I'm so lonely

I don't think I have ever needed to talk with somebody in my life as badly as I do now. But there is nobody to talk to.

He did apologize for the pie hole comment and cursing, after a fashion. But he offered a great deal of contempt for me at the same time. He has let some minor things fester. He said he wants out. I don't really believe that's 100% true. I think the pressure of trying to support his family and failing at it time and again has got him down. Holidays are hard because he has to see cousins and friends who are very successful, and of course they always ask, "So what are you doing now?"

It bites.

He is very obviously depressed and I'm just trying to give him space and coach the children in doing the same. They were perfect angels yesterday. They're having a harder time of it today, but that's to be expected. He did some stuff around the house yesterday and today, which was awesome. But he hasn't looked me in the eye and I haven't looked him in the eye, and who knows how long this will go on.

It hurts. I want to talk to him. I want this distance to go away. I want to be united with him again. It's horribly painful to be apart from him. I wonder if he realizes how hard this is for me, to stay away from him and give him space? Ordinarily, he'd know that. But maybe he's in too big of a funk to see it.

Why do I bother?

My laptop died. I lost everything. Including photos I have never gotten around to uploading on a back-up site. Photos of the kids. Photos I loved.

And then I got tired of complaining, so I thought I'd stop posting here.

But you know what? I'm addicted to the Internet. Because the Internet doesn't tell me to shut my pie hole like my husband just did.

Yes, he did. He's never done that before. He might apologize for it later, I don't know. He doesn't like to apologize.

I guess I might as well admit that I did marry a loser. I love him, but I'm not going to make excuses for him. He can't get it together. He doesn't know how. He hates that he's a loser and he doesn't know how to fix it. And I can't fix it for him.

His mom took the kids today. We had some time alone -- hours alone, for the first time in I don't know how long. We ate breakfast together, but that was it. He went his way, I went mine. When we finally headed over to get the kids, the tire was flat. He didn't want to change it, and I wanted him to. I would have done it myself, but I'm not strong enough to work the jack or undo the lug nuts (not since I had wrist surgery). I couldn't understand why he just wouldn't do it, and all he could say was, "I don't like to." It was irritating, and I was irritated. I just wanted him to explain it to me, and he didn't have any way to explain. So he yelled at me. He started to change the tire, but when he called his mom to tell her we were running late because of the tire, she said she'd bring the kids home. I guess he got his way after all.

And now I'm hiding in my room, on the internet. Because the internet doesn't yell at me and tell me to shut my pie hole.

Is my marriage falling apart? Sure feels like it. He just wants me to stay out of his way, so that's what I do. I don't like it. I'm a fighter. I want to fight for this, make it right, make it better, make it work. But you know marriages take two people fighting for it.

I still think he'll come around on the marriage. He doesn't believe in divorce, either. The rest of it -- well, I guess I don't think it's realistic to believe that he will someday get a good-paying job that takes the pressure off me. I'll always be the primary breadwinner, until I retire. And since I can't change that, I have to be okay with that.

I want a mother so bad. I guess that's one reason why I am Catholic now, because we Catholics have Mary and most other kinds of Christians ignore her.

My mom wasn't much of a mother. She ignored us when we were babies, crying in the night. She never even taught me to say "please" and "thank you" -- I had to teach myself that. I figured out in college what a rude person I was and it took me years to fix it, and I'm probably still far more rude than I realize.

I just want a mother. I want a mother to advise me and help me and encourage me. I want a mother to praise me when I do something right and help me figure out how to correct things when I do them wrong. I want a mother who will pray for me and gently help me stay on the straight and narrow.

I know I have Mary, but sometimes I wish I had somebody more tangible. I fear I am not a good mom because I didn't have a good mom. Sometimes I get irritable about Mary because she had, like, the perfect son. And the perfect husband. And she didn't feel so alone and helpless that the Internet was her best friend in the world.

My husband used to be my best friend in the world. I sure miss him.

The Harried Life of the Working Mother

A new study from Pew Research tells most of us working mothers what we already know: We are stressed to the max, we don't think daycare is the best solution for our children, and while we don't mind working and contributing to the household income, we wish we only had to work part time.

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1360/working-women-conflicted-but-few-favor-return-to-traditional-roles

Why I work outside my home

That’s easy. I have a job outside my regular mom/wife/homekeeper role because I have to.

I seem to run into two kinds of people – those who think a woman is nothing unless she has a job outside the home, and those who think that a woman is nothing unless she stays home, raising the kids full-time.

Newsflash: women are not so easily divided between those two options.

Take me, for example. I was raised by a mom who stayed home with a bit of input from a dad who had a decent enough job to support a family of six solo. I was raised thinking that I would go to work and support myself. I didn’t think about whether or not I would work after I married and had children.

Back when I was 17, I picked a career that seemed to be right for my unique set of skills in a classic American industry. I got myself a full-ride scholarship for one year at an accredited university and jumped in, singularly focused. For my freshman, sophomore and junior years, I was named the outstanding student in my class and received partial scholarships.

During the summer between my sophomore and junior years, I got my first internship in my field. The next summer, I stepped up and got an even better internship. That company liked my work so much, they kept me on part-time as I completed my senior year of studies. I didn’t get any school awards that year, but I that was okay because by then, I was receiving awards from professional organizations.

After graduation, I was brought on full-time at the company I’d been working for, and that was that.

Sounds good, right?

I guess it was all right. Looking back, I wish I hadn’t been so foolish about it. I didn’t realize how heavily my chosen industry would be affected by recessions, for one thing. For another, I wish I would have considered the fact that my job is for young people. Eventually, you age out. When I was 21, however, and had the world by the tail, I rarely considered things in the long term.

I worked for a long time. Got laid off, made do, and then worked again. Twice, I walked away from this profession because I was fed up. Twice, I came back into it.

At this point in my life, I should be getting out of this work. I’ve been in the “aging out” phase of this career since I was 40. I’m lucky to have a job at all, with this particularly strenuous recession we’re going through right now. And frankly, I want to get out.

But I can’t. I have to work because my husband cannot support our family right now. I’m not sure if he ever will be able to.

You’re going to have to trust me on the “whys” behind that one. Maybe I’ll get to it later.

Now, a lot of stay-at-home mothers like to chide me, maintaining that “I could stay home if I wanted to.” They would suggest giving up vacations (we’ve had one in the last 10 years, and that was going to see my parents, who paid for our hotel room). They would suggest giving up restaurants and fast food (98% of our meals come from home. The kids don’t even get hot lunch at school very often because I can make a nutritious meal for less money at home).

They would suggest cutting back on my hair and make up expenses (I get my hair cut once a year, don’t dye it or perm it, and I never wear any make-up at all). They would suggest my professional wardrobe is a money pit (all my clothing and all my kids’ clothing comes from thrift stores).

I say to them, “Thanks, but you aren’t living my life.”

I’ve heard all the ways to save on running a household, and I’ve implemented them. The kids and I raise a lot of our own food in the garden. We shop sales for groceries. We buy used everything, and we accept cast-offs from our friends. The only piece of furniture we’ve ever purchased new is the bunk beds + trundle set that we got for the kids. My husband and I sleep on a mattress that is 15 years old. We don’t go out on “date nights.” We’re lucky if we rent a movie twice a month.

Our 3-bedroom house is modest and we have a killer 3.9% interest rate that makes it equal to renting a 3-bedroom apartment, but this way we get the equity. The mini-van is paid for. I use Freecycle. We only use our sole credit card for emergencies.

Frankly, it’s a lot of work to live this way, but I don’t mind. I’ve gotten so many great things that have been cast off by others but suit us perfectly, I can hardly pay full price for anything. My last pair of jeans cost $2 at a thrift store – I can’t bring myself to pay a sale price of $35 for new jeans, let alone $45 for full-price. I can get a box of cereal for $2 so consistently, I shudder at the thought of paying $3.89 (or more) for Cheerios.

Despite all this cutting back and frugal living, we couldn’t make it on my husband’s income. And so I work. Even though I’m underpaid, I make double what he does. Not working would be irresponsible. My family needs me to work.

Why I am Catholic

Never in my wildest imagination did I ever think I would become a practicing Catholic. And never did I imagine it would cause such a ruckus. I mean, if somebody came up to me and said, "I'm joining the Lutheran Church," I'd probably just smile and say, "Good for you!" But joining the Catholic Church garners a whole list of negative remarks.

I was baptized Catholic but never given any Catholic education whatsoever. My parents quit going even before I was born and just had me baptized to keep up appearances with my very Catholic grandmother. We went to Mass sometimes on Easter, and we went to Mass for a few months when we had a foreign exchange student from Ecuador, because she was Catholic and my mom didn't want her to think we were pagans. But I just sat in the pew (or crawled around underneath them) and wondered. When I was heading off to two weeks of Girl Scout camp at the age of 11, my mother was reading over the packet and learned there would be religious services. She told me to go to the Catholic one and to go ahead and receive Communion. That's all the preparation that I had -- hardly appropriate for a First Communion.

So basically, I was raised atheist. I think other Catholic parents who fail to give their children the instruction they promised to give them at the baptism should keep this in mind. No education = atheist kids.

In high school, a bunch of my friends became evagelicals. I was intrigued and I went to their Bible studies, but it didn't add up for me. Nothing stirred in my soul. It just seemed like a ridiculous amount of effort for a fairy tale.

In college, out of loneliness because I was in a place where I didn't fit in at ALL, I went to a Bible study that was advertised on photocopied posters stuck up around campus. I walked in wearing torn jeans and sloppy t-shirt and moccasins that I had made myself because, well, that's what I wore every day. The room was filled with girls in dresses and boys in button-down shirts and ties. I stuck out like a sore thumb, and the students were rude and stand-offish to me. I remember in particular one girl looking derisively at my clothing. She said something, too, but I can't remember what it is. It doesn't matter. However, to make matters worse, the text for the day was one that I had had a lot of trouble with in the high school Bible study. So I had a well-crafted argument ready, and I let them have it.

I never went back.

Like most college students and young adults who have no moral compass, I lived a pretty hedonistic lifestyle after that. I struggled with all my relationships -- friendships, roommates, employers, peers, romances -- because of what my family was like. I was too dumb to figure out that most other people don't operate with the levels of hostility and dishonesty that I grew up with.

I hit rock bottom when I was 24 years old. Out of work, about to become homeless, virtually friendless and desperately short on cash. I remember crying out, "Oh, God!" and listing off all my troubles. I didn't think of it as a prayer, because I didn't believe in God, let alone praying.

In a panic, I called somebody I hardly knew, but had hit it off with the handful of times we met. I knew I had just enough money to get to her town on a Greyhound bus with a little to spare, and begged her to take me in until I could earn enough money waiting tables or bartending to go on my way. For some very strange reason, she agreed. Two days later, she picked me up at the bus station.

What I didn't know about this woman was that she was a Christian. She called on her friends to pray because she knew I was trouble.

Two weeks after I arrived, I had a good job -- in my field, not waiting tables. I had money in my pocket from a freelance job. I had a home and new friends. And suddenly I remembered the prayer that was't a prayer, and I felt deep down in my soul the presence of God saying to me, "I heard you, and I answered you."

Now, I knew a little about religion because I'd been trying to get a minor in it in college, just because I found it interesting (I was one class short at graduation). I knew about Judaism and Islam and Buddhism and Christianity and a few other prominent religions. And what I knew at this point, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the God that had come to me and rescued me was the God of Christianity. In all other religions, it's about us trying to get to God. But in Christianity, God comes to us.

So I was a Christian now, but I had to decide what kind of Christian. I looked around a little and I think I might have even called a Catholic priest, but the conversation was obviously forgettable. Anyway, it was easier to go to the Assemblies of God church with my roommate.

That's what I did. I got baptized again because they told me my first baptism didn't count, and I agreed with them. I read the Bible again, but this time all the way through. I learned a ton. I also went to an ecumenical Bible study program called Bible Study Fellowship and learned a ton more. I taught Sunday School. I volunteered with the youth group. Evetually, I became a part-time secretary in the office. I also met and married my husband at this church.

But then something went horribly wrong. The A/G was infiltrated by a terrible thing called the Brownsville Revival. Now, I know that some people think the Brownsville Revival was just peachy. But Christ said to judge things by their fruit, and that's what my husband and I did. We saw broken marriages, children neglected, teens experimenting with drugs, alcohol and sex. We saw various ministry programs falling apart because nobody was interested in giving any more -- only getting. Donations to the church dropped. Volunteering numbers hit an all-time low. Visitors would come on Sunday and then run for the door once things started getting nutty.

Worst of all, when my husband and I sat down with the senior pastor with open Bibles to share our concern, he told us, "Close your Bibles. The spirit is doing a new thing."

If you know A/G at all, you know it's a Sola Scriptura church. So how is closing the Bible a good thing? What "spirit" was at work here?

My husband and I struggled. I quit my job. We quit our voluteering roles in the church. In time, we left. And it was horrible. Like a divorce. We lost friends over it. People refused to talk to us. We found out later that the church leadership had decided to lie to the youth group and tell them we had moved away.

For the next six years, we floundered. We attended an Eastern Orthodox church for a while, which I loved but my husband found too difficult to take. Then we started going to a little church where everybody in the congregation was an escapee from one denomination or another. The pastor and his wife were nice, and we learned the liturgy there, but it was never quite right.

Eventually, my husband admitted to me that he thought God wanted us to become Catholic. I thought he was nuts. I mean, anything but Catholic was acceptable. Catholics weren't really Christian at all, were they?

At that point, however, my husband was the godliest man I knew. I decided that as long as we were both committed to finding out the truth, it would be okay to take a class in Catholicism.

What an eye-opener! I learned that I had been lied to about Catholicism by the A/G and by others. I learned that Catholicism is actually biblical and holy and Christ-centered. And so we became Catholic.

I still think it was the right decision. In a lot of ways, my faith has grown. When it comes to sin, I've seen victory over some habitual sins that never went away when I was an evangelical. If you judge things by their fruit, the way Jesus told us to, then Catholicism is definitely the right thing for us.

Who I am, anonymously

I decided to remain anonymous on this blog for a couple of reasons.

First, to maintain my personal privacy. I'm not a public figure. Even my previous blogs have only been read by family and friends. I used to want (need?) to be famous and strove to become so, but it's very clear to me now that God intends for me to remain an average, anonymous person, and I'm perfectly okay with that.

Second, to maintain my husband's privacy. Long ago, my husband and I agreed that it is not healthy for a marriage to criticize your spouse to others. Just look what happened to Jon & Kate Gosselin (I don't get that station on my TV, so I'm not a fan of the show, but they were all over the news for a while there). So I don't complain about my husband to anyone. However, there are times when I have issues with him, and I want and need to work through those issues. As an anonymous person writing on an anonymous blog that is not advertised at all, I think I can do that safely.

Third, to maintain my children's privacy. Any one of them might decide to become a public figure when they reach adulthood, and I'd hate to have anything I write here come back to haunt them. Not that there is anything scandalous about any of my kids. They're all adorable and smart and charming. Yes, I'm biased.

So who am I? I'm a 45-year-old Catholic mother with a job outside the home and way too much to handle emotionally, physically and practically. I grew up atheist and became an evangelical Christian as a young adult. I met my husband at church when we were working in ministry together, something we thought we'd always do. Then our church went nuts, so we had to find a new one. After floundering around for a long time (while we struggled with infertility and my husband's career took a major nosedive), we ended up in the Catholic Church. More on that in another post. We now have three kids, a dog, a modest house, and a minivan that's been paid for for nearly 2 years. And I'm still working.

I did not intend to be a mother with a job outside the home. But here I am, and this is part of my personal angst.

So...how do you know an anonymous person is being honest? Well, you're just going to have to take me at my word on that one. I have no reason to lie. This blog is between me and God, after all, and He already knows what the truth is. My goal is to be just as honest as possible.

Why I started this blog

I have blogged before, to chronicle the antics of my kids or to track my spiritual development as I became a Catholic Christian at the age of 38.

But this blog is different. For one thing, I'm not advertising it and I'm not linking to other blogs or hoping to be linked to from other blogs. This blog is basically my way of sorting things out while I talk to God about it. So if you're here reading this, you're here by accident.

You see, I'm a very verbal person, but my words come out better through my fingers and my keyboard than with my mouth. Where I ramble in oration, everything gets straightened out when I type. And after years of trying to work through various "this-es and thats" with my Lord and Savior in prayer, I finally decided that the best thing to do.

I realize that somebody my stumble upon this blog and read it, and that's okay. Because honestly, I would really, really, really love to find a clear message from God in the com-boxes. I know the odds of Him doing that are practically nil, but I also know that He can inspire an ordinary person to say just the right thing. So if you feel strongly compelled to comment, go right ahead. I'll read it and pray about it and test it against Scriptures, and it might just be my message from God after all.