Of Trads and Deconstructionists

A few years ago, I got a little bug to start a blog which highlighted all the negative things I've been experiencing in my traditional community. It was going to be sort of tongue-in-cheek, but focused on the many true reasons why the traditional communities sometimes get a bad rap. It was to be called, "Clutching My Pearls," after the silly phrase people use when they're making fun of us trads. 

Funny, right?

Well, I decided not to do it after all. I realized that if I did that, I might be tempted to fall into the same mindset as deconstructionists, because I was coming from a place of hurt. I have had trad friends hurt me. Trad priests, and higher leadership have also let me down. There have been trads who hurt my children, too, which, as a mother, is really a difficult kind of injustice to contend with. But I didn't want to align myself with all the many minds out there that deconstruct generally good things solely because they have been hurt by them. 

Here are just three reasons why:

1. In my experience, the main objective of the deconstructionist (in this sense), is to destroy stuff in order to make themselves feel better. It's the weaponizing of strong feelings in order to tear down someone else. When you're hurt by someone over and over, it's understandable to want to find a place where your feelings have a voice, but it's easy to fall into the false mindset that you're doing something about your pain by deconstructing that person or group. Trying to destroy someone isn't really productive in any sense; it is literally destructive. 

2. It's a dishonest and fruitless way to heal. It's not only a false narrative about an entire group of people, it's also not a genuine path to healing. Usually, people don't find healing when their MO is to deconstruct. They end up in an echo chamber, which illuminates their pain and magnifies the imperfections and sinfulness of other people. It also isn't healthy, and it certainly won't incite healing. If anything, it'll just perpetuate a cycle of anger and pain. I've noticed a rising theme of anger within the deconstructionists, and a lack of peace. This is not a healthy path to healing. Deconstructionists usually paint these dark pictures of what they perceive is the cause of their pain, when most of the time, the truth is that it's one person who happens to be such and such a way, or it's one small group, not the entire group of whatever category they fall under. For me, I could easily deconstruct the traditional Catholic world as a whole, but it wouldn't be productive, nor- most importantly- honest. It's important to not place blanket statements on a group of people, especially when you know for a fact that not every single one of "them" are that way. 

3. Aligning myself with the same mindset of deconstructionist would be to cut myself off from the truth, goodness, and beauty found within our faith. One example of what this looks like is their deconstruction of the lives of some saints. Like totally rewriting their story, spreading a false narrative about the reality of their saintly lives, perhaps in order to quell some growing guilt in their own life, perhaps to water down the faith, and spread doubt within the minds of those still searching or still unsure. I don't know the reasons. However, it's one thing to recognize that NONE of the saints were perfect, and many led sinful pasts before becoming saints. It's totally different to put a slant on their lives that questions their sainthood entirely, when we have so much in the way of proof, tradition, and teaching to honor the original belief about them. 

Listen, I'm somewhat of a "trad life refugee" myself, having experienced a well of hurt and pain, judgment, control, pretense, (and gosh, the unhappiness, what's with all the unhappiness?) coming specifically from some of the people (including priests!) who identify as trad Catholics.... I get it. I've been betrayed, abandoned, and let down by people I thought I could trust within the traditional community, because of radical beliefs or superior attitudes. Or just plain brokenness which, in trad communities is sometimes twisted into virtue, and weaponized. I just don't believe that "deconstruction" is the way to go, and I think I'd say this even if my trauma was deeper than it is.

To my fellow traditional Catholics who have suffered at the hands of their own trad community: 

Don't be a deconstructionist, tearing down the beauty of the traditional faith because of the ones who have hurt you, and painting it into some warped picture because of your trauma. It isn't everyone who aligns themselves with trad life who are that way! I'm still a trad in most ways (specifically, I am still in love with the TLM, my husband is still the head of our household, and we are still open to life), and I don't operate in that manner.

Also, PLEASE don't leave the faith! Especially for your children's sake. Sort out what is actually true (for instance, veils are NOT about keeping the guy creep behind you from being distracted by your uncovered hair), and find your ground within the actual teachings of the Church, the lives of the saints, and most importantly, Jesus Christ in the Eucharist- the source and summit of the faith. Yes, I'm aware that this process can also be somewhat of a deconstruction of its own making, but the goal is Truth (which you have in the Catholic Church, the fullness of God's Truth). It is not searching for an outlet for your pain. And it is honest and good.

Remember: Always view it from the humble lens of LOVE for Him Who is LOVE. The traditional Catholic life is very beautiful if you shut out all the noise and opinions of extremists and liars, and listen to the Holy Spirit within you as you search for the Truth.  

 And...if you have been hurt in this way, my inbox is always open. ❤️‍🩹  

That Time God Took Away My Ability to Write

As an introspective and emotional person, I have always found solace in writing.  Growing up as the sixth child of seven in a very busy, and sometimes frequently always loud home, when I would lose myself in the chaos, it only took putting ink to paper to find myself again.  I filled journals with my thoughts, poetry, tears. It was how I handled the difficult or major things. I never felt much of a need to write down my feelings otherwise.  This practice served me well as I grew, and I carried it into my adult life. As I contemplated marriage, had babies, moved. As my husband lost jobs, I lost babies, we lost family... I wrote.

Writing is my outlet.  Whether it’s good writing or not, gibberish or coherent, it allows me to freely and safely express myself, my deepest longings, thoughts and fears.  Through it I unpack, sort through and face it all, and I am more apt to transition to a place of healing from the painful things, or a better understanding of anything major.  Writing out what’s in my mind and heart has always been much easier than speaking it, and has served as the means by which I am able to process life as I see it.

This past December I had my seventh baby.  I was three and a half weeks from my expected due date and suddenly was facing high blood pressure, HELLP syndrome and an induction.  I had a scare an hour after my baby was born where I was unresponsive for some time, and in that time I had somewhat of an interesting experience I am still trying to understand.  The whole twenty-four hour + event left me raw, exhausted to my bones, and completely unable to process anything the way I normally would. Moreso, I was unable to write. Anything.

I was quite numb for the first two months after.  Emotion spilled out less than a handful of times, briefly, but even then I could not write.  I remember lying in bed one night, balancing my baby on my legs, staring at her and crying. She had just recently become less of a stranger to me, and I was marveling at her beauty, our growing bond, and the grace of God.  It was one of only a few times I had been able to look at her without numbness at that point.

It wasn’t until the next day or so that I realized something.  I had been striving for several weeks to somehow write an article about my labor that I didn’t remember, and I had been completely unable to. I’d start, then stop. Erase it all.  Begin again. There were too many holes, too many gray areas. There was too much I felt but couldn’t express. Too much sifting through murkiness, only to end up with hands as raw and empty as I felt inside.  I was grieving hard the fact that I could not write, that I couldn’t go through the process I normally do. I hadn’t been able to journal at all about it, and could not take from that what I needed to write the article.  What I realized was that the Lord had been whispering to me in various ways all this time to come to Him. To find my outlet in Him.

I didn’t have an ‘aha’ moment with that or even a great spiritual event afterward leading me to my state of ability to write.  Nothing like that. It was a slow progression over the next week or so, realizing that though I usually prayed and wrote (and often wrote my prayers as my means of processing), this time, with this, the Lord wanted me to pray only.  To come to rest at the foot of His cross and abide there for a time. I didn’t have anything I needed to be able to process otherwise and there was no way of obtaining it without that time with Him.

When I finally surrendered to that idea, putting aside my notebook and my laptop, something in me started to crack open.  Whenever I felt any sort of pain or became aware of the lingering numbness within me, I consistently returned to Him. Again and again, I prayed and cried, and I felt reassurance dawn over and over, tip-toeing ever so gently into my heart. Pieces of the puzzle began to take shape, their smooth edges fitting just so with others.  The ones that were still hazy with jagged edges unable to be clearly defined had to be set aside. I had to accept that I would never have the whole picture. But what I did have, I was able to take from. I was able to write about my feelings, my ordeal, and from there I was able to form the article I eventually ended up submitting to a magazine.

Now I am 14 1/2 weeks out from having had my precious baby.  I don’t necessarily feel healed completely. But I do sense a shift in direction on my path.  I suspect that in the next few weeks and months, more things will present themselves to me to sort through.  What I went through was no small thing and I am learning more and more how dangerous HELLP syndrome is and could have been for me and my baby.  Although I am more able to function and deal, some days are harder to grasp the light of than others. Some days still leave me somewhat raw.  But I know that no matter what, any ability I have...to heal, to write, to laugh, to love, comes from Him and Him alone, and I am nothing...I can do nothing, even write my feelings...without Him.

Trust

A thousand times I've felt the weight of my laboring through this season of my life, felt its jagged edges scrape against me, the burden of carrying six souls through this world, hoping that they make it relatively unscathed. Hoping that they are not marred too much by its ugliness, and in particular, not by the failings of their haggard, desperate mother.

A thousand miles I've tread the path in stark silence, memories aching to be expelled, worries drowning out my inability to just do the next thing. Just staring into blank space.  With joyful feet around me, kid-noise echoing, and I, too unwell to even crack a smile through my pain.

I wrote once that I used to think God made a huge mistake in giving mothers just two arms to care for their babies.  I wrote this at a time in my life where that weight and the shifting grief within me over a life I had to let go of, was heavy on my mind.  When the few children I had then already felt like too much for me, and I wasn't sure if I was capable of living the life I was called to. 

Motherhood.

Of course I could live it.  Of course.  But could I live it well?

I look behind me and see the tiny toes in the sand which follow their mother's path out to sea, to the raging waters of this life where the world is vast and often dark, the depth of knowledge and understanding and love not quite known..  Those little toes stepping lightly into the weathered boat made in the crooks of arms encircling, trusting and seeking and ready.  And I, unable to shove off, to let go.  To take their small hands in mine and set sail.

I cry out:

What if I lose sight of the beacon?  What if even in the calm, angry gray clouds threaten on the horizon, and I become lost? What happens to these babies of mine?

The Lord's answer:
 

Ah! But I do not make mistakes, and it only takes two arms to clasp your hands in prayer.  Stop wringing them in worry, stop faltering upon the shoreline and focusing on the horizon, imagining things that have not yet even come.  My lighthouse looms, always in the peripheral, the light of My Love a clear direction even against the raging waters.  The silence is for rest, rejuvenation. It is not for staring into the darkness, seeking out the jagged edges felt sweeping past raw feet in the surf.  Never mind those.  Never mind the hastiness and urgency welling up inside. Let go and realize that the I, the One who made those babies and called them out to sea, also made you, their mama, strong enough to bring them safely back to Me.