My First Time

Honestly, I wrestled with what to title tonight's post ... I even conducted a survey of sorts among a few of my friends at work to ask what comes to mind for them when they hear the words "my first time." And without fail, every single one of them had one of two responses ... I'll leave it to you to guess what they were. Granted, I do work at an advertising agency filled with younger folks, but still ... every single one of them said the same thing. Knowing that many of your minds probably raced right down the same path as my co-workers did when you read tonight's title, I'm sorry to disappoint you ... this post isn't about THAT first time at all. It is, however, most definitely a first-time experience for me and for those of you who read along with me as well. Are you ready? Sitting down? Have a cold beer or a Diet Coke in your hand? Dog curled up beside you? Snuggled under a blanket? Excited for what you're about to read? Good, because I promise tonight's post is an extra special one.

So now about tonight's first-time experience ... I am extremely honored to introduce my first male guest blogger. That's right, friends, tonight's post is a first in the history of this blog ... all of my previous guest writers are gals, and tonight's guest scribe is a guy. I met this young man almost a year ago ... he's one of those fellows I liked the moment I met him. You know how sometimes you just sense that a person has a great heart and a kind soul? That's what I felt when I met my young friend. He's a fantastic writer, a loyal son, a devoted husband and a loving father. He's a great guy with a quick smile and and an even quicker wit ... and I'm blessed and humbled to call him friend. So, my deepest thanks to you, friend, for being willing to bare your soul and share your heart ... you are the best, young sir ... the absolute best.

"I grew up the tall, relatively smart, brown-haired, blue-eyed, pretty athletic first-born son of staunchly Catholic parents. My mom is the parish business manager and my father leads parish retreats, sponsors candidates in the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults and is an usher at Sunday Mass.  We lived in a Catholic neighborhood. I attended Catholic elementary, middle and high schools, where I made a lot of close Catholic friends. I married a nice Catholic girl whom I’ve known since the fourth grade. We still live in the neighborhood, and she teaches at the school we attended together as kids. So does her mother – she’s been a pre-school teacher there for the last 29 years. Most of my oldest, closest friends, my entire extended family, all my in-laws and most of my neighbors are Catholic.

So you could say that being Catholic has always been central to who I am. As a kid, I attended Mass every Sunday, I could recite Hail Marys and Our Fathers at breakneck pace, and knowing when to sit, stand, kneel and respond with “Lord, hear our prayer” was as automatic and instinctual as blinking. But my favorite part of being Catholic was always the Rite of Reconciliation, or, as laymen call it, confession. For those of you who don’t know, here’s how confession works:

You show up to church for a special evening service, usually around Christmas or Easter, you get in a pew, you kneel and you pray. Silently. Then, after an appropriate amount of time, you get up, approach one of the several priests stationed around the church, kneel before him, and he asks you to share your sins. So you fess up. Every time you hit your sister or sassed your parents or told so and so at school to go kick rocks while you were out on the playground. It doesn’t matter if they hit you first or didn’t let you go out to play after dinner or “started it.” You fess up, Father O’Malley forgives you and gives you a penance to complete (usually a few Hail Marys or a Rosary), and then, almost magically, you walk out of church feeling lighter. Happier. Better. Like a weight has been lifted that you never realized was there.

Yeah, I always loved confession. And if you ask my family, friends and acquaintances, they’ll tell you I still do. But that’s not exactly the case.

Unbeknownst to most of the people in my life, I walked away from Catholicism and ceased to believe in the existence of God several years ago.

Now let me be clear. This was not a particularly hard thing for me to do, erm, internally – when my mind ceases to understand or believe something, it’s always been very easy for my heart to follow. But socially? That’s a little bit tricky. Turns out, it’s often harder for others to embrace your changing views, values, politics and priorities than it is for you to embrace them yourself. So most everybody except for my wife and closest friends don’t have to, because I’ve never told them.

So now, I live with that secret. It’s usually not a big deal, but it’s always present. Something to occupy my mind and tug at my conscience. And, in order to maintain some of the long-time relationships I’ve come to value, I carry that emotional weight with me every day, all the time, over every beer with old friends, family dinner or fish fry in the Parish basement. You see now why I miss confession.

Which brings me back to this blog. In many ways, Terrie’s writings are her way of doing reconciliation with herself. And reading what she has to say about her personal transformation, and seeing her become more and more at peace with herself, gives me a little piece of that weightless feeling I was talking about. It makes me happy, and even a little bit jealous, to see someone I consider a friend reconcile with herself. Because I know that in truth, there’s a discrepancy between my own outward and inward self as well.

So what does this all mean for you? Well, if you’re reading this, you know Terrie, and you read the first paragraph of this post. She is a woman, I am a man. She is old enough to be a grandma, I am barely old enough to be a father. She is short, I am tall. My hair is brown, wavy and parted to the side, and hers is short and very, very spiky. We grew up in different places with different traditions, religions and experiences. On the surface, Terrie and I are not the same. Not even close. But no matter what we look like or where we come from, we all carry a little weight on our shoulders that the people in our lives can make heavier or help us shoulder – and some of us aren’t brave enough to show that weight to the world like Terrie has been.

A pretty famous comedian named Bill Hicks once said that '(Life is) just a ride. And we can change it any time we want. It’s only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one.'

I try every day to choose love. To be kind, to humor, to understand and to accept those around me, in the hopes that I might help them shoulder their burden in whatever way I can. And on behalf of everyone from your family to the kid at Starbucks who makes your latte to me, the guy baring himself to you via a friend’s blog, I implore you to do the same."