Grace, Caring & My Beautiful Wife

She is beautiful. Really, she is. Every part of her is true to the word. I once told her that the sunrise was a miracle, but it couldn’t hold a candle to her, and meant it (mind you it may be plagiarized and the coinage of it potentially has become lost inside my ever unsteady, yet ever overthinking mind).

The first time I saw her was at St. Andrew’s Hall while I was in the college seminary. One glance into each other’s eyes and the question was answered. This was the person I was going to marry. Yup, no doubt. Actually, I am totally kidding. 

I do not renounce love at first sight or stories of romantic beginnings coalesced into one perfect first date. However, that ain’t us. 

Actually that first time I saw her she was accompanied by three other missionaries who had come to Seton Hall University to serve the college students on campus. They were being given a tour of the grounds and made their way over to the home of two dozen eighteen to thirty-five year old young men discerning a life of celibacy. Well, a lot more than just that, but it paints the picture of what an attractive young woman was walking into. Interesting place to happen upon. 

What I do remember in that first exchange was her name, Margot. 

The four visitors joined us for Night Prayer in our small chapel. That chapel was the place I found God. It was not as though I found him one day in an “ah-ha” moment, but more a finding of treasures periodically throughout my three year commitment in my discerning years. 

How interesting to have shared a first encounter with the woman I would one day marry inside the walls of the very place I learned to find God in all things. She was a gem inside a place where gems would be found for and within my own heart. This was only my second week attempting to discern the priesthood. Trust me, there were many broken gems turned lumps of coal to be tossed in order to make room for those eternal gems. I am still tossing them. 

Later on that semester, after occasionally seeing her from a distance across campus, or in the cafeteria with college women she was leading in bible study, I had a real conversation with her. Sort of. 

It was an unusually cold autumn day for the great Garden State.  Ahead of me on “The Green” I noticed a moving mass of fur. It was her. 

She was wearing a fur coat that engulfed her petiteness. I did not know many twenty something year olds then or now that actually wore a fur coat, and thus being raised in Tennessee where fur was mounted as decor and not worn, I was a bit taken back. However, that fur coat, it was her. 

Margot was making a few circles as if patenting the ground while staying in one spot. It looked as if she wanted to maneuver this way, but then that way became better only for one step before the next way appeared to maybe be a new way that was better than this way. She was lost. So, being the young man of great chivalry that I was, I approached her expecting I would be the elucidation to her quandary. 

Before I reached her she heard me, looked up and said, “Hey! Do you know where Corrigan Hall is? I have to speak at a class and I can’t figure out where it is on this crazy map.” There went my “art of surprise” chivalrous heroic moment. To put it out there, I was not attempting to flirt or woo her. 

It should be noted that Seton Hall’s campus is 58 fenced in acres. I grew up mowing lawns in Tennessee twice that size. She was lost in that tiny space. Remember that for later. 

As I told her where the building was she thanked me and quickly began to hurry away. As she did, I called out, “No problem. Take it easy Margot.” That got her attention and I really was not even trying. I knew her name. “Wait. How do you know me? Have I met you before?” 

When you know someone’s name everything changes. I recall working at a camp west of Nashville for four summers. I always appreciated the beauty of the greenery, but it was not until a friend taught me the names of all of the trees—literally all of the trees—that I truly appreciated them. Not only did I feel smart, but also I felt as if they were no longer mere objects of beauty. Margot is not a tree, obviously, but the same principle applies. Sort of. 

I know her as the woman her parents named Margot. I can look in her eyes for more than a second or two and call her by that name. She and I can fight and I can call her by that name. I see her beauty and it has a name to it: Margot. 

So, guess what Shakespeare, I have some bad news for your infatuated character of love. “What is in a name?” Everything. So, Romeo do not “doff thy name” quite yet. No offense to those Shakespearean scholars--random unnecessary fact, he died on my birthday. 

I love her name because it is the starting point to everything about her. I love everything about her.  Love is a complicated word, and just because I say I love everything about her does not mean that everything about her is perfect. 

It is the imperfections I love in her because they make me want to become the man I have been called to become. Her flaws are present in my own heart because if I am not the cause of them, I certainly am the release or trigger of them. I know her, and I love what I know of her. 

She has revealed every piece of herself to me since our courtship began three and half years after I met her. For those wondering, I was out of the seminary six months before it became multimedia official. Yes, it was scandalous, but no, it was not that scandalous (depending upon how you look at it that entire sentence could be false).

Through her revelations have come forth a vulnerability of extreme sincerity. She has shared things within the verbal and nonverbal conversations over these last six years that no other person has had the privilege of receiving. She has opened her heart and has opened mine because of it. 

One of those “supposed” imperfections that she obtains, which calls me to become the man I was called to be, sometimes irritates me. She cares. She cares more than anyone I know. I call it her grace of caring, but I am convinced there is another theological title for it. If someone’s family member dies whom she does or does not know it can ruin her day. She does not dwell on it. She lives within it. In her words, “My heart.”

I have seen this happen on numerous occasions. One such time being a recent car ride where she was venting about our short cash flow for the rest of the month, but than felt burdened by it because of a far off removed acquaintance that she knew who had literally no money. 

It greatly troubled me. I have worked hard to provide for my family, and sometimes that labor does not financially pay off. I want it to, and I want her to share that frustration with me. It was in that frustration that I proclaimed, “You know what? You need to ask God to take that grace out of your heart!” I have regretted those words since the moment they left my mouth. My imperfections are harder to love. 

Caring is a part of who she is. She feels the pain of other’s sufferings to such an extent that all she can do is the most she can do; pray for them. She is beautiful. 

The women that have meant the most to me in my own life are women who suffer. No matter how I try and change that I cannot. I wish I could. My mom suffered, her sister is suffering, and the Mother of God suffered. It is within these women that I see the beauty of my wife’s own life. 

She is not suffering because of her own trials, even though they are many. She is suffering because of others trials. That is caring. That is beautiful. 

When I look back on that first conversation I laugh. She was lost and she asked me for directions. Neither of us knew it then, but I would actually be given the sacramental grace via marriage to navigate her on this earth and into heaven one day. I need her help frequently in that role. And because she cares about people more than I do, she helps. 

Margot is beautiful.