Ants in the Airstream and the Sacrament of Reconciliation

Ants infesting our Airstream taught me a lesson about the Sacrament of Reconciliation and why frequent confession is important for the soul.

It all started when my son wanted to show his girlfriend the inside of our Airstream. My husband’s first response was a big fat “NO”. He went on to explain, “We do not go inside. There are ants. It isn’t pretty.”

A little background: for over 20 years, we have described our driveway as the “one with the Airstream.” The silver trailer has been living there since my husband’s parents purchased it in early retirement with dreams of travel. Those travel plans did not come to fruition. While it has not seen many campgrounds, it has served as a sort of in-law suite since my my husband’s parents stayed in it often when they came to visit us. Eventually, as age catches up to all of us, it became evident that they could not give it the attention it needed, they gifted it to my husband and his brother.  

Which meant, that the attention it needed was also gifted to my husband and his brother. The toilet leaked, the tires needed replacing and we had no proper towing vehicle to bring it anywhere. But mostly it was the ants. And as with many things that can become overwhelming to deal with, we locked the door and saved it for later.

But my son persisted as children do and so we did what hadn’t been done in a while.  We unlocked the door.  With a can of raid in hand, we entered. My husband was correct- ants. (At least I hope they were just ants. Some of them have wings— what if they are termites!)

Let the Cleaning Begin!

The next day, armed with Pledge, Windex, rags and a shop-vac, my husband and his brother began the process of cleaning it. In fact, they spent the entire day cleaning. This was the beginning of a project that would continue over the next year.

Several days after the initial clean, we went back in to check on things. More ants. More Raid. More cleaning. It was time to start pulling furniture out to get closer to the source. Taking out the sofa, we saw that a bit of the wood was was wet. I was certain the problem lay deeper and wanted to pull the carpet and wall boards up.

My husband stopped me. He was not ready for might lay underneath.

Sacrament of Reconciliation

This got me thinking about the Sacrament of Reconciliation, otherwise known as Confession, and how our ant-infested airstream is much like a sin-infested soul. We can lock the door and ignore it all we want.  However, eventually we are going to have to deal with it, one way or another. When we can keep the door to our soul closed and locked, never attending confession the ants breed, increase and develop wings. They never disappear on their own.

When we open the door occasionally, spraying what we easily see, we can get a surface clean, much like what happens in an annual (or longer) visit to confession. We clear the basic sins- maybe bad language, missing mass, gossip, etc. The easy ones that everyone does. Maybe we don’t even feel that bad about them, but they are pretty obvious and we know we should.

However, if we want to really deep clean our souls, we need to go underneath the surface.  Move out the furniture, pull up the carpeting and maybe even the subfloor. Really look for the source of the ants. The root of our sin. How can we do this?

Reconciliation: My Confession Experiment

Like the airstream, for years I ignored confession. I went through life thinking as long as I was doing mostly good, and loved God, that was fine. And in many ways it is fine, but the sins build up. Grow. Multiply. Develop wings.

A while back, I made a resolution at my annual retreat. I wanted to really dig deep and get to the root of my sin. I kept hearing people that went weekly to confession, so I decided to do an experiment. For the duration of Advent that year, I would go to confession each week.

After several weeks, I noticed something. My confessions were a lot more intense and involved. I was confessing things that I had never thought were a big deal before. The more often I went to reconciliation, the closer I could look at where my sins were coming from.

Weekly confession is very vulnerable, making me dig, going beyond the few ants I see creeping out of the wall.  I have to lift that carpet. Deal with what is underneath. Getting to the root requires more. Repair, clean up and taking steps to not allow the same thing to happen again. Sometimes the easier thing is to simply lock the door, not let anyone enter. Ignore it.

Sacrament is a Means of Grace

The Latin root of “reconciliation” is “reconciliare,” which means to bring together again or to restore harmony. If a sacrament is a means of grace, then confessing our sins in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we receive grace as we are restored to harmony with God. I like to believe that this same grace helps us with those sins we just confessed, strengthening us as we go back out into the world.

Fixing up the Airstream over the last year has been a lot of work. Many weekends were spent doing tedious tasks to get to the root of all the problems. Then, more weekends were spent rebuilding the inside of the airstream. It is beautiful and ready to serve others. Just like we will feel after we spend some time and attention on our souls.