Confessions of a “Church Lady”

I suppose it had to happen eventually.

At approximately 6:50 p.m. ET on Wednesday, March 7, 2012, I officially became a “church lady.”

I’m serving on a team to help people considering a return to the Catholic Church. It’s a program called Landings that was instrumental to my own return back in 2005. The group was in the sanctuary for a parishwide mission night on the parts of the Mass. I got up to yoo-hoo and hug about a half-dozen of my church friends who also happened to be attending.

“Melanie knows everyone,” my friend Anna, the leader of Landings International, said to a couple of those in this spring’s Landings class. I giggled a little.

Anna and I co-authored a book, When They Come Home: Ways to Welcome Returning Catholics, and began talking about writing-related stuff while we waited. I mentioned I’m working on a proposal that involves research into people who were recently canonized. “You know,” I said to Anna and the woman seated between us, “JP2 and Benedict saints.”

The other woman looked at me blankly. “Excuse me,” she said. “What’s a JP2 saint?”

“Oh, people canonized by either John Paul II or Benedict XVI,” I said, “you know, the two most recent popes.”

She still looked puzzled. That’s when it occurred to me that that was the same look I must have had on my face seven years ago when people said things like, “We are a resurrection people” and “You don’t get to the resurrection without the crucifixion.” It occurred to me that I am now a “church lady,” someone who knows priests by name and counts many of the folks next to her in the pews as valued friends.

And you know what? I like being a church lady!