Figure It Out
Every Saturday night for more than a decade while I was in my 20s and teaching, I drove to my grandmother’s house in Havertown (Pa.) to visit with her and my aunt. I stayed about an hour or so each time, shared some tales from the previous week in the classroom, and would watch a little bit of Matlock or Murder She Wrote or Lawrence Welk … whatever happened to be on TV that evening. On the way back home, I would stop at the local Dunkin Donuts (there was no Wawa close by, so don’t criticize!) and treat myself to a hot chocolate. It was tradition.
One particularly cold night in January, having just left my grandmother’s, I steered my rusty, trusty old Mercury Topaz into the small Dunkin lot next to the local Catholic grammar school. I could do this drive with my eyes closed, it was that familiar. Except that this time – for whatever reason – I misjudged the entrance, mistaking a mound of old snow piled near the intersection as the way into the lot. It wasn’t.
Immediately – and I mean immediately – I heard my two front tires slam into hard concrete, and the front bumper was now dangling by what seemed to be one flimsy bolt. My Mercury with two flat tires was now jammed onto this snowy concrete barrier, and I couldn’t get it unstuck.
And so what did I do? Pulling my flip-phone from my pocket, I called my Dad. “Hey Dad, don’t be mad,” I said, as I stood shivering in the cold on West Chester Pike, “but I need your help. Can you come get me?”
His response was immediate and reassuring: “Hang tight. I am on my way and we’ll figure it out.”
It’s THAT moment, isn’t it, which we all dread: telling a loved one something significant that will impact them, that might trigger their negative emotions, and that very well may cause a rift in a relationship:
Dad, I destroyed the car. Sweetheart, I lost my job. Mom, I’m suspended from school for cheating.
And as a young betrothed Jewish girl from Nazareth must have said to her husband-to-be: “I’m pregnant, and the child is God’s.”
No doubt the news affected Joseph deeply. Was there anger that rose to the surface? Confusion and fear? Did Joseph – a righteous man, as Matthew describes him – have any doubts believing that Mary conceived Jesus through the power of the Spirit?
It’s important to remember that Joseph, like all of us, was a deeply human man who loved Mary and was asked to accept news that is certainly a challenge of faith and reason to digest. Who could blame him for divorcing her? Who would blame him if he let his emotions get the best of him in that moment?
And yet, I believe that Joseph gives us a powerful roadmap to follow whenever news comes that rocks our world and tries to steal our peace:
Firstly, Joseph courageously chose to divorce Mary quietly, when in fact, he had every right under the Torah law to have her publicly shamed and stoned. What he chose to do was take the higher road that protected the dignity of the woman he loved (as well as her child), instead of choosing an option that might have allowed the urge for personal justice and revenge to be scratched. Shaming is never the
answer, and yet too often for many men, it is the way they choose to respond.
I’ll never forget the time in high school watching a man publicly berate his girlfriend/wife – I wasn’t sure at the time – for something she jokingly said to a waitress about his eating habits. She left the restaurant in tears, humiliated before friends and strangers alike. In treating her as less-than, this man thought he was winning; getting the upper-hand perhaps. If anything, by crushing her spirit, he was not
embracing his own call to protect, build-up and bring dignity.
Joseph, in letting Mary go quietly in order to raise her child in safety, was actually demonstrating how deep his concern was for her. He was willing to sacrifice his own desires and dreams in order to let Mary find a way forward with God, and thus he was offering her the greatest respect imaginable: “I may not understand what God is doing here, but I trust Him enough to let His work be done in you.”
The selfless, self-sacrificing courage of Joseph on display – a challenge for all of us to live in our vocations as spouses, religious, parents, and human beings who care about the dignity of others.
Joseph’s fortitude also came in another way, one that speaks to the need to respond with humble obedience when we believe God is asking us to do something for Him.
Look, I know we’d all like to have an angel come to us in a dream when we have difficult life decisions to make, but the truth of the matter is this: God speaks into our lives all the time and in countless ways – sometimes dreams; sometimes angels; sometimes silence; often Scripture and other people. On our part, once we know it is of God, we must act. Like Joseph, we go.
He didn’t argue with the angel. He didn’t spend five weeks or months or years debating whether the dream was real or the message worthy of his time and energy. In faith, he believed he was being asked to take on a responsibility that was much too big for him to handle on his own, but he set-out to accomplish what was being asked of him. He surrendered his will to the Father and trusted in God’s
love, and then having done so, he took his betrothed’s hand and said: “We’ll figure it out together. Let’s do this.”
There’s a beautiful line in the nuptial blessing prayer during the celebration of the Sacrament of Marriage that captures the depth of this kind of trust and love: “May her husband entrust his heart to her, so that acknowledging her as his equal and his joint heir to the life of grace, he may show her due honor and cherish her always with the love that Christ has for his Church.”
When all is said and done, that’s really it, isn’t it? Joseph’s love for Mary is the reminder of what courageous, selfless love looks like in every vocation: a love that never shames but entrusts; a love that reacts in humility and obedience to God’s will when another is in need.
That night when my Dad showed up, I was afraid he’d be angry. After all, I seemingly destroyed a car due to my lack of careful driving. He could have yelled or embarrassed me. Instead, in love, he showed up without a moment’s hesitation, got out of his truck and came to where I was, asking if I was okay.
Then, he said words that I haven’t forgotten almost 30 years later: “All of this will be okay. C’mon, help me figure out how to push this thing off the curb … and then you can buy me a coffee.”
Love shows up without shame and acts without hesitation. It’s the love of St. Joseph. It’s the love of my Dad. It’s the love we’re all called to live everyday of our lives. “C’mon,” it says, “We’ll figure it out together.”