Choosing life over death

I say I choose life every day but I lie. While I do make a conscious choice to be life-giving, to be as compassionate and loving as Jesus was, and I acknowledge the primacy and centrality of God in my life, I choose death when it comes to my physical well-being.

I don't pay such close attention to what I put in my body, often eating foods that are bad for me; I ignore what my body needs to maintain optimum health. I even ignore the pain I am in, until it becomes unbearable before I actually do something about it. Hence, I choose death on some level every day.

Just by listening to the people around me, seeing the states their bodes are in, I know I am not unique. I may even make 'better' choices, and thank God, my health issues are not serious and revolve mostly around managing muscle pain and getting a good night's sleep.

P said that people generally avoid a fast death but they invariably pick a slow one. He was talking about people with chronic illnesses who have the power to manage said illnesses yet choose to ignore the prescribed remedies, preferring instead to let their conditions degenerate to a point where symptoms can be dire, and damage irreversible. Even then, they refuse to take accountability and make judicious changes in lifestyles that would help, opting instead to use medication as their only line of defence.

It's completely baffles me that people can be so irrational, choosing death over life, albeit a very slow death, but, then again, I am no different myself. I do not eat properly and exercise regularly. I do not do what's right for my body. I guess I'm not disciplined enough, and laziness trumps vanity for me. Prayer, now I've got that down pretty much, even mindfulness, but exercise and eating right? Hmmm, I still have a ways to go.

Although looking after one's health is not explicitly preached in the Bible, Saint Paul did remind the Corinthians that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit within us, and that we are not our own, we belong to God. We also know that gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins and that temperance is a virtue. In Genesis, we are tasked to be good stewards - should this not apply to our bodies besides the environment?

When I feel tired or unwell, I am not able to give my best to the tasks I set myself. I even draw back from reaching out to others, loving others, for it all becomes just too much. My efforts are lackadaisical and perfunctory.

When I am in pain, I can only focus on my own pain, my world shrinks, and I tend to ignore the pain of others. I become self-centred, selfish, without even realizing it. I become short-tempered, impatient and quite intolerant of others' weaknesses.

When I am emotionally exhausted and fragile, I close up unto myself, and I do not hear the cries of the needy around me. I don't want to. I just can't. How can I be the hands and feet of Christ when I myself am so in need of comfort and rest?

I recently had a minor procedure done and while the outcome was good and I feel relieved and grateful, I am also physically drained. So I am learning to love myself a little more by resting and taking better care of my body. I realize I cannot continue down this path of poor stewardship over my own health for the price is high in terms of not being able to do the things I love, and the missed opportunities to minister to others.

I want to be pain-free, energized, brimming with health and vitally alive. If I am in better shape to worship the Lord, I will do a better job of it. Right now, my best is really not my personal best, and that's a shame. As I work on restoring my health, I invite you to take stock and see if you could make some healthier choices and to do it immediately. Every day we are given the power to choose life or death, choose life in all the ways that honour the Creator. 

Cultivating coupleness in marriage

I was sharing with my SD last week about how my marriage was going and he said to me you both need to find a new language of love that is special to the two of you, a coupleness that is forged from each person's gifts and talents, and expressed in giving to the other in a committed love. I thought, what a lovely concept, and I was heartened for P and I have actually been doing this for the last year or so, discovering and building our own unique love language.

He reminded me of not falling into the pitfalls of a consumer relationship where we use each other for our own selfish needs, and we do not not respect the other's gendered dignity and we objectify each other. The archetype of this kind of relationship is where the man is seen as the banker or social status enabler while the woman is the "decorative vase" or baby factory.

Then there is the convenience relationship where we are in relationship merely to suit our own needs and purposes. It is not really what we are looking for in a relationship but it serves certain superficial social purposes, so why not? This is almost like a friends with benefits type of relationship where we fulfil ourselves gratuitously at the cost of real intimacy. Again we fall into using quite easily.

I will also put into this category, what my SD cautions against for married couples, and that is the married but living as singles. There is no true commitment to establishing a life together as one couple. Neither is willing to give up or make certain sacrifices that would make the other happy, so we still pursue separate interests and social lives, much like housemates. The relationship dynamics centre around quid pro quo, a what's in it for me attitude, all very transactional. Hardly what one can call marriage.

The kind of relationship marriage should be is the committed relationship where we are invested in the welfare of the other, what is good for him or her. It's a self-donating love that does not give up one's own dignity and individuality and is centred first on loving God in order to love the other. It's not about codependency or being a doormat.

There are undoubtedly differences in how men and women communicate, and how they see things from a feminine or masculine perspective can add tension to a relationship, even in the best of committed relationships. P and I are still learning to accommodate each other's differences, even when we don't completely understand the other at times. With patience, empathy and the ability to forgive, we can change to become better people together as well as individually through time.

Here is where what JPII calls the complementarity of the sexes comes into play. We are each called to combine the best of our masculine and feminine genius in how we interact with each other as a couple and how we, as a couple, act and interact socially.

This gender difference is found in spirituality as well. Brother Dominic shared that for men, the tendency was to the external, think Saint John of the Cross's Ascent to Mount Carmel. For women, it is more internal much like Saint Teresa of Avila's bid to enter the Interior Castle.

Women tend to be more life-giving, while men more life-protecting, just like Joseph who fled to Egypt with Jesus and Mary upon receiving a dream from an angel. The invitation is for both to nurture the life-giving qualities, without ignoring being life-protecting, and bless each other, their extended and respective families, and society at large.

As P and I continue to grow in coupleness, creating our own love language, I find the words of Saint Louis de Montfort in his book True Devotion to Mary apply equally to the marriage vocation and I can certainly shoot for this:

It is certain that growth in the holiness of God is your vocation. All your thoughts, words, actions, everything you suffer or undertake must lead you towards that end. Otherwise you are resisting God in not doing the work for which he created you and for which he is even now keeping you in being. What a marvelous transformation is possible! Dust into light, uncleanness into purity, sinfulness into holiness, creature into Creator, man into God!