Outside My Realm of Thinking

I was originally waiting to post on what I learned this lent, because for me its been a hard lent.  But something else came to mind today, of which may just be a little bit of my lesson from lent after all, but almost I think it stems from the new year and resolutions made then.

Post thesis I was determined to figure out who I am outside of studentdom, and what it meant to be me.  For a while I felt like I wasn't making any progress because I wasn't accomplishing what I thought I had to do.  One of the things I was determined that I needed was to find young Catholic moms who could enrich me and I them and we could talk about how to teach the Catholic faith to our kiddos etc. I thought this would help me be spiritually fed in the way I wanted to be and so it had to be a good thing.

Well today, I went to a young Catholic mom play and pray group.  There was nothing wrong with it, but I realized once I was there, that it was not how God wanted me to be spiritually fed.  I think I would even return to it again, because Ben seemed to have fun, though he totally was doing his own thing most of the time. (totally my kid in this because apparently I drove my mom crazy with this behavior.) So, even though it was a good experience, my eyes were opened to what I already had.

I realized in what I already had, that I was being spiritually fed.  I had been going to a Catholic Women's Bible Study once a month, and while most the people there are all at least 15 years older than me its been feeding me spiritually in a way that I originally didn't think it was.  Originally I felt like the odd ball that was too young to have any wisdom and speak up in the group, but I kept going, a God thing for sure, and eventually I did have things to say and share that were well received.  And besides that for a lot of it I enjoy sitting back and taking it all in because these women do have a lot of faith wisdom to share even though I originally didn't think I fit in with them.

Besides that, I have been having play dates with 5 or so young moms all in different spiritual states, none of them practicing Catholics.  Oddly, I find I have a lot in common with them.  And as my husband alerted me to yesterday, as I was overhearing his conversation (bad me!) to another friend on the phone, I am being spiritually fed by these ladies too.  These ladies stretch me to listen to another faith perspective and to reassure me of my own faith choices.  I get to practice compassion in a whole different way to those who are maybe like me in some ways especially when it comes to parenting but totally approach things differently in other ways such as faith. Each woman is so unique and I love learning about each of them as we grow in our friendships.

And so as my facebook status kind of states: Sometimes, when you are looking for something, you begin to realize you already have it.  It's just in a different form than what you thought it should be, and it takes the searching to make you appreciate what you already have.