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.  

Emotions Rooted In Love

Most of her hair had receded from the chemotherapy and malnourishment; she seemed physically weaker. She was rocking in a red paisley chair. “Patrick, sweetie, I just want to be better.”

On another occasion, while I was watching her during the early hours of morning, just before the sun peaked across the backyard and while my father was sleeping next to her, she sat up and said, “I am so hungry.” As I fed her the chicken broth, and it streamed down the sides of her once soft defined smile now turned loose and tired, she said, “It is so good.” 

Finally, one night in the midst of silence while my wife Margot was watching her and had briefly left her side, my mom suddenly yelled out “Margot!”. Startling her and I both (awakening me from my own sleep) we hurried into the room to find her sitting up—or attempting to—in her hospice bed. I am not sure if she saw us, but she did feel our presence. She looked in Margot’s direction and said, “I love you.” She then went right back to sleep. 

These were the last verbal interactions I would have with her. Why do they still haunt me, or rather, why do they not make me come alive? Let me explain.

When I envision my mother’s death, and I think of it long enough, I do find peace, but mostly I  am revealed a multitude of emotions rooted confusingly in love. No matter how it is experienced, death is hard. No matter what faith one encompasses or does not encompass in God, death is hard. No matter how dignified or undignified a person dies, death is hard. 

There is so much pain involved not only in the degradation of someone’s physical being when they are battling cancer, but also in the care-taking of those emotionally there beside them. I admit there were moments when my mother’s needs frustrated me. They were not needs in the sense of her wants. 

I recall coughing fits that would last upwards of thirty minutes. I remember the frustration I had during them. I so badly wanted to simply hold her and yell “Stop! Stop coughing mom! Please!” I wanted her to stop because I wanted to stop suffering because I was suffering because she was suffering. This was a need, or was it a want? 

A multitude of emotions rooted in love. 

In his book A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis wrote, “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” The moment my mother ceased to breath, I understood those words. It was not her death that terrified me, but the grief which followed. How would I live without her and how would I deal with what soon pursued internally? I was afraid to be without her because of the physical presence her being fostered within my own life. Without that presence the fear would come forward. It was a question that hosted chaos and anxiety—like something was missing, or rather, is missing.

The last few years of her life were not glamorous. They did not do justice to who she was as a person neither mentally or physically. She was a woman who raised five children and loved one man her entire life so diligently that they were all by her side holding no questions as to whether or not they were ever not loved the night she moved from life to death. Regardless of whether she was physically capable of showing that love in those final years meant nothing; it had already been shown an infinite number of times throughout her life. What was needed was her presence to make us feel connected and as one—to make us feel loved. It is that presence and my inability to move forward at times that causes me fear. Not her death. 

My mother died in love with two men. My father and God. I often wonder if my dad ever felt inferior to her eternal romance, or maybe, rather, if he ever felt challenged by her love of God. I never felt inferior, but I did feel challenged. My mother had such a cornerstone faith in God that I am certain she loved and trusted in him more than her own family, but it was because she loved and trusted in him more than her own family that her own family never felt less loved or second best. There abides the challenge. 

We were all the heart of her joy and the joy of her heart because her heart was a sacrificial one that was guided by her love for God. 

This is how hope is born. Hope is born through love and practiced through faith. We hoped from the moment she was diagnosed with cancer and through all four years of fighting that she would be cured. We hoped because we loved her and had faith in our love of her—she had faith in our love. 

When she conquered the cancer the first time we were not as surprised as much as we were encouraged. When she was re-diagnosed half a year later, but this time with brain tumors, we were not defeated, but encouraged to fight alongside her once more. She knew just as much as we did that beyond all of the madness of the cancer we would be together as a unit, ready. 

As she drew her final breaths I remembered something my wife Margot had said. She felt each time she entered my mother’s room as though she was entering an adoration chapel, or in the Catholic tradition, a chapel where the new covenant is reserved; a place where “heaven kisses earth”. At no other time was this more true than within those final breaths. The word adoration comes from the word adore which is latin for two words: “ad” and “ora”. Translated literally it means to mouth, or as an action, mouth to mouth. 

As Patricia Marie Rivera breathed in her last breaths she breathed in the life through her mouth which she had been given and which she had returned. It was a life rooted in God. She breathed in us there in the room by her bed grasping a piece of her both physically and spiritually. She breathed in the physical presence of God and slowly let go of the life he had allotted her for the sake of eternally breathing in, mouth to mouth, his presence in heaven. Put simply, she adored and was adored. 

Though I am without conclusions as to the questions within my own heart regarding life without her, I am not without her. She exists within the daily offerings I make to those around me. I slept quietly within the safety of her womb for nine months. It was one of her greatest offerings. It was my life. 

The final question that remains is this: “Patrick, sweetie, what are you going to do with it?”

Beauty Not Burden

Six years ago my wife Margot miscarried our first child just before the end of her first trimester. It shattered her heart. Four months later we lost our second child in the same manner. As a man with a wounded wife whose pain I could not fully comprehend, I felt truly helpless. It was a difficult time for us newlyweds. It was something that set the tone to our first year of marriage. We wanted a child so badly.

However, to every crucifixion there is a resurrection. Thankfully two years later we celebrated the arrival of the first of our three daughters (who today are all under the age of four) to nurture and love whole heartedly. The moment she breathed and I heard her first cry, a cry that pierced my heart and awakened my soul, I wept as did my wife. This child was what we at that moment were created for.

That night as my tired wife slept, I held my new daughter in my arms. The light creeped in under the frame of the hospital door. It was sufficient enough for me to watch my firstborn try and open her eyes for the first time. I kissed her continually on her then cone head and I recall the feeling inside of my heart. 

It did not have words to it, but it spoke. It called out so clearly a definitive action that alerted my senses and gave me a job and a mission. If voiced it would have said, “Mia Marguerite I have hardly met you and I would die for you.” 

I have died daily for Mia and her two sisters in so many ways. 

Raising three children—three girls at that—has granted me a life filled with joy. It is a tiresome joy. There are nights when my wife and I think we are alas going to enjoy time in a romantic setting: low lights, a glass of wine, and time alone on a couch stained by chocolate candy or popsicle hands—when it happens. One of our little innocent beings, created in love, will wander or whine and wreck the moment. 

A coin will be tossed by a glance between the distance of a pillow cushion which separates us, most likely I will lose, and will arise into the not so darkness of our daughters’ room lit by a three foot pink Christmas tree that I have not had the heart to take down even though it has been eight months since its first arrival upon their bedroom dresser. Why? Because my two and a half year old asked me not to. 

Though typically it is a glass of water wanted, a stuffed animal that has fallen off the bed in need of being rescued, or the reassurance of my presence, there are those nights when it seems nothing is sufficient in aiding them back into the land of dreams laced with Tinkerbell, Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. They are making me selfless. They are making me a better man. They are making me holy.

My daughters may in fact be little creatures of want, but it is a want I gladly seek to understand and fill within reason. Within reason? Within what reason? It is within the reason of bringing them to know that the world is not perfect, nor are their parents, but for now I will do everything within my limited contingent self to aid them in meeting the non-contingent “Being” when that day does arrive. Why? Love.

When I get stares from people that I do not know, or questions from acquaintances, friends or family members as to when I will stop having children, I am baffled. It is as if the world sees children and creation as something that is supposed to have a red light or green light to it. 

My question to the world is such, “What is so wrong and awful about approaching the ability to procreate from a yellow light point of view?” Like Aristotle's exegesis on virtue, I approach the ability to create not cowardly or recklessly, but courageously yielding to discernment. 

I do not hate anyone, but I do at times hate the questions people ask me. They see my wife and I with our three daughters and instead of seeing the beauty in my children they see the burden. When did the world get so frustrated with the burden of children? When did it get so frustrated with people who have numerous children? When did human beings become perfect to the point that they have no need to be uncomfortable? 

People who can have children want children. They want to create. We are designed to create in conjunction with the ultimate Creator. From the point of natural law, our existence is an action that requires us to begin and end some thing or task.

For me becoming a father or a fully human being involves more than conception and birth. In the words of Johannes Metz, “…it is a mandate and a mission, a command and a decision.  A human being has an open-ended relationship to himself.  They do not possess their being unchallenged; and cannot take their being for granted as God does his. Other animals, for example, survive in mute innocence and cramped necessity. With no future horizons they are what they are from the start. The law of their life and being is spelled out for them, and they resign themselves to these limits without question.”

Innately inside every single soul is a yearning to bring life into lifelessness. People ask me questions about my “sex life” with my wife and the fruits of it—we make love and then nine months later welcome and name that love—because they do not have the courage to create what we have nor do they dare to and thus they mock the unknown. Their contraceptive sexuality breeds them into a world of contraceptive thought and spirituality. 

What if people stopped mocking the unknown and embraced it? What if people decided to live outside the comfort of themselves?

My life is a radical one. I am raising a family of saints and I am not a saint; and yet I want more saints to raise. I am seeking to bring my stained self into the unstained hearts of my children in hopes they will be able to do the same one day by seeing their imperfect father as a human being that tried to embrace the unknown. They are the unknown. Everything about their future is a mystery except one thing. I will love them, always.

My halftime is the distance between work and home. It is not long considering I work above my garage in a makeshift office. When I walk through the patio gate I am greeted by a shedding German Shepherd named Rosie, a wife that is typically tired, a drooling five month old baby named Colette, a middle child syndrome two and a half year old toddler named Marcella, and a four year old preschooler named Mia. I am surrounded by estrogen and I am somehow asked to guide, provide, and protect this group of people (Rosie takes care of herself—so she’s not included in the invoice). It is hard. I am often uncomfortable. I am tired seven days out of the week. Yet I am happy. How?

Because I get to watch life unfold. I get to put all of myself into the creations I created, and I love it.  Try it more than once or twice. You might find more of yourself in the giving away of yourself.