A Moment When I Got Caught Up

Last updated on: October 12, 2026 at 8:32 pm by Sherry Antonetti

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A Moment When I Got Caught Up 2026-10-12T20:32:42-04:00 Sherry Antonetti

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This weekend felt full. One daughter was in a show at her college, and we drove to see it. Another wanted to go to a concert with her friends, and needed us to drive her to it. We even fit in a date night on Friday, where we just sat and talked about the past week and the week to come. It was an ordinary but extraordinary moment, because it was unrushed.

Unrushed time is rare. My aunt tried to teach me. While I was a stay at home mom, she advised to have a cup of hot tea each afternoon, because it would force me to slow down, to let myself take in the day. Being young, anxious and foolish, I recognized the wisdom but failed to apply it, explaining, I didn’t like tea. I have tried to learn.

What I want, is that no excuse for not carving out stillness that reading, writing, prayer, even running, and hot tea can bring. Knowing it is valuable, I must ask why I have worked so hard for so many years to deny myself this stillness –and the answer is two fold. I’m stupid, and “Sherry, Sherry, you are anxious about many things.”

Listening to my daughter sing, and to the other performers that night, was stolen time. The quiet drive with control of the radio, also stollen time, and mass today when I watched my son work to learn how to be an usher, but sat by myself as a result, stollen time. What I also discovere dwith all these opportunties, is I’m a glutton for this kind of thing.

Stillness of the soul takes more work –but what happens when you experience it, is you recognize how much you’ve starved yourself of that better reality. It’s an experience of time when you stop measuring it in productivity or minutes, places to go, things to do, tasks at hand.

Pondering other opportunities –playing the piano, phoning a child or a friend and just listening, these were also opportunties to be still and know they were here, to be present, to be filled. I also thought of long hugs, the kind my daughter who performed used to give when we would walk together in the evening. The walks too, were a means of taking that time, of allowing time to be spent without measure.

God gives us all these invitations to the feast, which sometimes is a lavish loud banquet, and other times, a quiet tea even if we don’t like tea. In the mass at the Our Father, my son took my hand, and I felt like he was inviting me to the stillness I’d not let myself have. It’s the kind that lets you see someone else, really see them, and see what they need and why they need it, and pushes one to act.

In that moment at the mass, I felt that glimmer of understanding of why we need everyone, especially those wrestling with the mass, with the world, with the Church, with all of it. We are here to witness to each other, the kind of people, world, Church, and faith, we are called to have –and to give and to receive. My son was bringing the basket to each pew, and I flashed back to my uncle who did the same service. Uncle Tommy was mentally ill, and it was apparent, but he served. So also, my son witnessed –and you saw people perk up and respond. It was a gift to the Church, and to him, he belonged. The moments we break open and are really present, these are moments when others experience that belonging because of us.

That’s what we all want from life, to belong, to be seen, to be included, to have time broken open for us, and for others, such that we forget to measure it because we are where we should be. And as if to makes sure I got the message, when I came into school today, the clock on the wall had stopped, meaning until it was fixed, it would be present at 10:24 all day until I changed the batteries.

Not the type of stopping of time I’d meant, but it did stop me in my tracks and remind me, not to waste a minute not being present.

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