Nancy

Nancy was my high school love.  But I was selfish and self-centered.  I went to college nearby my high school.  After a few months in college, I decided I wanted to meet other young women.  I just stopped calling or seeing Nancy.  I did not explain anything.  I broke her heart.  She was still in high school.  After several months I called.  We got back together, but it was not the same.  Nancy was wiser now.  In my absence, she had decided to go to college many miles and two states away from me and home.  We dated until she went away.  I thought things were going well.  I visited her remote college once in a blizzard, such is love.  She was happy to see me.  There was another guy on the horizon.  Nothing to worry about, right?  Wrong.  By summer when Nancy got back home, I was pretty much number two on her list.  Now I was unhappy.  When Nancy went back to college that fall, our relationship faded.  She wrote me as much.  Over the next two years I saw her once at the World's Fair where I was working.  We ran into one another and had a long conversation that changed nothing.  I think I whined!

In my second year of graduate school, I was with some of my college chums on a Saturday, playing tag football.  Maybe someone mentioned it, but somehow I knew that Nancy was getting married that day in a church that was on my way home, or could be.  After the game I drove by the church and decided to park my car.  I got out and stood across the street from the front door.  Almost immediately, the doors  flung open and out came Nancy and her new husband.  She looked happy.  I was sad, and alone.  What a mess selfishness makes of a life.  Nancy went on to a much happier marriage as Mrs. Nancy Marsden than she ever would have been as Mrs. Nancy Ryan.  I was not marriage material.

God works in mysterious ways.  I went on to work in business in two cities, looking for Miss Right, but I was Mr. Wrong, and so no luck.  Then God began to haunt me.  "Come to me."  It was like an occasional wave upon the shore.  I ignored, or talked my way out of it for a while.  "God, you don't want me," was my prayer more or less.  But finally, I decided to jump in and not avoid the wave.  I have been bobbing around now for 40 years with the Paulist Fathers.  It was what God wanted, damaged goods and all.  God wanted me to be a priest.  The road was long, dark and confusing at times, just to get into the ocean of God's love.  Where sin abounds, grace aboundeth more.  Stanch Catholics, those who are solid in their faith, have other priests to care for their needs or wants.  I think I am best among those who are on the edge of the wave.  They see me bobbing around and think, maybe they don't have to be so perfect, or squeaky clean to have a place in the ocean of God's love.