Holy Motherhood

N made her first confession today.

I wasn't sure about this, since I'm not so sure about confession in general. ( No one tell my priest.)

I wasn't big on confession when I first made mine in fourth grade. I still wasn't big on it before my confirmation in 10th grade. Sometime after that, I saw on the news that the priest who had heard my first confession had been a pedophile.

That one kind of put a damper on the whole confession thing for me.

In all honesty I'm pretty sure I was done with confession long before I heard about that priest. But it did serve to strengthen my convictions.

Of course, I have plenty to confess. I just prefer to confess it directly. And truth be told, I'm always asking God to forgive me for something. Just this morning, after I called the driver in front of me an incompetent idiot, I asked God to forgive me. And when I lost it with B yesterday, I asked God to forgive me, because surely he didn't send us these children so that I could act like an incompetent idiot when it came to parenting. There's more, but suffice it to say much of it involves someone being incompetent, or an idiot, or both.

And most often, it's me.

All this time., I've been pretty comfortable doing it my way. Even the Church agrees that I don't need to be in a confessional to ask for forgiveness. I can be in my car, or my kitchen, or hiding in my bathroom, and I'm forgiven just the same.

But then we had kids. And we decided to raise them Catholic. And kids now have to make their first penance before their First Communion.

Which would be now.

When I first mentioned the whole confession thing to N, she looked at me and asked me if she understood this correctly. She was going to talk to the priest...by herself..about her..sins?

Um, yup, that's about it.

Then she cried.

I can't say that I blamed her.

I hoped that as she learned more, she would relax a little. We took classes. And read. And talked. And I attempted to explain it all, though probably not very well, since after all, how could I explain why this was so necessary when I didn't really think it was, well...necessary?

I seriously considered not making her do it, but that would involve pulling her from religious ed which I definitely didn't want to do.

So, instead, I gave her ideas to talk about with the priest .

After all, she is only seven. She's never called anyone an incompetent idiot. She's probably never even thought about calling someone an incompetent idiot.

"Just tell Father that you hit your brothers sometimes", I told her.

She stared at me for a minute and said,  "I only hit them when you tell me I can hit them, because they hit me first".

Huh.

"I know", I told her, "And I stand by that. But it's probably not what Jesus would do."

She stares at me again. She's doing that a lot lately.

"So, what, am I going to confession for you?"

Well, at least one of us would be.

In the end, she told me she had it figured out and didn't seem interested in my suggestions.

Today was the day. I prepared myself for tears. Drama. Sobbing in front of the Church.

In reality, she took a few deep breaths before we went in, and we sat quietly while the priest prayed for those making their first penance. At one point, parents were invited to lay their hand on their child's head and pray over them. I should say that the Catholic Church in which I was raised did not have parents lay their hands on their children heads. We also didn't hold hands during the Our Father. We sat (or stood, or kneeled) completely still, looked straight ahead, shook hands at the sign of the peace, said hello to the priest as we hoped he didn't notice that he had never once seen us at confession, and left.

But, hey, I'm open to new ways. So, I raised my hand toward N's head. And she looked at me like I had lost my mind.

And then she ducked.

She did, however, go to confession. There was a long line, as she had made it clear that she was only going into the room that had a screen, and that room just happened to be the most popular.

So we waited.  A mom next to me tried to take her son's picture, and her husband looked at her as if she was an incompetent idiot, and said "This is not a Kodak moment."

"Other people are taking pictures, " she told him pointedly.

He shook his head, buried his face in his hands, and muttered something that caused her to stalk off with her camera.

I know the priest must hear some stuff in that confessional, but I have to say, I was finding it pretty interesting outside of the confessional.

The line was getting shorter. Some kids were coming out happy, clearly ecstatic to have it over with. Some came out laughing, since our priest is incredibly funny. A couple boys came out crying.

When N's turn came, I hugged her and thought I should say something profound.

So I smiled and said..."Have fun!"

Have fun?

Dear God, it's true, I am an incompetent idiot.

In the end, my girl went in, she confessed some quite possibly made up sin, she came out, and smiled, and shrugged.

Clearly, this was no big deal.

I don't know if this will serve her in the future. Maybe at some point she'll find some tremendous benefit from it that I so far haven't. Or maybe, thirty years from now, she'll tell her kids that she's not making them go to confession, like her incompetent idiot of a mother did.

But at the very least, she did something hard, and now she knows that she can do hard things. And she learned that to be forgiven, all you have to do is ask.

Most importantly, she learned that when your mother makes you do something hard, like talk to a priest about sins that you quite likely had to make up, she will stop on the way home and buy you a chocolate cupcake with chocolate icing, and let you eat in the car.

There are many ways to ask for forgiveness.