By “Sir, give me this water so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Note: The tender example of Christ’s healing the Samaritan woman’s heart in chapter 4 of John’s Gospel shows me the layers Christ gently moves through to bring healing to each of us. As I prayed with this reading during Lectio Divina,* I found myself in the story, showing me how Christ longed to give me true refreshment through the theology of the body. As I share my prayer journey in this piece, I hope my experience can meet you where you thirst as well. My Easter prayer for you is that, wherever you are in your spiritual journey, that you will come to believe because Our Risen Lord has moved likewise within your own heart.
I think you could safely call me a typical oldest child. Headstrong, independent, and confident –while at the same time, a Type-A rule follower. I preferred to make the rules (or at least approve them).
The big sister of three younger brothers, my God-given temperament led me to gravitate to be a helper, a fixer for others. I’m also a recovering know-it-all (that’s still a work in progress).
As a young person, if I didn’t already know it, no one could tell me. The innocent pride and overconfidence of childhood grew into self-reliance. This could have been my undoing, but it was the eventual way God broke through the dryness that self-reliance brought me.
Coming to the well to ease physical thirst, Jesus’ request for a drink invites curiosity from the Samaritan woman: “You, a Jewish man, asking me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?”
Growing up, I never questioned my parents’ love for me. Faithful in raising their children in the Catholic faith, they led us in Sunday Mass attendance, Advent and Lent devotions and service to others through family music ministry, and they helped to form my morality.
Rollicking and wide-ranging conversation around the table were a big part of my family experience that I look back on as being especially formative. Some topics, though, were privately discussed between parent and child – including the truth and meaning of human sexuality.
They were thoughtful and straightforward. And yet, their teaching about bodily integration and chastity seemed to me just like rules that were being imposed on me. Remember, I liked to approve of all rules that came my way? Though I obeyed out of love for some time, I began to interpret these teachings as a confining list of don’ts that were contrary to my stubborn self.
As my teen years concluded, I realized that my search for love outside the family felt like confusion and boundary-pushing. I didn’t know why it felt this way, especially because I was doing things my way, just as I liked.
“If you knew who was saying to you, ‘Give me a drink’…”
To feel special and loved by someone outside the family is a natural part of growing up. Made in God’s image and likeness, to be drawn into communion with others by our God – our Triune God – is everyone’s call.
But my lack of understanding of how to fill this thirst for union in a godly way was only further confused by a desert culture with oases that proved to be mere mirages. My thirst for love was never quenched, and dehydration became my default state.
While I was able to develop strong and godly friendships, my dating relationships lacked the depth that I longed for, and that Christ wanted for me. This was not just in the diminishing physical boundaries, but I also began to realize that the emotional and spiritual components of these relationships were lacking. They never progressed past a certain point. Or, if they did progress, the depths were contrary to the way I was raised and the Christian life I still wanted to live.
The surrounding culture that affirmed my “strong independent womanhood” to a fault didn’t answer the deeper yearnings of my heart. I had so many questions: What could I expect from the young adult men in my life? What did my womanhood mean to me? Were men and women really all that different, after all? Was there more to being loved than sharing physical intimacy? Would I find someone who would want to know me on a deep level of love and conversation, heart-to-heart, as I had experienced with my family around the dinner table?
My self-confidence began to weaken. Would anyone ever really love me for me? College years were met with true questioning. I began to tell myself: “To be loved, I will have to settle for the next best, though inferior, option.” And yet this contrasted with my try sense of self!
I dated a young man who teased me for holding physical boundaries. “You’re not a nun, you know,” he said.
I also dated someone who told me point blank: “Just so you know, I never want to have children, and I never want to be married. As long as you’re OK with that, our relationship can continue.”
You’d think I would have ended both of those relationships immediately. It has taken a long time to heal from those seemingly innocent comments. They became layers that needed to be pulled away so Christ could access the depths of the well that I am to him.
Christ continues to talk with the Samaritan woman, working through and uncovering the layers of hurt and confusion of her story. I answer with her, “I have no husband.”
My lowered expectations, which brought a lack of self-integration, led me to distrust my feminine genius.
But then, in the Catholic Studies department of the University of St. Thomas, in St. Paul, Minn., a spark was lit when I began reading St. John Paul II’s theology of the body. The professors and faithful students there became a true oasis for me as they helped me discover truths I sorely needed to learn.
The gift of this time brought a glimmer of hope in my heart. Like the Samaritan woman who began to tell the true story of herself, the time was becoming ripe for me to be known by Jesus: body, mind, and spirit.
“Go, call your husband…”
The Lent before I met my future husband, the hope welling in me grew stronger. It gave me the confidence to say: enough. My soul-sickness ended here, now. No more coming to draw water at noon, where I’d have the least chance of meeting someone. I was sick of the thirst I had, of “not having a husband” (i.e., experiencing relationships that pushed my physical, emotional and spiritual boundaries yet again).
I was finally led to try conversation with God. If I could talk with my family around the table and be so happy, loved and enriched, maybe I could c try that with God. I wish I could say this had been my first resort, but I’m glad it became my last.
I wanted to ask God to fill me with desire for him alone. I wanted to date God, in a sense – to feel how I was special and irreplaceable to him. I wanted to test out: Could Christ really satisfy the longings in my mind, body and soul? Could He be trusted?
This was a fruitful time of faith and trust for me. I began to go to daily Mass when I could and renewed my commitment to the sacrament of reconciliation. Somehow, God preserved me from ever letting either of those completely drop, but now, rather than duty, these sacramental lifelines gave me joy.
Christ met me at the well when I met my future husband. I knew something was different when we had our first conversation over coffee at the small kitchen table in the campus ministry house of hospitality. We drank a whole pot of coffee and talked for hours. There it was…the gift of conversation, formed in me, that I was so dry and thirsty for.
Matt listened. He was patient. He let me talk, and I listened to him. (We would both say I continue to do a lot of the talking…but I’m learning there, too). Our conversation had depth, respect, humor and caring, all intertwined. Just as Jesus and the Samaritan women were alone for their intimate conversation, we almost felt out of time and sequestered to one another as we began a journey to learn everything there was to know about each other.
The jar was let down, and now the real watering could take place. Our Christ-centered friendship led to a dating relationship, but Christ was leading us, not the culture. God allowed the relationship of trust we developed to help us draw deeply from the wells of each other’s hearts and souls. How refreshing when we could listen to each other and, just like the story of the Samaritan woman, get to the real heart of the matter, together with Christ!
The Samaritan woman and Jesus, a Jewish man, might have seemed like they wouldn’t have faith in common, however, she expresses her faith in the coming Messiah. “I know the Messiah is coming, the one called the Anointed; when he comes, we will tell us everything.” That is all Jesus needed to act quickly, seeing her faith – and He revealed his identity to her! At this, she leaves her jar behind, trusting she will not ever be thirsty again and goes to tell everyone about what happened, confident she will be received into the community as she shares the gift of Christ with others.
With the refreshment of our shared belief in Christ and feeling hydrated again, God worked quickly on Matt and me, too. Though we know it caused some confusion and consternation among our family and friends, it seemed natural and right to us that we dated for a mere six weeks before becoming engaged and were married in my home parish in six months!
During our engagement, Janet Smith’s talk “Contraception: Why Not?” was a gateway into understanding and trusting that natural family planning was in line with the true meaning of our bodies. But God had more for us. We soon began to devour Christopher West’s TOB “for beginners” materials (and were blessed to see him speak in person early in our marriage). We were given book recommendations from our faithful professors and friends. We had new eyes to see the truth that God wanted to reveal to us and could now contrast the darkness we’d both experienced with the light of Christ, reflected also in the presence of one another.
As in the story of Jesus and the woman at the well, things can sometimes change in an instant, but when we look back over the twists and turns of our own stories, Matt and I can see that God was preparing us – even allowing us – to be thirsty, so we could ultimately be refreshed in him. We were indeed made for more.
I rejoice that I answered Christ’s request to let down my jar to receive the life-giving water of the theology of the body. I pray that wherever you are in your own journey, your thirst be abundantly answered by a God who will not rush you, but will, with gentle questions, peel away the bruised layers of your heart and meet you to refresh you in any dryness you’re experiencing. He will provide you with eternal refreshment.
* The Latin phrase “lectio divina” may be translated as “divine reading.” Lectio divina is a method for praying with the Scriptures. As one reads and invites the Word to become a transforming lens that brings the events of daily living into focus, one can come to live more deeply and find the presence of God more readily in the events of each day. The method of lectio divina follows four steps: lectio (reading), meditatio (meditation), contemplatio (contemplation), and oratio (prayer). Learn more here.
