I'm making friends.
For a long time, I thought that was going to be the hardest part. It was hard. It's still a little hard. But there are going to be a lot of hard parts. And I haven't even started teaching yet. I still don't even know how to make a lesson plan.
Every week we have faith sharing in small groups. Basically, we all go around and just talk about how we are. It's a strange thing to get used to if you haven't done anything like it before. And for the most part, I haven't. But, I feel like I have people holding me accountable for the things I'm struggling with, for the things that are going to be hard. Over the week I felt like I got over the initial fear I had of getting to know people. But there are so many other things I need to work on.
I think what helped the most was the realization of the true spectrum of spirituality that is in our group. There are people who go to Mass daily and have an extremely strict adherence to the Catholic moral code. And there are people who aren't that comfortable at mass, who have a lot of unanswered questions when it comes to God and Catholicism and life. And there are people everywhere in between. What unites us is our desire to teach children and our desire to learn more about ourselves spiritually. And that's really cool. The first two weeks, that spectrum was hidden below people walking on eggshells (myself included): Who do these people expect me to be? Who do I want to be? But the answer is - myself. And that is freeing. That is making everything so much easier, and I don't know why it took me two weeks to figure it out.
To foster this spiritual growth, we've been talking about prayer. To be honest, I don't know if I know how to pray. I sometimes get uncomfortable in church. I have a hard time focusing long enough to pray. My mind goes everywhere. I mentioned this to someone, and the response I got was really wonderful. Praying isn't really about taking a ton of time out of my day to reflect or worship God. Life is a prayer. By opening my door, by getting to know people here, by learning more every day about my vocation to teaching, I'm creating a new and stronger relationship with God.
Finding God in all things - It's another one of those Jesuit charisms. And it's what I'm really depending on/thinking about right now. Because if going to class, sharing time with new friends and sharing this experience with all of you can fall into that category of prayer, it makes the whole concept a lot less scary.
For the first two weeks, I was just wasting a lot of time. I was wasting time moping, worrying, avoiding people, being afraid. And I don't know if I can blame myself - the realization that I'll be a teacher in two months, with little to no training is a terrifying thing. But now I need to work past that. I need to embrace the support group that has been handed to me in a neatly wrapped package. Instead of simply wasting time, I need to do what I do best. I need to start wasting time gracefully - by going to wing night at the moon, by 1 a.m. visits to Village Inn, by walks downtown in the humid and wonderful afternoon. Wasting time gracefully (isn't that an awesome phrase, I had never heard it put that way) is what I've always been good at.
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