Marian Helper Winter 2015-2016

M arian H elper • W inter 2015-16 •  marian.org 13 MH I ’m going to lose her. The words kept shouldering their way into my thoughts, no matter how I tried to fend them off. No. Don’t think that. You’ll start crying again, and you cannot cry yet. You have to calm down and drive. We made it home, and I sent the kids off to play. I opened the computer and found the information I needed. Before I had time to talk myself out of it, I grabbed the phone and dialed. When a woman answered, I stammered through my request. She asked me a few preliminary ques- tions, and then: “What is it that you want to talk to the counselor about?” “Um, I need help with … anger management.” Because if I don’t change, I’m going to lose her, I added silently as she moved on to the next question. It had happened that morning outside the library. Ours is a small, quiet town, and after parking the car, I felt safe letting the older kids get out and wait on the sidewalk while I got the baby. But when my four-year-old sprinted gleefully toward the intersection, I called out, “Bernadette, come back!” She whirled around. “Why?” I didn’t have the patience for explanations. “Because I said so!” I yelled, yanking the stroller open and strug- gling to connect the car seat to it. Bernadette looked hard at me, lifted her chin, and placed her hands on her hips. “No,” she said, and stepped off the curb into the street. It was my turn to sprint. Pushing the stroller wildly and trailed by a running two-year-old, I reached the corner and pulled my little girl back to safety. Gripping her arms much more tightly than necessary, I screamed at her. Right there on the sidewalk, I screamed in my small daughter’s face. When I finally stopped and let go of her, she fell down on the pavement. And now, I was going to lose her. Even if no one had seen and reported me, even if the police didn’t show up at our house to take her away, I was still going to lose her. If I went on giving license to my rage that way, I would lose her heart for sure. I tried to teach my children about God’s love and our need to submit to him trustfully in all things, and what kind of example of caring authority was I providing? When Bernadette grew old enough to sin, why should she ask confidently for the mercy of her heav- enly parent if her earthly parent regularly unleashed demonic fury on her? She would despise me for being a hypocrite — and worse, she might turn away from him, expecting him to be as harsh and terrifying as I was. Before I became a mother, I was a teacher and generally got along well with my students. Certainly I never screamed in their faces or landed one of them on the ground. But when my own children came, I discovered a darkness in me that I had never suspected was there. In my lower moments, I have doubted God’s wisdom in sending me children at all, or at least in pairing me up with a child who shares my fiery stubbornness. In my very low- est moments, I have told myself that I should never have followed this vocation at all. If I had stayed single, I could have simply remained that nice, harmless lady who never would have dreamed of screaming in a little girl’s face. And yet, if I had not been awakened to th e wrath lying dormant within me, I would have lost the chance to try to conquer it, and growth in holiness is the reason for every vocation God sends. I could have lived unaware of my capacity for frightening anger because there was no one close enough to push my buttons in just the right way. Perhaps I would have died one of those lukewarm souls, neither hot nor cold, whom the Lord spits out of his mouth. That afternoon, I stood at the screen door and watched Bernadette play in the front yard with her siblings. I had held her and asked her forgiveness. My appointment with the counselor was written on the calendar. Already I noticed a hopeful peace seeping into the cracks in my heart. The ugliest moments of family life make the depth of our need for God most painfully clear. They force us to see what we need to beg him to heal in us. We must see, and we must beg, and we must submit to his healing touch — or else risk losing everything. Marian Friedrichs is a Marian Helper who lives in Kansas. F amily matters — the story of a mother THE UGLIEST MOMENTS By Marian Friedrichs