The accidental Jesuit

Part of the stress of the holidays for me is wanting everything to be perfect. The house, the food, the kids. Not fancy; just perfect. You won't mistake my house for Martha Stewart's, and I serve no flaming desserts. But I want things how I want them, and that includes smiling children on Christmas morning.

We did have lots of smiles. The kids had a nice Christmas, and are enjoying their new games and toys. But there was also an element of uncertainty, particularly with Abby.

She had been sick and missed the last two days of school before vacation. She still wasn't feeling 100% healthy on Christmas morning, and the aroma of my traditional egg-and-sausage Christmas breakfast casserole didn't help matters. When I left to sing the first of two Christmas morning masses, there was some doubt about whether Abby would be able to come to church with the family, as planned. Earl told me that even if she could go, she'd most likely not be wearing the beautiful Christmas dress I'd laid out for her, since the collar came close to her neck and she was extra sensitive to that, feeling sick and all.

Earl is a wonderful husband and father with many talents, but choosing clothes for our daughter is not one of them. He warned me not to comment on the outfit if I didn't like it. This did not bode well. I left the house with a cloud of thwarted control over my head.

On my way to church, I realized that this was a Christmas lesson in detachment, that Jesuit principle of surrendering control and accepting things as they are. I first learned about detachment as a concept from the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author whom I interviewed last year for the Patriot Ledger. It's a way of unloading emotional baggage attached to life, of accepting that we're not in control. A simple concept, but a hard practice for a control freak like me.

By the time I got to church, surprisingly, I had detached myself from the situation. If Abby could come, great. If she couldn't, I'm sure my father-in-law would stay with her at home. If she could wear the beautiful dress, terrific. If she couldn't, well, I'd just be glad she was there.

I sang the first mass without even thinking about Abby too much. After coffee in the rectory, I returned to the church, and, to my joy, there was my whole family, including Abby. She wasn't wearing the Christmas dress, but her shirt matched her jumper, her hair was brushed and she even had a faint smile on her face.

I congratulated myself on my detachment efforts. And then, I realized that a better measure of my detachment success would have been if Abby hadn't been at church.

I'm still a control freak, but at least I recognized an opportunity to practice detachment, and it wasn't as painful as I thought it would be. We'll see what happens the next time.