On the feast of St. Joseph, I'll mention the period in which he was most manifestly evident in my life:
We were 23 and just-turned-24 when we got married, we were both in grad school, we had no money and no plan. We lived in a rat infested apartment in DC.
But we really wanted to be parents. So we did the things people do when they want to be parents, but no babies came.
We tried for a couple of years without getting pregnant before we went to see doctors, but eventually we saw doctors, had surgeries, etc. No babies came.
Those of you who have experienced infertility know it can be a very difficult cross.
We found it to be a source of frequent disunity in our marriage. We struggled with it in different ways: Kate experienced the rawness of it, I the impotence, so to speak, of being unable to fix it.
After a couple of years and a couple of surgeries, that all became acute.
We went through a particularly dark period of maybe 18 months in which we trying very much to get pregnant, non-Catholic people were urging us to use immoral means to have a baby, and Catholic people were telling us to just have faith and pray more and it would happen.
Interiorly, though, while we were trying to have a baby, we were miles apart from each other. Lots of things we couldn't say, and plenty of fights in which we said the wrong things.
Basically, we were two fairly immature kids who were presented with a cross and handled it badly.
So here's where St. Joseph comes in. While I felt unsure about how to lead, failed at it a lot, unsure what we should do, and hearing lots of bad advice from all sides, it was St. Joseph who gave the grace of perspective, and some ability to help us see this was unsustainable.
St. Joseph helped me to step into just the role of being a husband better, to be patient, to help us decide that the pursuit of having a baby had become something of an idol, and to call it quits, so to speak.
And that led to a renewal of our marriage, a lot of healing, and then clarity that we might -- like St. Joseph -- become parents by a more circumlocutious route than our friends who had like 6 kids and a minivan while we just doted on our dogs like a couple of oddballs.
And that -- St. Joseph, really -- led us to the adoption of Maxie and Pia, and then the arrival of Davey.
Without him, honestly, I think we would have just not known how to keep our marriage intact.
And from that, he guided us to a family.
So, St. Joseph is great.
Also, we have two ribeye roasts in the oven. Kate is apparently also making salmon, but I won't be eating it.
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It’s unjust to say that people with Down syndrome exist to teach us lessons about being better people. It’s an extremely common trope we would all do well to avoid.
People with Down syndrome, exist for God’s mysterious purposes: because we give him glory and because he loves us.
*I don’t know what that errant comma is doing there. It’s kind of embarrassing.
I heard this kind of talk from a very well-meaning pro-life person today, and I appreciate the effort.
But I have a theory (but no data) that this kind of talk actually makes it more likely people with Down syndrome will be aborted, by making them a different kind of creature.
Other things my dad told us:
- that 'Green Chromosomes' are stronger than other genes, so if you are a bit Irish, the green chromosomes will overpower everything until you're all Irish.
- that on St. Patrick's Day, I had to write Seamus on my school papers or I would get a zero.
So the Prince of Wales shows up in the U.S. and we say "Hey, this freakin coffin couldn't hold George Washington. You remember that guy, right? Anyway, here's some wood."
I wonder if they focus grouped the “can and cannot do” language. I suspect it won’t play well with people who are skeptical, who seem to be an important audience for the speech.
Nor will the bit about the 4th of July.
On the whole I think this speech will be celebrated by people who support Biden and be criticized as scolding by those who think the federal government has been overbearing.
A nice enough speech, but I don’t see it moving any needles for anybody.