Integrity and Dating

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Many thanks John Antony, your post is truly inspiring.

I really paint a picture of being better than I am though. Most people think when I say ‘I need to do better’ that I’m striving for perfection, to be honest though I’d be happy just getting through a week without committing mortal sin.

I saw a show recently about a community of Hassidic Jews. Their life was really inspiring. Jesus said to us that unless our righteousness was greater than that of the pharisees, the strictest Jewish sect at that time, we would surely not enter the Kingdom. That’s scary, because looking at those guys, I can’t even claim to come close. What was truly amazing was the way they all kept their kids from unchaste influences on TV and the world, the way they would avert their eyes, and not even touch memebers of the opposite sex to shake hands. I just feel like, as a convert, someone who, despite my hypocrisy at claiming to be ‘born again’ before that, allowed myself to wallow for the first 26 years of my life in influences that will take a lifetime to overcome even to the point of avoiding mortal sins.

In the meantime, it doesn’t seem right to start thinking about marriage, but I don’t know that i’ll have the encouragement to go on fighting without someone by my side (I know Jesus is there by my side, but I mean someone who I can relate to in the world as an equal). Thus the confusion. I honestly believe if I’d waited another day before coming back to God I’d be lost forever. Yet I still don’t feel that I’ve come back to God, I’m still waiting around for that conversion moment that will make me live 100% for God, but I know I shouldn’t be waiting but living it now, and I know I’m not doing so.

Need someone to strive for, but not worthy of that person yet, so need to strive for it, but need someone to strive for. Aargh!
 
DL82 said:
I really paint a picture of being better than I am though. Most people think when I say ‘I need to do better’ that I’m striving for perfection, to be honest though I’d be happy just getting through a week without committing mortal sin.
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Have you talked to your priest about the *possibility *that you have developed or are developing a scrupulous conscience? Scrupulosity does tend to make one believe they are unworthy, committing sins constantly, etc. Perhaps its something spritual direction could help you analyze.
 
1ke said:
Have you talked to your priest about the *possibility *that you have developed or are developing a scrupulous conscience? Scrupulosity does tend to make one believe they are unworthy, committing sins constantly, etc. Perhaps its something spritual direction could help you analyze.
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Thanks Ike, I do have a spiritual director. I’m not talking about scrupulosity, more like presumption. It’s not that I’m confessing minor stuff like missing my morning prayers or eating 58mins before communion. Not that you have any right to know, but covetousness, lusting after women, laziness at work, and a whole bunch of other major sins I commit almost daily and am more likely to commit now than when I was a catechumen, because I know I can always go to confession about them. Presumption.
 
Wow! You are saying the same things that keep bouncing around in my heart.

I don’t think I had a huge event that said yes God I know your there 100%. It is a strunggle no matter what level of fath you are at. My adivice is keep stiving. God will bless you with woman with the same heart. I asked Him once who she will be, how will I know her, He said she will be a lonely servant (just like Mary). You can see a woman like that a mile away not be her looks but by her heart. That heart is so beautiful it will not matter any of the sinful/prideful/misguided preferences we may have, they will not matter. We wil be attracted to the real her defined by her heart. The real her that does not grow old with age but grows deeper and even more beautiful with time. It all about that strive to really Love.

Keep her in your heart. She is struggling just like you. Pray for her alot. Sacrifice for her. God wants you to know Him better through her. When God brings you two together it will be so great no words can pronounce or even hope to decribe. You will know her when you know her heart.

Continue the fight agaist sin and trust in the Lord.
What is in the past is in the past and the future is not for you to know. What is in your heart right now is all that counts.

God Bless you and your future wife,
John Anthony
 
*"That heart is so beautiful it will not matter any of the sinful/prideful/misguided preferences we may have, they will not matter. We wil be attracted to the real her defined by her heart. The real her that does not grow old with age but grows deeper and even more beautiful with time. It all about that strive to really Love.

Keep her in your heart. She is struggling just like you. Pray for her alot. Sacrifice for her. God wants you to know Him better through her. When God brings you two together it will be so great no words can pronounce or even hope to decribe. You will know her when you know her heart". *

Thank you for this beautiful post. I just wanted to say that it’s so true that as you are seeking your wife- so each woman searches for her husband. We are lonely, we do struggle and we are searching for someone who seeks above all to do God’s will every day. He is always in our heart and we pray for him. We are searching for someone who will walk with us in our journey towards eternity- encouraging us and helping us to persevere. Someone who will help us grow in our love for Christ in every aspect of our lives.
Such a one must be worth waiting for because it will “be so great”
 
DL82 said:
Thanks Ike, I do have a spiritual director. I’m not talking about scrupulosity, more like presumption. It’s not that I’m confessing minor stuff like missing my morning prayers or eating 58mins before communion. Not that you have any right to know, but covetousness, lusting after women, laziness at work, and a whole bunch of other major sins I commit almost daily and am more likely to commit now than when I was a catechumen, because I know I can always go to confession about them. Presumption.
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Well, eating 58 mins before communion isn’t a trivial matter, just so you know, if done deliberately.

On the subject of coveting, lusting, and sloth, you need to take a step back and think about what you are trying to accomplish.

If you are committing a slew of different sins, and don’t know what to do, then just pick ONE, and say, ‘Lord, I don’t want to do THIS sin anymore, and every time I find myself doing it, I will pray the Lord’s prayer’.

Then you can move onto other sins, but don’t just let yourself wallow in self-pity, and presume to rely on confession, easy though it can be.

God Bless!
 
Just wanted to thank everyone on this thread for their wonderful advice, and apologise for all my public wallowing in self-pity.
 
DL82 said:
I have quite strong traditionalist views about how the married state should be. I believe that people should be virgins when they marry, that as it says in Proverbs, we should love the wife of our youth, i.e. marry while still young enough to be good parents, (biologically, a woman is at her child-bearing prime around 17), and that the man should be the chief or sole bread-winner. More importantly, I believe people should marry someone who helps them in their spiritual growth, that they should seek out a spouse in the same way they would seek out a spiritual director, without too much emphasis on emotion or ‘chemistry’, if we pray to God He will give us the desire for union, and it ought to be a gift from Him, not something we take for ourselves.

But…

Saying all that, I am not a virgin, I have been in a past relationship which was very much about ‘chemistry’ and would feel (emotional response, not what I believe in my will) that my marriage lacked something if it didn’t have that. I am 26 already, and am a graduate student, so don’t make enough money to support a family, and won’t for some years.

I feel like if I’m to have any integrity I have to accept that I am now too old and too wrecked to marry. I know God can forgive, and I know we need to forgive eachother, but I feel that if I care about a woman enough to want to marry her, I wouldn’t want her to HAVE to forgive all of that, I would care about her enough to want her to marry someone who has integrity.

My ex told me that I would never be happy, because I’ll always feel guilty about my past, and about not being the best I could have been. I think she’s right. I would dearly love to live a life of radical penance, to be like the homeless guy who used to pray on his knees outside the cathedral where I used to worship, kneeling until his trousers were ripped, his knees bleeding and he could barely walk. I saw him and just knew that he cared so deeply and felt so unworthy of the God who had shown him so much mercy.

OK, so I’m too hard on myself, but I always will be. I wouldn’t be happy with a wife unless she was equally hard on me, but then it wouldn’t be true love if all she ever did was point out my faults, or would it? Do I just accept lifelong singleness as part of my penance for messing up the first 26 years of my life? I feel so joyful when I think of that possibility, an integrity that is worth even more than the love/lust I constantly find myself craving.

So why do I still feel so unhappy? Why do I still find myself coveting the married state?
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Although I am not in your situation, there are only two things that strike me from your post:
  1. 26 is not too old to get married.
  2. If you are feeling guilty or unworthy because you are no longer a virgin and feel a need to do “penance”, maybe the group of women who you would feel most comfortable with are those who are also “in the same boat” - you two would best be able to understand each other and the struggles you’ve been through and help each other through it.
 
DL82 said:
Just wanted to thank everyone on this thread for their wonderful advice, and apologise for all my public wallowing in self-pity.
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There is nothing wrong with seeking advice or sharing self pity. This society (world) says you are weak if you seek help or you even hint that you may have problem.

We all have problems, pains, and self “whatevers” but we can’t get over those things without help. It is imposible. We need to seek the Lord even more deeply, we need to ask for assistance or or in many cases accept assastance. But in the same instance we have to be willing to assist, to reach out and listen. We need to stop walking around with our eyes glued to the floor hoping not to make eye contact. We need to walk around with our eyes open to see the real pain in people.

To get back to dating and worthiness, what it comes down to is Love. Do want to have a great marriage? Learn to Love greatly. Just remamber to Love greatly you have to sacrifice greatly! We only have to look at the cross to know that this is true.

God’s servant,
John Anthony
 
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