We here in America seem to love labels. No matter what you “are” you can’t just be a plain old anything. 

I spend a lot of time driving around in a truck listening to talk radio and Catholic Talk radio. On the Catholic shows, people always identify themselves as  some type of Catholic, either cradle Catholic, born-again Catholic, returning Catholic, Wayward Catholic, (okay, I am the only one I know of who call themselves a Wayward Catholic) or Catholic convert. Whatever happened to just being a plain old Catholic?

The other thing I’ve noticed is that most of the people who are either hosts or guests on these shows have a story about how they either came back to church or were converted from another religion or atheism to the Catholic faith. They can usually point to a certain moment or incident in their lives which caused them to either return or convert to Catholicism. Of course this is probably why they are hosts and guests huh?

I don’t have such a story. Well not really. I can’t say it was one thing which brought me back, more like a bunch of things. A light didn’t go on, I didn’t receive a vision, there was no epiphany(I don’t know what it means either but it sounds Catholic), I just knew it was right. I knew it was time to come back. I knew it was the right thing to do.

I wish I had never left, I wish I had made different choices thirty or so years ago, but maybe it wasn’t right then. Maybe I needed to go down the road I did in order to get where I am. Maybe this is part of the plan. Who knows? Well God knows but He’s real good at keeping secrets.

The point is, I have come back and I am glad I have. Life has become so much clearer to me now. I see things I never saw before, in ways I never had before. No, I can’t go back, I can only go forward. Although I am still a Wayward Catholic, at least now I see the way.

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