My Crazy Catholic Life

“People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered. Love them anyway.
If you do good, people may accuse you of selfish motives. Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you may win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway.

The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.

Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway.

People who really want help may attack you if you help them. Help them anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you may get hurt. Give the world your best anyway.”

• Mother Teresa

I was going to copy this whole article like I have been the others, but I decided that because it is the last one I would encourage you to go check out this beautiful site to read it for yourselves.

But how? How to wait for him? We’re at an age that is generally marked by a great enthusiasm and impatience for the future. We have one foot in our childhood and one foot in the next stage of our life’s journey. Our growing up is darkened a little by a wistful remembrance of our childhood days, but we know we cannot go back, so we direct all our passion to the future. And we begin to see it, in a way, for the first time.

We were always observers of that future world when we were small, and in fact we observed far more keenly that many of the inhabitants did. But we didn’t think about it too much; our business was with the occupants of fairyland, with the merriness and the magic and the hard unwavering code of morality. Quite naturally we had no interest in living anywhere else.

And then we began to get older. We’re the fortunate ones whose severance from childhood wasn’t quite so difficult to bear. It didn’t make us cynics, and it didn’t make us bleak. Our passage was gentler, for though we lost the unspeakable innocence of that time, we still had our sense of wonder. We didn’t believe Peter Pan when he said that one could be too old for fairyland. Fairyland was for children, but age had nothing to do with it. The words we believed were the words of Christ, who said that we must be as little children if we wanted to pass through the gate.

That’s why we’re here in fairyland now, sitting out on the tower balcony. The weather is very good, of course; it’s inconceivable to think of the princess waiting in poor weather (though one never does know… her prince might make his appearance on a rainy day). It’s most likely a warm day in late spring or early summer, for that’s the time of year when princesses sit on their balconies most often. That’s the time of year when her friends are riding off with their princes to their happily ever afters, and she is left alone, wondering what could be delaying her own.

She’s still in fairyland, though she grows older. In one way fairyland is more real to her than it was when she was a child. As a child she listened to the tales of love and romance; and now she realizes with a great thrill that for her it could actually be true. The future looks exciting, full of both challenges that she longs to overcome and joys that she longs to experience. She’s in an extraordinarily awkward position, for though she just got over her little period of mourning for the past, she has accepted that the future is what she is called to. And just as the acceptance turns to a wild eagerness and she prepares to set out, something says: “Wait.”

It could be that it’s only the absence of a prince that restrains her; or it could be that even if he were to come at that moment she would still linger back because the King calls her to something else at this time. Whatever the reason, she finds herself come to an abrupt standstill just as she was picking up the momentum to go into the future world.

And this is where we find her, and where I find myself. Waiting.

One could come to the conclusion that waiting is a very easy thing to do. All one has to do is sit back, enjoy life, and wait for the good things to come. The balcony is a pleasant spot, what with the sunshine and magnificent view of the land, and sooner or later he surely will come up the road.

A princess could get the idea that because she is called to waiting it follows that she is called to inaction. And there is that passive form of waiting. There is, however, another kind of waiting, a kind that is very active and involved in setting the course for the future. It doesn’t wait for the tides to turn this way and that, or for the breeze the blow hither and thither. This waiting, though it is waiting, is undertaken in a way that the princess takes advantage of all her opportunities, prepares for the future, and directs the course of her life.

I’m not necessarily talking about going out and looking for a man. I don’t have any disagreement with this, though I don’t have any words of advice to offer. I’ve heard that church groups and other such places where you’ll meet likeminded Catholics are advisable, but I have no personal experience. The path my King has set before me is the path to college, and trying to find a husband before I go could very easily lead me off of that path.

I’m not saying either that a girl has to go to college. I’m talking about no specifics whatsoever; it’s the attitude that I’m concerned with. Wherever God calls her to go, whether it be to actively search for a spouse, or go into the work world, or go to college, or stay home as I have for all the past years of my life, there is one thing that every girl should have in common: the way she undertakes her waiting.

For the Introduction and Parts 1-16, please click the link in my sidebar.

The princess who has found the secret of Surprise has found the secret to joy and peace. She is confident because she is entirely open to God’s will. For her life is an adventure, and her waiting is tempered with a great anticipation. She believes that her prince will come around the bend someday; but she doesn’t know what he’ll be like – beyond certain obvious traits, such as devotion to God, maturity, responsibility, and such, which will be necessary if he’s to make a good husband and father.

She expects nothing, because she wants to be surprised.

In Chesterton’s play of that name – The Surprise – the King is to be married to the Princess Christina, for he promised to make her his wife when he was young. His heart, however, belongs to the lady Maria. Nevertheless, he goes to the altar to fulfill his promise and marry the Princess. After the ceremony is performed he lifts the veil from her face and sees that it is Maria, his beloved, who is his wife. He gives a great cry, and the Princess, who has remained behind after switching places with Maria, says: “That is the cry that has not been heard on earth since it was heard in Eden. It is the cry of Surprise.”

The girl who has planned out the entire course of her romance without the input of one of the principal players – her man – sets herself up for disappointment, because chances are she never will meet the man who lives up to her many and detailed expectations. And even in the event that she does find that man, it was only what she expected.

The girl who believes in the Surprise wants both to give and hear that cry of Eden. The King in the play removed the veil from his bride and saw that she was not the woman he expected, but the woman he loved. When the prince rides up to her tower the princess does not want to see the man she expected, but the man she loves. She doesn’t want the experience to be routine, but so astonishing that she is always full of wonder and gratitude.

This isn’t to say that she has no expectations whatsoever. Both for her own sake and for his she must have very high standards. But there is, I think it will be acknowledged, a difference between standards and whims. There is a difference between saying: “He must be a Catholic,” and saying: “He must be familiar with Mozart.” There is a difference between saying that he must be capable of caring for a family and saying that he must be capable of dancing quite beautifully.

Standards are a necessity. The princess is too precious to give herself to just any man that happens to come along. She respects him too much to make it too easy. This will be addressed more fully later.

Whims are no more than that, though. They change often. I know this from personal experience. I had all sorts of ideas about what my man would be like as a young teenager. That picture looked different every year. And I decided eventually that it was nonsensical, and that I didn’t want to build my vision of marriage on that. I didn’t want a man who was everything I wanted and nothing of himself. Not only did I want to be surprised by him in himself, but I wanted to be surprised by everything that he knew that I didn’t. I wanted to be grateful for every way in which he differed from me. I wanted him to introduce me to things that I knew nothing about, and I wanted to have the immense joy and pleasure of sharing my loves with him. If he didn’t know how to dance, very well; we’d have ever so many delightful evenings dedicated to that. And whatever he knew that I didn’t, I would learn, and so many new and wonderful things would be opened to me.

And that is where I stand now: waiting, with high standards but no whims. I expect nothing. I expect nothing not to avoid disappointment, but I wait in hope and anticipation, and when I go out on my tower balcony to watch that road for a few moments, I murmur Chesterton’s words softly to myself: “Blessed are they that expecteth nothing, for they shall be gloriously surprised.”

I want and wait for the Surprise.

For the Introduction and Parts 1-15, please click the link in my sidebar.

She wants him. This general notion of wanting him is natural, and can apply to all princesses.

Certain specifics, however, are dependent on the individual. All princesses want him, but they will vary on what they want in him. Every princess has some standards. Unfortunately some of them fall into the trap of elevating mere whims into standards, and their longing becomes very self-absorbed. Rather than look to give of themselves their outlook is decidedly greedy.

Amongst my acquaintances we refer to it as “Anne Shirley syndrome.” Those of you familiar with the series by L.M. Montgomery will have an idea of what this looks like. Anne was an extremely idealistic and romantic girl, which I have no objections to. The problem lies in the way in her faulty understanding of ideals and romance. As a young girl she paints a vivid picture of her ideal man: dark, melancholy, full of poetry and moonlight, and so forth.

Many girls have similar ‘ideals.’ Handsome, they say, and he must be wealthy (or he mustn’t be), and he must play a musical instrument, and he must like such-and-such type music and read such-and-such books, and he must dress in this way, and speak in that way, and so on and so forth.

Frankly I don’t think that this sort of obsession with non-essentials is laying a good foundation for a solid marriage. It’s very self-centered. It’s all about what she wants and requires. She has unrealistic demands and expects him to fulfill all her wishes to the minutest detail. There is no sense of giving in her attitude towards him.

I have a feeling that she wouldn’t be so thrilled if she were to find out that she was excluded from the list of many men because she didn’t possess certain qualities. Imagine that you meet a wonderful young man, and you’re growing fond of one another, and… you don’t quite fit his list, because your taste in music isn’t similar enough to his, and out you go.

There would be enough pain in knowing that he disqualified you right from the start because you didn’t dress the way he deemed ideal. You would probably feel a bit of anger and irritation. In fact, you would probably figure that you wouldn’t want to attach yourself to such a man anyway.

So consider that a good man might not want to attach himself to such a girl who would reject him on the basis of his hair color or his favorite book.

Some standards are necessary; but mere details should never be required. The fundamental frame of mind behind that obsession with non-essentials strikes me as being the same as that which is behind lust. It’s a reducing a human being into mere characteristics. In the case of lust, one reduces another into no more than a body; and in the case of foolish requirements one reduces another into no more than a collection of interests, tastes, and abilities.

A man is not a possession. He’s not like the particular outfit that you have in mind to wear. For that outfit you plan out all the details: there will be a tuck here, a pocket there, and the fabric will be of such a colour and such a pattern. You can’t do that to a man. It’s degrading to his humanity. He is created in the image of God, and has a great dignity.

We women justly complain when a man considers as a collection of body parts. Young ladies – particularly us, the romantic princesses – have a great temptation to do something similar thing to men, and instead of looking at them as individuals possessed of a great dignity we consider them to be a collection of various traits.

It is a lust, of a different sort. It has little respect for human dignity, it looks only at what it can take and have, and it demands everything of others while being unwilling to sacrifice anything of its own.

And then there’s the Surprise.

For the Introduction and Parts 1-14, please click the link in my sidebar.