When Home is Maybe Too Comfortable

I love my house. I suppose many people do. I truly love walking in my front door and knowing that I have the rest of the day to just be home. My couch is one of my all-time favorite places. I can (and have) spend all evening sitting in my living room watching a Hallmark movie or scrolling on my phone. However, this summer, I became very convicted that God didn’t make me for sitting home alone staring at a screen.

Discipleship Begins With Relationship

At the same time that God was calling me out on my increasing slothfulness, I was becoming more aware of the power of relationships in my work as a parish catechetical leader. I’ve been studying discipleship for a while now, and one key to discipling others is to enter into a relationship with them. So, I decided this would be my summer of relationships. This especially played out in my role as coordinator for OCIA. I decided to take as many opportunities I could to meet the inquirers in person and talk to them about the process. Those conversations went so well that I extended this mentality to other aspects of my job: carving out time to meet a potential volunteer and even a new colleague in person. So, as I was challenging myself to have more in-person contact with people at work, God was plying my heart with ideas about my life at home. 

Spiritual Motherhood in the Quiet of Home

As a single woman who lives alone, I am constantly challenged by how I am called to live my faith in my own house. Yes, I can embrace the spiritual motherhood vocation when I’m at work or in the community. There are clearly people and projects there that need me. But at home? How do I live my spiritual motherhood on those nights when I’m on the couch in my jammies? In many ways, this has become the biggest topic of prayer for me.

As I have brought this to prayer, the Holy Spirit inspired a new thought about spiritual motherhood. Yes, it’s about breathing life into what’s around me. But it’s also about having my heart ready to do that and willing to step up when I have the chance. A key aspect of spiritual motherhood which I had been missing was the idea of being open to life. What does that look like as a single woman with no kids? I’m glad you asked.

Openness to Life in Spiritual Motherhood

Catholic married couples are called to be open to life, meaning that they say ‘yes’ to accepting children as a gift from God without trying to unnaturally control when those children do or do not come. This definition of ‘open to life’ sure isn’t new to me, but it posed an interesting question: how does God invite me into this disposition even when I’m not in a time of having babies?

As I’ve prayed with the idea, a few things have stood out to me. First and foremost is the disposition of saying ‘yes’. Most days, I’m just trying to check everything off the to-do list so that I can go home. When new things pop up at the last minute, I don’t often say yes to them, or at least, not happily. I was recently spending time with fellow volunteers after a youth event one evening. We had finally shooed all the teens out, cleaned up, and locked the door. One of the other volunteers proposed we go somewhere. Immediately, my response was, “To bed?”

I’m really not a spontaneous person at all. I’m the person who grabs her paper calendar and flips to next week to schedule a 15-minute phone call. But as a spiritual mother, that attitude doesn’t look like being open to life. The Holy Spirit has spurred me to start saying ‘yes’, and to say it quickly and happily. Now, I still am called to be a good steward of my time, which means that certain hours do need to be devoted to sleep, work, and holy rest. However, being open to life means that the answer shouldn’t automatically be ‘no’ just because I’d rather be sprawled out on the couch at home.

Saying Yes to Life, Not Self

This leads right into the second aspect of being open to life as a spiritual mother. A big qualifier about all of this is that I don’t just say ‘yes’, I say yes to life. The purpose of my yesses is to pour into the lives of others. They’re not for me. It’s not a Yes Day situation, where I eat ice cream for breakfast and go buy a pony. Being open to life means that I look to the lives of those around me and see how I can say yes to them. It includes anticipating and responding to their needs (both vocalized and not) and giving what I can, even when it’s uncomfortable for me. Truly, doesn’t physical motherhood include much of the same?

The next piece of the ‘open to life’ disposition is recognizing that the life in front of me is a gift from God. Since I’ve begun pondering this, I’ve been in many situations where I am looking at a person in front of me and seeing them with the eyes of our loving Father. Now please don’t canonize me yet, because there have been many more times that I’ve failed to do this. But one beautiful side effect of being open to life is noticing that those who come to me – at work, as a friend, as a sister or daughter – are beloved children of God, and he is trusting me enough to bring them to me. Their presence is a gift to me too, and I am able to feel God’s love filling me as I say yes to them.

Finally, as I am open to life, I remember that I am not called to control life – mine or anyone else’s. Catholic couples must ultimately surrender to the will of the Father, as must I. He is in charge of who comes to me and when. It’s never conveniently on my schedule. Yes, this means I am asked to share my evenings, weekends, and sometimes even early mornings with others when I would rather have them to myself. However, if I remember that life is a gift and that I am to say ‘yes’ to it, then I can happily share my time when I’d otherwise rather not.

The Fruit of Openness

So, what’s been the fruit of this newfound mantra? Untold amounts of grace. The Lord has opened my eyes to so many ways in which I can pour into life, which in turn blesses me over and over. Generally speaking, I’d say I’ve made more connections with more people lately than ever before. I take time to talk to people, and I make an effort to enter into what they’re doing or invite them to enter into my life. When someone new floats past, I make an effort to reach out and bring her in. Merely by inviting someone to Bible study or out to dinner, I’ve made new friends and connected a few friends to each other.

This has spilled into my work at the parish too. It is incredibly easy to forget that ministers are supposed to smell like the sheep. As I mentioned, I’ve been saying yes to more meetings and prioritizing relational ministry, which means that I’m not at my desk a lot. Instead, I meet people where they are and have a real-life conversation. My joke lately has been that I turned the local coffee shop into my office, but it’s somewhat true. The best work I’ve done in the past few months has been to just talk to people. No, that relational ministry doesn’t do much for checking off the to-do list sitting at my desk, but it does bless others (and me) in profoundly beautiful ways.

This newfound aspect of spiritual motherhood has really challenged me. God has invited me to step up and do things that make me uncomfortable – namely, talk to new people and be flexible. I know God has a sense of humor, because this “open to life as a spiritual mother” business is not how I’d naturally think. But stepping outside of my comfort zone has been incredibly fruitful. I have been so blessed by the grace of God in this season. He has brought me new connections, new friends, and some amazing stories of “how did we end up here?” situations. I am so grateful that the Lord has called me to be open – open to say yes, to pour into others’ lives, and to allow Him to guide who I meet and when.