NAS: Challenge Accepted!

Please join Morgan and Jen for more goal-making!

Oooh…a challenge! Wait…was I supposed to have one at the beginning of the summer and check in now or…is it taking insights from this series and giving myself a challenge?

Ok, so… you think you are called to marriage? What have you done to help with that? Go to a young adults activity! Sign up for CatholicMatch.com! Something that allows you to take an active step towards meeting your hubby. Praying is important, but God isn’t just going to plop him in our laps for us, we have to do our part, too!

Or, feel the religious life is your thing? What about reaching out to a community you’re interested in? Go on a retreat with them!  Have coffee with a sister from another community! Same goes for you ladies… pray, yes. But, it’s important to be active in your search for God’s will.

SO… on 8/13 tell us what you did! How’d it go? Did that help motivate you to do more?

Oops.

Well, I did sign up for CatholicMatch, but not with any real goal in mind. There was a discount. 😛 So far that’s actually gone really well, considering. Their new “Match Portrait” better links you to men who seem to have the same values and goals (after taking a 100-question quiz that seems like a pre-Cana inventory!). So there a couple I’m messaging right now…I’ll let you know what happens!

As for challenges to do in the coming weeks, well then, I have a BUNCH!

– Join more groups. And not because they happen to have been the Boyfriend Store for so many acquaintances. No, I should join them because I’ve been craving authentic Christian fellowship. You know how when your body has been missing its regular dose of a nutrient and suddenly all you want more than anything in the world are baby carrots? Yeah. My soul has been missing out spiritual nourishment, so now all I can think about is how to get involved in a community. It’s going to be a big, brave step for me. I left communities last year because an unhealthy friendship finally ended and I didn’t feel up to moving in that realm and risk the calm and wholeness I spent a long time regaining. But I’m going to do it: the first Tuesday of the month (last week, but didn’t make it as I was horribly ill) is a new Bible study at my parish, and on the third Wednesday of the month there will be a ladies-only Bible study (any state of life).

– Figure out my current guy issue. For the past two and a half years I’ve been in really hard-to-define emotional/mental places regarding a particular person. Earlier this year I finally thought we’d mutually reached the same place and got my hopes up. At present, the hopes are fading fast. The challenge to myself is to figure out what to do and to be more decisive than I have been in the past. I don’t know what this will look like…maybe a phone conversation…or when it will happen…maybe a one-on-one when I visit person’s city in the Fall. But I will do it. No more relational back-burners.

– Lean in—to the faith. I think most of my emotional turmoil and angst arises when I am not pursuing my relationship with God…or not answering when it’s quite obvious He’s pursuing me. I’ve got many more books on my to-read list. My challenge is to actually pick one up and read it diligently instead of HGTV marathons with Roomie. And to try to pray the Rosary more. I have experienced firsthand the graces of novenas, and yet this summer I failed. Multiple times. And I even got to thinking my failure was responsible for something not going the way a friend and I wanted. But this blog post (link to Stephanie) shifted my perspective: “Prayer doesn’t’ change things. it changes us.” How much more peaceful my summer could have been! Ah well.

I think three is a nice number of goals—each Person of the Trinity can help me out with one a piece. What are your goals?