Hitting Rock-Bottom

By Christine
For 35 years, I was absolutely unable to go back to our beginnings. I just couldn’t! I had blocked all memories because something terrible had happened that I simply didn’t want to remember.
Christian was distressed about this because we just couldn’t talk about the past. Our past.
Yes, there was a very painful event, but not all memories were bad! It took Christ’s grace all these years to heal me, little by little, and for the past 3 years, I have reconnected with our history, with our beginnings, with how we were then, and I have learned to love our story!

The pain is still there, but it’s a healed pain. I can face it, and even embrace it!

Here is what happened.

La Grande Motte

I had just turned 19 in April 1975. In June of that year, I took a job in a restaurant at La Grande Motte, a touristy place on the beach. The restaurant’s name was La Cambuse. I was housed there with another girl, la Grande Motte being too far from Montpellier (about 18 miles).

My period was late. I had seen a doctor the previous month and he had given me the pill to start taking on my next period. But this next period just wasn’t coming! I bought a pregnancy test… And it turned positive!

My first reaction was excitement! I impatiently served dinner at the restaurant and as soon as it was over, despite the late hour, I took my moppet to go back to Montpellier to share my big news with the man I loved (hey we didn’t have cell phones then!) This was extremely imprudent on my part because the road was not the most frequented one, especially at night.

Christian didn’t get as excited as I was. The look on his face wasn’t the happy one I had expected. This is where my memory starts to blur.

He made it clear that he didn’t want this baby. I was devastated. I talked to his brother’s girlfriend, Dominique, who broke the news to me that Christian had had an abortion before. Still, I didn't realize at all Christian's suffering, I was too centered on myself. I talked to more friends, especially a sweet couple who already had a baby. They talked me into keeping the baby and I loved the idea, it was all I wanted. At the same time, I couldn’t picture myself without Christian, announcing the news to my Dad. I was afraid of him, afraid of his reaction. I went to see a doctor who also encouraged me to keep the baby. I wanted it so badly! But I wasn’t brave enough. I wasn’t strong enough. Abortion had just become legal in France on January 17th, 1975 (Loi Veil). 

Simone Veil, responsible for the legalization of abortion in France

Christian and I went together to a Family Planning center where they explained about the abortion. They told us that it was nothing, just some cells as tiny as a pinhead would be removed. We were completely misinformed, misled, and unprepared to face this evil. We believed them.
Then the decision was made and Christian took me to this strange place. I remember there were girls with babies there. A nun received us, yes a nun, but from what I remember she was a Protestant nun. She took our money. It was decided I wouldn’t have any anesthesia. It was more expensive. Then Christian left and I stayed for the night. The abortion would be done the next morning.

I was in a room with several other girls in my “condition.” One of them was having her 4^th abortion! During the night, I remember having a terrible panic attack! It's impossible to describe the feeling of absolute terror that overwhelmed me. I screamed, woke everybody up, the doctor came to calm me. I remember he was communist. He again told me that it was nothing, just a bunch of teeny tiny cells, not a baby. My memory blacks out here again. I know they had to put me to sleep, and then all I remember is waking up sobbing and bawling, a nurse trying to quiet and console me.

Christian came back to pick me up. I don’t remember much, except that he told me we would have other children. I know I tried to forget, to live as if it hadn’t happened.

“There is no question in my mind that we are 'disturbing a life process.' The trauma may sink into the unconscious and never surface in the woman’s lifetime...
But a psychological price is paid. Something happens on the deeper levels of a woman’s consciousness when she destroys a pregnancy.” Dr. Julius Fogel, abortionist

A wall started to build up around my heart, a wall that grew with the years, strangely even more after the birth of our first daughter. This wall kept my pain buried, kept me "safe" from it.  (to be continued)

God on the Back Burner

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By Christian
I received this comment from a cohabiting future groom,
“I don't feel that my commitment in marriage will be any different from the one I made in cohabiting before marriage. From the beginning, I have given all my love to her and her only, and nothing about that is going to change.”
He was very sincere! But what about God? While there is a difference between couples who cohabitate while planning to get married and couples who cohabitate with no plan, cohabitation remains sinful.
When a couple asks for the Sacrament of Matrimony, we assume that they yearn to invite God into their relationship. If they are a cohabiting couple, we assume that they wish to bring their relationship to a higher level.
Most of the time, cohabitation involves sex and contraception, which are two grave sins, despite what the culture tells us. They are not sins because “the Church says so,” they are sins because they go against God’s natural laws and will.

Lovers by Marc Chagall

We cannot overlook the serious pastoral problem presented by the widespread practice of cohabitation, often by couples who seem unaware that it is gravely sinful, not to mention damaging to the stability of society. Pope Benedict XVI to American Bishops, March 9^th, 2012

Cohabitation puts God on the back-burner. A couple who cohabitates before marriage doesn't put God in the equation. In short, they don’t trust God to give them their spouse at just the right time.
It is like saying, "We are so in love, so committed to each other, that we cannot wait for you, God. We don’t need you." When in reality, the very source of their love IS God. He is the source of all love. So to proceed prior to His blessing is like turning our backs on Him. 

Very often, too, these couples do not trust their love either, and think it has to be tested. They want to verify that they can make it together, just as they would test a car to make sure it’s the right kind for them.

Cohabitation is a great scandal in the Church, and causes others to sin, thinking that if so many Catholics are doing it, it must be OK. “If something is evil, even if everybody is doing it, it remains evil. If something is right, even if nobody is doing it, it remains right.” St. Augustine said in his Confessions.
We were celebrating my granddaughter Alice's birthday not long ago and this image came to my mind:
Just imagine that Alice snuck around behind our backs and grabbed a big piece of the beautiful birthday cake with her fingers, just to have a taste. Then the time to celebrate her birthday comes, and all we have to present to the family gathered around her is a cake with a big ugly hole in it. Everybody is shocked. The remainder of the cake is still good, we still celebrate the birthday, but something is spoiled, something is not as good and beautiful as it should have been. It's exactly the same with cohabitation. 

Remaining chaste until after the wedding makes it the only way to do it right in order to honestly include God.
No one can consummate their vows until after their union has been blessed by God, because sex is THE sign of the covenant that authenticates the consent.

 Yes, it’s God will for us to wait until He blesses us. These are the natural laws, the order in which God would like us to choose to abide in order to follow Him and be happy.

Marc Chagall

 

TV Stars!

Hello all!

Just a quick announcement that for the second time EWTN invited Catholic Marriage Prep for a live broadcast: Life on the Rock! 
With Fr. Mark Mary and Doug Barry. 
Thursday Oct. 11th, 8:00 pm MTN Time.
(You can always double-check the time at http://www.ewtn.com/tv/live/index.asp)

Mattie and Moses Nelson, partners in Agape CatholicMarriagePrep.com will be there LIVE!
Moses and Mattie have been working for CatholicMarriagePrep.com since 2005 in one capacity or another, and have become full-time partners in 2010.
They live in Denver, CO and have 5 children, ranging from 9 years old to 4 months old.

Paul and Sarah O'Brien from Denver, will be there live as well.
They took the CatholicMarriagePrep.com online course a few years ago while they were both working with FOCUS.

Paul and Sarah O'Brien live with their two daughters near Denver, Colorado. Paul is the director of information technology for Nativity of Our Lord Catholic Church and School in Broomfield, Colorado, and Sarah is a veteran events consultant for FOCUS (the Fellowship Of Catholic University Students). Married in 2009, the O'Briens are looking forward to the blessing of their third child in January.

Please pray for the success of the show and spread the word around.

Meet the Parents

By Christian

Meeting your girlfriend’s parents for the first time is always an interesting adventure. I met Christine’s Mom first.
For the Spring break 75, I drove Christine home, about 4 hours North of Montpellier. Her hometown, Le Creusot, was 45 minutes from the highway.
It allowed me to discover the beautiful country side. Rolling green hills, Charolais cows grazing (Gosh, my mouth was watering at the thought of the meat!), vineyards everywhere. I had heard about Burgundy wines of course, but I’d never had the chance to taste any.  I‘d never seen such landscapes and so much grass, so green, in my whole life either.

Then, there we were, in front of the large house; her Mom welcomed me as a family member right away.
It was a typical French home, as I’d imagined it. It was the first time in almost 5 years that I was welcomed into a French household!
We were right on time for lunch. Passing through the kitchen, I saw that Charolais steaks were on the menu. Christine must have tipped off her Mom! As a starving student, I was craving solid meat.
What I didn’t know, at the time, was that Christine’s Mom was very well known for letting things burn. So, this time, when she thought the steaks were done, she very carefully covered them, and they arrived almost boiled in my plate. Arghhhh! What a disappointment! I almost cried and couldn’t resist giving the one who would be my Mother in law her first cooking lesson. She still cooks steaks the way I taught her, good girl.
Then coffee arrived, and she had to have her second lesson!
She didn’t kick me out right away this time. A few months later, while visiting Christine in Montpellier, she told me coldly: “I am pretty happy to visit my daughter and to kick you out of her bed!” OK, got the message.

Later that summer, Christine and I were both working as waiters in a restaurant in Aigues Mortes, a very touristic medieval town. St Louis had left for his crusade from Aigues Mortes in the 12^th century! Christine’s parents were vacationing in the area and wanted to meet me. Christine took a few days off to be with them. They came at lunch time, at the height of the tourist season, when it was quite busy. I saw them coming and left my tables and customers to chat with them for a few minutes, wearing my waiter’s black pants and white shirt.
In my eyes, Christine’s Dad was the typical tourist, sandals (with socks), shorts, camera around his neck, the whole deal.

His gaze bored into me, weighing me in five seconds. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the report of his analysis on the spot.
Little did I know that he was the C.E.O of a huge factory. He had forty engineers in his engineering department, and thousands of workers. Among other things, they were manufacturing nuclear plants.
The main owner of the factory was one of the richest men in France, no less than Baron Empain, heir of the Schneider family.
Only when Christine’s Dad offered me a tour of the factory a year later did I figure out he was no ordinary tourist.

He had to train me for many years to learn a bit of Burgundy wines tasting. It was tough training. I feel sometimes I should go back to these sessions, as I truly enjoyed them.

In almost forty years, I have gotten to know them quite well. They have been Catholics their whole lives, never faltering. The house they live in now is a nice manor, always open to all. They are very generous, very devoted, and ready to help whoever knocks on their door. At some point they welcomed many Cambodian refugees who were fleeing the Pol Pot regime. Theses families were always visiting, staying. Christine’s Dad would find them jobs, they would get established in the area. Now their children call them Grandpa and Grandma and come visit with their own children. Yep I love my in-laws.

October, the Month of the Rosary

By Mattie (www.catholicmarriageprep.com)
This month Holy Mother Church teaches us the importance of Mary mediatrix through the beautiful prayer of the Holy Rosary.

The Virgin Mary with Apple Tree by Bradi Barth

The Holy Rosary was given to St Dominic by Our Lady herself in 1206, while he was combating the Albigensian Heresy in Southern France. She gave him this "mighty weapon" and explained to him its uses and efficacy. Since then it has been one of our Faith most treasured sacramental (a sacramental is an action or object of ecclesiastical origin that serves to express or increase devotion).

Actually when we ask our engaged couples what is a sacred sign in their life, a great majority says that it is a rosary given by their Grandmother. So when I become a Grandmother I need to remember to stock up on rosaries to give to my grand kids :)

If you are not in the habit of saying a daily rosary now is a great time to get started! Yes, it is hard but look through your day, it only takes 20 minutes. Maybe during your commute? Or before turning on the TV?

As a family we have been saying it right after lunch, while we are all in "limbo", done with lunch but have not started our afternoon yet. It works wonderfully! I actually don't fall asleep! It's great!

How to keep the little ones reverent during the rosary? Well, that's a tough one, if you have a fail proof answer let me know please :)

First they have to be involved, let them lead the decades, have a rosary book for them to look at (we use this one. It works great, it also has a poster that goes with it and I bought 2 of them, one to make matching cards for the children to put on each mystery as we pray that decade.

Now what great friends are we going to celebrate with this month?

- October 1st: St. Therese of Lisieux

Since St. Therese promised to spend her time in Heaven sending shower of roses on earth we take her to her word. Every year on her feast day we write her a letter with our petitions to be presented to her Divine Spouse. You will be amazed at the answers when you re-read your letter next year! She is an amazing intercessor! Very efficient if you are having a hard time conceiving or know people who are struggling with infertility ;)

A St. Therese "Shower of Roses" Tea Party.

- October 2nd: Guardian Angels

The best present you can give your Guardian Angels is to receive Holy Communion in their name on their feast day.

How about some Angel Food Cake? My second sister, Marion, is turning 29 on that day!:)

St. Francis of Assisi

- October 4th: St. Francis of Assisi

Many parishes hold a pet blessing on the feast of this special friend of animals, check out your parish's website.

- October 5th: St. Faustina Kowalska

Pray a Divine Mercy chaplet a 3:00pm today.

- October 11th: my baby sister turns 18!
 and Moses and I are interviewed live on Life On The Rock, 8:00 pm (MTN time), at EWTN for CatholicMarriagePrep.com 
Also on October 11, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI will open the Year of Faith. During this Year of Faith every Catholic is invited to a deepening in faith through prayer, study of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, and renewed participation in the sacramental life of the Church.

- October 15th: St. Teresa of Avila

Another wonderful Carmelite. In her honor we love to have ice cream with caramel (if I'm on top of my game I will even make some homemade caramel, which is truly best if made with slated butter.)

- October 16th: St. Marguerite Marie Alacoque

Great time to renew your consecration to the Sacred Heart

- October 18th: St. Luke 

- October 19th: St. Isaac Jogues, St. Jean de Brebeuf, and Companions

- October 21st: Saint Kateri Tekakwitha! The lily of the Mohawk will be canonized this year on this day! The first Native American saint!

Throw a party! A real pow-wow is needed for this one!

Kateri Tekakwitha

Busy, busy month! In so many very happy ways!

God bless all of you!

Childhood Unfinished Business (Healing in the Sacrament, part 4)

By Christine, www.catholicmarriageprep.com

My aunt from Montpellier died last night. Without her, I would never have visited this tapestry exhibition on November 27^th, 1974, and Christian and I would never have met.

After our first meeting on November 27^th, our relationship developed pretty quickly. After a few more chance meetings, we were together for good. 

What attracted me to him was his obvious self-confidence; the impression he gave of inner satisfaction. I was very insecure myself. I didn’t think I could ever be loved. My self-esteem was pretty low.

Strangely enough, I can see now, looking back, that he was sending me clues that he was emotionally unavailable, just like my father who had been so preoccupied by his job, and my mother who didn’t want me to pity myself.

As Harville Hendrix, Ph. D. puts it in his book Getting the Love You Want, Christian’s emotional distance triggered my primary drive, “which was to make a person who was distant and unavailable become close and dependable.” Meeting Christian “crystallized all of my childhood unfinished business.”

This didn’t make our relationship any easier, of course. Christian and his brothers were a kind of clan. They would make plans to live together, have a farm, leave France, etc. They didn’t like the French, and I was French. I didn’t belong. I felt left out whenever they talked about Morocco and their friends. I was discovering an entirely new world! I had the impression also, that women were, for them, only accessories to be used for fun and pleasure. What I couldn't realize at that time is that they were uprooted, they had no place they could call home anymore. They were grieving for their mother, the one who held the family together, and this was their way to make up for all they had lost.

Christian would often tell me that I shouldn’t get too attached to him because he liked to change. For him, at this time, sex was just a casual way of getting to know someone, not a big deal! He had told me about his previous girlfriend, and I thought that I was just a replacement for the one he couldn’t have. Since he couldn’t share his feelings, I didn’t know that he didn’t really love her. For me, since she was from Morocco, she belonged where I didn’t, and I thought he would never love me as much as he’d loved her. This idea got a grip within me and it stuck to me for years.
When we meet someone, we do not realize that this person has been wounded and suffers. We only see things from our limited selfish perspective.

I was desperate to become close to him, I wanted so badly for him to open up to me, to love me! I had an insatiable need for closeness, craving physical affection and reassurance! I'm sure I was very clingy.

Each time I tried to start a conversation, he would either grumble, “don’t bug me!” or crack a joke and it was over.

We were so different! He was more the kind that kept people at a distance in his desire to have the freedom to come and go as he pleased, not wanting to be pinned down to a single relationship. At the same time, he was fun, smart, resourceful, carefree, and attentive! With him, nothing seemed serious, and I envied his detachment and freedom.

The pain in our relationship was sometimes intense for me, but even so, he attracted me so strongly!

Isn’t it funny how God writes with our crooked lines?

Behind Every Abortion There is a Dad (Healing in the Sacrament, part 3)

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By Christian

 It’s not rocket science; behind every abortion there is a Dad.
My girlfriend and I had been dating on and off since we were 16. We left for college in two different cities in France. She was in Paris, and I was in Montpellier, about 500 miles south of Paris. I wouldn’t have called it a stable relationship. There was no marriage on the horizon, and we weren’t even really in love.
That summer of 1973 was a very difficult one for me; my Mom had come to Montpellier in February with terminal cancer, and she had passed away on May 17th. My girlfriend had joined me at her funeral in Alsace, my Mom’s birthplace. She had then gone back to Paris for her finals.
After my own finals in June, I went home to Morocco, to be with my Dad. I was 21. 

My family home in Meknès, Morocco

My Dad wasn’t doing too well, and I worked long hours supervising the harvest at an apple farm.
My girlfriend was vacationing in Spain with her family and one day she dropped by for a surprise visit, out of the blue, just for 24 hours.
We went to a nightclub with a group of friends, but we were not “together” at that time. Still, we ended up at my place for the night. She left in the morning, back to Spain and then Paris.

I was still working on the farm when she called from Paris to tell me that she was pregnant. She wouldn’t keep the baby. I suggested, not very strongly it is true, that we could get married, but for her it was out of the question. She needed money to go to England where abortion was legal. We had a few short phone conversations, mainly to talk about money and flights arrangements. We never mentioned the baby. One day she called and simply told me she was leaving for London. Then there was a last phone call, just to say, “It’s done.”
I felt completely numb. I was still grieving my mother’s death, and this only added to it.
College started again. I visited her in Paris in the fall, then again at the beginning of 1974. She told me everything about the abortion in a detached way. She didn’t seem to feel anything about it. Eventually, we got back together, but it didn’t last.
Awhile later, I learned by chance that she had gotten married at the end of the school year.

It was only years later that I realized how terribly it had affected me.
First, a very strong attachment had been created between the two of us through this abortion. We were “parents” and parents don’t have a baby without this strong attachment. It’s incredibly strong because it is nature’s way of keeping parents together; to make them fight together for their child for the rest of their lives. The baby may not have been born, but he was real and had created a psychological attachment between us.
Second, the abortion, on top of the fact that my girlfriend had left me without closure, had killed something inside me. I was lost. It seemed like all feelings had deserted me, as well as any desire for connection. I was avoiding anything that could start a lasting and serious relationship. I wanted the fun, but no strings attached. I was empty.

This was the state of mind I was in when I met Christine.

The sad thing is that this first abortion opened the way to another one.
There is not a day that I don’t think about these babies, not one day!

Christine and I participated in a Rachel’s Vineyard's retreat about ten years ago in Denver. I had to unearth all the pain I had buried deep within me, and all the pain I had inflicted to others. During the retreat I was granted an amazing gift. I had the vision of these two beautiful little guys, all dressed in white, playing peacefully together under a very large cedar, in a vast prairie. We have given them names, Philippe and Emmanuel. Christine has adopted Philippe. It’s a consolation but it doesn’t erase the pain.

http://janetpantryart.blogspot.com/2010/07/busy-busy-andmore-tea-vicar.html