Maybe it doesn't matter

I've just written of some of the most serious circumstances surrounding my fall, but maybe it just doesn't matter what the circumstances were. Maybe...or is there any "maybe" about it?

I knew what adultery was, and I knew that nothing can justify it.

And yet, at the time, it felt so right. I felt loved for the first time in a long time. I had a confidant. I had someone who saw good in me, and who cared about the things that interest me. Someone who loved me for ME. It felt so good.

I have never loved someone so much. No one has ever shown me such love.

It still feels good, to know that someone could actually love me for who I am, faults and all. It was never about sex. We never even touched each other. Although we wanted to. Ached to. At one point, I would have if given the opportunity.

That's part of why I'm struggling so hard. I've been starving for love and approval for so long that when someone actually offered it to me, I fell headfirst with absolutely no attempt to break the fall.

I regret offending God. But I am finding it very hard to regret loving such a wonderful human being. Does that mean that I haven't yet repented for my sin?

How can I regret love? My mother says that it's never a sin to love someone.

Maybe the only sin, then, is desire? Or is it a sin to love, too?

At night he's in my prayers. My love for him, my longing for him, and the deep pain of our separation and knowing that it never. can. be. And I offer up all that pain for the salvation of his soul. And I ask the Lord to heap the pain upon me if that sacrifice can somehow save his soul. But never more than I can bear.

Somehow, I have to get us both to heaven. And my husband too.

I don't really know how it happened

I don't really know how it happened, and still sometimes I can't believe that it happened.

I need to tell the story, but somehow when I try to find the words it sounds like excuses. That's not my intention at all. There's no excuse for sin.

I am a sinner, and I am at fault. I was weak. I fell. I knowingly and willingly sinned.

My sin is adultery.

My marriage has been rocky for a long time. My greatest fault in my marriage has been laziness. I'm not a great housekeeper or a very good cook. I have a hard time keeping up with my responsibilities. I spend too much time online. I practice NFP for birth control (which means that he can't make love as much as he wants). As for my husband, he constantly puts me down. There is very little that I do right. When I do do something right, I don't hear about it. I don't get encouragement, or validation, or thanks. When I try to include share with him my personal triumphs, interests, and projects, his lack of interest is palpable. Neither do I get affection; sex the only time he touches me, and that to me makes it feel like mutual masturbation. It's not in the least "unitive". At this point, I'm just doing my duty, but not very often. So what it boils down to is that for over a decade and a half, I've been told very little except that I'm...no good.

Some people suggest that he's been abusive to me: psychological abuse. I don't know. It's so subtle. He doesn't yell and scream at me. He's never laid a finger on me. It's all cold logic, and sometimes anger but without raising his voice. Because it's so logical, so calm, I have no choice but to believe him. He's right about my faults. He doesn't make them up, they are there. Sometimes his put-downs are in the form of jokes that he tells the kids, laughing. "Your mother is (whatever imperfection is on his mind at the moment), eh guys?" When I protest, he says "That was just a joke! Don't you have a sense of humor?" He teaches our children to have no respect for me.

This has not only utterly destroyed my self-esteem but has made me VERY lonely. I'm so lonely I silently cry myself to sleep nearly every night.

There's more to this story. But that's a beginning.

What sin has taught me

I'm a sinful Catholic. I am an orthodox Catholic who believes all the Magesterium teaches. That, however, has not preserved me from sin, or made me any better than anyone else on this earth.

I've fallen. Big time. And I'm trying to pick myself up. But every time I do, I seem to fall again.

I used to be prideful. It was my greatest sin. I was proud of being Catholic, of being an orthodox Catholic who went to church every Sunday. I was proud that I put more in the collection box than anyone else. I was proud that I went to mass when nobody else did. I was proud that I didn't practice birth control. I was proud that I was Catholic and not a Protestant. I was proud, period. I had no reason to be.

Okay, to be truthful there's still a nugget of pride within me. It's like a cancer. It's being slowly excised, but I am not sure that it will ever be completely cured.

I've been thinking of writing this blog for a long time. Today I came face to face with a person in my community who I've despised. He is an ex-priest. He left the priesthood when he fell in love with a woman who was the wife of another man. They live together now; or at least, they did last time I heard. I've hated him, resented him, felt vastly superior than him, snubbed him, slandered him. We were standing next to each other in line. He had to have recognized me as a former parishioner of his, yet I avoided his eyes, pretended I didn't know him, as I've done before, as I did when I noticed him standing in the back of the church during mass last Sunday.

Suddenly a thought came to be unbidden: "You are no better than him." It wasn't a put-down, it wasn't my low self-esteem talking, or the condemnation of the Lord. It was a simple acknowledgment...whether of my own, or sent from God, I don't know...that I have no right to feel any superiority. Or blame him or condemn him in any way. A recognition that he is my brother, and we are equals before the Lord. At that moment, I was humbled, and I felt great compassion for him, and love. I thought that his fall was probably much like my own...not black and white, but shades of gray, and fraught with questioning and confusion and pain and reasons no one could guess. After a few moments of processing this feeling, I timidly turned toward him, made eye contact, and said a few innocuous words, meaningless small talk.

I had forgiven him. And suddenly I knew that it was time to start this blog.

Somehow, my sin has taught me humility, and compassion, and the value of forgiveness. Not perfectly. But better. How can being a sinner make me a better person? This is a mystery to me, one I don't understand. I wonder how that can be the Lord's plan.

My mother always told me that when the Lord allows bad things to happen, it's because He will use it to bring about a greater good.