Dying Passion

Do you wonder why you feel so restless, so discontented with life lately?

You know that for the past three years, you have been quite happy with your job, your family, your so called spiritual growth. But there is this niggling feeling, this insistent thought at the back of your mind lately.

You wonder if this niggling feeling began several months ago when your mother refused to allow you to attend that Vocation Discernment seminar you have been invited to attend. The first peace you really felt was during a retreat with the Carmelite Missionaries last summer. Then, you were quite eager to really discern if something else is in your future.

Your mother fears that you might be compelled to do something she is not ready yet. And you agree with her on that. You may not be ready for anything else.

But the realization that something inside you seem to have expanded has started you. Yes, you are still young in the faith and yes, you still have a lot to go to and yes, there is still more out there but a thought bothers: that maybe you gave up on an opportunity to grow.

There is a hunger in your heart and you try to fill it in with the pictures and facts of this one cute professing Christian who plays a mean football. You try to convince yourself that you are happy watching others live the life you feel compelled to join in.

You find yourself growing bigger than your circumstances but your insecurities, your fears and doubts, your guilt, holds you back from completely and fully expanding.

And everyday, you teach, with the lack of passion and fervor you once felt. Because something inside is eating you, killing you day by day. You go through the motions but you no longer feel anything. It's just fear, doubt and guilt now. Your favorite companions in your life.

Hanging by a Moment

What is love? What is it like?

I have never been in love but recently,  I read a Regency romance novel featuring a frumpy heroine who decided to do certain things because she, it appears, has lived a safe existence for so very long.

With the ton considering her as very definitely on the shelf, and with her very own quiet acceptance (by wearing her lace cap and sitting on the spinster's seat as the veritable wallflower), our heroine seems to have snapped out of her trance-like life when her younger sister, considered as the toast of the season, was about to marry a duke.

She made out a list of things she would do. Things that gentlemen do but ladies don't do. Her list included: kissing someone - passionately, gambling in a gentlemen's club, fencing, watching a duel, shooting a pistol, and for once, feel beautiful.

I am planning my own list to...several lists actually. Lists that don't include finishing my Master's Degree in five years, reading Shakespeare's complete works within three years, writing a young adult fantasy novel, working from morning til' night, earning a promotion and all those professionally cool things I have been hankering about.

I want to do something personal. Something different for once. Something for myself. I have no idea what those things are yet but with me falling hopelessly "in-like" with a self-professing Christian football hottie and claiming him, I think that's saying I am really going around the bend.

I need to catch up with real life...