Struggling with the Elephant in the Living Room: Part 1

I was a part of a movement called Regnum Christi (RC) for 5 years.  And I loved it. 

In 2008, through a series of unexpected events, I found myself literally pulled away from what they call ‘the Movement’ in RC circles.  I fought tooth and nail to stay in, but with us moving out to the countryside, miles away from my small and beautiful RC women’s group, and with our meetings being at the crack of dawn on Saturday mornings, I found it impossible to meet with my ‘true sisters in Christ.’

This was heartbreaking, and it happened at a very difficult time in our family’s life.  When we were struggling financially and going through significant loss, it felt like God was ‘taking away’ the last thing I had that gave me joy (besides my family)… my ‘group’, my ‘way of life’, my identity as a ‘woman of the Kingdom.’

I had felt honored when Corey and I were the first RC couple in our city, and when the spiritual director of our area, an amazing Legionarie priest, held spiritual direction meetings in one of our office rooms.  We were encouraged in our business, especially since we were building up our successful business in order to be able to be financially generous (hopefully) to our Church and the cause of life.  RC was big on working with leaders in the community (“effect the leaders, and they will evangelize and bring more people to Christ”… a wonderful theory that we believed in)… and to feel like we were being identified as successful and holy leaders in our community was just plain flattering.

I loved everything about the movement: the prayer circles (called “Encounters with Christ”), the soul-changing and uplifting silent retreats, the regular spiritual direction which is something that many Catholics are not often privy to, the encouragement to become saints, and the holy clergy leaders we had… not to mention the amazing lay people who were attracted to such a movement, who became my ‘sisters’ and who were such a source of encouragement and support to me and my vocation.

And then things started to crumble…

We started struggling in our businesses, and Fr. took the spiritual direction elsewhere as we had to leave the office… soon, we found out second hand that we had been replaced in our apostolate (the mission one does in the movement) by another couple, and then we started to kind of drop off the email list letting us know when and where spiritual direction was.  Most likely none of this was intentional.  But coupled with our personal suffering and loss and the fact that we were now more isolated and living in poverty for a year, it felt like we were abandoned.

We never held (and still don’t hold) any of the people we actually knew as responsible for these very real feelings… in fact, I had not had one negative experience with anyone I have ever known in the RC movement.  But in 2008, these little nagging questions started to grow in our hearts.  Did we become unimportant all of a sudden because we were no longer financially successful?  Were we not qualified anymore for the mission?  Was there something deeper going on that we were not aware of?

… to be continued…