Season of Grey

Truth be told- I want to be happy.  I want peace in my heart, peace in my mind, peace in my relationships.  Apparently, I’m not the only one.  You can’t be on TV or internet for more than 5 minutes without being bombarded with ads that promise happiness in one way or another.  Purchase this subscription and equipment and lose weight fast.  Order this online tutorial and make your first million.  Discover the “one trick” that will make you look like a movie star.  Get this upgrade for security.  Drink this for health.  It’s honestly overwhelming.  And then there’s the ubiquitous mantra we find floating around everywhere, “Just follow your heart.”  

But then you look around and everyone is exhausted.  They live for the weekend and margaritas at “5 o’clock somewhere,” only to start it all again dragging in on Monday morning.  They are worn and their lives are a reflection.  Oh it may look like they have it altogether, the house, the dog, the white picket fence, the 2.5 children (scratch that-  the .5 children).  But when you look in their eyes they are wondering what in the world they missed.  Why are we so tired?  Why are we so depressed, along with every other person we know.  We followed our heart and it deceived us.  And then it was merciless and took us for all it was worth.  Because it would stop at nothing and left us blind, unable to find a way out of the pit.

What is wrong?  I feel like I should have been made for something and yet, I feel so far from anything that is real.  It is all just feels like a sham.

There was a season in my life that inside I refer to as the grey season.  I didn’t see anything in color anymore.  It was summer time.  Technically, everything was bright, vibrant, and green. The sun was out.  The flowers were at their peak.  But my life was grey.  This was not the life I had planned or that I thought God had planned for me.  We had a house.  My husband had a good job, although he was on the road most of the time for work.  We had 4 little ones and I didn’t even know how to talk to anyone over 5 years of age anymore.  It made me nervous.  And yet I felt God quietly summoning me to be open to life.  

I was angry.  I was frustrated.  Why was everyone else able to get away with “normal” Christian life and have only 2 kids and then go on and live their lives and not think about it so much?  Why were they not bothered by the fact that birth control was an abortifacient, even though they touted their “pro-life” stickers?  I had sought wise counsel from one pastor’s wife I knew.  She only had 2 kids and seemed to have it all together.  “Getting fixed after my second child was the best day of my life,” she declared with a smile.  Okay then.  So why not me?  

I was an adventurer- like Moana minus the two- piece.  In my late teens and early 20’s I’d travelled the world on missions trips from Eastern Europe to the Congo to South America, sailing on the Nile, climbing Mt. Sinai to watch the sunrise, and working in rural medical clinics in the mountains of Guatemala.  Now my life consisted of poo, a lot of poo.  Follow your heart they say.  And where would it lead me?  To cast it all away to follow my dreams.  What even were these dreams?  I’m was too tired to know.  I just knew that He (the big He) was asking of me to be open to life.  So much life.  My life was so full of life, screaming, teaming with life.  I wanted a little more dull.  A little more quiet.  A little more dignity and repose.  I had always been a lover of silence.  Now my life was the antithesis of silence.  

I did the popular thing, I went to a therapist.  I was a veteran so fortunately the VA offered one free of charge.  After 2 or 3 sessions of little things that were bothering me we got down to the nitty gritty.  I felt God calling me to be open to life.  And I knew I needed to respond.  But I was terrified.  Terrified of another baby, more nursing, more exhaustion.  Terrified that I might end of having like 30 kids, even though that was a biological impossibility.  But ultimately it came down to one question, “What was right?”  And I knew that the right thing was to do what God was calling me to do.  And this path was certainly not what my flesh wanted.  It was kicking and screaming, “Run!  Take birth control like everyone else.  How can God require this of me and no one else?”  It felt downright unfair.  And what if you don’t want to do what God is asking of you?  Grey.

One particular grey evening my husband and I were out walking on one of the local bike trails, pushing a stroller of course.  We were crossing over a highway on an overpass and we stopped to watch the cars roll under.  “What do I do?” I asked my husband.  “I know God wants me to be open, but I cannot even fathom it at this moment.  I feel pulled in two completely different directions.  The spiritual part of my desires to do the will of God, even if it requires sacrifice.  The other part of me wants to say, “Screw it all!  It’s not worth it.  I want to live MY life.”

He stopped for a moment and looked at me.  “God knows every thought.  He knows every struggle you’re having.  Ask Him to change your heart, to help you desire His will.  He is able.”

And that was it.  

God help me.  Change my heart, this cold, grey heart of stone.  Turn it to a heart of flesh.  

It wasn’t instantaneous, that’s for sure.  But slowly I responded.  “God, I don’t understand why you are calling me to this, but I trust you.”  I asked Him to change me with less than mustard seed faith.  And very slowly my world returned to color.  

At the time I wasn’t Catholic. I knew God and had a relationship with Him, but I had never read Humanae Vitae.  I was not aware that birth control was never a part of God’s plan for humanity, inspite of all its claims for freedom, control, happiness, and responsible living.  Rather, in being open to life, we truly fulfill the vocation of marriage.  Marriage was never just about grasping for happiness.

I only knew that I had to trust God.  I knew that ultimately He had the best plan for my life.  Where it would lead I had no idea?  I was still scared, still terrified of the thought of 30 screaming babies.  But I chose. If you’ve ever read Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress”, to me it was like choosing the path that went between the two tethered lions that were eager to tear me limb from limb.  

Robert was child #5.  He came after the grey season.  Hardest pregnancy I’d ever had.  Months battling lice with all the kids plus myself (I still have flashbacks), kidney stone, shingles, and gestational diabetes.  Not long after Robert’s arrival our entire family converted to Catholicism.  One day while laying on my bed, unable to get up due to the pain of the combination shingles and kidney stone I asked God, “Why is this so hard?”  It’s not very frequently that He answers so directly or succinctly, but this time He did.

“It is because of the seed within you…”  As baptized Christians we carry in us the divine life of God.  If we allow it to take root and grow it has the capacity to change the world.

Even above the longing for ease, we desired truth in our inmost being.  We desired a lasting happiness that could only be found in doing the will of God and living according to His plan, in His Church.  So many people are convinced that the Church is merely a string of rules, limits, a moral law, that will cut them off from what they truly want.  And then of course there’s the accompanying guilt they experience when they break those rules. They equate having limits, being “put in a box”, and having to follow rules, as cutting them off from their hearts desire and true pleasure.  Isn’t it easier just to not try.  So they choose what philosophers refer to as “moral relativism” or choosing “your own truth.”  We’ve all heard the mantra- “you do you, be yourself, do whatever your heart is telling you to do.”  

Contrary to common thought all these “dos and don’ts” aka the moral law was not created to minimize pleasure, but rather to maximize it. 1  Imagine a roadmap or Google maps.  It’s meant to guide you so you don’t take the wrong direction, run into trouble, or worse you’re yourself plunging over a cliff. 2

Although choosing to do whatever we want may reduce guilt in the short-term, guilt is necessary in order to keep one from future unhappiness. 

Then there is the analogy of pain.  Pain sends a message to our body that we need to stop doing whatever action is causing pain, such as touching a hot stove.  If we didn’t feel pain and continued to touch it, the damage could be irreversible.  In the same way, if we continue to choose the wrong way, even if we do call it “following our heart”, there is the horrible possibility that it could damn our souls to hell (atleast that’s what C.S. Lewis said).3  This is not an exaggeration to get our attention.  The path of choosing whatever feels good in the moment can ultimately trivialize repentance and imperil our salvation. ^4^

The other night our family of 10 was on a rare trip to Culver’s for some butter burgers and custard (if you haven’t experienced this Midwest joy you’re missing out!).  Most of us had ordered the kids meal that very conveniently came with a little cup of custard after our meal.  We had the huge corner booth with an additional table so we could all fit.  The waitress came to deliver our little cups of goodness.  She looked around and then at me, and with a truly curious look asked me the same question I get whenever we’re out together en masse.. “Are these all yours?” she asked wide-eyed.  My kids, particularly my older ones, kind of get a kick out of it. 

“They are.” I replied with a glimmer in my eye.

It was her response that took me aback.  “You must be a very brave woman.”

That was it.  There was no sarcasm in her voice. She meant it and she meant it with all sincerity.

I had always planned to be a missionary.  I just never expected it to be in N.E. Iowa with 8 kids.  It is a brave thing.  It’s bold and terrifying.  Even though I don’t get out of the house a lot, it shouts to a culture that embraces abortion and the casting off of moral norms like haute couture. 

Hardest thing I’ve ever done.  Wouldn’t trade it for the world.  

There is nothing in or of this world that can bring lasting pleasure or happiness.  But there is something more.  It will always involve a Cross.  But ultimately, it always brings about a Resurrection.

John 12:24, 

Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, 

it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.

References:

1 Peter Kreeft, A Refutation of Moral Relativism , at Catholic Culture (2024), at www.catholicculture.org

2 Kreeft, A Refutation of Moral Relativism , at Catholic Culture (2024), at www.catholicculture.org  

3 C.S. Lewis, The Poison of Subjectivism , at http://williamwoodall.weebly.com/uploads/1/0/2/2/10226906/the_poison_of_subjectivism.pdf