Tag: parenting

Love Means Going through the Motions

She was seven years old that summer, the second summer she and her sisters came to live with me. Seven years old and still throwing the tantrums she’d thrown when she was three, tantrums so long and so violent I worried for her safety. I was at my wits’ end with that little one. I’ve known some tough kids, but this one took the cake. And I prayed for her and I prayed about her and it occurred to me that maybe she was lashing out because she needed attention. She’s a physical touch girl through and through, so I sat her down and talked with her about how maybe if we snuggled more it would help her to calm down. And I made her a promise:

“No matter how much trouble you’re in, if you can ask me for a snuggle, we’ll take a time out together and snuggle. Because I love you and I want you to know that.”

It’s a great idea. Trouble is, she really wanted me to prove that I loved her. So she’d push and push and push me until I was almost at my breaking point, then she’d look up with a glint of pure malice in her eyes and ask me to snuggle her.

And I would bite back every objection, every bit of justified rage, every shred of pride. I would take a deep breath and hold her and stroke her hair and murmur to her how I loved her.

I wanted to drop kick her.

As I sat there telling her how much I loved her, I wanted to scream and throw her out of the house. I wanted to be done with this child.1 I didn’t feel lovey. Not one bit.

And I don’t think I ever loved her more.

I didn’t like her much in the moment.2 I didn’t want to tell her I loved her or how sweet and good she was. I wanted to show her everything she was doing wrong. I wanted to fix her attitude and make her compliant so that all our lives could have a little peace in them. I wanted to change her. There was nothing there that the world would call love.

But that’s when I loved her the most. Not because I felt lovey feelings but because I chose to love her.

If you’ve been in any kind of relationship for more than 6 days–or seen Frozen–you know that love is sacrifice. It doesn’t just require sacrifice, it IS sacrifice. Love isn’t a feeling, it’s a choice. And as wonderful as romantic feelings or maternal feelings are, they aren’t love. Love isn’t really love, I think, until it’s hard. That’s when it finally stops being about us.

This is why marriage is indissoluble: because it’s hard and the hard is good. That’s what kills our selfishness and makes us more like Christ. This is why babies are awful. Because as wonderful as they are, we might love them only for our own sake. When they’re colicky or teething or doing stranger danger and a sleep regression at the same time, that’s when we die to ourselves to live for them. That’s real love.

And I think that kind of love means sometimes you do what you don’t feel because you wish you felt it. It means stopping for a real kiss goodbye in the chaos of the morning routine. It means compliments on a job poorly done but well meant. It means murmuring soft words to a screaming child who you’d rather leave by the side of the road than spend the next 16 years–the next lifetime–nurturing.

It’s not being fake. You’re not doing what you don’t mean, you’re doing what you don’t feel. You’re saying or touching or smiling exactly what you want to mean. You go through the motions and that going through the motions is a powerful act of love and a step back toward the feelings you wish you had.

But you knew that. You learned about the whole “fake it till you make it” thing when you were stressing out about looking cool at your first dance.

Do you know it’s true of prayer, too? Not just that it gets easier as you just suck it up and do it. It’s actually especially pleasing to God when you just suck it up and do it.

For weeks now, I’ve been struggling in prayer. I’m always good about praying, but I’m not good at it and lately it’s been dragging me down. I’ll give an impassioned talk about how amazing God is and then go stare at a tabernacle and feel nothing, think nothing, get nothing.

So I keep sitting there before the Lord. And I keep saying this same thing:

Jesus, I wish I loved you as much as I pretend to love you.

Over and over I’ve sat there thinking how amazing my prayer life would be if I really felt all the things I pretend to feel. They’re not lies, just vestiges of things I’ve felt before. Things I really feel when I’m talking about them, maybe, but not things I feel when it’s just me and him. And I wonder what it would be like to feel those things all the time.

Jesus, I wish I loved you as much as I pretend to love you.

For weeks I prayed that prayer, not petitioning so much as stewing, until he told me:

You do.3 You act like you would act if you felt it. Not perfectly, of course, but you show up. Every day you show up, just the same as you would if you really enjoyed it. You go through the motions not because you’re getting something out of it but because you’re giving me something. You’re giving me yourself even when it feels I’m giving nothing back. You aren’t pretending you love me. You really love me.

You don’t have to get butterflies every time you receive. You don’t have to be totally focused in prayer. You don’t have to be zealous like Francis Xavier or humble like Thomas Aquinas4 or brave like Catherine of Alexandria. There were probably days when Francis wasn’t zealous like Francis and Catherine quaked with fear. Sanctity isn’t a measure of how you feel but of what you choose to do.

I’ve never been more proud of my little sister than on the countless occasions I’ve seen her speak sweetly to a wild, raging toddler. I know she doesn’t feel lovey in that moment but she chooses to act like she loves them. When she does that, she loves more truly than if she were rapturous at the thought of another moment with her cherubs because she is choosing love rather than being driven by her feelings.

I think the Lord feels the same about us. I think that when prayer is boring or faith is hard or NFP seems like it will be the death of you that’s the moment when heaven rejoices at your small victories in finishing the rosary or speaking truth or whatever seems so hollow and fake right now.

I guess all I’m saying is if you’re trying, even a little bit, the Lord is pleased with you. He sees your brokenness and sin and complete inability to love him well. But he sees that you try and the desire to please him does please him.

The best thing Thomas Merton ever wrote.
The best thing Thomas Merton ever wrote.

That little girl–now a big tough high schooler who still likes to cuddle–didn’t need me to feel good about her. She needed me to love her even when I didn’t feel good. In the end, that’s what she was looking for: someone who would love her when she was unlovable. Maybe God withholds the feelings we so long for to teach us to love him when he doesn’t seem lovable.

Keep on going through the motions. Do what you wish you wanted to do as though you wanted to do it–with God and with friends and with in-laws and with spouses and kids–and trust that you are enough. All he wants is your effort–he’ll bring it to perfection. Don’t let your inadequacies stop you. You are enough.

 

  1. There’s a reason parents come in twos. It is HARD to raise kids–especially defiant ones–without backup or relief or someone to talk things over with. If God calls me to have kids, I sure hope he gives me a husband to go along with them. [↩]
  2. Though oxytocin’s a powerful thing, and I’m a physical touch person myself, so it did help a little. [↩]
  3. I don’t hear voices in prayer. Some people do and that’s awesome. But I’m just going to paraphrase the sense I got in prayer. Don’t get all excited and think I’m a mystic or something. [↩]
  4. Have you read The Quiet Light by Louis de Wohl? I love all his books but this one was incredible. [↩]

Your Screaming Kids Are Distracting Me

Crying Cecilia 2I was at a holy hour the other night, totally focused and immersed in my thoughts, when from the back of the church came the sound of a wailing toddler.  Just like that, I lost it.  I was completely distracted by some kid who was far too young to be stuck sitting in a church.

And thank God for that.

See, I was totally focused on planning the rest of my night.  I was coming up with a packing list and deciding which posts I could update before I headed out in the morning.  I was thinking about the songs I have on my new smartphone and wondering if the USPS would forward the package I had shipped to the house I was staying at in time for me to get it at the house I was staying at next.  Yeah, I was focused, all right.  Focused on me.

Then that kid started screaming, and I snapped out of it.  I heard the dulcet tones of a toddler tantrum and couldn’t help but thank God for the luxury of silent prayer.  I heard footsteps and a door opening and offered a prayer for the patience of that poor parent.  I prayed for those who were really angry about the disturbance.  I prayed in thanksgiving for the gift of life.

Parents, I know all too well the frustration of taking little ones to Mass.  I calculated this evening (when I should have been praying) that I’ve taken little ones 4 and under to Mass by myself at least 200 times.  So while I’m not a parent, I know the frustration and awkwardness and even shame of that experience.

Case in point: John Paul isn’t so great at first person pronouns.  He refers to himself as “you.”  This was great when he was potty training and announced at the top of his lungs during the Eucharistic prayer, “You awe weawing undewweaw!!”  There were definitely panty line checks all around the sanctuary.

I’ve gotten plenty of dirty looks.  But more often, by God’s grace, I’ve gotten affirmation.  People thank me for bringing “my” kids and compliment me on their behavior.  Once after John Paul threw a particularly loud fit at Mass, an elderly man came up to me and told me it was the holiest sound he’d heard all day.  “He reminded me that I’m alive,” he said with a smile.

But more often than not you don’t notice the smiles.  You notice the rolled eyes and raised eyebrows and dirty looks and you think that at best you’re not making anyone angry.  But that’s not true–at best, you’re making the people around you saints.  You’re pulling them out of their self-obsession and reminding them that being at Church is about emptying ourselves for God and each other.

Prayer is so often just a veil for narcissism.  We talk and talk and talk about ourselves and then slap an “Amen” on the end and consider ourselves holy.  When your kids start screaming, it distracts us from ourselves.  We start praying for you.  Or for them.  We pray for single parents.  We pray in thanksgiving for our grown children or we beg for screaming children of our own.

I was visiting with my grandmother the other day and mentioned that Cecilia shouted stream-of-consciousness for the entire Mass today.  She said, “Oh, do they let children in the church?”  Needless to say, she’s not Catholic.  But it’s an attitude I’ve found from some Catholics.  “Until they’re old enough to sit quietly,” they say, “leave them at home.”  Or maybe “You know there’s a cry room, right?”  As if the Mass is their personal property and they get to decide who stays and who goes.

Jesus embraced children, folks, and so does our Church.  If you don’t want to hear them cry, the solution is not to remove the holy little ones from the church.  The solution is for you to go to the 7am quickie Mass or the solemn high Mass that takes 3 hours.  Find a Mass kids aren’t going to and shut yourself up in that one.

Or maybe offer up your distractions and frustrations for their parents, who are so much more distracted and frustrated than you.  Take this as a sign that God is calling you out of yourself.

Ooh look at her shoes! I wonder how many states have more vowels than consonants. How far is it from here to Maine? I should make a pie this afternoon. 3.14159. What would I even do with a giant mouse suit?

Because if the normal noises of normal children are going to distract me, I was going to be distracted anyway.  By cute clothes or cute men or split ends or whatever1.  And nobody’s suggesting that we wear burqas to Mass or segregate our congregations or require frequent trims.  Unlike most of the thoughts that grab my easily-distracted mind, the screams of your children are a distraction that draw me to deeper prayer.

So take them to the cry room if you want–or stay in the pew.  Lord knows that at many churches if you’re in the cry room you’re practically not at Mass, it’s such a circus in there.  Keep them as quiet as you can however you want to–I won’t judge.  They’re going to be ridiculous and you’re gong to be embarrassed, but taking them to Mass gives them grace, earns you years off of purgatory, and breaks my hardened heart just a little bit.

On behalf of those of us who don’t understand the sacrifices you make to bring your kids to the wedding feast, I’m sorry.  I’m sorry for judging you and being annoyed at you and rolling my eyes and everything else that focuses on me instead of on us.  Your kids are a very important part of us, even–especially–when they won’t stop yelling.

Because yes, your kids are distracting me.  They’re distracting me from my narcissism.  They’re distracting me from the idol I’ve made of worship, making me encounter God as he really is, not as I want him to be.  They’re distracting me from the endless series of irrelevant thoughts that occupy my “praying” mind.

Your screaming kids are distracting me.  Thank you for that.

  1. I’m not kidding.  I seriously examine my hair for split ends during the penitential rite.  Really, your toddler is the least of my spiritual worries [↩]