Problems of Purgatory

I read this today, and Purgatory has been on my mind since my Nana died.

I mean, everyone was consoling everyone in my family with "She's in Heaven now" and "She's reunited with her husband." And so everyone was comforted by these statements because everyone is Protestant.

Everyone except me, that is.

Little Catholic ol' me who boo-hoo-ed the entire funeral because no one could say anything to comfort me. Sure, my Nana's Earthly suffering had ended, but what next? More than likely, she went to purgatory. And purgatory is no Heaven. And in some ways, it might be worse than Earth depending upon how one lived her life.

I don't think she was baptized. So did she go directly to Hell? Surely, a just God would not send a woman who so fervently believed in Jesus to Hell. So did she experience baptism of desire?

If she did, she made it to Purgatory at least. How much time will she have to spend there? Will she be held to the same standards as a Catholic? Did any of her time on Earth, any of her suffering earn her some indulgences since she may or may not have been familiar with the idea of redemptive suffering? Will some of her sins be automatically forgiven and her time lessened if she had a mental disorder that caused her to commit sins?

And who will pray for her release from Purgatory besides little ol' me? Certainly no one else in my family.  And what of my grandfather, an upstanding man, a good father, and a Methodist minister? What of him? Is he in Purgatory too?

But other people can pray others in general out of Purgatory, right?

Very rarely do situations remind me of bible verses, but I can't help but think of 1 Corinthians 13:11
And then I noticed it's the same chapter as popular love/wedding/theological virtues scriptures.

I can't help but feel I'm being told something here, but I can't make sense of it.
Either I'm too tired, too spiritually inexperienced, or too sinful to understand.
Or maybe some combination of the three.

But I used to like the idea of Purgatory before I became Catholic.
Now it really bothers me.
Still, I'll pray for my Nana, and all the dead.

We laid my Nana to rest today.

It feels so surreal. I only have a few thoughts floating around in my head. So bulleted list order it is.

• It was a lovely Protestant service, but I couldn't help but feel we were all missing something by not having a funeral mass. It's like I knew the only thing that could calm me down is the peace of the Eucharist. And how nice would it have been for us to all be taking communion together?
• My Nana, though overall a good lady, still had some hang ups throughout her life. Did she forgive and forget during the course of her disease? Everyone was all talking about how she was definitely in Heaven; poor little old me is wondering how much time she has to spend in Purgatory, or if she even has to spend any in Purgatory at all because she suffered so much here. Then again, she didn't offer it up, so it doesn't count right? Or does it because she was Protestant and really didn't know any better? Unfortunately, I can't turn to my family for answers to these questions since no one is Catholic. 
• She went so quickly. But she outlived all her friends and family and got rid of a bout with pneumonia not too long ago. She always said that even though she loved us greatly, when her husband died, she was ready for God to take her any day. Some afternoons, I'd come home and she'd be back in her chair crying about how much she missed my Grandfather and how she couldn't understand why she was still here. In my heart of hearts, I'd like to believe she worked things out. And even deeper in my heart of hearts, I'd like to believe that someone, a guardian angel or maybe even my grandfather, offered her the chance to pass or to stay while on her way to the hospital. I really believe she had a choice, and I believe she took it. I just feel it in my gut. 
• Our priest locks our chapel. During daylight hours. Honestly, what's the point of being Catholic if I can't go worship and sit with Jesus any time I want? One of the reasons I left the Protestant faith(s) was because it was so Sunday/Wednesday-ish. I want church, God, Jesus in my everyday. I honestly could have marched right over to his house, knocked on his door, and pestered him to open it for me just so I could sit and cry in front of Jesus for a bit.
• But how awesome is it that I could walk over to my priest's house and ask him to open up the chapel? Yet another cause for priestly celibacy is that while he may lose out on lay life as a father and parish member, he gets an entire Parish as family. And parish members don't feel bad or guilty for bothering him or "taking up his time" with their problems because what else is a single priest with no kids going to do besides pray, visit the elderly, and run and maintain a parish? He has no tension between his family, work, and spiritual life. They are all balanced in his vocation. He has no other obligations but to the Church. 
• I'm still mad, but I'm not mad at God. I'm mad at our fallen Human condition. I just know God never wanted or intended our existence to be this way. The is evidenced by the fact that He put us in Paradise. We took it away from ourselves. And because He loved us, even if we screwed everything up and threw everything off balance, He sought to make it right. He wanted us to have eternal life, to have paradise. He gave us Jesus. He set the scales back aright. In a perfect world, these sorts of things would not happen. I'm not claiming to know the thoughts of God, but the more I ponder it, the more I am just wholeheartedly convinced if He didn't want us to live eternally with Him, for us to have Paradise once again, to spare us of suffering, infirmaries, and time, He never would have sent Jesus to redeem us. Obvious and simple, but it carries so much weight these days. 
• All the more reason to keep my eyes on the Kingdom. 
• I miss my Nana more now than ever. It was one thing to spend time with her and know she couldn't talk to me or move or go shopping with me or curl my hair or play solitaire or sew with me; it's completely another thing to know I'll never even see her again as long as I am Earth bound. And I think our bodies instinctively know this isn't how things were meant to be. And I think that's why, religious or not, we cry when someone dies. 

I can't articulate my thoughts completely. That's just what's floating around. 

Oh 2012. I hoped for the promise of change, and oh how I've gotten it in some of the most unexpected ways. 

My Nana Died Today.

And I am beside myself.  She either lived next door or with us for most of my life. It was only when I went to grad school that I didn't see her as much.

Growing up, I always thought it sucked to have two mothers. One mother that was biological and sometimes treated me more as a sister, and my grandmother, who taught me how to sew, set a table, make a bed, bake a pie, and play solitaire. This is the woman who encouraged me to dream of travel, big cities, bright lights, musicals, and to get an education. As time went on and my Nana's condition declined, my mother stepped in and actually started "mothering" me. Oddly enough, I think this is exactly how it needed to be all along. I don't think my mother was actually mature enough for a child when she had one, and I think she needed time to grow into it. It was only when she started taking care of my Nana that we started gelling well as mother and daughter. Now, that I think about it, I was actually lucky to have two mothers, even as difficult as it might have been at times or how much my angsty teenage self proclaimed I hated it.

I never got to say goodbye. It. just. happened. No one in the family had time to say goodbye. No one made it there in time it happened so quickly. And it's so sad because I know she told me once that she wanted someone to hold her hand.

Father John has said before that he doesn't like it when people say, "Oh, it was just his or her time to go. It was God's plan." I wholeheartedly agree. This wasn't God's plan. One of the consequences of sin was death. Death, leaving one another behind, this was not His intentions at all. He originally put us in a paradise with no diseases like Alzheimer's. No need for things or people to pass away. We did this to ourselves, and now we answer for it.

But that's the beauty of Heaven, right? That paradise can be restored. That we can be healed of infirmaries. That things and people can last. That all of us will agree that God is good, God is great.  And if there is anything I needed right before Lent to remind me how great the promise of Heaven is, well, as awful as it sounds, maybe this is the reminder I needed.

Eternal rest grant unto Jamie J., O Lord, 
and let perpetual light shine upon her. 
May she rest in peace.

Amen. 

I said no.

So something kinda crazy happened the other day.

I said No.

I said no to something I had wanted and wished and hoped and prayed for a very long time.

While I might be stuck on Heathcliff in some respects, I don't want him back. But with Ireland, it was always a different story. I always wanted him back, even when I saw him in town or at a bar with another girl.

And not only did he apologize to me on facebook, but he texted me as well. I told him there was no way we could go back to how it was. If we hung out, I'd want to date, and I couldn't wager him over my friends. He agreed that he missed me, and if we were around each other, he'd still want to date too, but he realized he can't make me choose between my friends and him. And he didn't want me to, either.

So our conversation ended with no. Even though I wanted things to be different. Even though he agreed he would date me again.

What changed my mind? Following the sense of peace. Just when thinking about dating him again, I just got the sense it would be wrong, a mistake. And when I thought about leaving things as they are, I just knew it was right. And all this felt counter intuitive to my heart. But you can't go home again, right?

So, I said no. And I felt peace.

Plus, remember this guy? I kinda like him. So far, he's everything I like about Heathcliff and Ireland rolled up into one. I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop. But maybe it won't. Who knows.

I guess I'm still pretty much in shock I said no, in spite of myself. Maybe I am getting better at this whole "I listen to God" thing, haha.

WWJD? Forgive and Forget, right?

I have some soul searching to do. This came in my facebook mailbox this morning.

Jesus would forgive, right? Jesus would forget. Jesus would accept him back. 

I miss him. I always have. 

Is this a test? Is the idea here just to work on forgiving people? Or is this another chance with a guy I really liked? 

What on Earth, 2012. What on Earth. 

I'm holding all the tickets. You're owning all the fines.

Today is a sad day. I know it because I woke up crying, I've been crying for an hour, and now I have Skinny Love on repeat. Indulge me a bit because writing is how I deal with things. If I don't write it somewhere, it never comes out and just stays bottled up inside eating away at my soul.

I was telling a friend yesterday that the common courtesy of "texting a girl the next morning" after you go out on a date freaks me out these days. I feel like I'm being smothered in attention. The most I can give to a guy is a few hours, and then, I'm done. I don't want to see or hear from him for a few days. Anymore attention than that, and I get scared.

I want a relationship, but I don't. I want company and a bond, but I don't want the heartache. The effort. The attention. I want to get married, but I don't want to get married at all. Basically, I've got commitment issues now. I blame it on Heathcliff. I don't blame him for much, actually, but I do blame him for that.

I was telling all this to a co-worker who was asking me about how my date went the other night. You know, the one with the other half-asian, half-white boy. I told her that he texted the next morning, the polite thing to do, and it was freaking me out because I don't want a commitment. She said I had to stop letting Heathcliff have so much control over my current life. Lord knows she's right. I mean, he's certainly not crying over me.

Last night, I revisited a dream I've had before only it was a continuation. Previously in a dream from over a year ago, Heathcliff and I had gotten married and moved into this amazing apartment. In last night's dream, I served him with divorce papers because he had already left me a long time ago and cut off all contact. I went through the entire place taking pictures of the things that belonged to me or my parents, and he agreed to sign the papers. Even in my dream, where apparently I still loved him as much as I used to, watching him sign those papers broke my heart. I was in shock. The one thing on Earth I thought was rock solid was crumbling, falling like grains of sand through the cracks in my fingers.

That was one of the things I told him when I first started dating him and contemplated the move to Catholicism.  "I just want one sure thing in this life. And I know I'm not going to find it on Earth." But among my sure things on Earth, as sure as Earthly things can get, I counted him at the top of that list.

But he let me down in such a major way.

I keep feeling like I won't have closure and be able to move on until I decide what it is I would have said to him after getting dumped because even to the last minute, I was trying to work it out with him. I still don't know what that would be, but I need to find the words, not necessarily for him to hear them, but for myself. Just so that I know.

In the meantime, I'm going to try to dispose of all the tickets and baggage I've got so no one else has to pay fines for crimes they didn't commit or carry luggage they didn't pack.

Diary of a Catholic Dating Girl.

I'm really beginning to think I should just change this to a Catholic dating blog. LOL.

I went on a date with a guy I met online tonight. Different from said guy in last post.

I had a really good time, laughed a lot, and he even asked if he could pray before we ate. (Not Catholic though).

Weird thing - He's half asian, half white. I know, right? What are the chances for two boys in a row like that? And he messaged me first. Go figure.

But I'm really happy right in this moment. Not butterflies, not warm fuzzies. It's more like I'm really satisfied.

I guess I can say I feel really peaceful, like everything is exactly how it should be.

Not even a week into the new year, and my world is already turned upside down and inside out, and I LOVE it.  Here is a bulleted list:

• I got a new job still at the community college. I am now an English lab teacher, and this position has more potential to turn into a full-time position as opposed to my old job of adjunct.
• I joined an online dating site. I thought it was for losers and desperates, but I've actually met some nice guys on there. 
• We had a party at my house and a guy tried to kiss me at midnight. To which I accidentally embarrassed him by screaming, "No, I'm not going to kiss you! I don't even know you that well!" 
• Said guy still called me the next day. Either he super likes me and is super confident or really pathetic. Cannot decide yet. 
• Said guy also apparently took me up on my offer to go to mass and see what it was all about as he went to mass with me today. 
• Which made me also realize how important the Eucharist is to a couple. I couldn't believe how vulnerable I felt watching this complete non-Catholic somewhat of a stranger person sitting next to me watching me take communion. 

2012, I think we're going to be friends.