… The Odyssey Book XII: 16

(The following is a very honest entry about a dark time in my life, that you might see further how amazing is the grace and mercy of God.)

“Pandora’s Box” by J.W. Waterhouse

Alas we come to perhaps the darkest years of my life, though I did not realize until later how dark they truly were for me. During this next year and a half of my life I would make choices that still haunt me with guilt and regret. Here I will relate to you my thoughts on my first and only girlfriends. The women I wrote of in earlier entries were never my girlfriend (sorry for any confusion).

After my first year of college at the University of Wyoming, I came home for the summer, just in time for my sister’s graduation party. It was there that I first met “Cassandra.”

I thought nothing much of our first meeting, just a simple, “Hello my name is…” from each of us. But as the summer continued, Cassandra was more and more visiting my sister, as they were friends, and yet I still paid little notice.

One day I was playing Morrowind in my brother’s room, as I was very, very fond of doing in those days, and Cassandra came to visit my sister. Before her departure, she came out to see what I was up to. I explained a little about the game and chatted for a bit. When it came time for her to depart, she gave me a quick hug and left. I continued playing the game, thinking little of it (I was and still am a hugging person).

The silence of my brother is what snapped me out of game-hypnosis. I turned to look at him and he had a big goofy grin on his face. “What?” I asked. “I think she likes you,” he answered.

Something in my mind exploded while something in my chest (likely my heart) shrank into a cold, quivering ball. As my mind raced with the notion of, perhaps, someone liking me my heart reminded me of the three-fold curse upon me. Three times I had loved; three times I had been rejected.

But this time was different– she was falling for me. Could this be “the one?”

I opened my heart more and more to this possibility and, sure enough on June 6th 2003 we were “official” as they say. I couldn’t believe it, and neither could anyone else that I knew. My best friend at the time was quite jealous, which I actually enjoyed, for it was always he and never myself who had the lovely young lady as his side. I was on top of the world.

I had no idea I was so highly poised, though, that I might fall.

Our relationship began wonderfully. She was very lovely, having long hair, brown eyes and a free spirit. She and I shared similar interests in the things of days since passed, especially the medieval and turn-of-the-century. I also got to know her parents, and it was not long before I had won their trust, and I became especially close to her mother. Cassandra being an only child, I brought much joy into her mother’s life as the son she never had but always wanted. I also scored “big points” when her mother grilled me on many things, including my beliefs towards sex. I confidently told her of my promise to God, along with vows of chivalry, to wait until marriage. Her father was much easier to win over– once he found out I was Republican, any misgivings he may have had toward me evaporated.

It was a couple of weeks until our first kiss, offered by her in the spur of the moment as I prepared to depart for the evening. My head swam the whole night. “This is it!” I thought, “The curse is broken!”

As weeks went on, our kisses became longer and deeper, and soon enough kissing’s charm wore thin and things progressed. At the time I had not the spiritual fortitude to be able to step back and consider things before I did them; I was so madly (not deeply, but madly, as in “insane”) in love with her that pleasing her was the top priority in my life. Kissing evolved into making out and over the months of our relationship, many of them long-distance with her in Iowa and I in Wyoming, twisted into sexual activities that pushed the very boundries of my oath. Never, though, did we engage in full-out sex– I always was able to step back from the very brink. I wanted to jump, though, I wanted so badly to step off into that soul-igniting abyss of release and she wanted me to. But the promise I had made to God lingered like a sad echo in the recesses of my mind and I could not bring myself to make that jump.

Near the mid-point of our year-and-a-half together, a dark change came over Cassandra. She began to dress differently, more revealing, wearing things that one might find at Hot Topic. Her interest in vampires and other things of the night began to be more and more her forte, but I hardly noticed it at all. I was so blinded by my love-obsession for her that I saw right past it to the woman I fell in love with. I was so blind, in fact, that I turned my blind eyes to my friends and family who would relate to me, as gently as possible, their feelings that Cassandra was bad news and I should move on to someone better.

I ignored them all, believing (as I believe many people do when they “love” someone and others don’t agree with their choice) that they simply did not understand her as I did. Their disproval only fortified my intention of staying with her because I felt like I was the only one that could love her. I was so blind, in fact, that I did not even see her daily efforts to try and seduce me into giving her the full sexual experience she craved.

In the last couple months of our relationship the dark nature she had adopted (or simply allowed to surface, I do not know for certain) asserted itself more and more, to the point where she dyed her hair black. The last time I saw her before the end was Halloween weekend when she came to spend it with me. I was so happy, but even then I could see that she was not, and nothing I could do save for feeding her sexual appetite with what I was willing to give cheered her up at all. Again, and I say these things with no pride and only with complete shame and honesty, I sought only to please her. If only then, during these years of my life, had I the consideration to think about what would please God, perhaps I would not have fallen into such darkness, such a way of life contrary to the very heart and soul of my being.

It was the second week of November when she did not say, “I love you,” at the end of a phone conversation that I knew something was wrong. A few days later she called, asking if I could come home on the coming weekend so that we could talk. I arranged it to be so, and sure enough my suspicions were comfirmed. She said that she couldn’t see us working out in the future, and because I had always promised her from the beginning that I would love her until she didn’t want me to, I said my farewell and departed, not wishing her to endure long hours of tears and begging.

The issue was not quite settled, however.

Nearly a month passed, and from the grapevine I found that she was quite enraged with me for some reason. She wished to have some words with me and I was interested in hearing them. I visited her and she raged on for an hour about many little things she was unhappy with as pertained to our time together, everything from “never doing anything when she visited me in school” to me never getting angry or upset at her. Yes, that last one surprised me, too. After that I went back home, knowing full well that there was some deeper reason that she ended such a long relationship.

Eventually I sent in my spy, who was apparently trusted enough by Cassandra that she would tell him things that she wouldn’t even tell me while we were together. She made a full confession to him as to the main reason she broke up with me.

It drove her crazy that I would not have sex with her.

When I was told this, I couldn’t speak. Memories of every sexual compromise I made for her pleasure (and, selfishly, though almost unconsciously, for mine) came flooding back into my memory. I remembered the days of my more innocent youth and wept, for those days were dead. The full weight of my sins began to bear down upon me and I realized that though I did not technically break my oath to God, I may as well have. I was so ashamed of everything, so ashamed, and still to this day I am haunted by these things. It is hard enough to try not to think or fantasize unchastely in the realm of my mind, but it is doubly more difficult when you needn’t fight thought nor fantasy because the great beast of Memory is plagued with the very poison you wish to avoid. Unchastity and impurity are a part of me now, and it is only through the mercy of God and the Sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist that I can even live with the things I have done.

The lesson: God is so loving and so merciful that he has not only forgiven me but has called me to chaste marriage to his Church and a life time of love in his Son Jesus Christ. Sinner that I am! Who am I that I should receive such a gift?! He has forgiven me completely, and his mercy does not stop at forgiveness, but continues in him giving the graces I need to grow from my past mistakes and find joy in chastity though I feel so broken.

His mercy did not wait until novitiate, though, to begin its work, oh no. His mercy was barely retained, building up over the length of my time with Cassandra behind the dam of my blindness, and when my eyes were opened it burst forth and completely consumed me, slowly drowning who I had become that I might be raised into a new life of purity and chastity with him and his Son.

Wouldn’t you know it, clever fellow that God is, that he would heal my heart, would purify and chasten me, by calling me to fall in love with another? But before I could be ready for such a thing, I had to be broken and though it was not God (I feel) that broke me, he waited until I had broken myself, falling from the heights of pride and lust to be broken upon the Rock of faith I had all but abandoned in my heart.

I will be absent from the computer for probably three weeks at the most, though perhaps I will happen upon a computer long enough to update in that time. But you musn’t despair, for as maje_charis knows, the next blog will be what was once referred to as…. The Mystery Girl Saga.

St. Mary’s Church in Tipton, Iowa

Before I continue on relating how various women in my life played key roles in my vocational journey, I wanted to speak about how my faith played its role, or, how it has played a role as I so far understand it. Particularly in the Catholic Church (especially in the Eastern Rites!), we speak of “mysteries.” For example, our belief in the Eucharist, that bread and wine actually become the true and living Body and Blood of Christ, is a mystery (really? ). All seven of our Sacraments– Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Reconciliation, Anointing of the Sick, Matrimony and Holy Orders– are mysteries. I have to date received all but the last two (not that I’m trying to “collect” them), and so it is that I must speak to how they have been active in my life.

I was, like many of you, baptized shortly after my birth (about a month afterwards, I think; my memories at that age are a little hazy haha). I received this Sacrament at St. Mary’s Church in Vinton, Iowa where my parents are both from. A few years after my birth we moved from Palo, Iowa to Tipton and became a part of St. Mary’s Church (the one in the picture).

Though no one but the priest realized it at the time, my baptism was one of the greatest gifts my parents ever gave to me. It opened wide the doors of God’s mercy and grace, consecrating my life for God’s will, separating me from the world as a member of His holy people and serving as a spiritual “betrothal” and “marriage” to Christ. The gifts I received at Baptism cannot be described or numbered, and only in these later years of life have I begun to realize some of them. With Baptism, though, comes a responsibility that it seems more and more Christians are neglecting to acknowledge.

As Catholics we believe that we are baptized priest, prophet and king. Depending upon one’s vocation in life, these realities may be expressed differently, but it basically means to me that because of our baptism we are called to be holy, to be faithful witnesses of God in the world, and to remember the dignity of our royal heritage– in Baptism we become sons and daughters of God, the Lord of All. His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ becomes our brother and lord, and as Catholics we believe that Mary becomes our Blessed Mother. There is no king in all creation greater than our Father, no lord in all the earth above Christ the King, and no queen in heaven or on earth can rival the Mother of God in majesty, and it is into this family we are welcomed through the waters of Baptism. Puts a different perspective on how we should live our lives and how we treat ourselves and each other, doesn’t it? When I talk about Baptism, say, to young people here at the mission or down in the Lander jail, I challenge them to think about this reality before they are about to do anything. I challenge them to ask themselves, “Is this the way a son/daughter of God would act? Is this how I should treat a son/daughter of God?”

So, certainly, by entering into this royal household and this divine reality, God began to shape my life as he shapes every life. Though I would not recognize his handiwork until many years later, it truly began before I was even conceived and took off in a quite radical way when I was washed clean in the Jordan of Baptism.

In second grade I received the Sacrament of the Eucharist for the first time. I only remember a few details: wearing a white button-up shirt and a black clip-on tie, the cantor singing a song with all our names in it, and taking pictures with the priest after it was all over.

What I didn’t realize was that the process that began at Baptism was being further enriched and fulfilled. My spiritual “betrothal” and “wedding” (funny how we wear white at our Baptism, First Communion and wedding (matrimony)) was being consummated as Christ and I, young as I was, truly became “one flesh.” Again, this is the Catholic understanding of the Sacrament. Being that we believe the Eucharist to be the Body and Blood of Christ, when we “eat if [his] flesh and drink of [his] blood” (John 6: 53) we have true life within us, and as Christ told us he IS the Way, the Truth and THE LIFE. In the Eucharist we believe that we become one with him and he with us, just as a man and woman become one with each other in marriage.

First Communion, really, is a pretty radical moment in a young person’s life, though so few realize it, if at all, until many years later. I’m only beginning to understand the significance of this event, not only this first happening so many years ago, but also as I participate in it daily in my life as a Jesuit. Every Catholic’s hope, whether they are conscious of it or not, is to unite themselves with Christ as closely as possible, and it is made more possible, literally tangible in this Sacrament, and it is impossible for it not to change your life. If Christ unites himself to you in flesh and spirit, you will change and always for the better. The more open and conscious you are of this unity, the freer he is to work our Father’s will within you, and amazing things are promised to happen.

I was Confirmed in 1999, which was my sophomore year of high school. All I remember of the event is choosing St. Gregory the Great as my patron, free pizza, and then meeting the bishop on the day of confirmation, and some of the festivities afterwards. I chose St. Gregory because I was huge into music, and the parton saint of music is St. Cecilia and I wasn’t about to be Confirmed as “Cecilia.” Or “Cecil” for that matter. So I settled for St. Gregory, who is the patron saint of singers, and little did I know how much he would pray for me from that day on. I enjoyed choir in high school, and I could sing well enough, but imagine my surprise in my senior year of college at the University of Northern Iowa when I was accepted into its top two choirs and was asked by the director of operas to be her star bass for the following year! Poor woman; it broke her heart when I told her I was entering a religious order (though hers wasn’t the only heart I broke…)

I had no idea at the time of Confirmation as to what was going on, but what happened was the Holy Spirit really “kicked it up a notch” and began to work deeply in my heart. It was that same year, for example, that I made my own vows of chivalry and began learning more about who I was and who I wanted to be. I learned more about what was important in life and what wasn’t, and though I didn’t necessarily become a more prayerful person and a more active Catholic, the Holy Spirit plowed up the soils of my very being and planted many seeds very deep, waiting for them to sprout later in life when the rains of experience and the sunlight of grace would cause them to grow and bear fruit.

Being Catholic for me from the moment I was born to the day I left for college in Wyoming was pretty simple. Being Catholic merely meant waking up every Sunday morning around 9am or so, brushing my teeth, getting dressed in something more-or-less decent, and piling into the car with the rest of my siblings. This routine was altered slightly if we had to go somewhere on Sunday, in which case we went to Mass on Saturday evening.

And that was it! Being Catholic is SO easy! I am SO kidding, by the way! Not to say that it is hard; challenging would be a better word, but I would say, in many ways, it is easy.

Anyways, there came a crucial moment in my life when the whole of my existence balanced on the head of a pin. One Saturday night, my first alone by myself in my dorm room at the University of Wyoming, I was setting my alarm clock. I pondered, “Should I go to Church tomorrow?” What a strange thought; it was now my own decision! Should I sleep in and not go, or should I just keep going?

Really it came down to two things, both of them having the same outcome and all of them revolving around my father. I love my father, and going to Church on Sunday is something very important to him and I certainly didn’t want to cross him on the issue, even though I was “old enough” at almost-nineteen to make decisions “by myself.”

I realized that, sooner or later, he would ask if I’d found a Catholic Church to go to, and I could answer him in the following ways:

1. “Sure Dad, I found a good one down the street and I went there last Sunday.” (Lie)

      Outcome? “Thou shalt honor thy mother and father. Thou shalt not bear false witness.” (Bad option!)

2. “No Dad, I don’t feel like going any more.” (Truth)

       Outcome? Yeah… not much better than the lie. I wouldn’t be honoring my father, certainly, but he would have been very upset and disappointed with me, and I wouldn’t want that burden upon me.

3. “Sure Dad, I found a good one down the street and I went there last Sunday.” (Truth)

      Outcome? Sure I had to get up in time to shower, etc. for an 11am Mass (SO hard, I know), but that was OK by me compared to the other options. So I went with this one.

It turned out that my aunts and uncles and cousins went to the same Church and God was so happy with me that he let me go home with one aunt after Mass for: free homemade lunch, free laundry services, playtime and Disney videos with the cousins and a free ride to Wal-Mart and the dorm at the end of the day. I decided that I would keep going to Church until I thought of an ironclad, water-tight reason not to. Never did find one….

A few months later I still had only one friend in the whole college– my roommate. I saw in the church bulletin that they were going to watch The Fellowship of the Ring. I was totally there! And also in attendance were two men about my age, whom I instantly made friends with. Then the next day I made friends with their friends. In two days my friend numbers jumped from one to over ten.

Then during the next semester I was invited to attend a Search retreat. I knew nothing about retreats, but I went anyways and it completely changed my life. What? Being Catholic can be fun and exciting? Huh? Reconciliation is awesome? Absolutely. Yes.

The small candleflame of faith ignited at my Baptism, kept alive by the Eucharist and fanned by Confirmation finally lit my heart on fire and began its slow, all-consuming effort to conquer me. I grew in my faith over the next year and even joined the Knights of Columbus, achieving a years-long dream of become a real knight. I felt like I had one foot in heaven, and I loved loved LOVED being Catholic (still do)!

However, that summer would introduce me to something I was completely and woefully under-prepared for– my first (and only) girlfriend.

It is with great joy that I relate to you one of the most important lessons of my life, a lesson that would shape my heart and soul in ways that would, much to my surprise, lead me closer to God. May I formally introduce my high school classmate, poweralto84. As you can very plainly see by her profile pic, she is absolutely gorgeous, and as far as I have known in the past and still believe, this beauty comes from a deep wellspring of grace within her heart- what you see is merely the reflection of the truer beauty shining within.

You see, it was through this very woman, the one whose blog you have hopefully linked to briefly, that God reached into the very core of my being and flipped a switch that gave me an instantanous insight- the young woman known to us here as poweralto84 is a truly beautiful woman.

Here’s how it happened, as best as I can recall.

I have been a classmate of poweralto84 as long as I can remember, perhaps even as far back as kindergarten, but I definitely remember her from my elementary and middle school days. She has always been very pretty, and I remember her being so even when I was going through the “girls-are-icky” phase of boyhood. I always remember her seeming to be shy, quiet and always polite. I never really got to know her very much, though, until we were in high school.

I believe it was the fall of our senior year… I can’t remember exactly; it could have been the spring of our junior year, too. At any rate, the time for student-directed plays was upon us and auditions had begun. My friend, known as Claire in the previous post, had written a play and I promised her I would audition for it. Being that I am always willing to help out, our drama teacher had me read parts for other plays to help out people auditioning in them. When the cast lists came out, I had been chosen for the lead role in a play called, “Ambivalence.” I was shocked and slightly terrified; I had never done theater and here I had the lead in a one-act play!

The play was about a young man who is the passenger of the car when his father, the driver, crashes and ends up being killed. The young man is plagued by the tragedy, and throughout the play there is an angel and demon behind each shoulder guiding or goading him at every moment. The idea of suicide begins to creep into his life, but the angel continues to remind him of the young woman whom he loves, and this keeps him clinging to life for the first part of the play. This woman, who was named Sarah I think, was portrayed by poweralto84.

I remember first seeing the cast list, her name being below my own. The first thought that went through my head was, “I hope there isn’t a kissing scene!” Not that the thought of kissing so lovely a lady was disgusting in any way whatsoever, but the thought of my first kiss being a fake, onstage kiss chilled my heart. Also, the thought of someone as base as myself kissing someone so beautiful filled me with terror and a strong sense of unworthiness, an experience that literary characters like Quasimodo and The Phantom of the Opera could relate to very well indeed.

In the middle of the play, my character is eventually pressured by the demon to jump off of a bridge, though the lights in the auditorium turn off in just the right moment to leave the audience wondering, “Did he really jump?”

Then comes the “infamous bedroom scene,” jokingly named so simply because it is set in a bedroom (and nothing else!). There was a bed in the center of the stage in which poweralto84′s character peacefully slept. In comes my character from the shadows, sitting on the edge of her bed. She awakens, relieved to see me and asking where I have been for the last two weeks. I reply in very broad, riddle-ridden answers before the demon comes to take me away, leaving her character in tears and hysterics. THE END.

So.

One night at rehearsal we were practicing “the bedroom scene.” I was very, very nervous because we had only recently dropped script and I believe it was also a dress rehearsal. You see, normally, during this scene I was blessed with having a script to bury my eyes and face in. This night was different, though I had no idea how life-altering it would end up being.

During this scene I looked straight into poweralto84′s beautiful eyes and I froze. I couldn’t remember any of my lines. The only thing I could think of was how beautiful she was. Of course, I already knew she was beautiful, but something about this moment was different. Her beauty was being seen differently now.

The vision of her stayed with me for several weeks and continually caused me to ponder the mystery of that moment. What had changed? Why was this so important? What was happening to me? I began to think I was falling in love with her, but I quickly dismissed it because it felt so radically different. Then, out of the blue, it hit me.

It was adoration. It was awe. It was the realization of true beauty. I was shocked; I had never considered such a thing before. It hit me then and there, however, that something inside me had changed from being able to appreciate women as being beautiful, changed from holding them in high regard, treating them honorably, and many other good attitudes, beliefs and behaviors I had towards women. All of that was based mainly on chivalrous idealism, attraction, and as a way to apologize for my own perceived “hideousness.”

But all of that changed because of what I saw in her eyes. I realized that within that woman and, truly, every woman, lay a beauty that could, if fully revealed, turn the very sun to ash with its intensity. It was because of this beauty that I must adore, honor, respect and love women; not because some code or idea told me to. What good are those things if they exist only for their sake? Such things need a higher purpose, a true calling and firm justification. This beauty was it; suddenly my life had a purpose beyond itself or even other people in general- it had an eternal, universal purpose.

I also realized that very few women, including poweralto84, realized this about themselves. It was as though the very night sky did not know that it possessed the beauty of the stars within its very self; it knew only of the black between them all. I resolved to tell poweralto84 about it, about what I had seen within her. It was a far greater effort than I ever realized it could be, but after a matter of hours over instant messenger, the truth of her beauty began to sink in. It was at the time the greatest thing I had ever accomplished and I was overjoyed at being the one to help her realize such a truth about herself. Still to this day, so she has told me, that discussion brings her consolation amidst the pressures and standards of our world. As we moved on to college, she was a great poetic inspiration for me, and I had the great honor and gift of being her personal poet for almost two months.

How has this brought me closer to God?

I did not know it at the time, but that deep inner beauty that I had stumbled upon, truly, was the very nature of God’s beauty; it was my first, close-encounter with God that I am aware of. When I was able to sense and sometimes even see the beauty of women in this new way, I was really seeing the face of God reflected upon the mirror of each woman. Over the years my appreciation, awe and adoration of woman’s beauty has brought me deeper and deeper into gratitude for God having created Eve, for gifting all of His creation with such beauty that I, me, this ordinary creature, might be reduced to nothing more than a teary-eyed beggar in the face of God’s image spilling His beauteous light all over my heart!

During my time in the noviate I have grown deeper in this gift, especially as I learn and live chastity and prepare for the vow in August. Though this gift made me anticipate the vow with great dread and sadness in my first months, I have come to see and realize what an encounter I am being given with God in the beauty and life of every woman I meet- in every woman I encounter the very Love I wish to vow myself to forever. This realization has brought me so much joy and peace that I sometimes can barely contain my happiness, and very rarely does the thought of a celibate and chaste life bring me any sadness except when coupled with memories which will be related in later posts. I pray always that this gift, to see women on such a level beyond what fashion magazines, pornography, film and other media try to make us see, will help me to bring them all closer to the very source of the beauty within them- our amazing, all-beautiful, all-loving God.

So, to all of you women who visit my blog, God bless all of you and thank you for sharing the gift of your beauty–God’s own beauty–with me.

Third love… you think I would take a hint! But I have come to be grateful for the wonderful gift God has given me in a heart that can be literally smashed to pieces, yet continue to love despite and pain or fear that might result in offering itself to another.

This next love came very gradually (if you can consider three and a half months to be gradual) as I came to know a girl I will call Claire. I cannot recall at this time how we first came to be acquainted with one another, but it was a fateful October afternoon that we became friends, as people who survive a harrowing ordeal become friends. You see, it was on a lovely October walk in the woods that we discovered our hearts had been wounded by the same blade- a blade earlier refered to as Maggie. Please do not take calling her a “blade” to mean that I harbor any malice toward Maggie; as I tried to relate in the previous entry, I have forgiven her entirely. But I use blade to convey the idea of wounding, for as you have read my heart was deeply wounded by Maggie. It so happened that my friend Claire had been dating Maggie’s former boyfriend who, via a brief email, broke up with Claire to be with Maggie once again.

Both Claire and I shared a deep pain and resentment of the two (childish, I know!) and this brought us together. Over the following few months I began to feel like I was falling in love with Claire; she was lovely, true, but she also had a wit, an artistic spirit, and an energy about her that was undeniably attractive to me. However, my past two failures at love haunted me and, believing myself truly to be cursed, I presented to my dear friend the ember of truth that was smouldering in my heart for her, lest it eventually roar into a fire that must painfully be drowned in tears like the two before it.

Claire sweetly, honestly and gently accepted my ember as a sincere gift of true and deep friendship, but confessed that such an ember did not burn within herself. While grateful for the offering, she could not return such affection and wished very much to remain friends. I accepted this, relieved that our friendship would remain intact and that I had “taken care of things” before they got out of hand, so to speak.

Yet, I was crushed. The ember, I felt, had gone out and with it had gone all hope of ever finding love.

I see now that this was quite a dramatic sentiment.

So on I went during my last year of school, longing for love but finding it nowhere, remaining close friends with Claire and slowly standing still as the days and months swam by in a blur until, finally, I was sitting in Happy Joes eating lunch with her, saying goodbye before heading off to study archaeology at the University of Wyoming in Laramie.

(Though it seems we’ve arrived at the all-important college years, there is yet one more key event from high school that I wish to post about, but I want to ask that person if I may blog about it, as she visits this site on occassion and it is, after all, the gentlemanly thing to do.)

Today’s lesson- Chaste friendship. Though I did not realize it at the time (a recurring theme in the story of my life), God drew me in friendship to a person suffering from the same pain as I was, and He drew me to her through my attraction to her. We all struggle with the gift of sexual attraction, but it is not a curse! It is a powerful blessing that calls us to love each other rightly, as God would have us. Yes, I wanted very much to love Claire and be with her and marry her and all of the other things that run through a heart-sick young man’s mind when he is in love, but God called me through my past experiences to reveal my heart sooner rather than later, and then presented me with the beautiful and wonderful gift of my first close, deep, chaste friendship with a woman. This friendship was so dear to me, and it helped me to move deeper in friendship with other women because it taught me that relationships between men and women could be very deep and spiritually and emotionally intimate without needing to be physically intimate. What a gift; what a treasure! This was the first of what would, over the years, become many such friendships, and it continues to be a tremendous source of grace in my life. Certainly they are challenging at times, but love is as much a challenge as all else it seems to be, and it is a challenge worth taking up! Once I could love whole-heartedly my women friends and rise above the desires of my flesh, I discovered such peace and freedom that I had never before known, and it has only grown as I continue to move towards my vow of chastity.