"Physical realities require physical paperwork"

on becoming Catholic

Twelve years ago I was in the final stretch of wedding planning. I knew early on that my husband was special. He was steady and kind, manly but not pushy. We were young — babies really — in love, and I would have followed him pretty much anywhere.

Yet, when it came to actually making a commitment, I spooked a little. We bought my ring on the way back from a trip to the Denver Zoo. It was summer, so there was family in town and we’d met up with various cousins for the day. On our way home, his little red Toyota Corolla took the exit off of Hwy 36 and we stopped by the jeweler. We walked in and looked around, I tried some rings on, and we walked out with a wedding band and an engagement ring. I suppose you could say that we did it wrong — bucking the conventional method of the ring being a surprise — but full disclosure has always been the way this man operates. He wasn’t hiding his intentions, and while I loved him for that, it was kind of terrifying. I remember that when we got back to his parents’ house, I took a long walk, and walked, and walked. I contemplated bolting, but arrived back after an uncomfortably long time and acted like that was a normal occurrence.

Looking back, I can see that some part of me was equally drawn to and terrified by the fact that my husband was not afraid to disrupt the status quo. Our relationship had already caused no small amount of tension between me and my mother. At one point she even told me, “He’s a nice boy, just not for you.” Whatever her plan for me was, he didn’t fit in. He was going to ruin my career as a concert violinist, he didn’t have the right kind of job, he was too much this, and not enough that. But most of all, he seemed to see through her and wasn’t afraid to call her bluff. I would be tied up in knots for days, my brain scrambled by our arguments that weren’t arguments, and he would patiently help me untangle the knots until I could see straight again. Walking the line between respecting my parents, who were footing the bill for our wedding whether we wanted them to or not, while not compromising the things that were most important to us, was a kind of delicate dance, best equated to waltzing through a minefield. I regularly felt the physical sensation of being ripped in two: the two relationships I cared most about were at odds with one another, and I was stuck in the middle.

Maybe some girls look back on their wedding as the best day of their life, but I would rather live a thousand ordinary days together than get married again. The ceremony itself was beautiful — the one part I’d fought for to make it as I really wanted it— but I just wanted to be married already.

Our first years of marriage were difficult in ways I never could have predicted. We walked in blind. Maybe everyone does. I remember sitting in premarital counseling, the woman who worked with us poking at certain questions. She probably intuited that there was more under the surface, but it just felt like she was stirring up a hornet’s nest for no good reason. We had it figured out, in the way that you only can when you’re 21 and 22, until of course we didn’t and we began a painful unraveling that would continue for several years.

While our peers were adventuring, traveling, having babies, and building houses¹, we delved into a dark hole of childhood trauma and chronic illness, clinging to the hope that somehow, some way, there would be something good on the other side. Four years in to our marriage, with two little kids in tow, it felt like all the wheels fell off.

I don’t know how things held together, but I’m so grateful they did. It was through prayers and grace and the support of people who didn’t understand but still showed up. I wouldn’t go back and undo any of it, but the costs have been high. Telling the truth, as best I could, has meant loss upon loss, the initial explosion trickling out into ancillary relationships. The chasm of grief that opens when I think about the whole thing is so wide that it feels like it will swallow me whole. I keep it contained with morbid jokes and surface level commentary, then observe my body’s truth telling response from afar.

To have two innate needs — to tell the truth and to belong — be at odds, is a type of crisis I don’t wish on anyone, and yet it seems to follow me around.

This spring, as we entered the Catholic Church, I felt shades of this push-pull surface. The things I felt most deeply were at odds with relationships I cared about. I wondered, yet again, why we seemed to always find ourselves in this position. Why could we not be people who maintained the status quo? That would be easier, tidier, less disruptive. In the same way my relationship with my husband began to expose things I would have just as soon have left alone, our process of preparing to join the Church poked at all of my sore spots. It felt like a systematic rummaging through the boxes of junk I’d shoved in the corners of my closet. I was healed enough, wasn’t I?

The boxes became literal at times, as my childhood belongings spilled out all over the guest room floor to occupy space I didn’t have. Everything about the process complicated our life.

The paperwork seemed endless, we were somehow problematic at each step, confounding the sensibilities of the church staff when we couldn’t seem to jump through hoops correctly. I wondered, if everything is a mess and the path is costly, why do you even keep going? What makes it worth persevering?

I don’t know how the metaphysics of making a promise in front of your nearest and dearest, signing a paper and becoming husband and wife work. When we left the church on June 1, we were still the same people as before, just married. Though in many ways, nothing had changed, there was also a real, substantial change in our state.

Even when there’s a real substantial change, it doesn’t mean the details get ironed out right away. You have to learn how to live into the new reality. We haven’t had many honeymoon stages in our life. For some reason we tend to jump straight into the deep end, and on the one hand it does save you some disillusionment later on. But sometimes I grieve the opportunity to be excited without tinges of sorrow and conflict shading the picture.

I’m not equating becoming Catholic to getting married, but there’s been a similar process of testing, discernment, commitment and now learning what it actually means. The process feels familiar, and there’s something comforting in that. In the same way that knowing and loving my husband provided a way forward when things were very difficult, I think knowing and loving Jesus provides a way forward when the next steps feel a bit muddled.

I might not be one hundred percent sure of all the noise² surrounding me, in fact, I can assure you that if asked about any number of weird Catholic things my honest answer would have to be, “I just don’t know yet” or “Yea, it’s confusing” or “Yep. That part is pretty screwed up.³”

What I do know is that the person of Christ has never been more apparent or present to me than over the last several months. I don’t think there’s been a time in my life where I’ve been more consistent or persistent in prayer or Bible reading. People have asked about my experience with Confirmation and the best I can muster is that it’s like I’d been playing a grand piano with the lid down my whole life, and someone finally opened the top. The song is the same, the person of Jesus is the same, there’s just more of it.

This newsletter is not about to become a Catholic apologetics site. For one, I just have no interest in arguing about things — there’s plenty of other people who do that. But also, me talking to you about being Catholic would be like a newlywed giving marriage advice. Perhaps the most helpful thing young love does for us old married folks is help us remember what it felt like to be so excited about our spouse. Why do we love weddings and baptisms so much? Because they remind us of where it begins, of how much we’re loved, and of the path we’re supposed to be traveling.

After a spring full of sacraments, I have a whole folder of certificates for our family. Our deacon quipped during an OCIA meeting that “physical realities require physical paperwork”, and we’ve definitely got the paperwork. I guess time will tell how the physical realities work out. Maybe we’re wrong about it all, but I do believe that “you shall know them by their fruit”. Will I be more like Christ because of this? I hope so. That’s always been my goal.

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I know people have strong feelings around this topic, and I respect those. Please respect me too. I don’t expect much to change in this space, as this step feels much more like a continuation of what we were already doing than anything else. Because this has occupied so much of my mental and emotional energy over the past few months I wanted to write a little about it, but I probably won’t say much more publicly. I’m hoping that I’ll have a little more bandwidth to get back to weekly writing and see what comes to mind.

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Lately:

garden produce upon arriving home, WV mountains, a monastery and cemetery we found by happenstance in Ferdinand, IN, St. Louis, CO, Meredith! In person! Friends in AR, somewhere on the side of the road in AL

Life: We took a road trip to CO, and while the kids did amazingly well in the car and it was great to see everyone, I think we’re still recovering. 52 hours of driving⁴, 15 states, 6 kids and 1 puppy. Whew. The weather was such — crazy tornado warnings etc… on our route home — that we chose to make the trip from CO back to NC in two days and I’m not sure I’d sign up to do that again any time soon. We got to see family friends in AR on the way out, and I got to meet

Meredith Hinds

in person (hooray for Internet friends becoming real friends), but I’m so ready to be home and have a bit of a slow down.

In the interest of slowing down, I jumped on the bandwagon and joined

Lore Wilbert

for a social media-less summer. It starts June 1st and I’m already looking forward to and dreading it. I really want to rest this summer — physically, spiritually, emotionally — it’s been such a full year, and I know when I’m tired it’s all too easy to resort to dopamine. If I just sit on the porch and stare at things, or play with my kids, or let my mind wander, it will be worth it. The point of the challenge is to continue work on long form projects, so I hope to send out a weekly letter, but I’ll try to stay off Notes⁵. Also, now that my FB feed has been one hundred percent hijacked by severe weather events it will probably help my anxious tendencies to get off that. But don’t worry, if you need to know about a storm anywhere from here to CO, I can probably tell you…

Reading: Absolutely nothing. But I hope that will change soon.

Around Substack, here’s some things I’ve enjoyed this week:

This piece on instant obedience was thought provoking

Part 1 and Part 2 of this summer guide from

Kristine Neeley

This pregnancy announcement and reflection on “A responsible number of children”

Listening: We exhausted many playlists⁶ on our trip, listened to Mrs. Frisby and Rats of NIMH, finished Cheaper by the Dozen and the kids have been listening to Wingfeather Saga since we got home. I want there to be no noise, anywhere, at all, for maybe a year. Since that’s not realistic, I’ve been going outside. The frogs and birds are back to their joyful noises. Today I was convinced there was actually a frog in my stove because it was so loud. No luck finding it, so hopefully it was just in the vent outside.

Growing: We got a ton of rain while we were gone, so the weeds are a little out of control, but I harvested cabbages and beets when we got home, and the bush beans are getting close. The snow peas might hang on for a little while since it’s been cool, and all the squashes and cucumbers are looking happy. Greens were largely a flop but we’ll try again in the fall and at least we’ll get beet greens! My zinnias, cosmos and sunflowers are also coming up, so I’m hopeful for cut flowers soon.

1. I don’t know if everyone was actually living their best life, but social media sure made it seem like they were. I’m sure there was plenty of heartache I didn’t see behind pretty pictures.

2. Uh, have you ever tried being confirmed, then having the Pope die two days later and being subjected to forty million think pieces on the papacy and every conceivable issue with the Church?

3. Probably the only thing more complicated than family is the Church

4. That’s the actual “car was moving” time. The amount of time that we were on the road I’m not sure I even want to talk about 😂

5. Still working out these parameters, but likely I’ll budget a few set times to check in during the week and stick to that. It’s fun, but I get sucked into the vortex.

6. The family road trip playlist, which is primarily a hodgepodge of old country — I recommend shuffling it