So Now What

Last updated on: August 19, 2022 at 6:55 pm by Sherry Antonetti

So Now What 2022-08-19T18:55:41-04:00 Sherry Antonetti

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I have been wondering what I should do, to be more what God calls and I am not sure what it entails. For a time, I thought writer, Catholic speaker, but that has remained very sidelined over the past few years. Part of it is to be a teacher, but again, it is still only partial. For a time, it was just keep being a mom –and it still is…but there’s an ache, an unfinished component that I cannot quite fathom. It means sitting and asking “Now what?” but that’s always tricky because it usually means something I didn’t imagine.

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So what am I doing in the meantime? Going to adoration, participating in Halo’s Total Consecration, listening to the Bible in a Year, and we applied to adopt an old dog. Maybe it’s the dog days of summer in my spiritual life –but I’m not saintly enough to not want God to give me answers. (Those saints who ask for no consolation? I struggle with not asking for such things. I ask. Often).

Just last week, I flew to Texas and saw family I’d not seen in years, and I felt the canyon time carved. It made all of it blunted and duller –like an ache that should be deeper and greater but had been allowed to be ignored to the point of pretending it wasn’t painful and almost believing it.

So I sat in adoration praying to be a better wife, mother, sister, daughter, friend, cousin, person, teacher, writer, all of it –keenly aware of how somehow I keep skipping along the surface of life, never quite plunging in deeper anywhere –and that discomfort of recognizing, that’s why God’s been so quiet –He wants me to stop floating and let myself sink into relationships deeper and deeper in –whether at work, in family, with friends, with everyone. So He’s not letting me hop to another thing, but making me stay put and struggle until I recognize how to not avoid emotional intimacy by distance, by professionalism, by silence, by fear, by anything.

Even worse, He’s let me in on the reality –so now, I get to do something with the bones of all these relationships or it’s on me. Blundering in ignorance is no longer an option. I’m going to have to be unafraid to listen, to speak, to reach out, and I don’t get to use any excuses that I used up to now –too many to manage, too much on my plate, too far away, too much distance already created.

It is what Covid revealed to many of us –how we used the busyness of life to keep us from having actual connections with each other that were beyond the surface. Now that Covid is no longer the ever present threat, we need to be deliberate in our engagement –whether with God or anyone else. How? By writing letters, by being deliberate with each of my children, with my family, with friends and no longer allowing everything to just be an organic opportunity –but deliberately willed. I thought of three friends I should call, and some games I should play with my kiddos.

Taking a deep breath and plunging from the high dive, and trusting in the plan.

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