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Sunday, September 5, 2010

Sunday Morning

I'm going to the 9 am Tridentine Mass on campus today.

9 am? On a Sunday morning?

Brutally early is what I would once have called that. This is the girl who stays up until 4 am reading blogs and checking Facebook. Or just reading novels. I've never been an early bird but rather like to sleep til noon. The past 3 years have been (among other things) one long, fruitless effort to train myself to be an early riser.

Last night, one of my friends who recently broke up with her boyfriend came home crying for the second time this week. Poor darling. Even though she initiated it, the break-up has hit her hard. I tried to sympathize but I couldn't be much help because truthfully, I've never cried over a boy, so I didn't know what she was going through. I've just never cared that much. Go ahead, call me cold-hearted and callous. Maybe it's true. But as I sat there thinking over her situation, I realized this:

Other people don't affect my feelings all that much. My sadness and happiness, the bad things I do and the good things I don't do, are because of my own efforts and nothing else. The times when I am most upset are because of my own dumb mistakes and not because of friends, boys, or anything outside myself. So if I want to grab onto virtue with both hands (I do!) and really live the life of my dreams (complete with 6 am wake-ups and 8 hours of sleep every night), that responsibility is on me and no one else.

This is all probably completely obvious. You wouldn't think it would take me almost 21 years to grasp that. But now that I know that, I want to hold on to it and use it to order my life the way it ought to be.

And that, my friends, is why I'm up so awfully early for Tridentine Mass.

p.s. I met the guy and he was very funny and sweet. Very kind eyes. But he's 8 years older than me and I gotta tell ya, I was feeling that age gap. It's ok. As someone once said, men are like trains - as soon as one goes away, there's another one coming right around the corner.

p.p.s. While reading through the Gospel of Mark today for Theology class, I came upon this line: "And he called the crowd to him again, and said to them, 'Hear me, all of you, and understand. There is nothing outside a man that, entering into him, can defile him; but the things that come out of a man, these are what defile a man." Coincidence? I think not.

1 comment:

  1. I’m so with you on the night-owl thing. My most productive hours are post-dinner until midnight. But somewhere along the way, all the morning people got together and decided that the modern world would operate on their schedule – the audacity! I think there was a top-secret summit and they didn’t invite us.

    It’s so funny that you’re writing about this because I spent a good chunk of this weekend working on creating order in my life and becoming a better version of myself. Moving always seems like a good opportunity for this but I had a specific talk with a priest recently that inspired me. Now, I consider myself to be a very orderly person. My physical environment is always neat, I know where everything is, and I have systems in place to keep it that way. Well, this priest told me that I needed order in my spiritual life – what? How dare he? I wasn’t really thinking about it that way. I guess I’m not so orderly after all! He told me to find what works and stick with it, which is what I do with say, my cleaning system, so it made sense to me.

    I agree, it all starts with sleep. Sleep is the key to an ordered life. For me to make it to mass now, I need to be up at 6:30 (ugh!!!!!!) which means bed at 10 so that I actually sleep for 8 hours because you’re not sleeping right when you get into bed, right! Here’s what I’ll do, I’ll offer up my efforts to get to bed on time for you to be able to wake up on time the next day.

    Good for you for never crying over a boy. Guarding your heart until the right time is true feminism. I’ve definitely cried over a boy – oh, those were not good times - but I’ve never been heart broken either and I’m so grateful for that. I believe that we have a profound responsibility to our future spouses to arrive at marriage with an intact heart. I’ve seen over and over again, the difficulties in courtship around emotional intimacy and trust when the woman has been heart broken in the past (probably true for men but I haven’t had these kinds of discussions with any men to know). The psychological wounds are very deep. So cold-hearted? Not in the least, you are strong and smart!

    Every time I see the metro roll into the station, I’m going to be thinking of what you said about men! Haha!

    I think those are called Godincidences – silly but cute!

    21 years is nothing to figure this stuff out. Clearly, as I’m still trying.

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