I thrive on organizing and attending to my home. I spent Ash Wednesday fasting and deep cleaning my house, transitioning seasonal decorations and fine-tuning organizational systems that had been failing for six months. I spent Good Friday fasting and rearranging my furniture, shifting bookshelves and side tables and lamps and plants until I finally could look around and feel satisfied, and more importantly, undistracted. Easter brought springtime, and springtime brought a change of clothes in my dresser, and an opportunity to change how I folded them. While I won’t make this an advertisement for Marie Kondo, I will say seeing neatly folded and clearly visible shirts, pants, and sundry items begins and ends each day with peace instead of chaos. Oh, and I bought a vacuum, and filled it up instantly with months worth of hair and dirt. I always thought vacuums were for wedding registries, and thus have always bummed off my roommates’ instead of buying my own. I can’t even convey the empowerment and thrill I feel every time I use it; that the time to get clean and have a clean home is now, not later.
For the last year, I’ve been trying to extend the same fervor of neat attention to my habits and behaviors, and mostly, to my heart. I have dusted off cobwebs and struggled with stains. It’s the hardest cleaning job I’ve ever had to do, and it never seems to be complete.
It all started two Februarys ago, when I was struck by an image of the crucifixion, with Mary Magdalene gripping the feet of Jesus. An itching in my heart, at something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. How could I be that vulnerable, not only with Christ, but with another person? Had I ever been?
The image stayed with me, rolling over and over in my mind, into Advent, until the words “let every heart prepare Him room” were ringing through my ears. As a single woman, I have spent the last few years growing closer to Christ, but as a woman hoping for marriage, had I prepared room in my heart for anyone else? What did a prepared heart even look like?
After listening to a friend’s podcast, and reading Fulton Sheen’s Three to Get Married, I realized I wanted my heart to reflect the Sacred Heart: on fire, bleeding, and open. I had to be the vulnerable one, if I wanted to be met with intimacy and vulnerability. I had to be the brave one, if I wanted to be met by courage. I had to clean out my heart, if I wanted it to be open to others.
I began the slow and sometimes painful process of rearranging my heart. Advent went into Christmas, Christmas into Ordinary Time, and still I was making space for someone to rest there. I found myself in another February, and in the midst of all this cleaning, in walked a most unexpected love, and for the first time in a long time, I was prepared, able, and willing to receive him.
I was most surprised that this person before me actually made it all easy, for once. All he brought to my heart was joy; all he brought to my face was constant smiles, so much so my cheeks frequently hurt. The sight of him brought relief in hard times. Our shared, smug smiles over inside jokes in the midst of a crowd warmed my belly like a bowl of hot soup. I grew accustomed to love being a breeze, for once. I grew proud of myself, that all my hard work of cleaning and improving myself had paid off. I wasn’t ever tempted to judge him, to resent him, to be annoyed in the slightest. Then the work was absorbed into the walls, like electricity, and I didn’t even recognize or credit it anymore. Instead, I slipped back into thinking that maybe the other people I had been with had always made it hard; that they simply weren’t the right one for me if loving them was difficult. Because here was a man so easy to love, just like Cole Porter composed.
With the change of seasons crept in an inexplicable change in my heart. I found myself annoyed again, critical again, fearful again. As the days got darker and darker, so had my mood and my outlook. All the things that seemed so perfect by the long light of summer began to fade in the dim light of fall. Affection became rote. It seemed all that I had worked at began to crumble. The crumbling led to despair, panic that everything was all wrong, that it - and I - was never right from the beginning. That, in fact, we were not meant to be, not even compatible, because I could be annoyed with him; because we could have slightly differing opinions on something; because suddenly he didn’t understand and support me which made me not want to support him. I suddenly felt numb to it all. And as a defense, a desperate means of reclaiming myself, I began to take, and not give. I began to want, to need, without offer. Despair was more comfortable than work; selfishness more comfortable than sacrifice.
In the midst of this mess, in the midst of my fears, and my tears, in the hot steam of the shower where all good thoughts occur, I heard St. Paul: “But God proves His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). God doesn’t just love us when we are perfect, and He doesn’t love us just when it is easy. He sacrifices for us, dies for us, not despite our mess, but because of our mess. We will only have the chance to become perfect, to become holy, to become good, because we are loved. Criticism doesn’t bring about perfection. Judgment doesn’t bring about perfection. “Be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Our Heavenly Father is perfect because He is love. We are good because we are loved; not the other way around. If God so loves us in this way, then we must love each other in this way, too.
When things get tough; when reality sets in; when the initial spark begins to fade and the relationship becomes mundane, loving can become hard. Like a new convert has all the fervor in the world, and then will surely face a time of darkness as the good news become old news, just so will new lovers face the challenge of staying in love. And this is good, true, and beautiful, because Cole Porter is wrong. The ease of love does not make us lovers; rather, “‘the will to love” (Fulton Sheen, Three to Get Married).
Our hearts are cyclical. The Church shows us this in her very calendar. As much growth as we may have made linearly, we can still go back and learn more. There is always an Ordinary Time to learn the hard lessons, continue to not understand, fall in the water, argue about who is best, and be “of little faith.” There is always an Advent to remind us that our hearts need to prepare room to receive incarnate love. Thankfully, there is always a Christmas to remind us that even if we didn’t prepare, Love will come anyway, and an Ascension to promise us Love will never leave.
For the remainder of Ordinary Time, I choose joy over despair. I choose to bring the work back out of the walls. I will make my prayer that of David: “Create in me a new heart, oh God; renew within me a steadfast spirit” (Psalm 51:12). For Christ is King, and He is a King of Love. For the remainder of Ordinary Time, and for the rest of my days - I choose love.
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