A Self-Righteous Daughter Stands Corrected: The Mercy of God is Unfathomable

I need to retract my critical tone in my story titled "Rejected by Those to Whom You Have Been Sent" that deals with the Gospel of Life and the issue of birth control from yesterday. While I still believe the basic truth that birth control is harmful and has destroyed our culture, I failed to reveal the true heart of the matter. I bought into the artificial contraception lie myself. I used contraception for years, even while knowing that the Church taught it was wrong and that it was a grave matter. I told myself that it was ok, that it was up to individual conscience to decide (that's what I was told at my Catholic high school), and the Church was outdated. I bought into the whole lie about sex being okay if we were in love. I did what I wanted to do and justified it to myself because I was afraid to lose my boyfriend, who was pressuring me to give in. I cried about it for days, told God to "consider us married", and then put my relationship with my boyfriend before my relationship with God and consented to an act that I knew was wrong. This went on for years and I even married this man because of my promise to God to consider us married, despite knowing deep down that our relationship was not a healthy one. After years of engaging in unhealthy bedroom behaviors, Mary came into my life. She showed me very tenderly and gently where I was going wrong in my thinking. She took me by the hand and showed me a better path, introduced me to Fatima, Medjugorje and other apparitions. She provided me a copy of the Catholic Catechism. The ultimate result after a serious spiritual struggle was that my husband could not accept the changes in me and our marriage ended in divorce. It was a painful journey, but the ultimate gift was that Jesus forgave me.

Yet instead of telling the story of my journey and the mercy that was lavished upon me on my return home, I ichose to point my finger at others who may be experiencing the same struggle between pleasing a partner and pleasing God that I had felt when I turned away from Christ. A few hours after submitting my story, the Holy Spirit brought to mind the story from the Bible of the wicked servant who was forgiven a huge sum and then went to his fellow servant and demanded payment of a much smaller debt. He also brought to mind the story about the Master's delay in returning and how the servants turned on one another and started beating each other. I was judgmental, acted self-righteously and failed to mention my own transgressions in the same area, for which Jesus was so kind to forgive me. I am sorry for having left the most important part of the story out, the harm that buying into the ideology of the sexual revolution did to my soul and my relationship and the amazing mercy God showed me. I just hope I don't get the measure with which I just measured, measured back to me. I am sorry, Lord, for taking the disciplining of the children into my own hands and ask for your forgiveness once again. May Jesus be praised for ever and ever and the Mercy of God be glorified!