A Gentle Metamorphosis

A quiet revolution has been going on inside me ever since I began the whole veil/modesty project. It has become clear to me that it is not proper to try and make what I am doing sound more effective and desirable than what other people may feel God calls them to do. Please hear my heart. It started with externals, yes, but it has become so much more--something that, without too much analysis, I will try to present so that others may discern the mysterious call particular to themselves.

I knew that we are all called to grow closer to God--I had, in fact, begun working up a piece on how God calls everyone to be saints, that there must be a path to sainthood waiting for each of us ordinary people if we will only persevere in prayer to ask God to show it to us. Granted, this kind of sainthood is not the kind that comes in a flash, or that leaves us in transports of ecstasy. It is an ordinary sainthood--a vision of a long life, well-lived squarely within the arms of the Church, depending chiefly on the life of the sacraments and of prayer. It all ends with a confessor by our deathbeds and a final plea to God's mercy. No canonization, no holy cards, no public recognition of any kind. Simply to be breathed into God's presence and to be spared any separation from Him, however temporary, was my wish.

There is a part of me that fights this. It says, "Don't tell God that you want to trust Him entirely! What if He takes your husband away? What if He burns down your house? What if he gives you the kind of disease where you can't do anything useful, but people don't think you're sick enough to help you?" and on and on and on. The upshot was, if you give God a blank check, He's just going to make you miserable. This part doesn't like prayer, either. "Just take a break," it says. "Not like you're doing anything for anybody, anyway." It's poisonous, this satanic sinful selfish voice. And it's always with me. It reminds me of everything I've ever done wrong, every indecent image I've ever seen, every horrible news story I've ever heard, and at the same time pumps up my sense of myself as a very strong, capable, intelligent person. It wants me to depend on me.

Then a wonderful thing happened. I found a blog called Homeliving Helper. I began to read the archives, first attracted by the plentiful images of beautiful homes and ladies in old-time costumes. But I began to absorb the message that being a mom and a wife--my vocation--was something of beauty, worth, and dignity. Up until now, I was still operating under the Old Paradigm--that being a stay-at-home-mom was just something some women did when they didn't have anything else better to do. And it was a good thing as far as it went, but when that last kid goes off to kindergarten...Mom should be scanning the classifieds.

I've called this blog the Catholic Housewife, but the truth is, I felt myself as more of a great-writer-in-the-rough, honing my craft in obscurity until The Great Day when all my kids are gone and I can hit the big time. Fulfill my potential. In the meantime, I let my toilets get grimy and my yard fill with leaves, because, "I'm above all this, right? You don't mean that some women actually clean their bathrooms every day? Are they insane?" That's why I fill my blog posts with analytical exercises and mystical maunderings, not housewife-y stuff.

Inspired by this blog, I did two things. One, I started putting my hair up every day. And I made myself an apron. I started putting things back when I was done using them, and I began looking around for ways I could make my home appear more comfortable, beautiful, and restful to the spirit. The vocation of being a housewife, homemaker, or "keeper at home" is about making the home a place worth coming home to: a place to eat and sleep, of course, but also a place to have tea, to crochet, to curl up with a book, to paint a picture, or to host a group--in short, a place to LIVE.

The home is your own apostolate, and you run it the way that you like. You can make it as ugly and stressful as you want, or as beautiful and serene as you want. Hint: things are much easier to clean when you can rest your eyes on something beautiful when you're all done, not something just sterile and impersonal. So, suddenly--my toilets are clean (OK, cleaner). My dishes are caught up and--wonder of wonders--even the laundry doesn't even fill one basket.

But there's a catch.

This will not work if you are putting your priorities in the wrong order. If I get compliments on my kids' behavior (no they're not perfect, so I'm not bragging...but it does happen), there's really no secret to how I manage them. I never forget who's in charge of them. And I never forget who's in charge of me. Women are under obedience; first of all to God, of course, but also to husbands or fathers--the representatives of God's authority. This is the unpopular angle of the blog. Yes, it is a Christian woman who mostly writes it. A minister's wife, in fact, from Oregon. She is fearless in her critique of the so-called "women's movement," and advances firmly the Biblical view that a woman must be the complement of the man. She--the woman--has her own role, her own gifts and dignity, but she and he are not the same. She tries to fill up what is lacking in him--she doesn't try to do his work, and she doesn't insist on him doing her duties. Like dishes.

It used to eat me up inside that when Dean was home, he'd be sitting on his rear while I labored over a sink full of steamy dishwater. "Why should I have to do this [Old Paradigm thinking] while he gets to just sit there? He should be helping me and then we can both rest!" went the refrain in my head. Now when I'm doing dishes I think, "I wonder if I can bring him anything." I never saw anything intrinsically important in domestic duties before. Now I see that I am ministering to my family when I go around, picking up socks and straightening towels. Not that I want to be a slave to anyone. I will certainly teach my children to pick up after themselves. But when my husband comes home after being on the road for ten or more days, I gladly pick up his socks, rub his shoulders, and bring him coffee. He's done his job--now here's my chance to do mine. Even our marriage bed has benefited.

Why am I telling you all this? I can hear it now: "Just because you've got the perfect life doesn't mean you have to brag about it and make everybody else feel bad." Granted, my way of embracing my vocation may not be your way. And my life is certainly not perfect. But Lady Lydia has many posts with insights into divorce, and what makes relationships go bad in today's society (I mean ordinary people, not people who are married to drunks or people with mental problems). How do ordinary marriages that start out OK go bad?

It usually has something to do with the woman trying to be the same as the man. She goes to work and pulls down a paycheck, so she doesn't feel like she should be doing all the housework when she gets home. She gets no pleasure from homemaking, since she never has the time or the energy. When the kids come, all they can do is fight about money. She is eaten up with resentment every day from some perceived fault of his that he refuses to take seriously. Then one day when their marriage is good and strained--she catches an interested glance from her boss, or he begins to confide in a sympathetic female. One may get caught up in a vice, like pornography, alcohol, gambling.

One day, it all blows up in their faces, and one partner angrily demands a divorce. I'm not saying it was all her fault. As women begin to disdain and deny their God-given roles, men begin to disdain and deny their own. Hence the complaint, "Where have all the good men gone?" But there's so much she could have done differently had she tried to live according to the role ordained to women by God. Being the heart of the home. The help-meet of the man. Maybe she takes a job if they need it, but her heart is not in competition with his. They are a team, but a team with a captain.

Why should this be so difficult to understand? Because everything around us tells women that YOU are top priority. You've got to take time for YOURSELF. How are YOU doing? Are you fulfilling YOUR potential? When people enter a marriage with this mindset, it's a prescription for ruin. I know how easily my husband and I could have gone down this road. And I'm sorry if it disappoints some, but it is really the woman's duty to back down first if there is some disagreement. That is biblical, and it's also practical.

In fact, as I've begun practicing this, sometimes swallowing my pride with a giant gulp--I've found that it's for the best. And my husband is SO GRATEFUL. He stumbles over himself to make it up to me. He tells me over and over again how I am the best wife in the world, and he's so lucky to have me. He is grateful for having been given back his manhood. Women, we can take our men's manhood, but we can't be surprised if he then becomes a creature that we despise. I may disagree with my husband, but now I glory in the fact that he's my man, and I'm his woman. Even if he screws up royally, it's not technically my fault. God knows that I am under obedience.

This obedience thing has been underscored by some spiritual reading I've done lately. I've been reading the diary of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, Divine Mercy in my Soul. It's a very thick book, but an irresistable read (I mean, who wouldn't be curious to "listen in" on somebody's conversation with Jesus??). He tells her over and over again that she must be perfectly obedient to her superiors and to her confessors, even when it appears to thwart her efforts to accomplish what Jesus has been telling her to do. Even when she appears to disobey Jesus, He praises her, because it is out of obedience. Reading this, I had to ask myself, "Just who am I in obedience to? I know I am bound to obey God and the Church, and if my confessor told me to do something, I would certainly do it, but I'm not a religious." In the book, Jesus makes it abundantly clear to her that he is immensely pleased with the virtue of obedience, and I couldn't help but want a share in the graces He promises.

Then great inspiration struck. I can obtain all the graces of obedience by treating my husband as my "superior" (in the sense of St. Faustina's "Mother Superior"). This may sound crazy to some people, but I wanted to obey. I even started asking my husband for his opinion on many more matters than I ever have, because 1) it makes decision making easier; and (2 if it doesn't work out, I don't have to feel humilated that I make a wrong choice. Besides this, Jesus loves a humble and obedient soul. Now it is true that most of us have heard preaching on humility, but not many know how to apply it. The secret is obedience. Jesus loves to rest in an obedient heart, He told St. Faustina.

This is not a prescription for servility, by the way. My husband trusts me to run 99.99% of our lives. I basically run everything, because he is gone so much, but I can't strip away his God-given role of leadership in our home and our lives. I have to find some way to give it back to him, or risk wrenching the reins out of his hands out of sheer habit.

So now that I'm coming across as a religious fruitcake with nuts on top, you get the general drift of where I've been going. Don't bother to leave long screeds in the combox objecting to what I've presented here. It's for me; it's my path, the path God has shown me. I asked Him for it, and I'm happy. That's the miracle. By placing God first, my husband and then my kids second, my home third, and myself last, I'm the happiest I've ever been in my life. Whenever I've tried any other order of priority than this, I've been miserable.

I know that was long, and a little disjointed. Sorry for that. I question even if this blog is a good use of my time. But I'm grateful for you. Let me encourage you to take a little step closer to Jesus, however you understand Him. He is so close. He breathes on us. He sustains that little bug crawling across the floor. Do you think he doesn't care about you? He does...more than you can imagine.