Learning to Love

Early January 2011, I headed to a party at a friend's house.  I opened the sliding glass door and stepped inside.  As I scanned the room, I noticed this tall, dark and handsome man at the other side, but continued in to greet my friends since "guys like that never like me anyways."  

After a short time, we ended up standing back to back in two different conversations, when Matt overheard me talking about my love for the Washington Redskins.  He turned to engage me in conversation and high five me over our shared love of the greatest team in the history of the NFL.  (What? You don't agree?)  The evening progressed with conversations of ocean life and C.S. Lewis.  He drove me home that night, and I was officially smitten.  

A few days later, he called to tell me that he was currently in the process of ending a relationship, and couldn't, in right conscience, begin dating me at that time.  DEVASTATED.  Of course this great Christian man couldn't date ME.  That was the name of the game for me at that time.  He was going on a surf trip and was planning to take the 10 days as an opportunity to do some soul searching.  I decided to pray a novena for him during that time, and had accepted that I was just praying for this man, with the very good chance that a relationship between us wouldn't happen.  (A Novena is a form of worship consisting of special prayers on nine successive days.)

Long story short, he returned from the surf trip, officially ended the other relationship (they were already taking a break), and our first date was January 29.  That February he gave me 4 dozen roses for Valentine's Day.  In March he told me he loved me, and by April, I was catching the bouquet at my sister's wedding.  

As our relationship progressed, we knew we wanted to get married... except there was just one problem.  He was Protestant and I was Catholic.  EGADS!  I became more intense about "the importance of making sure Matt knew everything he could know about the Catholic faith."  I gave him a journal in which I had written down all my favorite prayers, and why my Catholic faith was important to me.  I made him listen to Scott Hahn's conversion story on CD.  After one "argument", I grabbed my bible and started bombarding him with Scripture.  That is never a good way to communicate, but that's the thing, I didn't know how to properly communicate my beliefs.  In the past, I was always defending myself against the misconceptions so many people have about the Catholic Church.  I could never just explain, I was always defending.  

We finally realized it had to stop.  If we were going to make it, we had to have a serious conversation about our future.  Matt took the matter to the Lord in prayer, and I did what any good Catholic girl would do, I grabbed my Catechism!  (Don't worry, I prayed too.)  We sat down to have our meeting, glass of wine in hand, and I read to him straight from the catechism what the Church has to say to couples like us.  "Differences of confession between the spouses does not constitute an insurmountable obstacle for marriage, when they succeed in placing in common what they have received from their respective communities, and learn from each other the way in which each lives in fidelity to Christ."  

Wow... and there you have it.  This is how Catholic and non-Catholic Christians should be treating each other.  Focusing on what we have in common, respecting one another, and learning from each other.  The Protest is over.  It's time for a season of unity.

I fully understand that sometimes that can be easier said than done.  We had to have difficult conversations about how we would raise our children.  It was hard, and it's still hard.  You have to make compromises, and you have to really evaluate what's important.  It takes a lot of prayer and humility, but it IS possible to love your way through disagreements and differences with Christ's love.

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; 5 it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; 10 but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. 13 So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."  (1 Corinthians 13)