At this point in my life, my major sins are those of a daughter in law who many times loses patience with my mother in law, who I try to stay away from because she does seem to bring out the uncharitable side of me and a 37 year old daughter (this is not the practicing Catholic) who is unmarried with 5 very undisciplined children, no job, sucks the life out of us financially and emotionally…and that is my “occasion of sin”. And, frankly I do try very hard to work on being charitable and avoid those sins which I believe to be venial sins. I know that I have never in my life thought ahead of a sin and thought “okay, God, I know this is what the devil wants me to do, I know this offends you, and I just don’t care, I’m going to do it anyway”. To me, that does make a deadly sin and would condemn me to hell. The serious sins I have committed were when I was a teenager, and we all know what those sins are once we discover we have hormones. These are certainly not sins that have a snowball’s chance of being repeated as I have been married 40 years. Yet, those sins still haunt me. One reason is because, at the time, believe it or not my vocabulary just didn’t encompass the wording to express what I had done wrong. At 16 making-out in the back of a car with your boyfriend seemed to be what all teenagers did. It wasn’t like, oh, I know, I’ll go out tonight with my steady boyfriend and try to offend God. and in the aftermath, the only words I had were making out. It didn’t seem like a good idea to go into a blow by blow description in the confessional even if I did have the words, and some of the priests were so old, I didn’t even know if they knew what a general “I made out” meant. Sex was SO taboo back then to discuss, yet. here I am 40 years away from those sins, and as a girl, I am sure I didn’t have the fight teenage boys have with impure thoughts. Even teenage girls, for the most part, well, let’s just say that unless they are with the boyfriend in the back of the car…the thoughts just don’t come into the mind to dwell on as it does with boys…(hope I can inject just a little humor here but I think men and women are wired so differently, that men just have that other brain to contend with all their lives, just my observation - and women when they fantasize, it is usually of a dinner with candelights, sparkling conversation, and the warmth of sharing moments with someone special - here’s the humor - even at our age…my husband is basically, well…let’s get to the point). Even so those things from my teenage years still haunt me…did I confess them well enough - was throwing in the reference in the confessional good enough, because I sure didn’t want to talk to someone who would be like my father about those things was just so hard to share. Lord knows I would never have spoken of it with my own father. So these are not sins that have been or even physically could be repeated but have all of my confessions, all of my faith, been an afront to God and kept me seperated from Him all these years. I feel like the last 40 years of my Faith may have been somewhat of a lie and I do fear that if I were to spill this all out to a priest in the confessional, and he were not a sensitive, caring type, I would still feel that it was not a good confession and I would still be here at this place. I cannot believe that I am even expressing all of this on here. In fact I find myself crying even as I write these entries. I do think a general confession is probably the best idea, but the impression I have gotten is that priests are not particularly thrilled, when hearing confessions (as most of the churches around here do) 1/2 hour before Saturday evening Mass and someone comes in and asks for a general confession. And does anyone know exactly how these general confessions go. At one time I knew…I think they just run down a list of stuff and you say yes or no and about how many times. Do they basically say the first commandment is this - have you ever done it? second commandment this… and me not have to contribute a whole lot to the conversation. It is helpful to know that many of you feel scared as I do. You have all been so kind, it is a wonder that I can “talk” about this with you and a true blessing from God that you respond.
I prostrated myself on the floor of my library, and told the Lord: “If this conefession is going to be what it NEEDS to be, Lord, then YOU"RE going to have do do it for me!”