I promised some people that I would write a post today. I've not got a specific subject in mind, so this will be a true rambling of a post-Commonweal gentleman.
I was looking back over my blog posts from a decade ago (!) wondering how I wrote so much back then. I was far more politically engaged and cared more deeply about how the nation was being run, and my reading on that topic fueled many of my posts. My faith, while no less vibrant and engaging then than it is today, drove me to write extensively on my conversion to Catholicism, but now that I've been Catholic for nearly as long as I wasn't, the topic isn't fresh anymore.
Of course, my family has grown substantially, since those hectic posting days of yesteryear. When last I updated gentle reader, I believe we were at five children. Now we're at seven, with number eight (God willing) coming to a birthing canal near you in April 2019.
Volunteer activities and kids' activities have consumed much of my time too.
However, a massive shift in our lives has thrown everything up in the air.
The Catholic School of Evangelization, a faith formation and retreat centre in St. Malo, MB (45 minutes south of Winnipeg, if you need a frame of reference), posted recently that they were looking for a new Missionary Family for a year-long term. This family would live on site, claiming a section of the dorms for themselves, and their role would be twofold: first, to prepare the facility to retreat groups coming in, welcoming them and being present to provide support, and second, to maintain the facility, performing minor maintenance and general groundskeeping. There's no income for this position, but the rent and utilities are free, so it somewhat balances out.
My wife and I both felt like this was something God wanted our family to do, so we pitched the notion to our children and began exploring the possibility of putting our names forward. To make a long story short, it's us: we are the Missionary Family.
This has uprooted us from our home, which we are renting out to a trustworthy family whose need for temporary furnished lodging providentially coincided with our term at the CSE, and as I write this we have been settling in to these dorms for the last ten days. Already we've welcomed one group in, and another comes this weekend.
When groups come, we need to give them their space as they are coming with their own agendas, programming, and community. We are to be background servants only, keeping out of their way as much as possible. This proves difficult with a shared kitchen and dining area, but we'll find our way.
The other opportunity we have here is to grow closer as a family while we embark on this shared mission together. I am a relatively handy guy and am seeing the needs this aging building has, but my big struggle is in involving my kids in my repair jobs so they can learn how these things are done and become more self-sufficient as adults. As a German, I'm all about efficiency, and involving an easily distracted nine year old boy when I'm replacing a doorknob slows me a down A LOT. That slowness bothers me... but it shouldn't. This mission isn't a glorified work bee. It's a shared evangelistic opportunity to grow in faith, and I'm as much a student at this school as anybody else. I am finding, even ten days in, that my focus on beautifying the building is not conducive to our family communion. It's not that I need to do less. It's that I need to do these things for the right reason and in the right spirit.
Another massive bonus here is that we literally live under the same roof as the Eucharistic Lord, as there is a chapel here. We're using the chapel for our family prayers and - truth be told - my heart was so full of angst as I started to write this post that I picked up my laptop from the dining room table and am now seated three paces from the Lord in his Tabernacle.
His presence is soothing, and in this rambling introspection I feel he is coaxing me to be more of a Mary than a Martha; to drink in the moment, even if it's a year long.
If you are reading this, dear friend, utter a small prayer for me, for my family, that we would be good missionaries.
