"Pride was the first sin"
Silly me. Thinking there was a way to be a feminist and a Catholic and a mother...
This is from 1999, and it's more pertinent than ever.
"pride was the first sin, and—as the battle cry of “individual rights” shows few signs of abating—it looks like it may well be the last, too. "
Boy do i regret my silly feminist years. How could I marry in the Catholic Church and not see how incoherent the feminist post-modern ideology was?
Had i recognized how i needed to be kindly led and protected by my husband, i might have realized that i needed to protect my kids from the devastating consequences of my prideful disdain of my homemaking duties, and their father's lack of mature, kind, resourceful masculine leadership and sound stewardship of our resources. Had i humbly accepted God's love for me as a woman, a wife, a mother, I might have loved my husband enough to see his shortcomings, encourage his strengths and ask for help for our dysfunctional marriage. But, no.
I was a feminist!
A "strong woman"!
An accomplished "career woman"!
So, I lived for decades in a dream. (Yes. Decades. Plural.) I lived with an idealized version of my husband that he now says only existed in my head. I thought the unruly craziness of our daily life, where he was the first to trample and mock any family routine i tried to implement, and I reacted by pushing and pulling this way and that, was us being "equal" to each other.
D-uh.
Now that he unilaterally chose to jump ship on our faith, our marriage and our family and that it's all water under the bridge to him, to his "girlfriends" and to what used to be our common friends (with a couple of precious exceptions), I pray that Jesus, Mary and Joseph are at the helm and guide me as i finally learn to
• embrace my role as a Catholic mother,
• hold the fort of my family home,
• help pick up the pieces of my kids' deeply wounded souls and
• stay chaste to keep what's left of my now unrequited wedding vows. (Boy do I hope that God never ever asks me to live with my husband again! Even praying for him takes every ounce of willpower i have. My pride is a tough sin to curb.)
What a mess.
Oh well.
Time for mass.
Mother of God, pray for me!