I am blessed with an incredible memory. Memory is part of who I am and forms who I am to come. This year has been one of the worst and best in my life. I have spent most of it in spiritual warfare working in a seminary which accepts homosexuality, unless it is detected. The hypocrisy is accepted.
I have had two major illnesses, and two operations in one year. Cancer has changed my outward appearance forever, but not who I am. I am me.
I have three lovely cats and much to do. My son is a great joy to me. He is surrounded by excellent seminarian friends.
The me is the identity in Christ given to me at baptism. The me was formed by Catholic parents, excellent Catholic education, for which I am forever grateful and much suffering.
One cannot be a single mom in America without intense suffering-the worst of which is the judgemental attitudes of family and fellow Catholics. So it has been for many, long years, the years of activity, but cancer forces one to reflect. To think of what is truly important.
My chances for a second marriage are now drastically reduced as I have aged and no longer am attractive. This part of my identity is gone, but my Confirmation patron, St. Rose of Lima, limed her face so that no one would want her. She merely wanted to be loved by Christ himself.
This Rose and other roses like her, such as Catherine of Sienna, whose Illuminations I read while convalescing (two weeks) and Teresa of Avila, who I truly understand for the first time in my life, have led me to the realization that to be a woman of God is not to be like other women. To be a woman of God is to transcend the physical, which is why I disagree more and more with Theology of the Body.
We are body and soul and our theology is that of body and soul. When the body decays, becomes marred, changes, ages, the sexual is no longer part of one's identity. No. My identity, standing in front of the mirror in Äugust in my best gown and saying goodbye to part of my female and maternal identity, I did not merely mourn, but rejoiced in that I am more, much more than my body.
When God gives me my body back, hopefully, at the Final Judgement, I shall be like new again. I shall also meet, God willing, those Roses-including my sister, Elizabeth, who went before me to heaven. She is a Pearl of those innocents who gather around the Throne of God, unlike me, who has to take a back place to her purity.
Catherine's Dialog and Teresa's Interior Castle give me comfort, as well as the knowledge that truth prevails despite so much spiritual warfare. But, as I am wedded to Truth, my way is not as hard as those who remain in ignorance,either by choice or accident. God has given me great peace and joy, as well as insight, to continue despite cancer and other things. The joy of living continues...