Six years ago today, I was back in full communion with the Catholic Church for the first time in decades. Tears streamed down my face as I approached my pastor, who was also my confessor, for the Eucharist. I didn’t understand much beyond the basics of being a Catholic, but I was grateful beyond words to be home.
A few months later, on a plane en route to Florida to see my best friend, I started counting up the people I considered particularly inspirational in my journey back to Catholicism. There were twelve. I ended up writing a memoir about my return, and a publisher acquired it. That all went south a few weeks before the book was to go on press because of the publisher’s concerns that my pastor had violated the confidentiality of my confession because I’d shown him the manuscript. A canon lawyer disagreed, but that was that.
Besides proving to myself I could write a book-length work, the experience also connected me with a terrific acquisitions editor. We stayed in touch, and he went on to acquire the book I coauthored with my friend Anna LaNave, When They Come Home: Ways to Welcome Returning Catholics, a how-to manual of sorts for building a parish program to help returnees.
And now, six years to the day after I first received the Eucharist, I’m doing revisions requested by a Catholic publisher interested in a 365-day women’s devotional my best friend and I co-authored. When I’m done with that, I’ll work on publisher-requested revisions to the follow-up to Anna’s and my book. (And yesterday, I turned in three devotionals for Living Faith, the Catholic devotional publication, and my weekly column at Your Daily Tripod.
Six years ago, I would have laughed if you’d told me how I’d be spending this Christmas. I also would have laughed if you’d told me I would have spent time struggling to accept I have a ministry as a Catholic writer. Me? Write? My “calling” was as an editor, improving other people’s work. And write for Catholic publications? At that point, I had to ask people what words like ambo and pyx meant.
Is God orchestrating this like a grand puppetmaster, or making the best of the twists and turns I’ve taken? I’ve given up on parlor game questions like that. What I have learned is to try to stop the overanalysis, and to celebrate the gifts and responsibilities at hand. And for right now, I’m a Catholic writer.
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Hey There Melanie,
Thanks for the above, Christmas is a time of presents and memories. Growing up, my wife Peg and I had different expectations at Christmas time. I was an only child until I turned fifteen, but Peg came from a family of seven children. Gifts abounded in my family. It was always easier than mentioning love, but it was our way of showing it. Gifts in Peg’s large family were limited, noise wasn’t. Gifts from both families were well thought out, however.
Great Job!