He is supposed to open doors for her. He is supposed to give her his jacket when she is cold. He is supposed to be respectful of her. He is supposed to fight for her and defend her honor, etc. (And, generally speaking, this is all men with all women, regardless of romantic feelings.) I have been privileged to know many such men throughout my life.

As Christian women, we are told to settle for nothing less than true chivalry from the men in our lives. And while it is true that we should expect to be treated with the level of dignity and respect that we naturally deserve, I feel as though many of us miss an important piece of the puzzle during our formation as young Catholic women. We learn how men are supposed to treat us and what we are to expect from them and what we shouldn’t settle for. But in all of this learning about what to expect to receive, what is our proper response?

My fear is that a young Catholic woman’s formation can sometimes boil down to this:

Men are supposed to treat us wonderfully, perform all of these heroic acts for us, and generally feel honored to be in our presence. And in return? We’ll dress modestly so as not to lead them into sin.

Something just does not add up here. As women, we are to expect all of these wonderful gifts and gestures from the men in our lives, and the only thing we are to give in return is often expressed in terms that seem to serve primarily to highlight the man’s tendency toward lust as opposed to a gift motivated simply out of love to show how much we truly care for him.

Of course modesty is important and can be (and most often is) motivated out of love. But I think that a woman’s call in her relationships with other men is to more than simply modesty. In fact, I think modesty is, and ought to be articulated as, simply just one facet of our active reception of chivalry as woman.

To expect something is one thing. To actively receive it is another thing entirely. I think that perhaps many of us woman have (rightly) come to expect chivalry but fail to actively receive it. We know that women deserve to be treated a certain way but we forget that a response is required on our part. And because of this, we often come off as being just plain rude and presumptuous. It’s not that we need to act a certain way in order to deserve to be treated with respect; we deserve respect simply by virtue of the fact that we are women. Likewise, men deserve respect, graciousness, and—yes—protection from temptation when we are able to help, by our dressing modestly.

The most important way to respond to chivalry is to respect it. There are many ways we can disrespect chivalry, but one of the worst is to take advantage of it for selfish reasons. Proverbs 31:30 says, “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” It’s true that our simple charm as women is one of our most powerful tools, but it’s easy to forget that. Be careful not to string guys along if you think they could be romantically interested in you and you don’t feel the same way (and get real; you’re beautiful, and if he’s spending a ton of time with you, of course he is romantically interested in you).

Other ways to respond to chivalry: Don’t forget that “thank you” goes a long way. Yes, we should have high expectations for the way a man should treat us, but that doesn’t mean we are excused from being grateful when a guy does the right thing. In general, just being courteous and eager to serve (as all Christians, regardless of gender, are called to do) is a good way to respond to chivalry.

What are your thoughts?

Copyright 2012 Mary Lane

Despite knowing we ought to be happy for our friends when they call us with good news about school/work/a relationship/ etc., we may often find ourselves suddenly comparing how we are faring in those fields to the positive news that our friend just shared with us about their life.  Before we know it, and often without even realizing what we are doing, we begin looking for all of the negatives in that other person in order to make ourselves feel better about our own lives.  Rather than being happy for our friend, we choose to tear them down, even if only in our own minds.

Some of us may realize this terrible tendency within ourselves, and so we rightly attempt to correct it.  But we often choose a method that, though better than tearing another person down, is still not ideal because it robs us of our own happiness.  We choose to compare ourselves to that other person.  We know it’s silly to wish that other person harm, so instead, we conclude that the other person is awesome and we just have to live with the fact that we are not.

Neither of these options is healthy, and neither is what God wants for us.  Since good things are inevitably going to happen to the people we know in life (yay!), I thought I’d put together a plan of action to help deal with envy and this terrible tendency of comparing ourselves to other people.

 1.     Reasonably examine your feelings

So you’re not happy for your friend?  Acknowledge it.  Acknowledge it to yourself and in your prayer to God, because it’s pointless to pretend with yourself or with God.  Be real about your feelings, but let them lead to this question:

Why aren’t you happy for your friend’s success?  Chances are, there is no good reason for you to not be rejoicing in your friend’s good fortune.  Still, it’s incredible how talented we are at coming up with even the tiniest of reasons as to why we aren’t as happy as we should be for our friends.  We recall past times when that person made a mistake and somehow allow that to lead us to the conclusion that they should not be allowed to have any successes ever again. Makes perfect sense, right?  Of course not.  But it’s important to go over these reasons of why you’re not happy so that you can see just how illogical they are.  Which brings me to step two.

2.     Go over all of the logical reasons for why you should be happy

Even if your friend was just the random winner of some contest that had nothing to do with personal ability or skill, (i.e., they did nothing to deserve this positive news) that’s still no good reason for you to wish this were not happening to them.  So make a list, and write it down if you have to, of all the reasons why you should be happy for your friend.  Here are some to get you started:

• It’s rare that positive things happen by chance and without at least some small amount of effort.  Your friend likely worked hard to achieve whatever positive thing is happening in their life.  You should acknowledge that.
• You care about your friends.  You don’t want to see them unhappy, so you should logically rejoice to see them happy.
• You would expect your friends to be happy when something good happened to you.  If they weren’t, you’d wonder what kind of friends they were.
• Being unhappy for your friend will likely hurt your relationship with them.
• Even if you had a good reason (which you don’t), being unhappy for or about your friend is not going to make you feel better about yourself.
• If all else fails: Jesus says so.  (Mark 12:30-31)

3.     Realize that another person’s happiness takes nothing from you

At its core, I think this tendency to comparison and to envy is rooted in fear.  We’re afraid that, if good things happen to our friends, there won’t be enough good to go around for us.  As a result, it’s hard to be happy for our friends’ good fortune because a small part of us fears that this means there is less left for us.  But all we need to do is realize this one simple truth: One person’s happiness truly takes nothing from you.

Remember that we live within time.  Good things are going to happen to you, and they are going to happen to the people around you—but they may not always occur on the same day.  It doesn’t mean you’re never going to be happy again.  Cicero wrote that, “Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.”  When your friend is happy, you should actually rejoice because you get to share in that happiness.

4.  Practice Makes Perfect

Now that you know all of the reasons why you should be happy, and that you have no real reason not to be happy, it’s time to practice genuine happiness.  Don’t be fake, but don’t expect fuzzy feelings over night either.  Realize that, after years of negativity, it will take practice to get used to being happy for other people.  So fight the urge to look for the negative by repeating to yourself the reasons why you should be happy for your friend.  Ask them questions about the good thing they have shared with you and look for all of the reasons to rejoice with them.  Put yourself in their shoes and realize that they probably told you because they want you to share in their happiness.  And of course, pray, pray, pray for the grace to be genuinely happy for those around you.

Copyright 2012 Mary Lane

And in theory, there’s nothing wrong with this.  I do agree that love is the greatest good.  It’s just that, if you ask around, it seems nearly impossible for us humans (especially my generation) to settle on an objective definition for what real love actually looks like.

At my graduation last September, our commencement speaker challenged our graduating class with the task of redefining love for the culture.  “There are so many songs or stories out there about falling in love,” he said, “when falling in love really only makes up about 2% of what love actually is!”

You can see how this is problematic.  Not only are we looking for the treasure without a map, we haven’t even really any clue what the treasure will look like when we actually find it.  We know the 2% of how the story is supposed to begin, but we are less familiar with how to live out the remaining 98% of the equation.  Enter broken relationships and confused hearts.  The truth is, a lot of people could fill the first few pages of several books with the 2%, or the “Fairytales” of past relationships—but because we have believed for so long that “falling in love” is the whole picture, the remainder of our love stories are empty pages.  And then we wonder when “true love” will come.

A wise priest once told me, “Once falling in love ends, true love can begin.”  Falling in love is a feeling.  It’s a rare feeling, but that doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed that it will only happen once in your lifetime.   True love is more than a feeling; it’s a choice.  And it’s not just one choice; it’s a series of choices.  It’s a lifetime of choices, and it usually comes down to the choice between yourself and your beloved.  You can tell it’s real love when you find mutual self-gift—when both parties involved choose their beloved over their individual desires.

If there were no choice in love, then it would not mean a whole lot for someone to say that they loved you.  The other 98% of love is not always easy, and it’s not always fun…and it definitely doesn’t always feel romantic and fairy-tale-esque, but it’s real.  Personally, I’d prefer to be chosen.

Copyright 2012 Mary Lane

Hands down, I attribute my faith to my family more than any other influence, and specifically to my parents (and of course it goes without saying that I was given such an amazing and faithful family by the grace of God).  Yes, I went to public school and no, we didn’t always get a family rosary in or memorize the Baltimore Catechism, but I never once questioned my parents’ love for Christ and His Church.  Religion wasn’t a game; and God was real.  Conviction like that demands your attention no matter how it is expressed.

For my family, it was expressed by living out the faith no matter what situation we were in.  If my sister and I had a cheerleading competition that happened to fall on Sunday, we may have had to skip out a little early and miss the awards ceremony because mass came first.  One year, we hosted an “All Hallows’ Eve” party at our house, which included listening to a portion of the Screwtape Letters on tape.  If we happened to have school on Good Friday, we would be taken out a little before noon to spend the afternoon either at service or in silence.

It wasn’t always easy; but I don’t think any path ever is.  Homeschoolers sometimes talk about feeling like they were missing out in high school when I often found myself feeling like I didn’t fit in entirely (there aren’t a whole lot of teenagers who are serious about taking their faith seriously).  Fortunately for me, that classic “rebellion against authority” phase that teenagers are often prone to often found its expression in taking pride in the fact that being a devout Catholic isn’t exactly “mainstream”.

And my parish youth group helped.  Actually, my youth group helped a lot.  And so did the fact that my parish had a blessed sacrament chapel open 24/7 to those who knew the code…not that my parents ever let me go by myself past 6pm, but that chapel meant everything to me in high school.

Bottom line: I don’t think my parents laid out a battle plan the day my oldest brother was born and had it all figured out.  I think they followed God’s will to the best of their abilities and, for us, that ended up meaning living very much in the world, but always doing our best not to be of it.

All of that being said— I spent the past three years of my life in college getting to know some of the best people I have ever met.  Being at a small Catholic university, a good amount of them had been homeschooled.  And I’m not afraid to admit: there is a lot to love about homeschooling.

First of all: these people knew more about the faith when they were twelve than I knew going into my freshman year of college (and I was no dummy!).   Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean they loved God more than I did—but they knew a lot more about Him and therefore were able to love more about Him than I could.  Maybe I wouldn’t have appreciated it as much when I was nine…but who knows?

Secondly: as a public schooler, talking to a homeschooler about the books I have read (or, um, haven’t read) can just be embarrassing (a lot of smiling and nodding along happens).  Of course, there are exceptions: homeschoolers who hate reading and public schoolers who read everything.  But by and large, homeschoolers have read the classics by age 10 and public schoolers can graduate high school with an eighth grade reading level.

When it comes down to it, there are pros and cons to everything.  If you choose to homeschool, your kids will miss out on certain things, but the same will be true if you choose to put them in public school.  There is no objectively right or wrong way here; it is just what works best for you and your family (and ultimately, what will help get your children to Heaven…because, as far as I can tell, that is why God gives people children in the first place).

Copyright 2011 Mary Lane

Yes, there is a certain level of marketing genius behind it all (or at least, there was at first).  But it begs the question: Size 24 or size 0—why is it that we as women still think we have to take our clothes off to get a point across?

There is a small victory being won here, and that is that women are finally beginning to realize the great power our femininity possesses.  There is a line from the movie Eat Pray Love that I have never been able to get out of my head because it speaks so fully to this:

Julia Roberts’ character is eating lunch with her friend, who expresses dissatisfaction with her body.  Roberts, with her newfound wisdom, asks her friend, “have you ever been naked in front of man and he’s asked you to leave?” Her friend of course replies, “no”.  Making her point, Roberts says, “Exactly.  Because when a man sees a woman naked, all he can think about is how he won the lottery because he has a naked woman in front of him!”

Roberts’ character, and every woman who loves this line so much, has just discovered what we all ought to have engrained in our minds from the time we are little girls.  Our beauty is not dependent on what size we are.  We have a certain loveliness and grace within us, simply by virtue that we are women, that no amount of pounds or wrinkles can take away (and all of that other, “I am woman.  Hear me roar,” stuff).

The problem with all of this is that, even though we have made great strides in realizing the power we posses as women, campaigns that have women of any size pose nude for the whole world to see just show that we have not yet fully realized the gift of our femininity.  We’re stuck giggling about it when we ought to be safeguarding it.  We undervalue it so much that we treat it as some silly little ploy to gain attention.  It’s time we stand up for more.

So, women of the world of all shapes sizes: please, put your clothes back on.

Copyright 2011 Mary Lane

Editor’s Note: Today, I’m thrilled to welcome Mary Lane as a monthly contributor here at CatholicMom.com. Mary, a graduate student at John Paul the Great University blogs at Young and Catholic. Please join me in welcoming Mary and her unique perspective by leaving her a comment today. LMH

About a month ago, I officially joined the ranks of people who call themselves college graduates.  It’s kind of a crazy idea to wrap my mind around.  According to certain statistics, this simple fact means that I will potentially be able to make nearly twice the amount I could make if I just had a high school diploma; I will be twice as likely to get and keep a job, and, according to some, I will be just an all-around happier person.

Sounds like a pretty good deal.  So then why is the National Inflation Association reporting that college education is possibly one of the largest scams in U.S. history?  Well, perhaps because many people my age let it be so.

College is expensive.  There is no arguing that.  But I truly believe that the education you can receive in college can be worth every penny put down, and then some.  However, at the end of four years, many people my age are finding they have not gotten out of the college experience what they hoped they would when they started.  Why is this?

Personally, I think this has everything to do with the mentality of us young adults in college. Rather than going to school to get ready for the “real world”, I think many people use college as a means to put off growing up.

We fall back on the old “everybody experiments in college” line, or make other excuses for our stupid behavior.  “Everyone else” gets drunk every weekend, so we do it, too.  “Everyone else” is sleeping around; “everyone else” is smoking pot; these things are “just what you do” in college.  We’ll grow up a little closer to graduation.  Right now, we just want to have a little fun.

Well, contrary to what a lot of people might say, people don’t grow up by getting the young and stupid behavior “out of their system”.  We grow up by choosing not to take part in childish or stupid behavior at all.  Stupidity is not the absence of knowledge.  Stupidity is acting contrary to the knowledge you have.  Saying you have to be stupid before you can be wise is like saying you have to be sick before you can be healthy.  It’s just not true.

It kills me to see people in our generation settling for this.  Put aside for a moment the fact that, upon graduation, we will have no idea what to do with our lives, having squandered our time and money spent on college going to parties and sleeping around.  The real tragedy of a college experience spent like this is what it does to a person.

If college is a “scam”, it’s not because we spend too much money on an education that doesn’t get us a job at the end of four years.  If college is a “scam”, I believe it is because we pay tens of thousands of dollars in order to live a lifestyle that slowly destroys us.  There is no happiness in that kind of lifestyle.  In truth, there is a lot of pain, and a lot of regret.

I think that, as a generation, we need to point out that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes here. Let’s stop buying into this lie that college is for acting stupid on the way to growing up.  Why wait until graduation to start making a positive impact on the world?  Positive change has to start with you.

Copyright 2011 Mary Lane