When Does My Real Life Start?

I can't count the number of women I have heard asking this question.  It happened again yesterday as I was chatting with the woman who works behind the desk where my daughters take dance.  She is Catholic and the mother of four, including a daughter my age.  She was telling me that she had to figure out what she was going to do when she grows up.  She was not unhappy as she said it, but her comment made me very sad for her.  Did she truly consider the last 60 years of her life a trial period? A test run? Filler? When did she think her real life would begin? Would there be some great Constantine-like sign in the sky to indicate to her that a great shift had taken place?

It's not that I don't understand why women make this comment.  I will be the first one to admit that daily life feels like a treadmill: you run as fast as you can only to find out that you've gone nowhere.  The best case scenario is that you haven't fallen and injured yourself (wait - is that only me to whom that happens on the treadmill?).  Still, it is on the treadmill of life, though, that everything happens.

On a treadmill, you may have physically gone nowhere, but have you accomplished nothing? Of course not.  You've worked out your body and, probably, altered your mental state somewhat as well.  It's not the getting from A to B that is important in this case: it's what you did in the time you were given.

Isn't life just like that, too? For we who believe in heaven, it's not really about getting from A to B in a straight line, is it? We know our starting point (conception by the grace of God and the union of our parents) and our ending point (death and eternal life).  It's about what we do along the way.  We may do the exact same thing every day, but even if the names and faces don't change, if we're lucky our attitudes do.  Especially when you're a mom, you can't rely on external indicators and rewards to measure your progress in life.  How do you measure a promotion after all? Potty training? Doesn't quite do it for me.  As moms, our indicators of progress are best measured by our attitudes.  Have we become more patient over time? At least more aware of our tendency to be impatient? Have we learned not to respond to the drama that children just naturally seem to create? Have we learned to make everything we do a prayer?


I sure haven't managed that last one.  Many years ago, I asked my grandmother how to pray.  More specifically, I asked her which prayers to say.  I was enraptured by her prayer books held together by rubber bands, and by the fact that she would ride her exercycle and shuffle through those prayers every day.  I wanted the secret to her success.  Imagine my disappointment when she told me to make every aspect of my daily life a prayer.

This wasn't the magic bullet that would jump start my lukewarm prayer life! I wanted the specific list of litanies, novenas, and consecrations that would make me the kind of woman my grandmother was.  How ironic.  What made my grandmother who she was was her LIFE, along with her selflessness, the suffering she'd endured, and her faith. Every day, she wrapped it all up in a neat little package and offered it up to God as a prayer.

The risk we run in wondering when our real lives will start is in missing out on them entirely.  I firmly believe that all of us must make a choice - a choice about our lives. Don't just "fall into" a life or a lifestyle and then wonder how you got there or, if you find this happening to you, resolve either to live that life with a sense of purpose or to change it.  Don't be a SAHM because you can't find a job.  Be a SAHM because you feel it to be your vocation.  If you find yourself in the role of SAHM less than willingly, resolve to fully embrace it for the duration.  As long as you have to do something (and assuming it is morally, ethically, and legally right!), embrace it fully.  Doing so can make all the difference between merely going through life and LIVING life!

I am not insensitive to the fact that what I am saying is not as easy as it sounds.  Just read http://mylorica.blogspot.com/2011/01/who-am-i.html for proof that I know it's not always easy to live the life you've chosen.  Again, though, I firmly believe that purposeful decision making and living will serve you far better than being dragged along for the ride.  Put yourself in the driver's seat, grab some best friends to fill out your vehicle, and go about the business of living your life.  Don't wait for what may come; fully embrace what is already here.