How I Fell Out Of My Minivan And Into My Identity

The ladies at church seemed startled when I climbed out of the window of my minivan. When the driver's side door handle broke the week before, I decided to avoid the overwhelming task of getting it fixed by learning to live without a functioning car door. I was too tall to scoot over the seat and out the passenger side, but I grew up watching The Dukes of Hazzard and knew that entering and exiting vehicles through windows was a perfectly viable option. In fact, people wouldn't even realize that anything was wrong! They'd be so impressed with my smooth moves that they'd just think I was too awesome to open the door. I quickly learned that the upper-body-strength to lower-body-weight ratio of the lean, male, twenty-something actors who starred in The Dukes of Hazzard is quite different from that of a thirty-four-year-old mother with a penchant for cookies 'n cream ice cream. Also, that the window of a minivan is about two feet higher off the ground than that of the sporty vehicle featured in the TV show. Unfortunately, one of my first experiences with these realities occurred in front of my acquaintances from church. A lady named Teresa, whom I knew through mutual friends, walked over to say hello. I tried to wave—this was mid-exit—but my foot got stuck in the steering wheel and I lost my balance. I tumbled out the window, letting some profanity slip as I grasped for something to break my fall. Teresa glanced nervously at her children, probably not sure whether to assist me or flee while she had the chance. I stood up, brushed myself off, and proceeded to make small talk. Assuming that she was also there to drop her children off at the parish Mother's Day Out program, I made a little joke in reference to the increasingly ominous noises coming from inside my car. "If only we could drop them off by catapult, right?" "We homeschool," she explained with a smile, nodding towards the three smartly dressed children standing politely beside her. "We're just here for daily Mass." I glanced at my children in the car in time to see a baby doll fly through the air. My two-year-old was chewing on a shoe. I excused myself to haul the avalanche of kids and backpacks out of the minivan, and Teresa said goodbye and walked with her children toward the chapel. Am I Doing Something Wrong Here? After I dropped the kids off, I lumbered back through the window and sat in the driver's seat for a moment. This sort of thing happened all the time. I'd joyfully converted to Catholicism four years before, but I felt like I'd never quite found my footing. Intellectually, I had it down—I'd read enough books that I could think like a Catholic—but I seemed to be failing at being a Catholic. While other women enjoyed joining prayer groups and running ministries, I was so introverted that my spiritual director once joked that I should have been a desert hermit. When I did attempt to socialize at the parish, such as my morning exchange with Teresa, it only added credence to that theory. I had a specific idea of what the authentic Catholic woman was like: She was the picture of joy and grace every time she went to Mass, and always had an emotionally powerful experience upon receiving the Eucharist; she kept her home tidy and she joyfully crafted elaborate celebrations for each liturgical season. And then there is me. I have five young children spaced so closely together that fellow Catholics, when they first meet my husband and me, often ask, "Would you like to borrow our Natural Family Planning book?" Mass is usually more of an exercise in survival than something I enjoy on an emotional level. My house is not exactly neat and my biggest success with celebrating the liturgical year had been buying a package of purple napkins one Advent. There in the driver's seat of my van, I noticed scuff marks on my blue jeans from my encounter with the parking lot pavement, and I thought of how lovely my friend Teresa had looked with her colorful, flowing skirt and her neatly pressed blouse. Comparing myself with her and all the others I perceived to be true Catholic women, I sank a little lower into the seat. I wanted to say a pious prayer beseeching the Lord for assistance, but all I could come up with was: Lord, I am failing at this whole Catholic womanhood thing! I started the car, pulled out of the parking lot, and prayed all the way home. I even spent a few moments in silence when I got back to the house instead of rushing over to my laptop as was my habit. I begged God to show me what it meant for someone like me to be authentically Catholic. The Search for the Modern Mary Shortly after saying that prayer, I had an idea: I should search for a role model, specifically for an image of what the Blessed Mother would look like if she lived in the 21st century. Having a visual would give me something to cling to when I strayed off course; it would provide a clear goal as I transformed myself into a real Catholic woman. I picked up a magazine from the stack next to the couch and flipped through, evaluating one depiction of a modern woman after another: I was fairly certain that God had given me this idea, so I figured he must have some exciting solution in store. I couldn't wait to find my image. Nothing struck me in the magazine, so I turned to the internet and browsed everything from oil paintings to ads to clip art, all the while asking, "What would Mary look like if she lived here and now?" Would her hair be short or long? Would she wear blouses or t-shirts? Would her face reveal an expression of unbridled joy or serious contemplation? No answer came. I kept looking. "How Gloriously Different All the Saints" I didn't find an image that day, or the day after. In fact, my search stretched on for weeks. Meanwhile, I kept thinking about the concept of true Catholic womanhood. I took a closer look at the lives of female saints, and kept my ears perked for any Church teaching on the subject. What I discovered surprised me. From the beginning of my conversion, I'd been aware of the call to die to self and become like Christ. In the Gospel of John we read that, "He must increase, but I must decrease (3:30, RSV)." In his letter to the Galatians, Paul says that he no longer lives, but Christ lives in him (Gal. 2:20). In Lumen Gentium (the Second Vatican Council's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church), we read, "All the members [of the Body of Christ] ought to be molded in the likeness of Him, until Christ be formed in them." Here's how I understood these teachings: becoming like Christ meant becoming unlike yourself. I had a rigid idea of what a devout person looked like and assumed that all holy people were basically carbon copies of one another. But that's not what I found when I looked more closely at the lives of the saints. For example, I discovered that while many were naturally at ease in social situations, such as the gifted administrator and teacher St. Frances Cabrini or St. Elizabeth Ann Seton who captivated everyone with her charm, some were not. Saint Frances of Rome was so introverted that she suffered a serious breakdown after the banquets and parties that accompanied her marriage! And when it came to marriage, some saints were happily married, such as St. Margaret of Scotland, some had difficult marriages, such as St. Monica, some were separated from their husbands like St. Radegunde and St. Etheldreda, and some, like St. Helena, were divorced.. Of course, all the female servants of God throughout the ages lived in quiet, orderly environments that were perfectly conducive to prayer, right? This was impossible for women like me with large families. But then I encountered St. Jeanne de Lestonnac who ran her estate by herself after her husband died, in addition to raising five children. St. Margaret of Scotland and St. Bridget of Sweden each had eight children, and St. Joaquina Vedruna had nine. By now my stereotypical thinking was in full retreat, including the notion that the saints were happy all the time. I learned that St. Catherine of Genoa battled severe depression for years, and I was as surprised as the rest of the world when it became clear that Mother Teresa heroically endured fifty years of the "dark night of the soul." Even super-saint Therese of Lisieux went through a final period of intense interior darkness before her death. C.S. Lewis once observed, "How monotonously alike all the tyrants of the world, how gloriously different all the saints." I had to agree. When I took a fresh look at real Christian holiness, this is what I found: Diversity. Uniqueness. People of all different temperaments and lifestyles, with a wide array of personal strengths and weaknesses. Lumen Gentium specifically praised the different forms that holiness can take, noting that the Holy Spirit "distributes special graces among the faithful of every rank," and that "by these gifts He makes them fit and ready to undertake the various tasks...which contribute toward the renewal and building up of the Church." He praised the Church for having a "wonderful diversity," where "each individual part contributes through its special gifts to the good of the other parts and of the whole Church. In other words, there is not a one-size-fits-all template for being a good Catholic. I didn't have to ape women like my friend Teresa in order to live my faith to the fullest. It was time to take another look at what Catholic womanhood might mean for me. Discovering Your Unique Type of Holiness I threw myself into this quest, reading everything I could find on the subject and consulting confessors and a spiritual director. This is what I learned: to uncover your unique brand of holiness you have to sift your God-given quirks and talents from your sins. So, for example, I shouldn't feel bad about the fact that I'm the type of person who sometimes ends up stumbling out of the car window at church. God gave me a brain that drifts toward quirky ideas. Instead of bemoaning that, I should ask how I can use that unique characteristic to do his work. But my occasional use of profanity and tendency to complain about everything? Those should go. I began to carefully discern the areas where sins and quirks collide, such as my relationship with housekeeping. I'd embraced the fact that with my scatter-brained nature, I'm not a naturally gifted homemaker; my house is never going to look like something out of a lifestyle magazine. But it was also clear that sometimes the sin of sloth was at work when I neglected to keep my living space clean. Taking this to confession, I received the grace to begin to reject my slothful behavior while still accepting my God-given nature. As the sifting process went on, something surprising happened: I was unearthing my real self. Before my conversion, I had confused certain sinful tendencies with inherent personality traits. To be truly myself, I thought, was to be cynical, short-tempered and lazy. That's just who I am , I rationalized. But I've come to understand that to be a saint is, among other things, to be wholly yourself. The more time I spent asking God to show me what it meant for me to be a good Catholic, the more I realized that he was showing me what it meant to be me. This brought a peace with who I am and a comfort in my own skin that I'd never known was possible. The inner transformation created a ripple effect in almost every area of my life. Once I realized that I didn't have to be like my seemingly perfect friend Teresa, I was able to relax and get to know women like her on a deeper level, drawing inspiration from them rather than comparing myself to them, Sure enough, I found that they often had struggles in areas I didn't. Now that I wasn't so worried about "failing" according to some preconceived notion of what it means to observe the Church year, I even stepped up my celebrations of the liturgical seasons, buying purple napkins and a wreath one Advent—though I usually forgot to light the candles. Sister Bridget Haase once counseled listeners of her radio show to "sparkle with self-forgetfulness." In order to show others the love of Christ, she explained, you have to think of others more than you think of yourself. Ironically, my insecurity about how to be a Catholic woman the "right" way had led me to focus almost exclusively on myself. When I socialized, I was always more concerned about whether I was saying something inappropriate or un-Catholic than I was about the wellbeing of the people around me. It was only when I learned to accept myself that I could forget myself; and it was only then that I could show others the love of Christ. The Answer to the Prayer In the midst of these discoveries, my effort to find an image of the modern Mary had shifted to the backburner. I suspected that the notion to pray for such a guide was not inspired by the Holy Spirit after all, but was just another of my zany ideas. Then one afternoon, as I walked through my living room, my mind abuzz with a hundred other thoughts, something caught my eye. I stopped in my tracks. It was one of those rare moments when the presence of the Holy Spirit is palpable, as if a breeze had swept through the room. I stared in bewildered surprise at—a mirror. More precisely, at my reflection in a mirror. A chill went through me. My prayer had been answered: Here was my image of the modern Mary. When she lived on earth, the Mother of God was probably not tall with pale skin and blue eyes, but I sensed God telling me as I stared at my reflection, This is what a holy woman can look like. If I wanted an image that captured true Catholic womanhood for me, I need look no further than the image of the woman in the mirror. I stared for a moment at the familiar visage of the tired mom in jeans and a t-shirt. When I imagined her as the picture of perfect holiness, everything changed. I stood a little straighter. I smiled and the weary expression on my face faded away. I saw my great potential, and forgot about my faults. At that moment, all the lessons I'd been learning sunk in on a visceral level. I took another glance at that woman, the person I'd thought of as outside the iron mold of what a Catholic woman looked like. Not only could she be a good Catholic woman, I realized, but God could use even her to change the world. Reject Your Sins, Love Your Quirks, and Go Change the World Though some of us have been slow to catch on, the Church has always celebrated the many faces of true Catholic femininity. At the triumphant end of the apostolic letter Mulieris Dignitatem , Pope John Paul II proclaims: The Church gives thanks for each and every woman : for mothers, for sisters, for wives; for women consecrated to God in virginity; for women dedicated to the many human beings who await the gratuitous love of another person; for women who watch over the human persons in the family, which is the fundamental sign of the human community; for women who work professionally, and who at times are burdened by a great social responsibility; for " perfect " women and for "weak" women - for all women as they have come forth from the heart of God in all the beauty and richness of their femininity.... The Church gives thanks for all the manifestations of the feminine "genius" which have appeared in the course of history...she gives thanks for all the fruits of feminine holiness. Notice how Pope John Paul II emphasizes the rich variety that exists among great Catholic women. From papal documents to the lives of the saints, the Church sends us the message over and over again: There is no one right path to authentic Catholic womanhood. God has a special plan for your unique gifts and talents. St. Catherine of Siena famously stated, "Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire." We tend to focus on the second, more dramatic part of the statement, but the first is just as important: Be who God meant you to be. Embrace the one-of-a-kind brand of holiness that God has chosen for you. Reject your sins, but love your quirks. And the next time you look in a mirror, remember that you're looking at a woman who can set the world on fire. The above excerpted from Style, Sex and Substance , a book on motherhood, sex, jobs, the culture and the power of a red suede pump.

How I Fell Out of My Minivan and into My Identity