I’m not sure it’s bad that something that significant stays on your “permanent file.” My filing was for more than $200,000 of credit card debt incurred during my marriage, and I personally repaid $109,332 of it over about three years. I’m past explaining how it happened and who did what. More important is that the experience changed my life in ways beyond how I manage my money and whether I’ll ever again trust anyone with it.

• Bankruptcy forced me to ask people for help, not necessarily monetary assistance (though I will always be grateful to my sister for the loans and gifts she provided during that time), but prayers and business referrals and the rescheduling of even simple dinner plans until my budget allowed. It also helped me to accept help in all forms–including mountains of great secondhand clothes from a dear friend.
• Bankruptcy taught me resourcefulness. At times, the paycheck from my day job was less than $1,000 per month due to the garnishment. I ramped up a successful business and worked more hours at home than I care to remember. I did any communications-related job that was ethical–creating content for a board game and putting together a series of dog care books from a university’s newsletter articles, for example, beyond the typical content evaluation and copyediting/proofreading assignments.  I sold much of my children’s books collection to help make ends meet. I went through most of the repayment time without buying any new clothes other than underwear.
• Bankruptcy gave me back some self-confidence. The day I opened the letter from the judge formally notifying me the repayment plan had been satisfied, I cried with relief. Then I got up the nerve to get a secured credit card from my credit union. The gift continues; this weekend, I wanted to go to an event on the other side of the DC metro area, an area where I’d have to drive rather than take public transit, a frightening concept for me. It wasn’t the first situation where I told myself if I’d made it through bankruptcy, I could certainly do this. The reminder worked.

Now, I wouldn’t recommend drowning yourself in debt to experience the positive impacts of bankruptcy. I do, however, treasure the things I learned through my experience, and believe that even the most difficult situation can be a blessing while we’re in it and when we get to the other side.

1. HSBC. Ah, HSBC. Once you wanted to be the world’s local bank. Your strategy has changed. I understand. But I became a customer anyway given the terrific Internet savings account interest rates you were offering four years ago. I added a debit account. I appreciate that you approved me for a credit card. But why is it so difficult when I travel abroad? In the fall of 2010, I found myself at the Lisbon airport on a Sunday morning three-way call with members of your card team and your fraud team because your systems were down for maintenance, which made it difficult for you to verify the transactions you wanted me to verify. This month, I was headed to Sweden and Norway. I called card services and the bank side–twice each. I said I was going to be unplugged, no e-mail or access to my cell or home phone. I provided my city-by-city iterinary. Then during a layover at Heathrow–at about 8 a.m. local time on a Wednesday–I learned HSBC had frozen all of my accounts. I spent the next hour calling collect to the numbers on the back of my cards, only to hear from all the representatives that a. the system was down, b. they didn’t have the authority to do anything, and c. you’ve sold servicing of your credit card portfolio so HSBC couldn’t help me and couldn’t tell me who could. Reassuring. I got to Stockholm, where pay phones aren’t as plentiful as they are at Heathrow. After two days, I gave up and called HSBC from my hotel. It cost me US$120 in calls to get things working again. On the positive side, one agent did apologize “for any inconvenience.” Back at home, I can’t get from the call center or the local branch the name of someone to whom to send a letter of complaint.
2. USPS. Last fall, I went to the Pacific Northwest for ten days. I filled out the online mail hold form a week in advance. I received a confirmation. The mail still was delivered every day (as evidenced by the packages left at the apartment building’s front desk). When I called USPS, a supervisor left a strange voice message back telling me that I could indeed use the online form to have my mail held. So I tried again before the Scandinavian trip. Got a confirmation number, again. Delivery didn’t stop, again. I called USPS this morning; the agent said the local post office got the hold order and she didn’t know what happened. She did say, however, that I could try mailing in a paper hold form or leaving one in my mail box for the carrier in the future. Ah, technology.
3. WETA. I want to support public TV programming in general and the local station in particular. A few years back, they’d called for weeks and months after I’d renewed. Finally, I cut my donation and sent it in saying it would be cut even further if anyone ever called me again. The calls ceased. So far, so good. I received a plea in February and decided to respond, sending in twice my usual annual contribution. In April, I received a notice acknowledging my recent contribution and saying my membership would be expiring this month. I sent a letter back asking how that could be. No response. I came home to find a solicitation saying it wasn’t too late to renew my membership. I tried calling. But WETA is staffed just six hours a day on weekdays, and strongly urges you not to leave a message and to call back during those hours (unless they’re in a one-hour staff meeting, in which case you’re to call back later). I went to the Web site, where you are strongly urged NOT to use the message feature if you expect a response, and to call instead.

So I’m sitting here thinking–is it really too much to ask that people who have use of my money believe me when I say I’m going out of the country and to allow payments to go through? Is it too much to expect that an entity that offers an online form to temporarily suspend service would get it to the right people? Is it too much to expect that a non-profit would communicate with donors on their terms, rather than on the non-profit’s?

I guess I have my answer. Yes, it is.

She was the last of my CCD teachers, back in seventh or eighth grade. Unlike the other nuns I’d encountered, she was thin and hyperactive and wore the then-new shorter habit. She was maybe a dozen years older than I was, and played guitar. Boy, did she love to play that guitar and sing new songs, songs we heard on the radio, like Ed Ames’ “Who Will Answer?” She’d swing that guitar around and strum like crazy as we all sang the lyrics, no one louder than she, about love and suicide and nuclear destruction and the verse that began, “Is our hope in walnut shells worn ’round the neck with temple bells…”

After Clement Mary, I had no contact with nuns for more than thirty years. After I returned to the Catholic Church in 2005, I was able to find her via e-mail. She’d left her order, married, and now was retired. She apologized profusely for not remembering me–I told her there was absolutely no reason she would–and wished me well.

Since then, I’ve grown in faith, and in my admiration for women religious. I think of Sister Jane Abeln, who for my fiftieth birthday took me to perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, an hour that quieted my soul in a way nothing but adoration ever has. I think of Sister Benedict Kesock, my current parish’s retired principal and the second woman religious ever to open the U.S. House in prayer, a woman who comforts those close to death in our community. And I think of Sister Joan Chittister, whose sermon at the National Cathedral a few years ago stirred my heart and whose books inspire me and propel me to write deeper and better.

I don’t always understand the totality of the issues that pit Catholic against Catholic, or the Church against the U.S. government. But I am troubled by the conclusions drawn by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith regarding the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, conclusions that seem to point to a hierarchy for social justice ministries. I signed a petition in support of the sisters, and pray for the conference members as they discern their response. I pray for us all that we lose no more sisters like Clement Mary. I am confident God will answer.

Once a big sister, always a big sister.

You remember Meg, the oldest of the four March daughters, the one who remembered when the family had money and longed for the small niceties of life that that money had brought. The one who realized after time away from home with the wealthy Moffatts that kindness and integrity matter a lot more than fancy ballgowns and frizzed hair.

And as for Jo, the character inspired by author Louisa May Alcott herself? Not so much. Jo was too much of a tomboy for me. And writing, well, who honestly thought a woman could make a living as a writer? Not me.

Like many girls from a certain era, I had a thing for series, and like Little Women, many of them featured heroines who loved to write. While I enjoyed reading about them, my favorite scenes often involved the non-writing older sisters. I longed to have a lifelong friend the way Betsy Ray did in Maud Hart Lovelace’s Betsy-Tacy series, but I also cheered when the popular Betsy got her comeuppance in Betsy Was a Junior. The one I ached for in that book was older sister Julia, who was blackballed by a “sister” in a college sorority. I liked the practicality of Beany Malone, another writer wanna-be, in the series by Lenora Mattingly Weber. But I saw myself more as her impulsive and generous big sis Mary Fred.

Decades later, I have a deeper appreciation for Alcott, Lovelace, Weber, and all those other writers of that genre (in case you haven’t guessed, I favored Mary over Laura in the Little House series as well). But a large part of my appreciation remains their ability to create believable, flawed, loving big sisters.

This particular woman is in a Bible study group, and remarked upon how in the Old Testament, God provides “just enough”–just enough manna. Just enough relief for the Israelites. Just in time action to prevent Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac.

Yet, in the New Testament, Christ provides abundance, whether it’s good wine, loaves and fishes, or comfort. There’s always plenty, not just what his followers need to get by.

My friends and I spent a good amount of time talking about our willingness… or lack of willingness… to accept abundance. We looked to John’s Gospel and discussed the man with infirmities, who couldn’t give Jesus a direct answer when he was asked if he wanted to be healed. Why now?

Too often, we decided, we ask God for just enough… “Help me get through this presentation today”; “grant me safe travels today”; “help me deal with the jerk in my life.” We don’t ask for the greater gifts of faith and grace and mercy.

I wonder why that is. Because we don’t think we’re worthy? Because we fail to get the big picture? Because we mix up living in the now and living in faith? Maybe a little of each. And maybe, just maybe, because it’s scary to accept just how large God’s love is for us.

The choice is ours.

It’s harder to find men, for starters, given we all have this idea that husbands/boyfriends are supposed to be taller than their wives/girlfriends. And let’s not even get into finding pants that are long enough. I end up buying most pants via mail order places like Long Tall Sally, which by the way has dubbed April 16-22 Stall Tall Week to “encourage women to embrace their height and , simply put, stand tall.”

I had to laugh. It reminded me of a conversation I once had with a priest during confession about how I wanted to disappear into the service woodwork at our parish but that I kept seeming to be thrust into leadership positions. He had little sympathy: “Melanie, you’re what, six feet tall? You’re always going to stand out.”

So, I pledge that for this week, I will try to embrace my height, stand tall, and wear heels. Just don’t take any photographs of me with other people–or leave any comments about how you wish you were my height. Honest, you don’t!

At approximately 6:50 p.m. ET on Wednesday, March 7, 2012, I officially became a “church lady.”

I’m serving on a team to help people considering a return to the Catholic Church. It’s a program called Landings that was instrumental to my own return back in 2005. The group was in the sanctuary for a parishwide mission night on the parts of the Mass. I got up to yoo-hoo and hug about a half-dozen of my church friends who also happened to be attending.

“Melanie knows everyone,” my friend Anna, the leader of Landings International, said to a couple of those in this spring’s Landings class. I giggled a little.

Anna and I co-authored a book, When They Come Home: Ways to Welcome Returning Catholics, and began talking about writing-related stuff while we waited. I mentioned I’m working on a proposal that involves research into people who were recently canonized. “You know,” I said to Anna and the woman seated between us, “JP2 and Benedict saints.”

The other woman looked at me blankly. “Excuse me,” she said. “What’s a JP2 saint?”

“Oh, people canonized by either John Paul II or Benedict XVI,” I said, “you know, the two most recent popes.”

She still looked puzzled. That’s when it occurred to me that that was the same look I must have had on my face seven years ago when people said things like, “We are a resurrection people” and “You don’t get to the resurrection without the crucifixion.” It occurred to me that I am now a “church lady,” someone who knows priests by name and counts many of the folks next to her in the pews as valued friends.

And you know what? I like being a church lady!

When I spoke about my struggle with my pastor, he recommended Father James Martin’s The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life. I liked it (though not quite as much as his My Life With the Saints). Near the end, I found what I needed.

Martin recalls a scene from the movie The Matrix, when the protagonist is ready to abandon a new direction and just go home. Another character, aptly named Trinity, says to him:  ”You’ve been down there, Neo. You already know that road. You know exactly where it ends. And I know that’s not where you want to be.”

I know where that road I was on leads: to an amazing mental, physical, and emotional connection. To time with a soulmate–on his terms. To holidays alone. To birthdays alone. And no matter how wonderful that reconnection would be, the other parts of that road are too painful. It’s not where I want to be. It’s just taken me a while to figure that out.

He’s the kind of conductor who waits if he sees someone racing down the stairs or platform to make his train. He’s also the kind of conductor who when there are delays, keeps the riders updated on what he knows about when we’ll be moving, using a calming, conversational tone.

For months, I’ve been meaning to send Metro a note about this conductor, but then I wasn’t sure if he’d get in trouble if I identified him as “the guy who always says ‘Orange train,’ not ‘Orange line.’” I asked just this week at the station near my home if it was possible to get his number based on the train’s cars, and was told no.

Then, this morning I ended up in the front car–and he was the conductor! I was downright giggly about finally meeting him and getting his name and number so I tell Metro what a great job he does. I hurried out the door at my stop and went to his window. I was a bit surprised to see he’s about my age… his deep, clear voice had always said younger man to me. I quickly told him how much I enjoyed riding in his car and how he made my commute easier. He gave a big smile and said thanks.

Then I asked for his name or agent number so I could contact Metro. He smiled again. “There’s no need for that,” he said. “You just did all you needed to do. Thank you, and thank you for riding Metro.”

As I watched the train pull away, I said a little prayer for him… and for the lesson in doing a good job just because, humbly and without any expectation of special rewards.

• Three weeks of a four-week yoga class
• Speaking and doing critiques at the wonderful Bay to Ocean Writers Conference
• Dinner with a former colleague I haven’t seen in nearly a decade, and a mutual friend who lives here and with whom I recently re-established contact
• A leadership meeting for a church-related movement
• Two virtual book-club meetings with my sisters
• A trip to Grove City, Pennsylvania, for the St. Davids Christian Writers’ Association spring board meeting
• Hosting my favorite editor and his wife while they stay with us for a night
• Taking to dinner the Cursillo candidate I’m co-sponsoring, and some other activities around that weekend
• Introducing a new friend to the wonders of the movie version of “Jesus Christ Super Star” (personally, I find it a sin anyone her age doesn’t know about the phenomonen that is Ted Neeley) and watching “Godspell” with her and my sister, both in a single day
• Three days in Chicago with a college friend
• Writing weekly Your Daily Tripod blog columns and my next Living Faith devotions
• A show at the Kennedy Center about Roma
• Finish judging books for the Ben Franklin Awards

And of course, then there’s the day job. And sleeping. And working out. And “American Idol” (even though it’s probably a foregone conclusion that Phillip Phillips will walk away with the crown). And the fact that a book contract is said to be in the mail, so I’ll have revisions to do. And the fact that I should get more serious about my social media platform. And the fact I haven’t spent any time writing fiction, an emerging passion, for four months.

So what am I adding or taking away during Lent? I thought about adding daily Mass at least one per week. I thought about adding 15 minutes of spiritual study every night. I thought about giving up alcohol. But instead, I’ve settled on two things that will be more difficult than any of that:

1. I will not add anything else, no matter how pleasant or obligatory, to those six weeks.
2. I will not complain or whine about the frenetic pace of my life since it appears that’s the way both God and I want it.

I’ll let you know how it goes–when I have time.