Quarter Life

Today I turn 25 and most people phrase it as, "Today you turn a quarter of a century old!"  As silly as that seems, it kinda resonates with you.  The phrase at once makes you feel 1) really old and 2) really young.

It provides a context for this milestone: you've still got miles to go before you sleep.  Century gives it a feeling of history too, your life is lived out in the history of the world and we often remember the dead as, "the generation that lived through....they saw this happen...they fought this war..."  Our lives are bigger than just our small sphere we see daily.

I had to resist the urge to make a list of what I want to do in my 25th year.  I wish I could say it was because a list would limit me too much but the real reason is I was too lazy to find a sharpened pencil (for a list like that you really need to be able to erase!) and I was scared.  Marking it down on paper makes it semi-permanent, resolutions that will lead to disappointment.  Or joy.  Depending on the list and what you make of it.

So as I take stock of my life I've noticed a few things going into 25:

• We are called to sainthood.  As I get older and notice I'm struggling with the same sins and temptations as I was when I was 15, I am aware of the continual struggle placed on us in this world and the need to embrace that suffering and offer it to God.  This is what makes saints, a total and whole love for God and a willingness to passionately endure all for Him.  I am no where near that point.  And as much as I pray that I may be a saint for the sake of God's kingdom, my flawed humanity speckles that petition abundantly with pride.  And that's okay, because we all have to continually pray to God to take our pride and give us the gift of humility, and our sin of pride can be an invitation to do that.
  
• Authentic manhood comes with age and getting closer to Christ. I often hypothesized as a kid what I would be like when I grow up to be a man.  Now that I am an adult, I'm no closer to knowing.  But as I get older, and have seen more, I see the lines filling out a little more.  I get the context of my humanity in the larger scope of society, the Church, and, most importantly, the person of Christ.  All people are called to imitate Christ but each gender in a particular way.  As a man, I feel called to empty myself as Christ did on the cross, giving for those I love everything.  But it's not a substantial gift: while Christ gives us Easter, Christmas, and every Sunday to celebrate His Sacrificial love, our sacrifice as men often is the equivalent of 5 minutes of card shopping on Valentines Day or a President's Day poem that makes the reader suffer more than the author (apologizes to my fiancee!).  But with age, the sacrifices get bigger.  Husbands will give more of themselves than a bachelor, and fathers in a way unique to them.  At all times that sacrifice must be rooted in Christ: Christ as a young man teaching in the temple turns into Christ as a bridegroom consummating his marriage to the Church with his passion and death on the cross.                                                                                                
• Work is important but not your identity.  As I previously wrote, I am recently unemployed.  But I've learned through my brief last job, a few freelance gigs here and there, and my unemployment the value and proper place of work.  Being productive and working is a good that helps round us out as people, it adds to our sense of self worth and helps us realize our potential as individuals and as a community.  But it is not everything.  I was laid off and a little over a month later my grandfather passed away.  A month after that, my other grandfather lay in the hospital for two weeks.  I've gotten to spend much more time with my family and I've seen that work is a small part of the equation but a very necessary one.  I've seen friends and loved ones become overworked, stressed beyond belief, and isolated by the drudgery  of their daily lives.  And, honestly, in my unemployment I've even been a little jealous at times of their situations just out of a desire to make a living.  But it's no living if you exist only to work.  Work is a good thing, it yields productivity, money, and self esteem.  But it is just one part of life.  Family, love, joy, charity, these are all a higher priority than work.  And at the very top of the list is God.  We do not have worth to God because we are workers for God loves all His children, even those who cannot physically or mentally be employed.
  
  Our value comes not from how much we produce but by how much we are loved by God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So many saints have done little in the eyes of the world, neither on the top of Forbes lists or even the Church hierarchy.  I think of Saint Therese of Liseux, who died at 24, one year younger than I am today.  She did nothing in the eyes of the world, tucked away in her cloister, but she loved so completely that she's been called one of the greatest saints of modern times.  Do not become so encapsulated wholly by work that you forget you're not just a worker.  We are not made for work but for loving God and honoring Him in all we do.  Work is a necessary part of that but not superior to our leisure, family and prayer. I resolve to make time for all these areas of my life and I want to do a better job of trusting God at 25 that he will provide me with the work He calls me to.
  
• I am not ready to be a father but I look forward to learning how. Being a dad is the second most important job in the world, behind being a mom. I have no idea how to be a father at all.  I have good role models in my own father and other adult men but actaully being a dad scares the crap out of me.  But I am an engaged man and as I look forward to when I turn 26 and get married I am so excited to finally be a husband and a father.  I feel like all men are called to some sort of fatherhood whether its spiritual or physical.  With our beloved mother companions we raise the next generation and bring them into the faith.  As a new godfather to a baby just born yesterday I don't know how to guide her or help her in her faith, much less how to hold her or change a diaper.  But God will show me, good Father that He is, how to care for His child and my own, when the time comes.  

It is indeed an exciting challenge to live life.  Taking a life lesson from the first movie I ever saw in theaters, that I still love to this day, Hook: 

May we all have a joyful and blessed year, whatever our age. 

God love you!  

~OneCatholicGuy

Three's Company: Jacob and his sister wives

Today the biggest thing on my schedule is going to look for wedding venues.  Being engaged is a very special time and I've gotten to know my fiancee in more intimate and beautiful ways as we look forward and plan our wedding.  That being said, it's also an extremely stressful time and the planning itself leaves something to be desired.  But I consider it a necessary labor as our life together deserves a proper start.

This morning I flipped through the Bible and stumbled upon the story of Jacob.  I faintly recalled that Jacob was married to two women and I knew they were sisters.  Or maybe that was just a show I fell asleep during on TLC.  Regardless, in an attempt to understand how the man who would be Israel and the stem of the rest of the scriptures leading up to the coming of Christ, I read Genesis 29 and 30.

For those equally unfamiliar with the story, Jacob (Issac's son, Abraham's grandson) is fleeing from Cannan because he tricked his father into blessing him instead of his brother Esau and his brother wants to kill him.  So, Jacob is talking to some shepherds, discovers he's in the country of his uncle Laban.  Rachel, his wife to be, show up with some sheep and he kisses her and bursts into tears yelling for joy.  A mini-family renuinon.  She brings him to her father and Jacob starts to work for Laban.  Laban asks what he wants for wages and he says he wants to marry Rachel.  It's at this time we also meet the eldest daughter, Leah who is described as having lovely eyes (alternate translation is "weak" eyes which sound lovely if not iron deficient).  Laban agrees and he works for him for seven years, "yet they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her." (Gen29:20).  How sweet.

Now it gets weird.  Jacob asks to consummate the marriage since his seven years are up.  He consummates the marriage and then in the morning discovers, oops, that was Leah!  You'd imagine he'd be able to tell.  But don't imagine that, since he wasn't and consequently asks Laban why he did this.  Laban gives an excuse that you need to marry off the eldest first and Jacob has to finish the bridal week with Leah before marrying Rachel.

It's an interesting punishment to say the least and, besides the weirdness of him marrying two sisters by accident,  it fits his particular crime.   Jacob is running from his older brother because he stole what was rightfully his.  Laban, for all his trickery, is trying to prevent the same thing happening to Leah.  She is the firstborn and rightful to be married before her younger sister.

That being said it's tough to see Leah as blameless, even if she looks at you with her puppy dog weak/lovely eyes.  She knew obviously that sleeping with Jacob was a deception and she participated but we don't know the reasoning behind it.  But this quote stands out as making her sympathetic,

"When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, he made her fruitful, while Rachel remained barren." Gen 29:31

Because Leah did not have Jacob's love but was now part of this marriage to him, God gave her six children of the twelve who would become the branches of the nation of Israel.

The way Leah names her children shows an evolution of her understanding of her relationship to Jacob and the Lord.  Leah's firstborn is Reuben which she said means, "The Lord saw my misery; now my husband will love me" (Gen 29:32).  Leah is despondent over not having Jacob's love, all her focus is on her failing marriage.  Naming her second son, Simeon, "she said, 'It means, 'The Lord heard that I was unloved so he has given me this one also'" (Gen29:33). This is what the scripture says is the Lord's reason for making her fruitful, because she is unloved. Levi, the third is named because of her husband will be "attached" to her.  She's no longer seeking Jacob's love in the same way she originally was but just a connection.  Jacob's love is not truly for her  and she can't force it with these children.  Finally Judah is born, the ancestral origin of the line of David, and she says, "This time I will give grateful praise to the Lord" (Gen 29:35).  Her love and praise has gone to it's proper place, the Lord.  Her attention is finally on the source of love and, lesson learned, she stops bearing children...for now.

Meanwhile in Gen 30, poor Rachel is still infertile.  We actually learn that she's so desperate to have children she allows Jacob to sleep with her servant and later he also sleeps with Leah's servant and has many more children.  Rachel's first two children (via surrogate) she names Dan and Naphtali because she had been "vindicated" and "prevailed over her sister" (Gen 30:6-8).  For Rachel this is all about a battle with sister and Jacob barely matter in the equation.  We may imagine she isn't even making love to her husband, if only because he's too busy schtupping everyone else.  Their great instant love is challenged and tested by this unfruitfulness and, much like Jacob's grandmother Sara, she has resorted to a vicarious birth. 

Rachel is so desperate to bear a child that she allows Leah to sleep with Jacob again in exchange for mandrakes that Reuben found.  Mandrakes appearantly are known for promoting conception and are an aphrodisiac (I guess oysters are out of the question since they're not kosher).  And it certainly did...for Leah.  Leah names the fifth son Issachar saying, "God has given me my reward for having let my husband have my maidservant." (Gen 30:18).  That's strange for any number of reasons, one of which is she called Jacob her husband again, perhaps unlearning the last lesson of handing herself and her children over to God.  The next son she says her husband will offer her presents because of bearing him six sons!  What is this, one of those bear six get one free deals? Presents? How about some child support?

This all seems so trivial! How is this intensely fruitful marriage reduced by the 7th child (Dinah, a daughter) to, "maybe I'll get a present?" Because it's not the real marriage.  The intended marriage is supposed to be between Jacob and Rachel, not Leah or any number of maidservant.  And the scripture says,

"Then God remembered Rachel; he heard her prayer and made her fruitful.  She conceived and bore a son, and she said, 'God has removed my disgrace' So she named him Joseph, meaning, 'May the Lord add another son to this one for me!" (Gen 31:22-24).  

God remembered Rachel and bore her the son she had waited so desperately for.  Joseph we follow for the rest of Genesis and is a very good man, who also suffers much affliction like his mother.  And she asks for another, a son that will be born to her on her deathbed in Gen35, Benjamin, "Son of my affliction".  Rachel suffers greatly but bears two sons in the end. Her disgrace, like her husband, is tied to her sibling rivalry. It was their pride partially that blocked her from having children but God does not forget his people and finally answers her prayer.

I'm struggling now to figure out a tie to the joy of Easter here.  I think, like all things, we will the find the answer in Christ.  Jesus is the firstborn of God and the first to be ressurected in glory.  He totally gave of himself to offer us the chance to be God's children.  We all are united in Christ and reconciled to the Father.  And I guess one thing I gleam from the story of Rachel and Leah and Jacob is that in marriage you have to constantly turn to God.  As wonderful as your spouse is, you are loving God in your love for them and your fruitfulness comes from Him.  Sex is the ultimate bond of love and it's our share in God creative act.  That mutual love is not something that can be trivialized or trampled upon by circumstances in our lives.  We have to offer ourselves wholly to God first and then to our husbands and wives.

I thought I thought another thought but it's escaped me. Point is, love you spouse, love God, and dont trick your inlaws into sleeping with the wrong relative. 

Until tomorrow,

In Christ's love,

~onecatholicguy