In contemplating my "C" post, I had several contenders. I could take a different path from A and B and write about how C is for "cook" which is definitely not me. I cook because we have to eat but, when given a viable alternative on any given day, I'll take it. I thought that when I retired things might be different -- and they were for a little while -- but just as the retirement didn't stick, nor did any excitement over stopping what I'm doing to spend time in the kitchen making a meal.
Another logical option for the letter C is counselor, the professional role I filled for most of my adult life. Unlike cooking, counseling is something I've loved for as long as I can remember, from being the listener and problem-solver for friends to discovering how much fun it was to run small groups when I was in grad school to working for decades with children and, for a while, teens. Ten years after retiring, I can still slip into full-on counselor mode in any given conversation without any awareness of doing so. Sure, sometimes my inner Jersey Girl takes over, bringing a healthy dose of snark and sarcasm, but Counselor Lisa is never far below the surface, ready to reign her in if necessary.
And then there's my third contender for the letter C. In my life, I've been a cradle Catholic, a cafeteria Catholic, a lapsed Catholic, and a Catholic who chose to return to her childhood faith, eyes wide open.
When I was little, my parents -- both products of Catholic educations, at least in part -- raised me in the faith. They took my sister and me to church, sent us to CCD, and made sure we received all the sacraments. I even remember going to church choir with my dad a few times. In my mind's eye, I can still picture that church -- the first one I really remember -- the one that, in retrospect, played a formative role in our family's faith.
Somewhere along the way, I did what most teens and young adults do. I started to question my faith. I made it through college with my faith largely intact, stubbornly clinging to it even as it became the reason for the demise of a serious college romance. But after college, with no church to call my own and a lack of any touchstone for my faith, I struggled to reconcile what I'd come to believe with what the Church professed. I never stopped believing in God, but I no longer called myself a Catholic. I searched for a new place of worship, and, over the years, I found a few that filled the spiritual space in my life.
But after my daughter was born, I felt myself drawn to the Church I'd grown up in. Despite my questions and the imperfection of the match between my personal beliefs and the Church's stand on them, I wanted to go back to Mass. Finding a church home soon followed and, with a touchstone for my faith again, I made the decision to walk back into the same Church I'd walked away from.
Finding the right fit can be much more important than we realize. We can fake it with day-to-day things like cooking, putting ourselves through the paces, and getting good enough to get by. We can do the same thing with our jobs, although I'm not sure why we'd want to, since finding a job that connects to our core is so much more fulfilling.
But the deeper we go inside ourselves, the more important it is that the match is just right. We can waste a lot of time waiting for it to be perfect, or we can meet it where it is -- and where we are -- and together, we can grow, even if it means that sometimes, we agree to disagree.
To say that C is for compromise is only part of the story. We can compromise a lot of things, but not those things that are at our core. Perhaps C is for change -- the change that enables us to realize that nothing is perfect. Sometimes, we do what we have to, and sometimes we get to do what we love.
Maybe, in the end, C is for choice. Sometimes, we choose the thing we have to do. Other times, we get to choose the thing that resonates with us.
The thing we love, at least in part, because we choose to.
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