I’ve found that desire fulfilled in God, the Church, my wife, my family, and all the beauty that slips past my peripheral vision on a daily basis, the kind of beauty that vanishes when I turn to look and slips away from my ability to describe in words. My only desire is to give my life to something worthy of love. In my vocations of father, priest, and writer I regularly find myself vulnerable and befuddled, almost confused at the acuteness of the way the universe pulls me apart and stitches me back together like some play toy, and yet I willingly volunteer, over and over again, to participate in the game. Other women struggle mightily with fertility issues or post-partum depression and its attendant feelings of helplessness. The difficulty on the body, the sleepless nights, the emotional intensity, it shines in the ragged happy eyes of new mothers. Heart and soul, as Colonna might say, poured out like wine from a press.
There is something almost frightening about it, the way that mothers casually give so much of themselves away. I’ve watched her collapse onto the bed at night only for a cry in the next room to instantly resurrect her against her will. I’ve seen her silhouetted by lamplight, nursing late at night, cheek quietly pressed to the milky white head of an infant, dozing while a tiny exploring hand massages and pinches her face. For 15 years now, she has regularly had some child or other wrapped close to her body, perhaps nursing while cooking dinner, embroidering, or sitting in the pew waiting for Mass to begin. I’ve witnessed similar scenes of my wife nursing our babies.
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