Confession Conundrum

Having named my page “Confessions,” I suppose it’s time to talk about exactly that.

Or “Reconciliation,” as it’s called now. And this is going to be an “audience participation” post. Because I need a little help from long-time Catholics on this one.

You see, Jesus and I go ‘way back. I loved Him even as a child, when I wasn’t quite sure what my parents’ faith was all about.

I definitely didn’t understand the Holy Ghost, Who—Which—sounded kinda scary, to be honest. I mean, “Ghost,” they called Him. That right there gave me pause.

God, the way they spoke of Him/Her/It, was also a little scary. He “smote” a lot. And He seemed—and to them He was a definite He by the way—easy to upset.

My elder family members used Him to keep me and other young folks in line. God was always going to strike you dead for something. And I can still see and angry adults reminding me that, “God don’t like ugly.”

“Ugly” was almost anything they didn’t like. Anything from talking back to them to a girl climbing trees “like a boy,” scuffing up her Sunday patent leathers and possibly giving the boys an easy peek up her skirt.

But I never heard them say what God liked. What God wanted, I heard, yes. And they taught me that God Is Love, which seemed to contradict everything else they said about Him. He just never seemed to like anything. Not anything I did, anyway.

But the way they threw their heads back and called to this Jesus guy, I liked that. They raised rapt faces to the sky and threw their hands up high and just sang their hearts out about Him. He made them dance down the aisles and pass out in the pews and speak jibberish like they were drunk on something.

And he was handsome, in the pictures on the walls. Kneeling, hands folded, his face so calm and loving. Oh, and he glowed, too. That was a neat trick.

I began speaking directly to Him almost just to see if He would answer. I didn’t do it in prayers, I did it either out loud, just like you talk to a friend, or on paper.

I would tell Him about my day. I would tell Him about the bully who screamed at me all the way home. I would tell Him all my dreams. Pages and pages of dreams in big spiral notebooks I still have. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to go to England. I wanted to do oh, so many things.

And at the time, I lived in a hellish inner city neighborhood where dreams like those usually shriveled up and died on the vine. Where kids died in the streets. So none of it seemed possible. I just needed to tell somebody who wouldn’t laugh at me. So I told Him.

He began to answer me quickly. I’d asked to get out of that neighborhood, and we moved to a new one, a beautiful one, even though my mother had been sure we wouldn’t be able to afford it. He got me through a high school full of bona fide geniuses, despite the fact that my old school had not prepared me very well.

“Let’s do this, Lord,” I’d say before those high stakes tests. And my stellar scores would stun my teachers and counselors.

He outdid Himself when I got to college. In an era when all the guys looked a lot like Him, too. Some of them professed to be trying to live like Him, but I don’t think Jesus would have approved of a lot of the things they did. It was nice, though, to be among people who understood my Friend.

He paid for everything, first of all. So that He could send me to England for two whole summers. And then, senior year, He helped me start writing for magazines I’d never believed I’d see my name in. It was like magic. “Ask and it will be given to you,” He said. And He remembered what I’d asked for.

So, to make a long story short as they say, I have always felt as if we had a remarkable relationship, Jesus and me.

Until now.

Newly Catholic, I haven’t yet entered that booth, to list my sins. I know what sins are. We got a whole list in RCIA, from deadly to ”meh.” So far mine are closer to the latter than the former.

In fact, now that I’m in my 60s and a retired school administrator and empty nester, I seem to have fewer and fewer opportunities to commit the really big ones. I live a pretty quiet and solitary life at this point. Friends tease me that nuns have more fun than I do.

Yet, I’m incredibly nervous about the first confession. What to say, what to do—I know the priest will guide me if I falter. But I’m still very nervous.

And there’s a part of me still stuck in my old Protestant “you and me, Jesus” pattern. I mean, He’s been listening to me for over 50 years now. Who’s this interloper I have to speak through all of a sudden?

Catholic friends tell me there’s nothing like a good Reconciliation session to wipe the slate clean. That I’ll feel brand new, afterwards. Others have tried to help by reminding me that since my favorite thing in the world now is Eucharistic Adoration, I should think of it as something similar, with a real live Host.

Still gives me the jeebies. I know my pastor, you see. As a friend. I know everyone I’d be talking to. And while my list of sins might be short most of the time, I get a queasy thinking of the day when there might be a really hot one in there somewhere. I could never look any of them in the eyes again. I couldn’t.

How sad that would be.

So here comes the “audience participation” part.

Give me some words of advice. Tell me a story about your first or any confession. What does it do for you? What will it do for me?

I’ll still talk to my Friend the way I always have. Just give me a reason to do it differently, now that I’ve chosen the faith He nudged me towards.

Oh, wait–is that the answer already?

Photo Credit: Fondazione Cariplo CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons