Women Lead

In all those moments, I had the privilege of ministering to the students, I felt empty. Despite serving those four years, I felt I hadn’t grown at all. I led these children with my heart closed to God. I struggled, instead, with seeking approval and purpose in my community, instead of fully pursuing Him.

And while I landed my first management role, my husband and I found out that we were expecting our first child. When I told my employer that I was expecting, he dropped his drink and said, “What did I do wrong?”

In the summer of 2004, I was sitting on a park bench with a view of the city’s skyline across from me, and these words filled my heart: “If not you, who? If not now, when?” … I could see that God was at work as He quietly stirred my heart, asking me to ponder His words more deeply while I discerned for the next chapter in my life.

For a large part of my childhood, I was a quiet girl. I didn’t contribute much in class due to my intense shyness and would squirm in fear if I were called on. I preferred to recede into the walls when necessary and would find it difficult to even string together a sentence at times. I would rather go unnoticed; it seemed safer that way.

I am not the Catholic woman who has had it all together. I am the type of individual that holds too many opinions, who is too loud, feels too deeply, and is constantly trying to get this “faith thing” right. I think that before social media, I knew I was somewhat an outsider in general, but it was once I joined that I felt that thought was perpetuated even more -- and not just by me, but by others, as well.

Even though I was raised in a Christian home, I believed the lie that a person’s worth was tied to their productivity. Our culture is competitive and the world conditions us to believe that our value lies in our accomplishments. In 2011, two significant events would reveal the truth about human dignity. First, my two-year-old son Seth was diagnosed with Autism. Second, I made the decision to become Catholic.

Have you ever entered Lent with a laundry list of ways you desire the Lord to work on your heart? Have you hoped that adding this or that prayer routine and giving up this or that time-suck activity would create the space to end up as the perfectly new spiritual version of your Ash Wednesday self?

One day in college, I remember being struck by the Gospel of Jesus calling Peter out onto the water to walk with him. Although this was a familiar passage to me, this was the first time I read a reflection that focused not on Peter losing trust and beginning to sink, but on his leap out of the boat.

During the spring term of second grade, my parents were thrilled that I was finally off the waitlist and able to attend the Catholic school near our home. Even all those years ago, I remember being the new kid at school, feeling alone and outcasted, desiring the simplest gesture of friendship from a peer.

Most of my trip to Lourdes was spent asking the Lord to reveal where in my life I needed the most healing, and after sitting in the queue for over an hour, meditating on rosary after rosary, I was finally ushered inside to ask the Blessed Mother to heal my heart from a life of past abuse.

Dear Sister,

I have lots of kids. Some of them are called my “big kids” and some of them are called my kids. My kids are my three beautiful children, Joseph Nicholas (5) Hannah Kateri (3) and Benjamin Francis (5 months). My “big kids” are the countless teens that walk through the doors of my parish in a town in New Hampshire. I am a wife, a mom and a youth minister.

Dear sisters,

I was in second grade when I wrote down my first story. I remember it well, the feeling of the plush green carpet beneath my feet as I made my way into my father’s wood-paneled study. His massive leather-topped desk held my wide-ruled notebook paper and sharpened #2 pencil. I scooted the desk chair up as far as my eight-year-old legs could manage and I began my work. Thirty minutes later, it was done: a sketch and accompanying short story titled “The Adventures of Hamburgerman.”

As a Catholic woman, I feel called to that bravery that brought me to Catholicism in the first place. The bravery of a yes to God no matter what lies on the other side. The bravery of searching with my whole heart. My journey to the Catholic Church was not the end of my pursuit of Christ. In fact, I understand the Sacramental Life to be just the opposite: it’s the perpetual seeking and finding more of the Lord. A way of living where my yes is not only figurative, it’s tangible.

Some days after the conversation with Sr. Hope, though, sitting before Jesus in the Adoration chapel and still mulling over the job offer, I asked a different question: “Lord, what would bring You joy? How do You want me to serve?”

He didn’t answer by saying ,”You’ll bring me joy when you have a Ph.D.”; or, “You’ll delight me when you become a professor.” Instead, He whispered, ever so gently, “You bring me joy when you use the gifts I have given you, right here and now. You delight me already.”

My mind travels back to those greats who came to preach the Gospel to India, who were as strange as we are if not more. They were new missionaries, and had to learn the language, the way to dress, the food, the customs, and the huge cultural and social barriers They were rejected, accepted and rejected some more. Still, they made Jesus known. They are the reason we have faith.

But while sitting in front of the Eucharist, the Lord pointed out that I am a human being, not a human doing.

I don’t need to prove myself. The arbitrary limitations I have set are a result of my own pride, not based on the truth of who He is. I have distorted my perception of His affection from loving to loving only if I can be a perfect robot of holy conduct and charity. God’s mercy is not dependent on my actions, but in my identity as His creation.

It was the first time in my career I came to a crossroads where my faith couldn’t blend with my work.

But many of us find that we don’t have clear models for what we’re supposed to do—what it would even look like to bring all our wild, weird, harrowing experiences to the altar. Especially if something in your life or your calling from God hasn’t been modeled for you by the Catholics around you, it can feel like you’re locked out of that small, perfect sphere of faith.

And yet, four years after my confirmation, I am still finding my way. I am still actualizing my identity as a beloved daughter of God and learning what it means to be a Catholic woman in this broken and beautiful world.

For every woman who is stuck between two worlds, two cultures, understand that the Catholic Church is universal. There should never be a division between your identities. We accept all, we love all, and we are all one body in Christ.

Surrender trying to live up to everyone’s expectations of you as a woman, daughter, friend, co-worker, wife, mother and Christian. Ask God what He wants from you, what He expects of you in any given situation and that will be enough.

Dear Ladies, I have desired to be a wife and mother for as long as I can remember. Can you relate?

During the very first Mass I attended in Afghanistan, this was all I could think about. I looked around the small chapel with tears in my eyes thinking 'this is the universal Church.' I may be on the other side of the world but, during that hour of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, my soul is at home.

I knew Jesus had room for me—he hung out with my crowd, loud mouth recovering know-it-alls trying to figure out how to follow Him. That wasn’t my issue. It was the Church, with its pearls and stained glass, its rules about candle height and liturgical music and specific wordings—that was where I wasn’t sure I was welcome. 

“It was an ordinary moment on a mundane day when I realized that the darkness was back. I’d run into a friend who works at my doctor’s office, and as she checked me out, she asked how I was doing. I wanted to simply say, ‘Fine,’ but I couldn’t keep the tears from filling my eyes….”

“My military uniform clung to my skin in the uncharacteristically hot and humid weather as my mind pressed in on the question that had been floating through my head. Finally, it landed: ‘What am I doing here?’”

“At 28 (almost 29) years old, with a 10-month-old daughter, a husband of 2 years, a mortgage, 3 books published, 40+ speaking engagements a year, a car note, half a Master’s degree, and more stress than I sometimes know what to do with, it’s becoming more and more evident, that following where the Lord leads is the only recipe to success that ever works…”

"I'm ashamed to admit that I have questioned and argued with God intensely in small areas and in large ones. Are you there God? Do you even exist? If you are there, do you care about me at all? These questions and others have regularly echoed in my heart…”

“I was standing in the narthex of the Cathedral, with my heart in my throat, hoping that I wouldn’t actually puke in front of the thirty priests and one archbishop standing behind me. Was this day actually here?”