January has been a vortex of activity that has threatened to cripple me. Besides grappling with deep fatigue due to helping out more with the grandkids, I have had to deal with a sprained ankle and being on the cusp of illness a couple of times. It has made for frustrating times as I am trying to ramp up my own fitness. I have been short-tempered due to pain and insufficient rest, and yet, my happiness quotient has been on a high.
Going back to attending weekday mass frequently has help centre me, and given me the fortitude I needed to deal with all the change in this new year. I know that I will eventually be able to deal with my new schedule with aplomb, and I look forward to my body making the adjustments.
The joy I’ve experienced these past weeks have come from spending more time with P who is now on a three-day work week, more face time with my grandkids, topped off very nicely with two weddings and a baptism.
Both weddings were young couples P and I journeyed with during their RCIA journeys, so it was just lovely to be part of the festivities. Not only was the earthly joy palpable, but the heavenly. The joining of two in matrimony is a union that most resembles the union of Christ and the Church that happens at every Eucharistic celebration and therefore best represents the union each of us is called to with Christ Himself. It brought home to me the beauty of my own wedding day, and I am ever grateful of how that day marked the beginning of a vocation that has given me so much fulfilment as well as how it drew me into a deeper and more profound relationship with Jesus, my eternal Bridegroom.
The baptism I attended of baby A was in the very church I was baptized just 12 days after I was born. Again, this serendipity made me reflect on my own faith journey. The sacrament of baptism marked me as one of God’s chosen, but it took me years before I wore that identity with passion, and chose to live out this gift intentionally seeking out holiness; to be bread broken for others, as I myself rely completely on the Eucharist. May baby A never take her baptismal covenant lightly and grow to love Christ with an effervescent love.
Amid the joy has been loss - deaths that have touched people I know, the birthday of a much-loved cousin who is no longer here, and the news of the death of J, who was in our first RCIA outing as sponsors.
My major takeaway this month is to not let fear paralyze me and stop me from acting, from doing what is right. And, most of all, to strive to see the light, even in what appears to be darkness.
Psalm 36:9 For with you is the fountain of life. In your light we see light.
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