Consequences

And I so hate consequences
And running from you is what my best defense is
Consequences
Oh God, don’t make me face up to this
And I so hate consequences
And running from you is what my best defense is
Cause I know that I let you down
And I don’t want to deal with that

~Relient K~

Warning (aren't I just full of warnings this week?): This post is full of Christianity and prayer and whatnot.

I've been listening to this song a LOT lately. I've been thinking about what it means. It's mostly religious. Mostly Christian. It's a little bit about relationships, too.

One of the major things that WG and I discussed this past weekend was religion. He's Methodist. I'm Catholic.

He's willing to go to just about any other Protestant church (oh, how I hate that word. I'd really just rather say "Christian"), and I'm being called to put into action what I've said for years: that I could be Catholic but not go to a Catholic Church.

The Consequences song has me thinking about a lot of things. There are consequences to falling in love with someone who will not go to a Catholic Church but who wants to go to the same church as his eventual wife. There are consequences to me deciding it's okay to go to another church, because I'm looking for spiritual fulfillment that the Catholic Church hasn't given me in a while.

I've talked with a lot of my Christian friends, namely my parallel-life friend, about how the workings of Saints and Mary and all of those extra goodies that Christian churches don't tend to have. And she's asked me, many a time, "Why can't you just talk to Jesus?"

"Oh, I do." I say. But really, I don't. I'm not lying. I just don't have heart-to-heart talks, like she means. I pray. I say my prescribed words. And each morning and night, I talk directly to God.

But Jesus.

Oh, Jesus scares me.

I love Jesus. But running from him is my best defense.

I can pray. I can get choked up during Holy Week. But I also know that Jesus was a man and has lived this life. He knows all of the temptations, and He didn't give in to them.

Maybe that's why I want to go to a Christian church. Maybe I realized that it's time to face Jesus directly. Sometimes it feels like the Catholic Church keeps Him slightly at a distance...but that could just be me and how I practice my faith. I can't blame the Church for that.

It seems that the consequence to my spiritual hunger is that I've found the answers in an unexpected place, in an unexpected man with beliefs somewhat different from my own.

I will never put aside the Catholic label, and I will want a Catholic priest at my wedding. But putting myself in a different building. With a different type of practice, where we meet Jesus right there. Well, maybe that's what I need.

When I got tired of running from you
I stopped right there to catch my breath
There your words they caught my ears
You said, “I miss you son. Come home”
And my sins, they watched me leave
And in my heart I so believed
The love you felt for me was mine
The love I’d wished for all this time
And when the doors were closed
I heard no I told so’s
I said the words I knew you knew
Oh God, Oh God I needed you
God all this time I needed you, I needed you