Some Thoughts on Today's Advent Retreat

This afternoon I participated in a CL Fraternity Advent retreat. I want to capture a few key thoughts from the experience while it is still fresh with me.

First, I am so happy that my husband was able to attend with me. We hardly have a chance to discuss household matters in person, let alone do something like a retreat day, so that was special. The main thing I came away with was my own need for freedom, freedom to be myself. When I went to confession the priest actually said "don't be afraid to be yourself." This kind of thing just makes me laugh with delight, at least in looking back on it by a few hours. I had never met this priest before and he had no sense of my journey beyond what I had told him in confession, and he repeats to me this key phrase which the Lord began telling me when He called me to the Catholic Church, and has been gently tutoring me in for years, and which has once again come front and center through encountering the writings of Fr. Giussani. I did a quick search on this blog and found any number of posts where I realize, over and over, that this is what God wants for me, and then this priest tells me exactly the same thing.

And I'm remembering a time in confession, probably six ago or so, when I felt the tip of something emerge of which I felt I received a much fuller understanding today. It was this sense that I have a "real" life that I live within me, and in certain contexts outside of me, but then I have this other life with which I interact with most other people in my life. Six years ago I had a sense of this, and it bothered me greatly, but I didn't understand why it was this way or what to do about it. Today I understood what this is, and I think this understanding will help me in the overcoming in the areas in which this is still a problem. Fr. Roberto talked about the "I", myself, as relationship with God, the Infinite. I am this relationship with God. And this is also how I need to understand other people, and how I need to relate to other people. And when I take this relationship to the Infinite out of the equation of relating to others, what I am left with is -- well here there were two metaphors, both helpful, striking, but different. I'm left with a political relationship. Every action is a reaction, calculated for what seems to bring me the most pleasing outcome. So I constantly have to read others, and make safe bets. The other metaphor, and perhaps I do see the correlation, is that in taking relationship to the Infinite out the the equation of how I see others, I am left a slave. Someone, something else is determining my life, and I am putting myself under that.

So, six years ago I saw that my real life is in my freedom of belonging to Christ. This is real. But I set a limit on that freedom; it ended where I had to interact with most people outside myself. No big wonder then that I tended to recoil from interaction, because I felt it automatically reduced me to just reacting to them, being their puppet, or even worse, being the puppeteer.

Why? Well, following the basic line of reasoning presented today, I felt this automatic reduction out of a fear, or at least a lack for some reason, of sharing my needs with others, or at the very least, being conscious of my needs while with others. This is also pretty much a no-brainer for me, because in times past I have felt myself an extremely needy person. I was pretty intense about it, too, in my 20s (when for months and months I would come to church with tons of Kleenex, knowing I would spend much of our 3 hour service crying). So I equated "need" with becoming a complete basket-case. Undiagnosed mild depression and hormonal imbalances in my 20s and 30s probably didn't help matters any. Infertility six years ago contributed greatly to this isolation: I felt I couldn't share my sorrow for fear of meeting a lack of understanding, lack of empathy. So, I tried to make a nice face, but inside I knew that I was just posturing.

To a degree I was only posturing with even my husband, and even myself. And I suppose I should add, especially with my Lord. I can say with certainty that I have emerged out of the veil of sorrow that I lived under almost all of my life. That doesn't mean that I don't ever struggle or feel sadness. But my reference point is not sorrow, it is life. Life, as in the Way, the Truth and the .... Life. I am just beginning to learn that needs are not big scary black holes destined to crush my existence. They are, rather, the roads for Christ to reach me. I can LOVE my needs, my neediness. God is there for me, and there is no true need that I have that He cannot meet the moment I bring it to Him, if not before.

I have a habitual struggle with expressing some basic needs to the people in my life, however, and this is something I must unlearn. I spent several days in Germany with my high school German class, including some days living with a family on my own. I nearly starved because every time they asked me if I were hungry I told them no, I was fine. That was my default "face" for the world. No needs here, I'm just fine! So what if I haven't eaten in 18 hours and have needed to use the WC for the last 10! While I'm a bit better now, if I were to rank felt needs from one to ten, I still personally act on only a five or over, and would hesitate to bother someone else for anything under a seven or eight level need.

But what happens if I can't express my neediness to others, or be conscious of it in relating to them? I think I'm starting to go around in circles here. Either I am reduced to reacting to them, or I reduce them to reacting to me, and we have either a political or a slave relationship. Christ is shoved to the back seat. Even if I know better, the relationship ceases to be with Christ as the focal. So, the big bugaboo which cause me to learn these bad habits is gone, but I'm left with the bad habits. Oh yeah, and there's that original sin thing of course. I really liked what Fr. Roberto had to say about sin: it cannot be the focus, Christ must be the focus. I cannot be about my failures, I must be about my desire to love, that desire that I am created for. So, I will use my bad habit of timidity about my needs to remind me of Christ, and then I am on a winning road, even in the midst of my failures, which will come.

It is all so good, and thanks be to God for His indescribable gift.