An Anecdote

I went to a bookstore in midtown Manhattan run by the Daughters of St. Paul to purchase books fit to show and read to my nephew, Jesse, who will be two years old next Sunday.

The sister working as cashier was an amiable and talkative person. I was feeling shy, as I usually do when I go into my hermit mode on weekends. But I knew I would have to make polite conversation.

She saw me standing by the cash register and said I could come forward. I gave her the books and said, "Here you go," as cheerfully as I could.

Then came the question I expected. She asked me if the books were for my children. Inside, I tensed. Children ... did she say children, not child?

I had to resist ignoring the question. I did not want to tell the sister I do not have children. I did not want to tell the sister that I have no intention of having children. I did not want to tell her that I don't have the least imagination for being a parent, much less a husband or a loving life partner. But I also didn't want to tell her that I am committing to lifelong celibacy or that I am in religious formation. Part of this was shyness, but part of it was a desire not to put the focus on me. The question wasn't about me, anyway.

While my mind was circling the wagons around my heart, I told the sister that the books were for my nephew, who is turning two years old, and I thought these books were appropriate because he is at the age where he will sit and be read to -- and quite happily, too. She agreed and then commented to the effect that he must really be getting around now, hard to keep up with, and so on. I agreed with her. I paid for the books, shoved them into my tote bag, and shoving my pride deep into my guts, I thanked the sister and went off to church for meditation and Mass.

I think I handled the situation well. I kept the focus on my nephew, not my insecurities. If I was not outwardly cheerful, then at least I was polite. But the question made me defensive, I confess. When my father was the age I am now, he was well on the way to becoming a dad for the third time.

Sometimes I also think about my elder brothers in religion, who began consecrated life ten to fifteen years earlier than I did. I am learning about the things they have done and the experiences they had by the time they were my age, and I feel like I am so far behind in my own personal becoming. I know this is not so, and it is silly, of course, to let myself be tempted into making comparisons with other souls. We are all being made into saints in God's time, not ours. Yet when time feels so ordinary, it can be difficult to remember we come from eternity and are made for living out of the eternal and into the forever.

I will not give rise to children born of my blood. And it may be that I have no spiritual children, either -- that depends on the grace of God and my cooperation. But let it please the Spirit that I seek to become a child of God. May She mother me and bring me to maturity as a disciple of Christ.

Last of all, as to one born abnormally, he appeared to me. For I am the least of the apostles, not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me has not been ineffective.

1 Corinthians 15:8-10