How 'Uninvited' Woke Me Up

Uninvited was a special book for me the first year that I lived out in Washington D.C.

It was a scary first year. I had never lived on my own. I didn't know how to pay bills, and yet there I was at 26 trying to find an apartment and a car, navigate a new job and all the benefits and pitfalls that come with it.
On my way out of town, a dear friend and the mother of one of the people instrumental in the shaping of my faith, gave me Lysa TerKeurst's book. I've perused her blog and it's very inspirational.
But it was this book that woke me up to how truly unusual my childhood was.
In the middle of reading this book--actually to be fair it was in the first few chapters--TerKeurst reveals that her father abandoning her had terrible, serious repercussions on her self-worth, her identity, and her relationships and expectations with men that she dated before she married her husband.
It was a resounding blow to the things I myself had experienced.
There was this tiny, shocked voice that said My father abandoned me.

At the time I had no idea where that thought came from. I was horrified. How...how was that even possible that I could feel that way about my dad? He had never hit me. He had always been there for me.

But I realized that even though my father had been there physically to care for me as a small child, that didn't mean he fulfilled his role as my parent very well as he got older.
Him being there doesn't mean he was a good role-model of what a father or man should look like.
Him being there doesn't mean he taught me how a man should treat a woman.
Him being there doesn't mean he wasn't abusive verbally, emotionally neglectful, invalidating, dismissive, selfish, guilt-tripping, or blaming.
Him being there doesn't mean he is excused for being controlling or overbearing.
Him being there doesn't mean he is excused for taking out his anger on me, for manipulating me and using reverse psychology and control tactics to conform me into doing his will.

Over the course of the next year, from August 2016 to July 2017, I slowly started to chew on what I had read in her book.

The rest of the book is beautiful by the way, and talks about how God sets us "Apart" to live fully and beautifully in Him, with Him, through Him.

But the thought that I had been abandoned, and I think more honestly, that I had been betrayed, could not leave my mind. I was sitting at work one day, struggling through our mailings when it suddenly dawned on me how much I hated my father.

I hated him.

I hated and despised him in all the senses of those two words as fully as one can feel them.
For every time he threatened to leave my mother and me if we didn't behave. He would pull out that threat like a belt and bellow at the top of his lungs that he would leave and we would never see him again. It came out in every argument. Every. Single. Time. And their arguments, legendary screaming matches that terrified me, were frequent. After enough time and experience with it, it tuned it out and became numb to the level of their voices, rolling my eyes, or in other instances, jumping in to defend my mother or provoking one or both, depending on how angry I was at them. Usually I was bellowed at to stay out of it. At earlier ages, I would cry and become upset at the fighting, only to have my father yell at me for crying--why was I crying? He wasn't yelling at me. Or he would take it out on my mom and I for her enabling my selfish behavior. The situation is too complex to fully understand and each memory is a network of pain, frustration, and anger is deeper levels than I sometimes comprehend.

It is not a wonder to me that I have a deep-seated fear of being abandoned. It is not a wonder that every guy I go out with, there is always a suspicion and fear that he will become bored with me, that he will not stay. That I cannot make him stay. That I am not good enough or interesting enough for him to love me. For him to love me enough as I am, good and bad, to want to stick around.
TerKeurst's book was only one part of a long and painful process. But it made me realize that I had been abandoned, through fear, psychological manipulation and control, and threats, by the one man in my life who should have been my protector.

That was seven months ago. Today I am ambivalent in my feelings toward him. Occasionally there is a fondness for the fun and loving things he did do, particularly when I was a very little girl. But there is no familial love. There is no affection. There is only emptiness and numbness. I have done my best in seven months to heal those wounds, by recognizing them, the root that caused them. But I will never be really healed all on my own; that's God's job. In God, I seek truth to fill the cavities left clean from the hard scraping I've done with the tools of revelation and understanding.
I am not as hollow as I used to be, but I am still not full.

The process of learning to fill your own bucket rather than waiting for others to fill it for you, or demanding they do, will never satisfy you or make you whole. The process and growth is hard; it is deeply painful. But the purpose of growth is to become. I just wish I knew what it is I am meant to be.

Reflections on A Wrinkle In Time

There is a musing in my mind today as I review and read about Ava Duvernay’s adaptation of “A Wrinkle In Time”, staring Reese Witherspoon and Oprah Winfrey as two of the large names attached to this monstrosity of a film.

I've been chewing on this for a few weeks since the film debuted and finally got around to expressing my modest concerns.

Though it largely escaped my notice as a child, “A Wrinkle In Time” is a determinedly Christian book. Not necessarily in the same sense of Catholic intellectualism as I have been presented with over the weeks and months of the past year. But from what I recall there were definitive echoes interwoven in its telling, as Allissa Wilkinson of Vox deftly explains, regardless of what philosophy you subscribe to.

Link

The film appears as a garish modernist interpretation on the basic universal theme found in every culture, that of the struggle of good triumphing over evil. However, aside from the basic elements of Meg, her little genius brother Charles-Wallace, and would-be love interest (later husband in subsequent novels), seeking the help of three supernatural beings to find her long-lost father, the film has none of the intellectual teeth about responsibility, consequences, and love that allow Meg to grow internally to reconcile her internally perceived flaws and the realities of the world and adulthood, as well as overcome the primary antagonist of the novel, IT—a giant, brain that is the representation of all evil.

I have not seen the film, and have little desire to; however a few things strike me as a common chord that often appears in the writings of Christian intellectuals across the board, and that is the call not only for universal holiness and struggle within God, but the main point is the struggle against the regimentation and totalitarianism of secularism of groupthink—as is often seen in socialist or communistic society—against upholding the individual as uniquely beautiful within the body of the Jesus Christ, as uniquely beautifully made within God’s organized world.

IT’s world was a terrifying vision of uniformity, as Meg and Calvin search through an endless array of same homes and neighborhoods to the central nervous-system of IT’s headquarters, a gray office building. Everything is the same; everything is uniform, dull, but perfect. There is no individuality, just…cookie cutter perfection to the tiniest detail and no differentiation. Even the children the two encounter essentially look the same from one to the next, playing and speaking all the same. Sameness. Uniformity.

This call to uniformity is a common evil in the current world, a theme called out in such works as “The Abolition of Man” by C.S. Lewis and warned of in Rudyard Kipplings “The Gods of the Copybook Headings”, written decades ago by intellectuals, good and bad in their own rights—everyone has flaws mind you, even you—who foresaw the pitfall of specialization leading to stagnation, to equilibrium of thought as everything started the trend towards standardization, especially in education.

My favorite edition, in large part because of the art by Leo and Diane Dillon.

Even the three beings—Mrs. Who, Mrs. Which, and Mrs. Whatsit—have direct and obvious echoes of Christian elements teaching sacrifice and love, especially through repeated quotes from Biblical Scripture. Even one of them sacrifices their form and becomes transformed to help the children on the next leg of their journey, at the cost of themselves.

As Wilkinson so adequately explains the true evil of IT that is utterly dispensed with within the adaptation “For L’Engle, the power of evil is not just to make us bad and angry and violent, but also to put us to sleep to what is going on in the world by controlling us — the way we live, the way we think, the way we desire — until we are all the same.”

This mode of thought is no more apparent than in a three-page excerpt that was cut originally from the text of the novel. In the lead up, Meg and Calvin are rescued by Meg’s father Mr. Murray once they find him through tesselation, or the folding of space-time to travel large distances. However, her little brother is left-behind, already held tightly in the telepathic grip and groupthink of IT. As L’Engle notes in the cut excerpt, the ultimate evil is conformity, sameness, and regulation.

And herein lies a disturbing trend in the current thinking of Western society: a division between head and heart.

We are told on a constant basis to exist in a state of alleged moral relativism, when in fact it is moral nonrelativism, as explained my Prof. Michael Gorman in his talk to the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C. There is no longer a universal truth, only an adherence to selfish truth that trumps all other mores and standards to allow for the personal selfish fulfillment of ones desires, as seen in the stoics and destroyed by G.K. Chesterton in his book Orthodoxy. 

And when there is no universal binding truth such as Jesus Christ and God, as evidenced in Christianity in which we are to strive for, we are given the saccharine dilution of morality in the universalist theme espoused in DuVernay's "A Wrinkle In Time", in which we rely solely on ourselves to find and utilize the strength of this world to overcome. But this is false. Humans fail.

Walter Ciszek was a Catholic priest who was destroyed in his 23 year imprisonment. He felt as though he failed when he finally signed a confession to the NKVD -- Soviet Secret Police -- stating he was a spy for the Vatican. He felt broken and ashamed in relying on himself as a holy man of God who stood above others because he was so virtuous, only to betray God, in his mind anyway. It was in giving himself over fully and submitting truly to the Father's will that he was able to overcome and survive through 23 years of captivity.

Relying on ourselves is a false sense of security, and a false message that leads to arrogance and failure, in the end. It does not allow any longer for unique beauty as individuals, meant to use our gifts individually for the glory of God, but for the continued sleepwalking of others to live in comfortable means. To not rock the boat, and to no longer act as the salt and the light. We merely become hedonists of the same self-indulgent cloth.

The Market in Marakesh

Back in January 2014, I participated in 2 Bag's Full Grow Your Blog event. The post for that had an interesting bit about my meeting Death in Marakesh. As a writer, I couldn't let that one get away from me, so here is the story of

The Market in Marakesh

While walking at night in a market in Marakesh, I met Death on the street. It was a chill night as the moon sat high on her throne, gazing down at the empty little street, sand eddies twirling together like lovers in a booth.

As I turned the corner past Adbullah's stall, I saw a cloaked figure ahead, hood drawn, a body tall and thin in a black robe. The figure shimmered as I walked down the causeway, my old bones shaking in the cold. Suddenly, like a lizard that scurried, the figure in the robe was before me, darker than they sky above.

"You are Safia, daughter of Hassan Azansi," it rasped, wind across a dry dessert.

"I am she," I said, fearful. I am old and carry little on me of value. What could this man want from me? 

"I am here to walk with you."

"To where? My home? Sir, go on your way. I must be getting onto my husband."

"What a husband to send you out here alone, with nothing to protect yourself from?" his rasp was heavier now, curious.

"He sent me for his medicine, he has run out."

"He has sentenced you to me," he said, and pulled back the hood so that I might gaze on his face. Allah, he was older than I, face drawn tightly over bones to the point that he was a skeleton. Never a handsome man, his thoughtful expression bore sad eyes that watched me unblinking. It was as though he could read my soul.

"Away, from me," I cried, stepping back and now knowing him for what he was. "I still have years left. You won't take me yet!"

"But I must," he said slowly, voice like wind blowing through a house. "Ahead a man waits to rob and murder you. Your husband has hired him to remove you so that he might marry Fatima down the road."

"A pretty but empty-headed thing. Why would he do this to me? I have born him two sons and a beautiful daughter that made a good marriage."

"Because he shudders when he touches you. Your breasts are heavy from suckling three babes and your body has become soft from the many years you have lived. You are now middle-aged, no longer the great beauty that he desired in his youth. He wishes for a supple and young body that he might touch, not that of an old woman."
"I am not old," I grumbled, pushing past the skeletal figure. The night was wearing on and I needed to be home. But I heeded his words and wondered at such a thing, that death would come to warn me of his intent to steal me to the night lands. Before reaching the corner, I spotted a stick, hefty and solid. I was not so old that I could not pick it up and use it. 
Walking on in my older bones - not so old at all - I rounded the corner and saw movement ahead. With a huff I kept going, listening as Death followed me, still curious.
The night was still and did not shift, but I could hear the slight movement of fabric against stone. And when the thief jumped out at me with dagger in hand, I hefted up my club and pounded him soundly in the stomach, and again hit him down on the back. He scrambled up and turned, pouch of gold clinking against his hip. The dagger lay forgotten on the stones.
With heavy breaths I turned to Death and watched him expectantly. He watched me back.
"Well, aren't you going to take me?" I challenged. 
"You are brave to demand that I take a soul that is still living."
"But..."
"Did you die?" he asked, head titled  as he considered me.
"No. So you won't. But I know someone that you can take," I growled. The dagger glinted in the moonlight.

My house was lit up with warm fires. It was a grand little house, with several rooms and even a bath! But tonight there would be no grand celebrations like my husband had thrown when we had married, or had babies, or when they had married in their turn.
I found him inside, stuffing his face with curried rice and pork. 

Re-edited 3-1-18 for grammar.

A New Start

I've never been much of a blogger. But I guess today is the day that I start to tell my story. It's not meant for other people to comment on, tear down, or judge.
It's for me to share what I've learned and establish that I am a person with their own identity and feelings, and that's been a damn hard process over the years. For those who have never been abused, please use this as an opportunity to understand.

For those who have been, my love and my deep empathy for your pain is real. Your voice, your feelings, and your memories are legitimate. That shit happened to you. No one has a right to take that away from you.

I am a survivor of child abuse. I understand in putting this out there, to the people that I am friends with, to the people who are in my family, that I invite your judgment. I invite your disbelief, your anger, your empathy, your disbelief. I do not care that you don't believe me.

I do care that you may be hurt. That is never my intention. That is never and has never nor will it ever be my intention to cause harm.
But I am tired of pretending to not be myself. I am tired of being whom everyone else desired me to be; how to act; how to live; what to think.

My perceptions are not always accurate. I do not always do the right thing. I fail every moment of every day of my life in not living as fully in God and Jesus Christ as I want to. And some days I don't want to. Some days I fail so fully I can't even look myself in the mirror in my bathroom without thinking You are a complete piece of shit. You don't deserve this job or this life that God gave you.

This blog is a place for me to share what I've learned, to share how I'm growing in Christ, and put out interesting little tidbits to people who are lost and confused and maybe don't know the way to where they're going.

So welcome to A Catholic Woman. Find some comfort and some rest.
God bless.

The Eponymous Ms. R.