Falling Into Life

I just read an incredibly moving post over at Calah's place (Barefoot & Pregnant), and all I could think of after reading it (besides Calah's amazingness) was that I have never had an experience like that. I have never had a "Saul" moment of conversion, or a moment of knowing that a particular thing was something I had to do or was meant to do.  For most of my life, I've simply fallen into the next thing. (Perhaps it's 'youngest child' syndrome or something.) I have never had a real go-get-'em attitude in choosing something - I have that attitude once I'm doing something - but never in the choosing.

I never really was passionate about sports or music or arts growing up. I fell into a sport in high school because one of my sisters was doing it, and though I stuck with it all four years, it was more a determination to see it through than a love of the sport. I wasn't a great student, though I wasn't bad. I didn't have a passion for math or english or arts or languages...just fell into whatever courses were offered, and didn't really have a passion for going to college after school...so I didn't.

I fell into marriage. My husband didn't propose in some romantic or outlandish way....we were in bed one night (you already knew I was a bad Catholic) and I asked where our relationship was going. He looked surprised and said, "We'll get married" and that's when we considered ourselves engaged.

I fell into being a mom. I was on the pill for the first month of marriage, but found I couldn't stand myself, so I went off it. We used condoms for awhile, then I started to learn more about what the Church taught (keep reading).

I fell into a life of secularism, then fell into youth ministry. I got kicked out of my parents' house for my 19th birthday (no, I've never been that bad of a Catholic, they just thought it was time for me to grow up on my own), and so I fell out going to church every Sunday (I never was any good at confession). It wasn't until I was asked to volunteer as a youth ministry helper that I fell back into my faith...albeit in a distorted way.


I didn't actively choose the Faith as a child, but faith in our household growing up was pretty much a passive activity. We didn't say a family Rosary, we said the "Bless us O Lord" before meals and we went to Mass on Sundays. I didn't actively choose to re-embrace my Faith, as I said, it was being asked to volunteer with youth ministry that got me to even thinking about it. Once I was hired, well, then I was passionate about teaching it (I'm nothing if not a conscientious worker), though not living it.

Am I doomed to live such a life of passivity, falling into one thing and out of another?
     Can you think of a better description of ourselves? You fall into love with one person, then out of love. You fall into the newest technologies and out of the old ones...sometimes faster than the supply can keep up. You fall into reading one news story and fall out of it before you are even done with one paragraph. You go on to the next stages in your life on auto-pilot because "it's what you do." You get married after 5 years of dating because that's just the next step (of course with no self-examination or discernment if it's the right step). You have the pre-requisite one or two children, and go on the Pill because that's what the "perfect" family has. You fall in line with the current politically correct talk and out of line with the incorrect kind of talk. You grow up, pay your taxes, join a bowling league, talk about respecting others' "choices" and beliefs, and you continue to go with the flow of what's acceptable in polite circles, even if personally you squirm inside.

We are perpetually hungry for the next, the biggest, the brightest; something or someone that will hold our attention fast, something that will say to us, "I am worth fighting for, though it may not be politically correct. I am worth losing your friends and your family for. I am worth your passion." Though I believe that much of my life has been of passivity, there has been someone saying that to me the entire time....Jesus Christ. It was no accident, falling into youth ministry. He was calling me to Himself. Yes, I taught what the Church taught because I was being paid, in my mind, to teach the Church's teachings and not my opinions. But as I came to study and learn more, I realized more and more how much of what the Church taught rang true in my heart....and made me deeply ashamed of how I had hurt Jesus Christ by my sinful life. This was the Holy Spirit, opening my heart and making it fertile for the love of God to grow there.

I stumble, of course. But my faith is less of a passive lifestyle now, of going with the flow, and more of a passionate one, against the flow. I actively choose to live my Faith.

He is worth my passion because of His Passion; 

He is worth dying for because of His Death; 

and He is worth living for because of His Resurrection. 

This is my Faith. I am proud to profess it.