things i've realized about being non-committal...

submitting yourself to the will of God is a very dangerous thing; it is also one of the most liberating things you could ever do in your life.

once you commit yourself to doing whatever God asks of you, you have to do it. there's no backing out of it. you've already said "yes" to God... how can you say, "woops, my bad, God. i was just kidding!" what are you going to tell God--that you weren't thinking straight or had a momentary lapse of sanity? how can you un-commit yourself to following God's will?

see, commitment is a tough concept for me to 'get' because i've been non-committal for as long as i can remember. i actually think i learned to be non-committal as a coping mechanism for dealing with my mom's death as a child. as a 5 year-old, i didn't know why she would ever want to leave us alone. in some way, i guess i thought she chose death to escape her cancer, rather than choosing to stay with us on earth and suffering through her illness. yes, i know it's a completely illogical and irrational thought process, but i wasn't logical or rational at 5 years of age. and i never talked to anyone about it so i never learned the purpose of suffering--how we can be sanctified through our suffering depending on how we deal with things we're dealt--or why people even die.

a couple of years later as a tween, with everything about my mom's death bottled up inside of me, i remember hoping that i never got married because then i'd turn into a mom and might have to leave my children alone one day the way my mom did me and my siblings. i never wanted my children to experience that. what a tragic outcome on my part in dealing with my mother's death...

fast forward to life in my late teens and early 20's... as long as i can remember, i've been non-committal. in college, my friends used to tease me because i seemed to have a revolving door of guys i was dating for a couple of weeks at a time and then they'd be gone. sometimes i'd even date two of them at the same time... i'd date them, then decide that we weren't "right for each other." or i'd say that i wasn't "at that stage" yet where i'd want to settle down and get married, even if they did. or, i'd get bored and i'd lose interest and move on, plain and simple.

23 years would pass before i'd come to understand that my 5-year old sensabilities about life, death and leaving-before-they-left-me had become an impassible hurdle in my life... during my reversion to the Faith, when i reconciled what i had done with God through the Church, i worked with a wonderful spiritual director at my parish in houston and by talking things out with her and praying about them, i was able to see God's hand in every aspect of my life--good and bad--through the years. my non-committal attitude was my youthful(read: immature) way of putting up barricades around my very fragile heart which had never healed from losing my mother at so young an age.

somewhere in my brain, i reasoned that if i didn't commit to any one guy, then i was able to control the circumstances which made my heart vulnerable and could keep my heart safe. i got to call the shots and be in, or out, of a relationship as i pleased.

clearly, this is not the how relationships should function according to Church teaching. in fact, the secular definition of 'relationship' means that two things are found to have an association with one another or even a natural connection. in the Catholic understanding of relationship, it is only by relating with and to others that we become aware of our individuality. as we discover our individuality, we realize that we are naturally wired for community, for relationship with others. what a beautiful paradox, eh? [the Church has much to say about the specific relationship between a man and a woman, in courting and in marriage, and the purpose of the perfect, complementary nature of this relationship. if you are interested in knowing more about this topic, i sincerely hope you will check out john paul the great's theological work, "man and woman He created them: a theology of the body." there is so much to unpack in this work, so much more than just sex, it will leave you with your jaw open!]

so what's the point, you might be asking?

well, i realize now that i'm not non-committal like i thought all these years. i can see how irrational my understanding of why people leave (or die) was and what the end purpose of dating is. i realize that death is actually one of the best things that can happen to a person... in my mom's case, dying released her from the temporal pain she was suffering through since finding out she had cancer a few years prior. and because my mom was a devout Catholic, i know that she believed she would be reunited with our Creator when she left this earth. she knew that this life on earth was not, in fact, the end--it was just a jumping off point to the real beginning of spending eternity in heaven.

i also realize that dating is not merely for recreation, as was my approach throughout college, but it is about seeking out a partner who will help you get to heaven. there is a definite difference between dating and courtship, and hopefully dating leads to courtship, but more often than not, in our modern american culture it doesn't. the purpose of dating in our culture is to have someone to take you out to dinner and a movie, to buy you drinks at the bar, to flirt with you and tell you nice things, to spend the night with to make you feel like your physical needs are being met, to temporarily take your mind off of things that are too uncomfortable to sit with in silence. in my case, all of those things blinded me to the fact that i never dealt with my mom's death. the problem with that approach is that it's temporary, it's not permanent. and if we understand marriage the way the Church teaches--and that should be the ultimate end to dating and courtship--then we should share a unique marriage relationship with one person who knows us inside and out and can support us in tough times and kick our butt into gear when we need it. kinda hard to find a person to help you get to heaven when you're just thinking about when the next person will come along.

now, what does all this have to do with committing to following God's will? well, i've been doing a lot of directed reading, guided prayer, dialogue with people that i trust about what my vocation is, and i believe that i know what God is calling me to. i don't know when it will happen, but i believe that God has been preparing me for marriage. and trust me, it is difficult feeling that God wants me to be a wife and mother and see no prospects in sight. it is too easy to think that i will never find someone at my age and that i should just give up. i have plenty of good-intentioned people offering words of advice and offering to set me up so that i can find someone, anyone as soon as possible. and it would be really easy to get mad, get sad, or get desperately lonely. but, i have committed (for the first time in my life) to following God's will, being patient in His plan for me and seeing my friends' and families' offers to help as longings to see me happy.

i will not give up on my committment to following God's will for me, i will not lose hope that God has been working on someone who is going to be what i need to get me to heaven and that He will reveal this person at the right time.

so this is what committment feels like... i have to admit, it feels pretty peaceful!

pax et bonum,
crystal