We returned last night from our trip to Iowa. I spoke at a Catholic parish in Dubuque, Iowa (which is at the nexus of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa). The temperatures were crazy cold, but other than that, we did not encounter any problems along the way. The joy of being able to share this faith journey was worth it all.
I used to live in Dubuque (and my father attended a Protestant seminary there in the 1970s). I completed my last year of undergraduate school at the University of Dubuque in 1989. Back then, I thought I would be a minister's wife - but that is not what God had planned for me. So, yesterday, as my husband and I sat in the car, parked in the parish parking lot in Dubuque, and I looked at the doors of that beautiful parish, I had the strange sense of the mystery of each faith journey. I was right there on that journey the whole time, and yet it is a mystery how I could be sitting in the parking lot of a Catholic parish, waiting to go in and tell the story of my conversion - especially considering the fact that twenty years ago, I probably drove past that parish and never gave it a second thought.
I used to live in Dubuque (and my father attended a Protestant seminary there in the 1970s). I completed my last year of undergraduate school at the University of Dubuque in 1989. Back then, I thought I would be a minister's wife - but that is not what God had planned for me. So, yesterday, as my husband and I sat in the car, parked in the parish parking lot in Dubuque, and I looked at the doors of that beautiful parish, I had the strange sense of the mystery of each faith journey. I was right there on that journey the whole time, and yet it is a mystery how I could be sitting in the parking lot of a Catholic parish, waiting to go in and tell the story of my conversion - especially considering the fact that twenty years ago, I probably drove past that parish and never gave it a second thought.
Sometimes, you just sit in amazement and say to yourself, how can this wonderful thing have happened to me - that God would bring me full circle and place me here all over again - but now as one who is fully at home in this Church? It is too wonderful to grasp it all.
No comments:
Post a Comment