instead of placing blame.

2. It’s cheaper and easier than pills. I’m lazy. Like, seriously lazy. When I would run out of birth control pills I’d often put off going to the pharmacy until I’d missed an active pill or two. That’s not good. And although my current insurance only requires a ten dollar co-pay for every pack of pills, my old insurance used to charge me thirty bucks a pack. My basal body temperature thermometer cost seven bucks, and I can photocopy a year’s worth of charts at Kinko’s for $1.50. You do the math.

3. I can get pregnant sooner when I want to. I have two friends who came off the pill and tried to conceive. One friend conceived after a year of trying, and another has been trying for five or six months now and still isn’t having any luck. I know they say that your body bounces back after three months, but sometimes it takes a lot longer. It’s been sad watching their frustration and discouragement, and I’d rather not go through that.

4. I can participate more in my medical care. Charting teaches you all sorts of stuff about your body that oral contraception covers up. In the short time I’ve been charting I’ve learned a bunch of things about my body. I also have a baseline I can show the doctor when things go wrong. This is much better than when I used to just go to the doctor and say, “I guess things are fine. Just renew my prescription and I’ll get out of here.”

5. It’s healthier. No artificial hormones, no increased risk of blood clots or cancer, no destruction of the mucus glands. It’s nice.

6. It teaches you about your body. When I finished the book I was outraged that I’d spent 27 years being so ignorant and fearful of my own body. The whole reproductive cycle is amazing when you learn about it.

Oddly enough, the book I learned NFP from (Taking Charge of your Fertility by Toni Weschler) is not a Catholic book. It’s utterly secular and pretty liberal and feminist.

Even if the Pope called a press conference tomorrow and told everyone that birth control was cool, I still wouldn’t give up NFP. I just wish there were better resources available.

NFP Woes

One of the downsides of NFP is that you're very conscious of your body. I kind of liked being ignorant. I viewed my reproductive system with the same type of benevolent ignorance that I viewed my digestive system...I don't know how it does what it does, but I'm sure that somehow everything is going okay.

Not anymore. And right now I know that something is happening with my body, but I have no idea what. My chart doesn't look like any of the charts in my book. I know I'm not pregnant, but I'm not getting my period either. Something is up.

Now, the internet is full of information, so I figured it would provide me with a wealth of NFP information as well. Unfortunately, I quickly found that most NFP/FAM practitioners fall into one of two groups:

1. Women who are doing FAM to try to get pregnant

2. Uber-Catholics

I checked out the Catholic websites first, figuring they were more pertinent. I was wrong. There was quite a bit on the moral reasons we need to use NFP, but nothing on how to do it and certainly nothing on troubleshooting. I did run across one woman's website that briefly discussed her personal experiences with NFP, but she danced around specifics. At one point she said that she didn't like to get too specific because she felt that she didn't want to discuss the goings-on of her bedroom, which made me want to tear at my hair and scream, "I don't care about the goings-on in your bedroom! I care about the goings-on of your chart! I want to know if what's happening to me is normal!" A lot of the Catholic websites had that tone, which is kind of like the tone of a high society lady who's forced to clean up after her dog in public parks. The law says she has to do it, but she definitely isn't going to talk readily about something so...gruesomely biological...in polite company. Little hints and innuendos is all she'll drop.

After that I looked at the websites for the women who were trying to get pregnant, and those were much more helpful. After being a nurses' aide for five years in college I'm not shy about talking about the body or its functions anymore. These women aren't either. I even found a gallery where women posted their charts, which was beyond helpful. The closest I can figure is that I'm having an anovulatory cycle, which makes sense. Right around the time I was supposed to ovulate I took a plane trip to Ohio, and after that school started, which has been non-stop stress. Unfortunately an anovulatory cycle can spin out for forty days or more (a Lent's worth!), so it might be awhile before my body rights itself.

If I knew more about NFP I'd start my own website with down-to-earth Catholic advice. I'm tempted to learn more so that I can do just that.

The Intentions

In the Catholic Mass there's a point after the homily but before Communion where everyone prays for the intentions. Basically someone reads a list of things to pray for, like, "For all of the poor in our city," or for the soul of someone who died, and after each one the congregation says, "Lord, hear our prayer."

In my parish, like most, at the end of the list they say, "For the intentions we hold in the silence of our hearts," which is where we silently put in our own prayers. Then they pause for a moment before everyone says, "Lord, hear our prayer."

Now, this is always tricky for me. Some people may have one or two things to pray for, but I come with a list. And it's not frivolous things, either, like praying for the Brewers to win or for me to win a raffle. It's all legit. I have such a large extended family that there's always someone who's sick, struggling, facing surgery or freshly injured. I also have friends in those situations as well, not to mention lots of students who are having a tough time. I want to include them all.

Now, to me, the pause indicates that we're supposed to take that time to think of each of the people we're praying for. And as I said, with my list that takes some time. It's a challenge each week to think of each person before the reader lets everyone say, "Lord, hear our prayer." I often stand with my eyes closed and my face squished up as I think of them as fast as I can. It probably looks like I'm having a migraine or something, but in reality I'm just trying to fit everyone in. I'm sure that God wouldn't refuse to grant my prayer just because I didn't finish with the rest of the congregation, but it still seems good to get everyone in under the wire.

I sometimes wonder if we're just supposed to be still and let God read the needs in our hearts. I'm not sure. That topic was never really covered in Sunday school, and the only thing I learned from my parents was that we should be quiet. I asked Mike what he does, and he said that he feels guilty about asking for anything so he doesn't think of anything at all.

I suppose I'll keep doing what I'm doing because I'm getting quite good at speed praying. Even if it's not quite correct I still mean well, and that probably counts for something.

Answered Prayers

I always hate calling people because I'm afraid I'm going to catch them at a bad time or bother them, but I'm never shy about praying. I pray for big things and little things, abstract things and concrete things, things for my life and things for others' lives. If it bothers me I pray about it.

One thing that does make me wonder, though, is how I know if my prayer has been answered. I rarely pray for concrete outcomes - mostly when I or someone I know is faced with a challenge I just pray, "Please help everyone through this time," or "Let everything turn out the best way it can." Since things usually turn out okay I just assume God was helping everyone through it. The thing that trips me up is when I pray for guidance. How do I know what to do?

When I was younger, like a teenager, I would occasionally pray very fervently for guidance. And after that I would sometimes feel a very strong...inclination, I guess you would say. Like I had a hunch about what I was praying about. I knew what I had to do.

Now when I pray for guidance I sometimes feel a hunch...but it's also usually an issue that I've thought about, asked others about, and heard opinions about. I can never tell if my hunch is what God wants me to do, what my friends or family wants me to do, or just plain what I want to do. I can't tell what's making me decide the things I decide.

When I was younger I kept to myself quite a bit, so there were usually thorny problems* that I discussed only with myself and God. Now I have good friends and a wonderful husband to bounce ideas off of, which is great...but it does cause more interference. Or maybe it's a lack of earnestness...I don't do much down-on-my-knees, crying, I-don't-know-what-to-do type of praying anymore. Or maybe it's some other failing on my part. Maybe if I was a better Catholic I'd be able to discern God's will more readily and know what He wants me to do.

This sort of thing doesn't come up daily, but it does come up when I start thinking about things like natural family planning. If I don't figure out how to be more receptive soon I'm going to have to stop praying, "Please help me to know the right thing to do," and start praying, "Please let me stumble into the right thing somehow."






* Thorny to an emotional, hormonal teenager anyway :)

Mass Online

Last weekend Mike and I were in Ohio for a friend's wedding. After we booked our hotel room our friend told us that it was in a not-so-nice part of Columbus. When we got there I learned two things:

1. Our hotel was actually on the edge of the not-so-nice part of town

2. Columbus is a whole lot bigger than I thought it was

Actually, Columbus is the biggest city in Ohio, even bigger than Milwaukee. And since we were in a less-than-wonderful area of a bigger city than I'm used to, I was nervous. We found a big street and drove up and down it, exploring, but other than that we stuck close to our hotel, our friend's apartment, and the bride's parents' house, where the ceremony was held.

Now, usually that's not really a problem, except that the second day of our trip was Sunday, and that meant that I had to find a Mass. Normally when we're taking a weekend trip I just hit the 7 PM Mass at a nearby church when we get back on Sunday night. But this time we weren't flying back until Monday morning. I wasn't thrilled about driving off when I didn't know the area, so I did the next best thing. I found Mass on the Internet.

Now, I know this isn't the best thing to do. I should find a church to go to instead, because Mass on the Internet and Mass on TV is really designed for shut-ins. But I also felt that I didn't want to get carjacked, so this seemed like a compromise.

Awhile back I wrote about watching Mass on TV instead of going to church, and how much I didn't like the experience. Mass on the Internet is no better. Actually, I liked it even less. The thing that bothered me most was not the lack of community or the slight guilty feeling I felt, although those were present too. Instead, the thing I liked the least was the convenience of it.

I know that sounds weird, but let me explain. The whole Sunday morning routine - waking up early even though you don't have to work, walking to church in the sun or rain or snow, sitting there for an hour taking it all in - makes me feel God's presence more in my life. Carving out an hour for Him and pushing everything else aside - my desire to sleep, the book I was reading, or the show I was watching - makes me realize how important He is. We make time for the things that are important to us, and every Sunday morning I realize how important God is as I make the time for church.

Mass on the Internet is too convenient. Being able to fit religion in at my leisure, when it suits me, cheapens it somehow. It makes my priorities seem off. It's hard to explain...I guess that I like having to put God ahead of everything, even if only for an hour a week. Having a pre-recorded Mass available whenever you want to watch it just isn't the same.

So the next time we're in Ohio I'll have to ask my friend where the good parts of Columbus are so we can go to a real Mass. Nothing else is really the same.

Holy Days of Obligation

Today was a Holy Day of Obligation for Catholics. When Mike and I went to Mass the priest mentioned that he likes Holy Days of Obligation, which made me happy because I like them too. The novelty of it - going to church on a day that isn't Sunday, going to a Mass where there isn't insturmental music* and the whole Mass goes slightly different - makes it fresher and makes you more mindful of the whole experience. That's also why I like Lent...it's something that jars you from your routine and makes you more mindful of having God in your daily life.

So hooray for Holy Days of Obligation!





* I don't think this is a universal Catholic thing...it's just that the woman who plays organ apparently only does it on Sundays, not weekdays.

Family Planning

Lately I've had the urge to become pregnant. Now. Yesterday. I find this odd because not too many years ago I was positive that I'd never get married, let alone have kids. I was tossing around the idea of fostering once I was in my 30's, but I never figured I'd be anyone's biological mom.

Now the urge to have kids has hit so hard and so suddenly that I'm sure it must be some type of biological imperative. Some primitive part of my brain has kicked in...you've got a male, so now it's time to reproduce.

It's made me realize, I have no idea how you decide to start a family. Normally I'd ask my mom, who has also been the recipient of questions such as, "How do you know when you're ready to get married?" and "How do you know when you're ready to buy a house?" However, I think that if I mentioned it to my mom she'd just say, "As soon as possible," because she really wants to be a grandma.

Mike's mom would say, "As soon as Mike gets paid enough so that you can quit as soon as you get pregnant," because she assumes I'll stop everything to be a housewife. Which I won't. That'll be a fun conversation.

My friends won't be much more help, I think. My friend Erica just gave up on her birth control, and figured that whatever happens, happens. Unfortunately, practicing NFP means that not only am I aware of when I can't get pregnant, it means I'm aware of the days I can. So I really can't get "accidentally" knocked up. My friend Jen just had a baby and is trying to convince me that it's something I have to do immediately. My friend Meghan is probably my most level-headed friend, who would probably help me formulate a plan to determine financial and emotional readiness, but even that seems insufficient somehow. There's got to be some other indicator...something...bigger.

Mike is another person to inquire, of course. He's sort of torn, like I am. Part of him wants a child, but part of him thinks we're not ready. He thinks we should have a house, probably because his family always had a house. To me, that's not as big a deal...when I was a kid my family lived in two apartments, a trailer, and a flat before my parents bought their first house.

For me, something seems to be...missing. When you go to start a family in full knowledge of what you're doing, it seems like there should be some reason other than procreation, or finances, or things like that. But I don't know what that is. I suppose I should pray about it, but right now I'm not sure whether it's my body or my soul that wants a child, and I'm not sure how I'd tell the difference.

I almost wish I could get pregnant accidentally sometime in the future, because I'm always better at dealing with the results of my decisions than making the decisions myself.

I don't plan on getting pregnant any time soon, but I do need to figure out how you know when you're supposed to.

On the other hand, I told my brother that if he got Confirmed he could be my prospective offspring's godfather. He seemed to consider the idea, and he also said that if I had a kid he'd babysit on the weekends. So at least that's covered :-)

Stumbling

This past weekend Mike, our friend Matt, and I spent Saturday hanging out. We biked out to Matt's place, walked to the theater to see the matinee of the Simpsons movie, biked home, walked to Brady Street so we could wander around the street festival there, walked to Downer Avenue to see the bike race, and then walked home.

Now, all of the walking from Brady Street on was done in my strappy sandals. These sandals are great for walking a few blocks, but they start to kill your feet after more than a mile or so. By the time we were headed home from Downer Avenue we had walked about two miles already, and my feet were rapidly blistering. I started to hobble, and then stagger, and then cling to Mike as I shuffled along. Mike put his arm around me and I hung on his shoulder as I hobbled along, trying to put as little weight on my feet as possible. I made a few attempts to hop onto his back for a piggyback ride, but when that failed I giggled and went back to hobbling.

As we made our way up Oakland Avenue I realized that not only did it look like I was stumbling drunk at 7 PM, we were also passing by the church and the house where our priest lives. Now, since our congregation was huge I didn't think he'd recognize me even if he was looking out the window, but the idea that he spotted me and assumed I was drunk was highly amusing anyway.

"He's probably got his list of parishoners," I said, "and he put a check next to my name. 'I'll see her in confession next weekend.'"

I don't know if priests or nuns actually do that, but if they do, and someone goes to my church, let them know that I wasn't really drunk. I was just experiencing massive blisters.

Life is Beautiful

This week I drove to Racine to do some shopping for the apartment. Even though I’ve been living here for a year now I felt that the apartment still needed to be girl-ified a little, so I went and found things on sale: curtains, hooks to keep the curtains back, a large basket to stash our board games in, a big glass vase, and silk flowers. When I was done arranging these things in the living room the place looked a lot more like home to me.

That evening I spent some much-needed time cuddling with Mike, and then headed off to work for my 11 PM shift. I had to park quite far from the building because the streets around it were closed for the annual Bastille Days festival. It started the next day but they were setting up that night. After I was done with work about twenty minutes later I headed back to my car. Even though I had to walk a few blocks of strange territory late at night, it wasn’t so bad. I made sure not to walk too timidly, and before long I was at my car.

As I waited at a red light I looked at some of Milwaukee’s taller buildings, including the beautiful Wisconsin Gas building. The streets were quiet as I turned onto Van Buren Avenue to head home. Just then the CD in my car started playing Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah,” which was one of the songs played at the end of my wedding reception. As I drove along I realized it was one of those moments that felt perfect…it was a beautiful, warm night, I was driving along the streets of a city that finally felt like home, and even though I felt like I could go anywhere tonight, I was coming home to a cozy apartment and a husband I loved. I was free and secure and loved and overwhelmed and excited all at once. Part of me wanted to laugh and part of me wanted to cry at the enormity of it all, but instead I just kept singing along to the song playing in my car.

I think that like most people I spend a lot of time striving for the next goal, concentrating on the next milestone. I think that’s fine…it encourages you to get ahead. But in my case, it also makes me feel like I’m constantly lacking. Instead of thinking about the things I’ve done or the blessings I have, I just have my eye on the next goal. Luckily I also have moments like the one I had that night, when I realize that life is so full and so beautiful that I get almost giddy.

I need to figure out how to have more of those moments.

Bits and Pieces

Last week Mike and I performed our marital duties without the protection of a condom, relying solely on Natural Family Planning.

Annnnnnnnnnd...it worked! I finished my cycle and started a new one. No pregnancy!

Granted, one episode of intercourse doesn't prove anything yet, but it was still encouraging. I'm finally getting the hang of this NFP stuff.

In other news that only Catholics will find funny, Mike's mom wanted us to pray to St. Jude to help us get a house. I'm not sure if her idea for us to pray to the patron of hopeless causes was thoughtful or a little insulting. Either way, I suppose it wouldn't hurt.

Godparenting

I'm not pregnant, or even close, but with two of my close friends from college having babies this summer I've started to think about childbearing. And in addition to finding a new apartment* and getting all the gear associated with babies, I've started thinking about baptism.

Mike and I are both practicing Catholics, and I'm learning that it's a rare thing in my generation. Of all my friends and family members I only know three people my age who are churchgoing Catholics...my married friends Jen and Joel, and my friend Meghan who goes to church without her husband. Other than that, all my other Catholic friends and family are either non-practicing, unconfirmed, or otherwise ineligible.

This scares me because Mike and I are still trying to use NFP, and I think that within the next cycle or two we're going to try winging it without condoms. While part of me thinks that we'll be fine, another part of me is bracing for pregnancy. That means also bracing for delivery, and childrearing, and baptism. And I have no idea what we'll do when the time comes.

I'm sure nobody reads this blog, but if any of you do and are practicing Catholics who would like to be a godparent to a kid in the Milwaukee area, let me know. Hopefully it's a bridge we won't have to cross for three years or so, but I'm trying to be prepared.

The other parish

This weekend Mike and I went camping, so we were out of town on Sunday morning. We decided that rather than go to church in the little town where we were staying, we'd just wait and go to church Sunday night in Milwaukee. So that's what we did. The only problem was our parish doesn't have Sunday night Masses, so we had to go to another church nearby.

Going to this church was actually kind of nostalgic. When Mike found out that I wanted to start attending church again he volunteered to go with me, so we went to this one because of the nighttime Mass. I think we only went once or twice...we soon found out that getting out of the apartment at night was actually harder than going first thing in the morning. However, it was still nice to go back.

They have a new priest there...well, a priest that's new to the parish anyway. He looked to be in his early sixties. I liked him on sight...he was thin, bald, stooped, and had thick glasses. He looked like he had spent a lot of time both studying and fasting, and he seemed like an appropriate guide for our journey through Mass.

The service was nice. It felt a little awkward because the melodies are different, the responses are different, but the overall Mass is so similar that you feel that you should be keeping up. Overall, though, I enjoyed it. It's nice to know that if we somehow miss the Masses at our home church, we have another nice church to go to.

This is not the dumbest thing I've thought of

I posted in my other blog about how I wanted to try Natural Family Planning. I was shocked at how critical the reaction was. After reading Marc's statistics - which I really think are based on the Rhythm Method, not Fertility Awareness - Mike got very uneasy, and told me that he thinks that NFP is too risky to try. So it's back to the pills for me. All in all, this has been a huge disappointment. Mike told me that I could keep researching and reading about it, but I'd rather not. If he's going to chicken out in the end, then I'd rather not get my heart set on it more than I already have. I was really looking forward to not worrying about taking a pill at 9 PM every night, not being concerned if I missed one, not worrying about a future that featured cancer or blood clots or any of the other nasty side-effects that can come when you take birth control pills.

So, yeah. So much for that little experiment.

It does raise an interesting point, though. In both the posting on my blog and in my conversations with friends, they've questioned my motivation for trying NFP, which is my religion. There are other reasons I want to try it - reasons too personal, too numerous, and too irrelevant to the topic to go into here - but when they hear "Natural Family Planning," they instantly think "Catholic brainwashing."

Most of the time when I make choices that people disagree with, they say I'm nuts but don't pursue it much farther than that. When I renew my contract year after year at my poor urban high school, my friends roll their eyes but say they understand my decision. When I told Mike that I was going to start using menstrual cups because it was healthier for both me and the environment, he said it was weird, but it was also my body. When I chose to buy my Chevy Prizm based on the fact that it reminded me of my Geo Metro, my friends just shrugged and didn't say a word about researching warranties or resale value or reliability.

But when I make a choice and cite my religion as an influence in that decision, suddenly I'm wrong.

I hate to break it to everyone, but the vast majority of my decisions aren't based on scientific facts or hours of research. I buy things on a whim, I take the easy route, I cave in to peer pressure, I make decisions that will result in an immediate gain without considering the long-term repercussions. In short, I make choices for dumb reasons. I'm shocked that people consider my religious values to be worse criteria than other standards I've used.

Seriously, people. Let's think about this.

NFP & FAM

Today Mike and I took a tour around town, and one of the places we stopped was the mall. After we ate lunch Mike suggested that we stop in Borders* so I can look for a book Jen recommended to me called Taking Charge of Your Fertility. It's partially about how to concieve, but it also has detailed information about the Fertility Awareness Method, which is a big part of Natural Family Planning. The big difference is that in FAM couples use condoms during the fertile period, while NFP couples abstain completely.

Sorry, Mike.

Anyway, it's not something that I'm going to do for sure, it's just something I'm checking out. Mike is pretty apprehensive, and I can't say I blame him. The thought of trying it makes me nervous too, but if it seems like it would work it's something I'd love to attempt.

So we'll see.



* Mike works for a bookstore, but not Borders. In my defense, though, his bookstore didn't have the book in stock and it was taking forever to come in, so I felt justified in going somewhere else. Mike kept his head down the whole time, though.

Responding to Comments

Recently Dykewife pointed out a link to a book on Natural Family Planning. I've been thinking about trying NFP for some time, but I've been having a tough time finding good information on just what it entails, and not simply why it's right. My body rarely cooperates in the schemes I have for it, and I think it might rebel if I ditched my birth control pills and just tried to anticipate my periods the natural way.

Anyway, the book she found is here. And it costs over two hundred dollars. Now, I'm curious, but not two hundred dollars worth of curious. Luckily Amazon came to the rescue with this listing. Twenty bucks is much more managable. And I did my grocery shopping at a new store this week, which saved me twenty bucks off my normal bill. So perhaps I can get it.

She also asked me what I'm giving up for Lent. I'm not really giving anything up, I guess. When I was in college I had a priest who said that the Lenten sacrifice was supposed to increase your spirituality and faith. You could do that just as easily by doing something as by giving something up. Last year I covered both sides by giving up Cadbury Creme Eggs (a real sacrifice, believe me!) and also reciting the Prayer of St Francis every day before work as a reminder about how to be.

This year I've decided to do something different. One of my big personality flaws is my tendency to worry. I worry about everything, and I feel the need to take care of everything and everyone. Oftentimes I feel like I have to not only look out for myself, but also for Mike, my students, my friends and family, the environment, and everything else. I know it sounds quite self-centered, but it's not, really...it's just that I want everyone taken care of. So this Lent I decided that whenever I worry, I'll say a little prayer to God asking for His help and guidance. It's a little reminder that not only am I not personally responsible for the well-being of the world, but that there's a plan for me besides the one I've thought up, and I have to be aware that things won't always go my way.

It's a surprisingly difficult resolution to keep. Luckily I wasn't like Mike, who gave up both french fries and using the internet at home. I don't know what he was thinking.

Grandpa & the Card

My grandfather recently had a total hip replacement and I wanted to send him a get-well card. I drew him a cartoon of a surgeon exclaiming, "Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was..." Next to him one nurse was saying, "Does he say that during every joint replacement procedure?" and the other nurse was rolling her eyes and saying, "Every single time."

I decided that a handmade card was a little bit elementary school, so I wanted another card to send. I figured I could fold up the cartoon and place it inside. At the store I selected a religious card that said something about God guiding his recovery, and inside I wrote, "We lit a candle at church for you and we're praying for you. Feel better soon!"

After I wrote it I was a little bit torn. Whenever someone's having a tough time medically I do pray, but it's not my first instinct. I'll pray before bed that night, but that morning I'll be making food or cleaning the house. I'm pretty practical. Sending this religious card was making me feel like I was making myself out to be some uber-Catholic, and I knew I wasn't.

My grandparents, however, are uber-Catholics. I knew that my Grandpa would appreciate my offer to pray more than anything else I could do. This was less about my own self-image and more about offering my grandfather comfort in the way that would be most meaningful to him.

So I sent the super-religious card. I hope it makes him feel better.

Ash Wednesday

Today is Ash Wednesday, which is the first day of Lent. I actually really enjoy Lent. Part of the reason is because Easter is my very favorite holiday - the weather's getting warmer, it's the biggest day of the church year, I get to see my family. And while it's starting to catch up with Christmas in terms of commericalism all of the Easter stuff is pastel, which is soothing, at least. Lent is a reminder that Easter is coming.

I also like Lent, though, because of the sacrifices we make. During Lent I have to be extra-vigilant to keep up with my Lenten promise of whatever I'm giving up. I have to plan my meals to be vegetarian every Friday. Every night I read the little black Lent book I get from church. It sort of forces me to arrange pieces of my life around my religion, and it makes my religion that much more tangible. Too often I force religion into the spaces that aren't occupied by my job, or my relationships, or my hobbies, and after awhile it seems to diminish the presence of my religion. But having to go out of my way to honor Lent makes me realize just how important it is.

So while most people are either annoyed at or ignoring the idea of going to Mass tonight, I'm looking forward to it. I'm hoping it'll be a good Lent.

For Better...Forever! - Part III

So I’ve finally gotten around to finishing my review of For Better…Forever! This is the stuff I didn’t like, and I wanted to take my time on it so I could deal with it fairly and evenhandedly. I know the author is never, ever going to read this blog, but I still want to be fair.

One thing I didn’t appreciate was his tone. When he got to the chapter on sex he began talking a lot about how pagans “stole” sex and twisted it around and perverted it. After re-reading the passage a few times I still couldn’t decide if he was using the term pagan to mean actual pagans, or if he was using it in the obnoxious way some people do, to refer to all non-members of your religion. For example, some Catholics will refer to all non-Catholics as pagans, some Fundamentalists will refer to all non-Fundies as pagans, etc. I find that to be distasteful. There was also a point where he said that he would personally come to the house of anyone who read his book and still used the threat of divorce in an argument and cut out their tongue. Which, if you think about it, is kind of silly, since that type of violence is as much of a sin as threatening to end a marriage. But yeah, the cutting out my tongue thing made me lose a lot of love for this author.

The biggest thing that irritated me about the book, though, was the following passage. It’s from a section of the book where he talks about couples that are truly unified and truly equal, and how they resolve conflicts.

…all decisions that affect the family should be made with the full cooperation of the husband and wife (and possibly the children). Further, decisions must not be made on the basis of who has more power, or whose turn it is to “win”; rather, they should be made on the basis of whose idea more clearly benefits the general good of the family. Therefore, in most instances, the husband and wife will be just as willing to defer to each other, just as Christ demands (cf. Eph 5:21). However, there will be times when either emergencies occur, or when consultation among the family members yields no clear winning answer. In these times, assuming the man is deferring to Christ (cf. Eph 5:21) and has the good of the family foremost in his heart and mind, the man would cast the deciding ballot. This designation is a result of the qualities God ordained Adam to emphasize, qualities that, assuming he is acting in deference to Christ and truly has the good of the family as his foremost thought, make him more likely to be able to discern God’s will for his family.

As funny as it sounds, I prefer people who blindly say, “The Bible says the man is the boss” because they only have a basic grasp of the message. This guy, though, is saying that the man is more likely to understand and relay the will of God. What makes Mike more able to understand God than me? Would a female saint married to an oblivious man be less able to understand God’s will just because of her femininity? It bothers me, especially when he’s not able to pinpoint just what these “qualities” are. For some reason, saying I should just submit is much less abrasive than saying that I should submit because I have a lesser relationship with God.

Overall it was an interesting book. However, it wasn’t written by a priest or a theologian. With this book I have a luxury that I don’t have with really religious teachings – I can take the parts that I agree with and just ignore the rest.

For Better...Forever! - Part II

Even though I found For Better...Forever! to have some creepy parts, there were some good parts too. There were the usual things about how to fight fair, how to keep romance alive, but there were two things that especially stood out in my mind.

The first thing was talking about love languages. I'm sure you've heard of it...it's all about how we express and take in gestures of affection. The three love languages in the book were visual (someone who likes written letters or tokens of someone's love), auditory (someone who wants to hear, "I love you") and tactile (someone who wants to be held). The other place I read about this identified five love languages, but the five seemed to overlap some and it confused me. Having three was more clear-cut. I took the quiz in the book and found out that I'm primarily visual and secondarily tactile, while Mike is primarily tactile. I'm going to try to keep this in mind when I pick out the last piece of his Valentine's Day present.

The other thing I liked was the discussion on Natural Family Planning. NFP is something I'd love to try, but I'm not sure I can. I know that it entails more than just the calendar rhythm method, but I still think that my cycles are too irregular to predict (normal cycles are 28 to 32 days long, and before I was on birth control my cycles were anywhere from 20 to 75 days long). Plus my birth control reduces my cramps and nausea, which was the original reason my doctor put me on it. However, NFP sounds like such a cool thing my body can do so I'd like to try it. I'm going to send away for some more detailed information but I'm not sure I'll ever give it a go. This is a decision that concerns Mike too, and I don't think he's so sure of it yet.

Tomorrow I'll discuss the things in the book that made my temper rise.

"For Better...Forever!" Discussion, Part I

I recently finished reading For Better…Forever! A Catholic Guide to Lifelong Marriage by Gregory Popcak. Mike and I registered for a few books when we got married and this was one of them. It was a pretty easy read and I wanted to discuss it in three ways…by summarizing the good points, the bad points, and what I found to be as creepy as heck.

Since the creepy part is the easiest and most subjective, I’ll start with that. The book talked about sex quite a bit. I wasn’t too surprised, since it came up quite a bit in our FOCCUS questionnaire, in our pre-marriage discussions with the priest, and in our diocese-sponsored Engagement Enrichment Day. The idea that the Catholic Church disapproves of sex is kind of a myth, and I had gotten over the initial shock of it. And actually, the parts of the book about Natural Family Planning were what I was going to discuss in the good points section. But eventually, as the book delved more and more into the subject it got creepier and creepier. Popcak described the three-way orgasm that should occur between you, your spouse, and God, and how God is intimately involved in lovemaking. I was slightly uncomfortable but sticking with what I thought was a long, long analogy until I got to Popcak’s lovemaking prayer:

Lord, let me kiss her with your lips, love her with your gentle hands, consume her with your undying passion so that I may show her how precious and beautiful she is to you.

That was just too much and I got completely skeeved out. I was all fine and good linking sex and spirituality, but this gets a bit too much into the…mechanics of it all, I guess. It shouldn't freak me out, but it does. I mean, I can’t even go to the bathroom if someone’s standing outside the door. How am I supposed to have sex when God is standing that close?

One of the other notes the book made was that sex needs to be a celebration of marriage, something that’s indulged in frequently and joyfully. It shouldn’t be just something to do at the end of the day if you’re not too tired. And since I’m tired a lot, that’s what it had become for me. So in the spirit of the book I enticed Mike last night. But halfway through I remembered that prayer and kind of froze up. I even considered turning off the lights or pulling the sheet over us, but I thought that would disturb Mike who was still busy. Plus, God can probably see in the dark. When we finished up it wasn’t quite the joyful celebration I meant it to be.

I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do about this little mental block, but I’ll have to work on it. Mike hasn’t read the book yet, so he’s still feeling pretty normal about the whole thing.

The Deacon

Yesterday when Mike and I came into church we sat on the side next to the wall, and I was able to look into the room where the priest, altar servers, cantor, and everyone else meet to put on vestments and get organized. I saw someone that made me gasp.

"Is that the deacon?" I muttered, nudging Mike.

"Looks like," he murmured back.

I grumbled a little and he said, "It's not too late to go out the side door and just watch Mass on TV," he said.

"No, no, we're already here," I said with a sigh. It bothered me because I really don't like our deacon too much. Well, I shouldn't say that...I don't really know him as a person. But after a few of his homilies now I've wondered whether he really meant his comments to be vaguely sexist. Did he really mean to imply that the older daughter in that story was less loved and less worthy because she left home? Did he honestly hint that women were meant to be just mothers and homemakers? Or am I just too sensitive?

Now, if the deacon were just a guy at work on on the street I'd dismiss him with a shake of the head. However, I feel a little different when he's speaking as a deacon, because it's like he's representing the beliefs of the Catholic Church. When he's up there he's their spokesman, and suddenly it seems like the nuances I detect in his sermons are nuances in Catholic belief.

I know that deacons, nuns, and priests are just people, and they come to church with values, beliefs, experiences, customs, and personality flaws that are independent of our faith, just like I do. I really should learn to sift between Catholic doctrine and some old guy's prejudice. At least it'll make listening to the deacon's homilies less painful.

Adultery, Take Two!

I've been thinking more about my friend and her quest to sleep with our engaged coworker. At first I thought my discomfort was coming from the fact that I wasn't encouraging her to follow a better path, but that's not quite it (in case you haven't guessed, introspection is not my strong suit). However, my discomfort does involve my religion...just in a different way.

Before I said that I was afraid that my lack of outright objection was being read as approval, or at least acceptance of her plan. I feel like the kid on the playground who's watching another kid get bullied, but just stands there instead of going over and saying, "Knock it off!"

But what if I do tell her to knock it off? When she says, "Why?" what do I have left to say?

Because I think it's wrong?

And she'll just say, "Your religion thinks it's wrong. And I'm not Catholic."

Being religious puts you in a position of having people think that your only beliefs are your religious beliefs. They think that you don't have any moral codes and ideas of good and evil other than what your church teaches you.

In this case I think that most people, whether Catholic, Jewish, Pagan, Atheist, or something else, would think it's pretty uncool to be horning in (ahem) on someone else's fiance.

But it's pretty hard to have an ethics-centered-but-religion-free discussion when the person you're conversing with assumes your every thought is based on your faith. Or maybe I'm still too much that kid who's afraid to stand up to the bully.

I still want to persuade her not to go through with it. I keep framing it in ways she'll accept ("Karma's gonna be a bitch on this one!") and pointing out the practical problems ("So what if he sleeps with you, falls for you, breaks off his engagement, and you're not interested. How awkward would that be? And you work together! Good luck with that!"). It's really a bad idea for everyone concerned.

The nice thing about being Catholic is that although it is tough to talk ethics in public, you can still pray about it in private. I just want everyone to come out of this okay.

Adultery, anyone?

Today I ran into the type of situation I struggle with often. A friend of mine was telling me, excitedly and happily, about something she was about to do. Something that I find pretty immoral.

In this case she was plotting about how to seduce a guy we work with. The guy’s engaged. And as she was plotting and scheming about how to get him I kept thinking, I don’t even want to be hearing this.

Now, I do realize that part of my squeamishness was due to the fact that, as someone who’s been engaged, I can sympathize more with the engaged girl than with my friend in this situation. If a girl tried to seduce Mike, I’d kick their ass. But someone pointed out that my friend wasn’t doing anything wrong, really, because she wasn’t the one who was engaged. If anything happened, the guy would be more at fault since he’s the one that would be breaking the engagement. And someone else pointed out that if it was a strong relationship that was meant to be, it would survive my friend’s flirting. But still! It’s the principle, dammit. Off the market means off the market.

The other part that made me squeamish was knowing that it was going against my religion. I mean, come on, while it’s not quite adultery it’s certainly close enough. And while I know that my friend and I don’t share my religion and I can’t really hold her accountable to my belief system, I was afraid that my silent listening was giving her the impression that I agreed with her plan of action. I was afraid that every time I said, “That’s interesting,” or, “He really is cute,” it came across not as noncommittal but as encouraging.

That’s my main problem. I certainly don’t want to encourage her, but at the same time I feel like I can’t really lecture her either. I can’t tell her, “Oh come on, you know that’s wrong,” because she doesn’t believe it’s wrong. Maybe I should be more like those fire-and-brimstone Christians and tell her that she’ll experience the eternal inferno not only for her premarital sex, but also for luring someone into adultery. But I’ve never gotten good results that way. Normally in situations like this I can be noncommittal enough that after a while spent trying to convince me of the validity of their plan, the person gets sheepish and says something like, “You think this is a bad idea, huh?” I’ve always had better results teaching people by example by trying to follow my own morals, rather than hitting them over the head with my belief system.

For some reason, this time is different.

So after awhile I tried to frame things in a way she’d understand. I asked if she’d really be able to trust in a relationship with a guy who had cheated on his fiancé with her. I wondered aloud what sort of karmic repercussions someone could experience in a situation like this. I left my own religion and my own beliefs out of it.

Should I have tried to lead her away from sin? Should I have convinced her to turn the situation around? Am I a bad Catholic for not exposing her to my religion? I’m not sure. But I do know that I tried to guide her through this situation the best way that I knew how.

Prison Ministry

I was sitting here trying to remember what the homily was about this week so I could give my impressions of the readings, but man, I just can't remember. I remember it used weddings and marriage as an analogy for his point, but what the point was...I...don't know. Crap. I felt even worse when I realized that the homily I listened to was just yesterday morning. Usually they stick with me longer.

But one thing that did stick with me is that after church next week they'll be talking about a program they're developing for a prison minsitry! Eeee!

Ahem. Perhaps I shouldn't make that noise if I'm really interested in going into prisons.

I used to want to work in the prison system, but now I'm not so sure that I could. After working in the educational system I've found that's difficult enough. Working in the prisons, well, I'm not so sure I'm up to it. But there's a huge difference in being employed by a system 40 hours a week and volunteering in a system one or two hours.

Apparently they aren't recruiting people yet, since it's a fledgling program, but they are having an informational session next Sunday about what they've got so far. And I know that while Mike will absolutely not accompany me into any jails, he will accompany me to this info session because they have donuts.

I'm pretty excited.

Society and Marriage

When Mike and I got married we had to meet with the priest a few times before-hand, and one of the things he told us was that we were about to embark on something that society didn't support. At first I thought that was silly. After all, there was tremendous pressure to get coupled up and weddings are glamorized in all facets of the media. But now I think that what he meant wasn't that society wouldn't support our getting married - it was that society wouldn't support our staying married.

It seems that nowadays everyone loves a quick fix. If something isn't easy and doesn't bring you pleasure every second, it's not worth it. There's the same attitude with relationships. If a relationship isn't bliss and sunshine every moment, maybe it's time to move on to someone else.

The way I see it, that's silly. For one thing, no serious, long-term relationship is like that. Nothing worthwhile is constantly easy...there are always bad days with anything. When I consider how much grief I've gotten from my family and my job and how much reward I've gotten as well, the grief-to-reward ratio of my marriage seems positively amazing. My relationship with Mike is the best thing I've ever worked for.

There's a second reason, though, that I find more disturbing. It feels like in today's society people feel less of an obligation to one another. I think that, as human beings, we have a basic responsibility to one another. A responsibility to look out for one another, to treat each other with a ceratin amount of respect. However, if you've had a relationship with someone, those ties are stronger. It seems like the hype about self-entitlement has eclipsed the ideas of compassion and loyalty.

Yeah. It's not the best environment to support a lasting marriage.

I'm pretty grateful that we have a church that will support us since society apparently won't.

Missed Church

This weekend I didn't go to church. On Sunday we didn't realize they had different Mass times because it was New Year's Eve, so we missed it. And on Monday Mike was sick and I was reluctant to leave him alone.

In the past I used to get a little twinge of guilt every Sunday when I realized that I was missing church, but I brushed it off pretty quickly. Now I can't quite brush it off...I feel oddly grungy, as if I'm wearing yesterday's underwear.

Maybe since I still have off of work this week I'll go to a weekday morning Mass.