It's been a long time since I have written. Not for lack of material - my family life affords me incessant writing material. Rather I've felt nudged by the Holy Spirit to withdraw from this space, to focus on being present, absorbing all of those life lessons myself rather than trying to process them into writing and then sharing them in a public space. In doing so, I've realized just how much I struggle with attachment to prideful things - my intellectual life, my quiet time, people's perception of me, needing to be right or the first to know, and then sharing it all with everyone I can.
I don't come here, now, writing to express that I've conquered these attachments in the few short months of my absence here. I can only imagine it will take an entire lifetime to do that. I only come with a newfound awareness of them - an awareness that could only have been made known to me through my family life. Daily - nay, moment by moment - my vocation as a mother is stripping me of me - my time, my sleep, my energy, my comforts, my hobbies, my will. I'd love to begin each morning with a coffee and the daily readings and end each evening with contemplative prayer and time to write here or in my journal or maybe do a craft or play some music. I'd love to take a shower each morning - a leisurely one, taking time to appreciate the warm water and cleanliness. I'd love for a solo trip to Walmart to not feel like a cause to rejoice for being unfettered, free to use a bathroom without a strategic plan, or free to walk past the toy department without trepidation, wondering which offspring would get sucked in and cause a fuss.
Recently, on one of these elusive solo trips, as I was oggling the cheap home decor and day-dreaming about redecorating our entire house, it dawned on me that this must be what a prisoner feels like when they clean up trash on the side of the highway. It might be short lived, it might be mundane, it might even be work. But hey man, it is unfettered. And it's just enough of a taste of freedom that it stirs the captor's imagination, gives him renewed life and hope, and leaves him salivating for more.
Let's be clear. I love my kids. I love my husband. I love my house. I love my life, and I would not change it for anything. But when I'm tired and am facing a trial, I am able to justify just about anything. I deserve this iced coffee from the drive thru. I deserve some quiet time. I deserve a day off. Me, me, me. Rather than responding to trial with an attitude of humility and acceptance, I respond with an attitude of self-pity and victimhood. That's not to say that relief is not helpful in the midst of trial, it is just to say that the attitude and attachment towards it needs to be ordered properly. My family life has revealed to me all of my areas of weakness and selfishness, my attachments to comfort and control, and above all, how prone I am to anger when my will is challenged.
On that glorious aforementioned trip to Walmart, I began listening to an episode of the podcast Pints with Aquinas, where Matt Fradd interviews a Byzantine Catholic Nun named Sister (now Mother) Natalia. And wouldn't you know, they discussed this very topic of attachment and a conflict of wills. At one point, Sister Natalia mentions an analogy of humanity, stating that we are all like rocks in a rock tumbler. Our jagged edges - our selfish wills, our broken sinfulness, our emotional wounds - keep crashing and banging into each other. It's a painful process for everyone, but a necessary one for us to become smooth, rounded, beautiful and nice to touch.
For me, as a mom in a busy house of little kids, I am constantly longing for solitude. I want to run away to a hermitage somewhere where there is peace and quiet, and where I won't be so stirred to anger all the time. But Sister also goes on to quote St. John Cassian, a desert father from the fifth century, who talks about the necessity for us to actually engage in the rock tumbling process:
"Self reform and peace are...achieved...through our own long suffering toward our neighbor. When we try to escape the struggle for long suffering by retreating into solitude, those unhealed passions we take there with us are merely hidden, not erased. For unless our passions are first purged, solitude and withdrawal...impose on us an illusion of virtue and persuade us to believe that we have achieved long suffering and humility because there is no one present to provoke us and test us...but as soon as something happens which does arouse and challenge us, our hidden and previously unnoticed passions immediately break out like uncontrolled horses that have long been kept...idle, dragging their driver all the more violently and wildly to destruction.
Our passions grow fiercer when left idle through lack of contact with other people... Poisonous creatures that live quietly in their lairs in the desert display their fury only when they detect someone approaching, and likewise passion-filled men who live quietly not because of their virtuous disposition but because of their solitude spit forth their venom whenever someone approaches and provokes them."
So my running away to a hermitage not only would fail to solve anything, but according to St John Cassian, it would actually make things worse. In my peaceful retreat, I might get lulled into believing I have conquered myself, living in a perceived holy solitude, but never actually challenging my areas of brokenness or weakness. And then, when I do return to interacting with people, my anger would only grow fiercer and more venomous through a lack of exercise of self-control that human interaction affords me. Getting back to my trip to Walmart, this totally makes sense to me. Because escape from my vocation is like a drug - a trip to Walmart leads me to wanting an entire day off. On the days my kids spend with their grandmother, I am left wanting it to be an entire weekend. When my kids spend a weekend at my in-laws, I am left wishing for just one more day of solitude. It's never enough, always salivating for more. Do I hate my kids? Not at all. I miss my kids desperately when I am away from them. What I hate is my sinfulness, and how my children reveal to me my ugliest parts, my weakest links, my most glaring failures. I crave time away from my vocation not because of my virtue, but because it allows me to escape confronting myself and my lack thereof.
I was recently offered the opportunity to help with an upcoming retreat. My heart did a little dance at the very thought of it. But in discussing the logistics with my husband, it became very clear that it was a virtual impossibility for me, and would certainly be a disruption to our schedule, our routine, our family peace. Initially I became bitter and resentful, wondering when my break would come. But then, over the course of a 24 hour span, I was in touch with two moms who were witnessing their children moving out. The first was saying goodbye to her first-born, the other was saying goodbye to her youngest child. It really hit me that my opportunity for me-time would come faster than I wanted it to. It hit me that I shouldn't spend so much time longing for a retreat, dreaming of silence and solitude, or wishing for my kids to spend one more day at my in-laws. What I was doing was wishing away these days in the rock tumbler, bumping my rough edges with those of my husband, my children, my relatives. Sooner than later, my parents will pass away. Sooner than later, I will be watching my oldest move out, and then I will blink, and then my youngest will be gone. And then I'll have plenty of time for retreats, for contemplative prayer, for daily scripture, for hot coffee and long showers.
Mother Natalia mentioned that no one in her order was allowed to enter into a hermitage until they have been a professed religious for at least 15 years. This is to avoid exactly what St John Cassian was talking about. This is to ensure that the religious person seeking a hermitage is doing so after having smoothed out the rough edges in the rock tumbler of living in community with others - honing their character and virtue by submitting their control, detaching from their own will and desires, bearing others patiently, controlling their anger, bridling their tongue, and learning to serve others with true charity and selflessness. In my opinion, there is no better monastery - no better rock tumbler - than the family life, because of our intimacy, our history, our connections. We reveal our ugliest parts, our deepest and most broken attachments - our roughest edges - in the confines and comfort of our own home. So may God grant me and all mothers and fathers the grace to lean into the tumbling, to let go of trying to control its direction, and to trust that it will smooth us, our spouses, and our children in the process, so that we may all grow in virtue and in gratitude for the other rocks in our life that help us to realize our true, smooth, beautiful, precious potential.