Womens Retreat Talk
I recently gave a talk at a womens retreat on living as a single, working and Catholic women and what Ive learnt so far. It was organised by my brother, Fr John Paul, out at his Parish, St Anthony of Paduaâs in Melton. Here it is. I admit I did copy and paste a bit from a previous talk I gave to teenagers at WYD on a bus ride, however added quite a bit.
Iâve been asked to give a talk about my perspective as living as a full time â single Catholic women and what Iâve learnt so far. Itâs hard to know where to start. I gave a talk a few months ago, whilst at World Youth Day to a group of secondary school students on our bus as we made our way from Wisla to Warsaw. I was asked to give advice on âHow to be Singleâ and even though a lot of the advice I gave was aimed at Teenagers, I would still carry the same advice through to young adults and adults, however there are a few things I will add. The talk I gave to the teenagers was based on my own experience of being a teenager in the dating world. To say that girls in highschool, even in Yr 9 and 10 girls arenât sleeping with their boyfriends is a fact I know isnât true because I remember that some of the girls I went to high school with were. I remember sitting with the group of girls I was with in Yr 10 and one girl saying âItâs all about the sexâ or something along those lines. Iâm so lucky that I was pretty strong willed back to raise my eyebrows at that and realise that wasnât true. But I was too timid to say anything because I wasnât sure at that stage why it was so bad. I knew it was bad, but I wouldnât have been able to explain why. So I was always silent whenever that topic came up and I felt like I really didnât fit in sometimes. However I got along with them all so well on other things, that I was happy to just be silent. When youâre in high school you start going to parties and it seems that relationships is all anyone is talking about. There was pressure from society and from your peers to conform to a certain standard, to dress certain ways to gain the attention of that boy you like, there was pressure to talk in certain ways so to not reveal your fears or insecurities. I was pretty self conscious and low in confidence around boys when I was younger. I could talk to them as friends, but if I liked them, no one on this planet would ever have known. I was too scared. Which when I look back may have been a blessing. Anyway, so when we are self conscious we put up barriers, we put on masks. Social media doesnât help as it gives us immediate access into a persons life, and vice versa, and itâs often an unrealistic image of that person. Teenagers are just so self conscious that it is fueling the hook up culture that, even if they arenât apart of, majority of their friends are. Because itâs easier to hook up with someone at a party in a half lit room and not have to properly talk to the guy because the musics so loud, then it is to actually go out on a proper date and have a good conversation and get to know them. So the main message that I gave to these teenagers was that I thought the most important thing about being single was to be a little selfish. To spend time getting to know themselves. The reason they are insecure, or self conscious is because they donât have confidence in themselves. I think it is so dangerous to enter into a relationship without a firm conviction as to who you are. If you donât have that conviction then you are so open to abuse and easily moulded, and itâs easy to do what society dictates is normal, and you run the risk of being used and getting hurt. Itâs easy to begin doubting whether an action is right or wrong and you can easily listen to those you probably shouldnât be listening to. Saint Pope John Paul II wrote that the opposite of Love is Use. What is Use? To use something is to take something for your own benefit, but to Love is to give without thinking of yourself. These teenagers all want authentic love, and I see that every day as a teacher and hear it in the girls conversations, and they want to find someone they can love authentically. However, if they dont have an understanding of what Love is, then how can they have a hope of authentically loving and avoid using someone to make themselves feel good? This is the part of my talk that I think applies to me even now, and will most likely apply to me for the rest of my life. My main piece of advice to them was to not waste the time that they are single. When I was in my early twenties I was going to WYDâs and events that helped me get to know my faith. I told them to not waste it thinking, oh when I find that guy, that special someone, Ill finally be happy. Donât waste it thinking, oh if I never find that guy, or if I never get married I am destined to loneliness, Iâm going to end up as that old lady with the 20 cats that lives down the road. I told them that they should use that time to get to know themselves which is what I did. When I left WYD, Poland, I thought that I had never seen a more joyful group of young people and adults alike. The best part of my trip was seeing the girls in my group growing in their faith over this trip. There was so much joy and so much authenticity in the friendships that were formed. That was because the whole trip had been Christ centred, who is Love itself, whose love we know we can rely on. There are no masks, He sees everything about us, and Loves us. So I told them to get to know Christ more and they will discover their true self. Because when you discover Christ you discover joy and joy is the knowledge of our true selves and our purpose, and I saw so much Joy on that trip, as I did on the previous two WYDâs I have attended, and really every Catholic event Iâve been to, from ordinations or weddings, baptisms etc. So over the past few years that I have been single, and also during the times I have dated, I learnt to use that time to know Christ more by building my relationship with him, which set me up with a solid foundation, so that my happiness wasnât and isnât dependant on whether Iâm single or in a relationship, my happiness is dependant on Christ, and the person that Iâm dating will help me get to Heaven. They will help you be your true self. Just like with friendships, you need to find someone who is going to pressure you into being a better person, who is not going to change you, but help you grow. As women we often place a lot of pressure on ourselves to be more beautiful, skinny, successful, and all around attractive. Many of us try constantly to attain a sense of perfection externally without sometimes feeling this internally. We may often struggle to love ourselves. It is so important to realise first and foremost that we are loved by God, fully and without reserve. If we can accept that we are loved by God, we can begin to love ourselves and reciprocate it back to Him, truly engaging in relationship with Him. We are capable of love because God is love. Our ability to love comes from Him. I am loved, therefore I can love and am capable of a gift of love and self to others. Not just a husband but to others, all those around me in my life. Knowing this gave me an interior peace that doesnât change, regardless of the storms going on around me. Once I figured this out, it helped me with past relationships and I knew pretty quickly whether or not that person was bringing me closer to Christ or over taking Christ in my priorities. That happened with me a few times, I felt like I wasnât being myself, I was anxious and generally wasnât happy. Otherwise, he was a nice guy, I was somewhat content, but knew that I wasnât totally happy. He respected my religious beliefs, but he wasnât making me a better person or helping me grow in my faith which is what I needed help with. So having a foundation in Christ first helped me recognise that need in myself and what it was that I wanted in a relationship. So, at the moment I am 26 years of age, living in Oakleigh with two other catholic girls. We are all teachers, however I teach secondary school and they teach Primary. I think the age Iâm at now is an age when itâs pretty difficult to, not necessarily to be single, but itâs a time when we sort of start to become restless not knowing what we are doing, or where God is calling us. Is God calling me to marriage? Is God calling me to religious life? Am I doing the best at work? I tend to have these conversations with my friends more often than I did when I was younger. Because sometimes I forget that Iâm actually an adult now, doing adult things. Your friends are also another challenge when youâre a single Catholic girl. I tend to have friends who are catholic, who help me in my faith so much, and then the group of friends who arenât, the ones I know from school or Uni. That is also another challenge, how to engage and be the best friend you can be to them, but also not let their lifestyles detract from your own. To not seem like you support their lifestyle choices but also to not come across as judgemental, as you still value their friendship. How can you be a friend and talk to them about being a young girl who chooses to save sex until marriage? They may not understand, and this was probably harder when I was younger, most of them are beginning to understand this a lot more I find as they are maturing and realising they want marriage themselves and realising they want to feel that commitment in marriage, even though they probably still donât quite grasp why marriage is so beautiful. Most of my friends are around my age, and Iâve noticed that in most of us, we are beginning to really talk about our futures, not that we didnât before, but it was always a sort of distant thing, youâre at Uni and working your casual jobs and marriage seems a while off. Now, we have just begun to work full time, we live independently, we have a stable income and we are somewhat comfortable. However, we perhaps begin to feel like we still havenât reached our fullest potential, in terms of living out our vocation. I actually found this really hard to write! I think itâs because Iâm still trying to figure it out myself. However, I know one thing is for certain, that whatever I do in life, wherever I am in one year, two years or ten years, if I centre my life on Jesus Christ and building a personal relationship with him, then wherever I am in the future is exactly where I am meant to be. However, I also want to stress something which I think some single Catholic girls may fall into the trap of. Building a personal relationship with Christ means building a solid foundation and knowing yourself and your worth in His eyes. This is vital. However itâs also risky that we fall into the thought that if I pray hard enough for my future husband or for my future vocation, it will fall into my lap or knock on my front door. When things donât start panning out or what weâve been praying to God we begin to wonder why nothing is changing and perhaps begin to feel despair. There is a quote by St Teresa of Calcutta that I really like. âI used to pray that God would feed the hungry, or do this or that, but now I pray that he will guide me to do whatever Iâm supposed to do, what I can do. I used to pray for answers, but now Iâm praying for strength. I used to believe that prayer changes things, but now I know that prayer changes us and we change things.â
Be proactive in making a change. I think that prayer gives us the strength to take action when we feel we are being drawn in a certain direction, be that married or religious life or whatever our vocation is. If you want to get married, youâre husband isnât going to come knocking on your door, you need to get out there and be a part of the world and meet people. If you want to see if religious life is for you, you need to talk to someone and go talk to that religious order your interested in. If you want to improve your work ethic, go into work early. If you want to loose weight, donât eat that cake. You need to do something about it. Prayer is important, but you also need to take action. Your husband might be outside the church talking to the priest after Mass, whilst your inside praying to God to send you your future husband. Donât get me wrong I think prayer is the most powerful thing ever, everything Iâve prayed for has panned out in some way. I also think that whatever we do in life, whether it be in our work, in marriage, in a friendship, with our family, just day to day life, we have to always be joyful. Im not saying we can never be upset by anything, but to avoid the unnecessary complaining and wishing for things to be better. Mother Teresa also quoted âJoy is the simplest form of gratitudeâ. I read that in a cafĂŠ! It was so profound I could stop reading it. Itâs so true. And we find Joy by knowing Christ. So when we are joyful we show that we are so grateful for everything weâve been given. So thereâs no sense is wasting time worrying about things we canât change. I just pray now for the strength and courage to change the things I can, and I do it for Christ and no one else.