Here We Go Again

Converting, moving, and continuing onward

Photo by Cagatay Orhan on Unsplash

At the start of my conversion, I didn’t know any of the mass parts.  Around me, parishioners intoned prayers they had known for decades, while I fumbled back and forth through the missalette, trying to keep up.  The liturgy that drew me into the Church also overwhelmed me; it was beautiful but unlike any service of my youth.  I grew up a Christian, I grew up with God, and it twinged my pride to feel like a newbie within the walls of a church.  Steadily, though, it became more familiar, like a new house that becomes a home. 

I have moved between countries and states and cities many times.  At one point in my teenage years, I attended four new schools in as many years.  While a fresh start in a new place is intimidating, the unfortunate truth about change is that the first step rarely takes the most courage.  No, the first step is novel and exciting.  Even when one feels intimidated, onward lies newness – a world of possibility.  The hardest parts arise when you find yourself trudging in between “brand new” and “familiar” - and there is yet more trudging ahead.  When strangers have become acquaintances, but they haven’t become friends.  When you’re still floundering through the mass, and you wonder if you’ll ever feel at home.  A time comes when you wonder if __ (insert move, conversion, career change, etc) was worth the hassle, worth the loss of your old friends and the comfort of past patterns. 

The first time I jotted down the bones of this essay, I intended to muse on what it meant to feel lost, and how to be okay with that.  The mass example came easily - a clear memory of feeling unquestionably out of place.  As I wrote, however, a broader theme emerged.  Sure, there are often big moments that throw us off kilter and leave us floundering.  It takes some learning, and a helping of humility, to start “poorly” and find peace in your fumbling.  But in some sense, we expect to flounder a bit at any beginning.  We hope as well that those around us will extend some grace despite our floundering.  The years pile on, though, and floundering after two, three, or four years of experience smarts a little bit more.  I’m no longer a newly minted Catholic so it feels all the more embarrassing when I have to grab the “how to go to confession” pamphlet before receiving the sacrament.  I still haven’t memorized the Apostle’s Creed, a fact made clear any time someone starts a rosary without enough warning.¹

^ Me

When you first move into a house and start to settle, you are not lost.  You know exactly where you are.  You just don’t know where anything else is, and more to the point, you have to decide where to put it.  The initial rounds of wall décor and trinket arranging may come easily, but anyone who has moved a time or two knows how the boxes pile up.  The decisions keep coming, past the point of novelty, until everything (even the necessary but miscellaneous odds and ends) finds a home.  Until you find them a home.  It’s exhausting, and that’s just the unpacking process.  Most of us don’t move into pristine homes, so there’s inevitably a list of repairs or upgrades to be completed.  You can’t afford it all right away – and even if you could, these things take time – so the list looms on, promising many future weekends of home projects and many superfluous trips to Home Depot.²   

During my time in college, I was a member of the Corps of Cadets.³ A favored marching cadence, especially right as a new semester began, went like this:

Here we go again

Same old stuff again

Marching down the avenue

10 more hours ‘til we’re through⁴

I hear that silly rhyme in my head often; too often really for someone this many years out of college.  But life offers us all a great many here we go again moments.  When the baby who has been sleeping well starts waking up every night.  The hard-won toddler bedtime routine gets thrown off. A new form of an old conflict rears its head, and if you’re anything like me, you throw your hands up in despair (again) and lament I thought we were past this.

Here’s the thing though: you are past this.  Your new challenge might feel like a repeat of the one you just overcame, as though you’re right back at square one, but you’re not.  There are just going to be some squares here and there that look maddeningly similar to square one.  Like a hike up a mountain, you go up and then back down, and then up again, and sometimes down again.  Going downhill feels disheartening after putting in effort up a slope, but the descents are as much a part of the way forward as the ascents.  You can plant your feet when the path starts to dip, refusing to believe in progress that does not look productive. But where else is there to go? The only way onward is forward.

It’s true that in some areas of life, we have an option to give up. We can throw in the towel on a stagnating friendship or scrap plans for the next house project. But with many of our struggles, there is no choice whether or not to continue trekking. You can hardly tell your kid to handle their own bedtime because it’s all become too much for you. And while the steps downhill can make you feel in that moment as though all your past efforts were in vain, the only way to make it all truly meaningless is to stop trying, stop caring, and just…stop.

I’ve witnessed time and time again the fruits of sustained effort, and what richness results when you push past the doubt and take the next hill. The first time becomes a second time, and then it becomes the usual.  Small talk eases into rich conversation, and a community unfolds around you. Every remaining knick-knack finds a drawer of its own. It may take a bit of trudging, one tired step at a time.  But as long as you’re going forward, you’ll get there eventually.   

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time.”

- The Velveteen Rabbit

A couple of housekeeping notes (aka me putting something on paper so that I know it’s real): Right now, this blog exists so that I have deadlines (self-imposed) and a reason to finish all of the half-baked ramblings rolling around in my head.  Becoming a writer involves actually writing and I need a reason to actually write, but also a reason to rewrite, edit, trim, etc.  That being said, this is still just a side project, and I’m going to do my best to keep it in its proper place.  In the future, I hope to post on Thursdays, every other week.  Thursdays are tough days for me.  The end of the week seems so close, but two full days of the “same old stuff” still loom ahead.  Hopefully publishing on a Thursday will help me, and any readers who feel the same way about Thursdays, have something to freshen up the day and make it special.  Additionally, the biweekly timeline gives me a deadline while allowing me some room to breathe (and you know, keep the kids alive, do the dishes, avoid drowning in laundry, etc.)  Thank you so much for reading!  

1. Kudos to you if this is an unrelatable issue, but I married into a family that starts rosaries often and without warning

2. To quote Dude Dad, why pay someone to do something that you could do yourself in quadruple the amount of time?

3. For those unfamiliar with Texas A&M, the Corps of Cadets is the public university analog of a military academy (such as West Point, the Naval Academy, etc). You can learn more here

4. Insert relevant number of hours