I became Catholic in 2010 and I had a very sunshine and lollipops view of what life as a Catholic was going to be like. I viewed issues in the world as very black and white. I thought in terms of good guys and bad guys. There were no gray areas for me. Every single question had a Yes or No answer in my mind. This came from me living life as a crazy person before my conversion. I figured all the choices I made before my conversion were wrong, and now I was going to make all the right ones. I talk about this a lot because just how gray things are in reality is a huge lesson I am constantly learning, and because 2020 has provided plenty of teachable moments.
It is so much easier to make plans and to feel in control of life when we know what is going to come next, and in this year, there is no knowing what is coming next. Not next hour, next day or next month. It is all a mystery.
Luckily, Catholicism is a faith that embraces mystery. How God became man is a mystery. How we have the freedom to cause so much suffering to the innocent is a mystery. How Jesus rose from the dead to help us get to heaven because we will almost always choose to cause that suffering is a mystery.
You would think that we would be the people most capable of dealing with the mystery that is this year, and yet … I do not think that is the case. I see a lot of hand-wringing going on. Here is what I know about mystery in the Catholic sense: It is when God shows up and shows us how much He loves us.
When I finally wear myself out trying to figure out how to manage on my own and give up, God always shows up and handles whatever it is that I have had a hard time handling on my own. I do not say that to be all “just be positive” either. I am the least positive person alive. I am cynical and I have been through a lot of horrible things. I’ve written about some of them in this space. When I say, “God swoops in,” I mean it.
The greatest example of that is when God swooped in and had people from all over the world donate the money for my son’s funeral. But that was only the beginning. In the moment when I was face to face with my son’s dead body the ground fell out from under me. I had no clue how I was going to keep on living in the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months or years ahead. I did not even think past the funeral really. I had helped to plan two funerals of people close to me in the ten months before Anthony’s suicide, so my brain knew what to do in that regard. But after the funeral? I had no clue what lay ahead of that. Kind of how we have no clue what lays ahead of us this fall.
I remember sitting in a chair in front of my son’s coffin as it was lowered into the ground. I was quiet on the outside. I had no idea how we ended up there, my son and I.
It was oddly the same shock as the day he was born when he was in my arms and I had no idea how I had ended up with a baby. How did I get here and where am I going from this place? As I stood up when my son Anthony’s coffin was safe in the ground, every step I took was a mystery. How was I going to survive? It felt impossible. Now here I am, three and a half years into surviving. How? God swooping in is the only answer I have. It is not the same life I was living before Anthony’s suicide.
That much I do know.
I think there is room for us to be open to God’s mysterious ways in the unknown that is this new life after Covid. We will never go back to the way things were before, but what we can do is survive each day from here with the help of God’s grace. And maybe, like me, you will look back and see just how much He swooped in when the floor fell out from under all of us.
Leticia Ochoa Adams writes from Texas, on life, death, grief, suicide, faith, motherhood, doubts and whatever (else) happens to be on her mind.
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