Call me perverted if you wish, but if I can help somebody find their tears, or their laughter...I feel like I have succeeded.
So, in the midst of my much needed house cleaning, God showed me again how to cry. Perhaps the full moon helped (always does), perhaps it was the vernal equinox, or the fact that it was Holy Week. Perhaps having my beautiful family arrive unexpectedly the weekend before...whatever the reason...the week wass much more than I bargained for. There are things I cannot speak of yet, but the ones I can...I will.
There is an episode in one of my all time favorite series: Joan of Arcadia. Joan has just broken up with her boyfriend and God rings her doorbell and tells her to clean. He comes back several times and says, I didn't say straighten up, I said clean. And she does...and she gives back to Adam the many things that reminded her of him...he responds by returning the things she gave to him and both are wounded...and God comes back and says, No, that's not what I meant. I said clean.
In the 16 years since my divorce, I have wondered how I am supposed to feel. Was I suppose to be angry with him? Was I supposed to replace him? Was I to pretend it never happened? I think one of the things that hurt me most was that he wanted nothing but money in the divorce. He did not want to have any memory of me. He took nothing from our house but those things he brought into it when we married. He chose to not spend time with our children. He was moving on.
And me, I couldn't move off the sofa. I stared at the clock on the VHS for days. And then God said, "Get off your sorry ass, and go to church." I'm telling you how it happened. The gentle suggestions he made were not convincing...so he used my father's language to get me moving. And I've told that story about what happened at church, so I don't need to repeat it here.
So, when I look back at then encounters I've had with God...and I remember what he told me 16 years ago...about how this would all play out...you'd think I would not be surprised. But I am. My problem is these last three years...when did they really begin? So I can't really say I know the answer yet, because the answer was supposed to happen in three years. The whole Lenten season this year has been not usual for me. Finishing up the third unit of CPE. Conquering my fears of my past with the Methodist Church. Appreciating my own gifts, giving away all that I am...and never feeling empty...I kind of thought I'd reached some sort of plateau.
But God said to me: clean. Trying to give a good confession, I knew I was troubled but I didn't understand what was troubling me. So that left me unrested. But I fumbled my way through it. I knew there was unfinished business. I just didn't realize it was in my own house.
You know, guilt can make us hold on to a whole lot of stuff. I keep my kids stuff from their childhoods because I know some day they will want it. I have kept my mother's things because I am supposed to...and because they are expensive and beautiful...but they are not who I am. Bit by bit I have let some of them go. They aren't me. But who am I? Have I even tried to find out?
I was really angry the other night at church, after the Good Friday service because I just wanted to sit with God alone in the Columbarium. Fr.Bruce and I had a wonderful conversation out there the night before...and as he walked back...I felt an urge to walk with him again..."rescue me!" I cried out in my thoughts...but I didn't follow through. So I talked with a friend, who again seemed to try to gently urge me to let go of my internal desire to be a priest. That I am supposed to be a priest. She was telling me that I was really not letting God be in charge. And I stayed because...I love my church so much and I need to learn how to fit into it.
Yet most priests I have encountered have never told me that I must stop thinking about it. They walk with me in my pain and confusion and they respect me for who I am. Many of the Catholic women I encounter are much less understanding and make me feel judged...and their well-meaning words to 'encourage' me to submit to my lesser status of woman would make me so much happier.
That's like telling me to get married again...then I'll forget all this nonsense. A man will make me forget. And indeed, I know a man would.
Last night, while talking with a female Catholic chaplain for only a few moments before Mass, I began to connect with why I have a constant feeling of loneliness at Church. Yes, the priests are unbelievable good to me...or let me say, the ones around me are. But I feel so lonely among many of the women, because they cannot understand me.
It feels like, if I was to say I was gay (and I'm not), they would try to love me and mother me and try to 'get me back on track' with the 'normal women' of the Catholic faith. Some feel it is their duty to fix me. I cannot be fixed.
But I can be healed.
So in my angst of feeling like I donot have women friends who can love me 'where I am,' I cleaned house. If I have to leave town, I have to fix up the house. To fix up the house, it needs to be clean...cleaned out of much of the stuff I have bought to hide the fact that I feel so very much alone.
And clean I did. I spent almost entire days in closets. I gave away things, I sold books. I shredded old documents. I still have too much. But God said clean. Just clean. If I keep at it, eventually it will all go.
And there was one box up in the corner of what used to be my son's room, now my prayer room. I was tired. Each day was a ten hour day. I really didn't need to touch it. Things were looking pretty good. But I pulled it down, without drawing blood as I did in the other closet the day before. It was to heavy...and I opened it. Holy Saturday, Jesus' body in the cold ground and me, crazy woman, walking around the house and crossing myself everytime I felt the need to pray it all out. And first I saw the red photo album...the one I thought Bob's mom had thrown away during the divorce...and there were the photos of my high school successes...I posted on FB about half of the photos...the ones that were not naughty...because I thought, what if I lose them again...must have them out in cyberspace somewhere! And I remember how much fun we had...and how foolish and young I was...and how it is all a part of how we grow up...laughing and crying our way through life. And I thanked God for the chance to remember more correctly the events of my past...and I prayed over them and offered them up to God.
But God wasn't finished with me. Below the photos, I found two old Joske's boxed. My mother's handwriting on them. Dated 1981...or 1987. I don't remember having the boxes at all. Clearly I had never opened them. The note on the box read: "For Cindy to read. I read them all on...and she wrote the date. She wrote,"I can see that I was loved. I had a good life. Not everyone gets that."
Inside the box were all the cards and letters I had written since I learned to write. I had forgotten how creative I was...or how driven I was. I had forgotten that, at one time, before some terrible things happened...that I had loved very much.
And as I sat in my prayer room, now that is was clean enough to sit in, I read, and looked out the window and listened to the birds...and I cried and I laughed...and I began to remember the good things and the crazy things...I remembered exactly where I sat...and what I was thinking, when I wrote the letters or made the cards. I remember wondering how to draw a lily properly for an Easter card...or the silly poems I would write.
And there on that Holy Saturday, when the Church claims "He descended into hell" to breathe life into those who lived in darkness...He breathed life into me...to see the real truth of who I am...in cleaning the house...and cleaning my heart and my soul and my mind.
Psalm 51:9
Cleanse me with hyssop, that I may be pure;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow...
Love, Cindy
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