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A magazine that witnesses to what is true, good, beautiful.


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The gift of receiving

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I hate getting gifts.

Giving gifts is great, but receiving them from others? No thanks.

It’s not that I don’t want the gift itself. It’s just that I immediately feel guilty. I feel a strong urge to somehow make it up to the giver. No amount of thank-you’s are enough. Maybe offer them a hug? A similar gift? My firstborn child? It seems nothing is sufficient to express my gratitude, so my next impulse is to simply not accept the gift. They insist, I insist, they insist again and ultimately I’m awkward around them until time has erased the guilty feelings.

You can imagine my discomfort when St. John Paul the Great’s Theology of the Body — which I embrace wholeheartedly — referred to the posture of “active receptivity” as an important part of the feminine genius.

Through a chain of little graces, God led me to a realization: receiving is itself a gift given.

Here’s what I mean:

If I’d brought home the perfect souvenir for a friend, I’d be hurt and let down if they refused to accept the gift.  When we give gifts, we put a part of ourselves on the line, too. As the cliche points out, it’s not so much about the item, but the intention. All the excitement of making them happy would be shattered by their rejection, which ultimately feels like a rejection of me.

It follows, then, that no matter how uncomfortable I am when someone hands me a gift, I must also consider that I’m holding a part of them.

Swallowing my feelings of discomfort and making space for them to joyfully give is difficult. It’s a sacrifice for me. It’s an active decision to put their heart before my own feelings. It’s…self-gift.

The adage “in giving we receive” is true in part because, as TOB has taught me, in receiving we also give.

Given up for you

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“Usually we give the baby three strikes, then we move on to other ways to get her out.”

The midwife sat on the edge of my hospital bed, choosing her words carefully. “If you want to keep laboring, you can make that choice. She recovered this time. But she’s not tolerating labor well and I can’t promise she’ll make similar recoveries if we give her two more strikes.”

I nodded, trying to clear my head. Minutes before, I’d been in a very deep sleep (courtesy of 30 hours of labor followed by an epidural) when four nurses practically knocked down my door and began frantically dancing around the delivery room. Their smiles were too cheerful as they encouraged me to change positions so the baby’s heart rate would stabilize. I was confused and disoriented, but it was clear something was quite wrong.

“So you mean we should do a c-section?” I asked.

“It’s up to you. I don’t want you to feel pressured into it, but I also don’t know how many more times baby can recover as well as she just did,” the midwife explained.

I looked to my husband. “Your thoughts?”

He shrugged. “It’s your body.”

I shook my head. “Not anymore.”

The ease with which the response came to my lips and the peace it brought me left me surprised at myself.

It’s not that becoming a mother made me less autonomous or less of an individual, but nine months of diet and lifestyle changes to protect and nurture the tiny soul tucked safely under my heart brought home the first lesson of motherhood: my life just isn’t mine anymore. My decisions directly impacted the wellbeing of one totally dependent on me. My body directly serves another. Everything that was mine is also hers.

My body had become eucharistic.

Throughout pregnancy and especially as I lay cruciform on the operating table, my mind repeated a familiar mantra, taking on new meaning every day: “This is my body, given up for you.”

As I lay next to the toilet fighting morning sickness.

As I turned down champagne at New Year’s.

As I craved the sushi my friends were enjoying.

As the heartburn stole precious hours of sleep.

As the contractions crashed over me.

As the doctors made incisions that could never be undone.

As I held my daughter for the first time.

As I winced in pain at unsuccessful latches.

As I forced myself awake at 3:00 a.m. to pump yet another meal.

This is my body, given up for you.

The body makes visible what is invisible. My body now expresses a fundamental change within me. Or rather, not a change — for I am not now foreign to what I was before — but a maturation. I’ve become more completely what I was always meant to be. As I empty myself for this tiny, demanding stranger, I become full than I’ve ever been before. It’s no longer my body and that recognition gives me an agency and a freedom to be more completely myself. The more I stay self-possessed, the more I’m not my own.  I never really existed for my own sake — none of us do — but to be given to others.

Unless we become like children

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My first grade class at St. Therese Catholic School in Denver, Colorado, is made up predominantly of immigrant children, many of whom are learning English as a second, third or even fourth language. Families are poor and often broken. The school is humble and resources are limited.

We’re a small but tight-knit community and, much like our patroness, we pour all our efforts into the little acts of teaching and love, relying on the grace of God to fill the gaps.  As the Little Flower promised, God pulls through in unpredictable and wonderful ways.

A few months ago, the students were struggling with a particular prompt in Catechesis: Write a sentence telling God how much you love Him. Hands shot up followed by answers like, “Dear God, I love you,” and “I love you SOOO much!”

As someone with a heart for Theology of the Body, I wanted more. “You can say that to anyone. How can you REALLY let God know you love him?” I asked.

The answers were typical: “Be nice to my sister.” “Share my toys.” “Give money to poor people.”

Nice, but not enough. “Yes, those are good things you can do. Is there anything you could say?”

This was met by a long silence. Students glanced around in confusion. Some began to shift in their seats. Perhaps it was too early for this concept, but stubbornly I let the silence hang one more moment.

A hand.

It was Paola, an English-language learner whose speaking and comprehension skills had exploded this year. She bears a strong resemblance to St. Therese in both looks and ambition — a strong-willed, frizzy-haired firecracker with dreams of the convent.

Her eyes were shining as she said simply, “I love you so much I will sacrifice for you.”

There it was — the theology of the body, the theology of salvation, indeed the very heartbeat of what it means to be Christian — summed up perfectly by a six-year-old and left hanging in the air of a stunned first grade classroom.

She got it.

She didn’t get it because she’s a savant child. She didn’t get it because we read countless stories about sacrifice. She didn’t get it because I’m some stellar educator.

She got it because recognition of Love sits at the core of every human heart, however young.

When the heart is loved, it knows. When the soul is consumed with love for another, it acts. Paola simply identified what every heart knows to be true: Love sacrifices.