{"id":1948,"date":"2013-05-30T10:43:05","date_gmt":"2013-05-30T14:43:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/?p=1948"},"modified":"2016-10-10T11:54:39","modified_gmt":"2016-10-10T15:54:39","slug":"the-strange-god-of-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2013\/05\/the-strange-god-of-i.html","title":{"rendered":"The Strange God of I"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Almost a year ago, I wrote my very first post at Patheos. The Anchoress <\/a>brought me aboard, so I thought it only fitting to begin my sojourn here by relating how the Anchoress first became aware of my existence<\/a> (via a \u201cdeeply offended\u201d response to a light-hearted blog post) and how she responded with such a fearlessly charitable email. By \u201cfearlessly charitable\u201d, I mean that she told me the truth mercifully and with compassion, but without evasion.<\/p>\n

That is something, isn\u2019t it? It\u2019s something that I hardly ever see these days. It\u2019s something that I didn\u2019t even recognize at first, that I had only seen in the writings of Raissa Maritain and Julian of Norwich. It\u2019s something remarkable in this day and age. So it only follows that I was thenceforth suspicious that the Anchoress might be a secret liberal, and I kept tabs on her blog in equal measures of attraction to her kindness and distrust of her politics.<\/p>\n

I was raised an Evangelical in Texas, y\u2019all, and it took me a good while before I could hear Mark Shea\u2019s name at all without dissolving into a puddle of indignant Republican wrath. I spent years thinking secession was not only a viable option but a master stroke of brilliance in the ultimate manifest destiny of Texas to DOMINATE THE UNIVERSE. It required all<\/em> the cognitive dissonance to convert to Catholicism, and once I was there, I was poised to align myself firmly with whatever facsimile the papists had to offer me of \u201cGod, Guns and the GOP\u201d. There were plenty there. I could choose from among them. And then the Anchoress sent me that email, and I started to see something new, and it scared the hell out of me.<\/p>\n

It was only a week or two after her email that I even understood the concept of hell as something real, and sin as something I could reject,<\/a> instead of something that had already (and irrevocably) ruined me. Ironically, that was precipitated by a conversation with friends who loved me dearly and whom I love dearly in return; it seemed like everywhere I turned, these papists were turning on me, saying awful things like, \u201cit\u2019s not your ideology but your actions that matter!\u201d<\/p>\n

I reacted first with denial, then anger, then bargaining, then despair. The stages of grief are supposed to end in \u201cdepression and acceptance\u201d, but I just gave up and settled on \u201cI\u2019m totally f*cked\u201d, because the rest seemed like too much work. Around this time, life conspired to shipwreck me half a country away from my husband, parenting three kids on my own, and I spent a solid six months writing about how miserable I was and how much everything sucked.<\/p>\n

I even got sick of myself after that, something that I didn\u2019t know was possible before. I started finding myself drawn more and more toward Patheos, the new home of my long-time Goddess of Uncomfortably Sympathetic Liberalism, the Anchoress. There was a lot of mercy going on there, and a whole lot of love, and oddly enough, it wasn\u2019t white-washed with sentimentality. I liked what I saw there, and I didn\u2019t like it, and yet I wanted it while I was repelled by it, and I, and I, and I I I I I I I I<\/p>\n

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