Puzzles are one of my favorite things to do in my free time. I become so relaxed and am able to forget about the stress in my life when I organize and sort through the pieces. Every time I put two pieces together, the image becomes more and more clear. I had an epiphany during orientation that my life is like one big puzzle piece… except I don’t know what picture all of my pieces will create. What I do know is that I have found a couple of puzzle pieces in my life. Recognizing each piece as a part of my own puzzle is what is difficult to do, but it is a journey that God is guiding me on.
After the first 12 hours of orientation for House of Brigid, I texted one of my friends, “I’m not sure how many more pieces I have left to find, or what my puzzle looks like, but I feel really confident that Sammie is a piece, and it makes me so happy”. There are the small coincidences, like our go-to karaoke song being “Man I Feel Like a Woman” by Shania Twain, or us saying the exact same phrases at the exact same time in the exact same tone, but then there are also the deeper moments where the two of us seem to connect and truly understand each other. I get really car sick, so I was super nervous about our car ride from Notre Dame to O’Hare. Rather than holding my nerves in and making myself even more anxious, I just walked into her room and told her I was freaking out. Throughout our travel day, she kept checking in on me. Never once did I feel like I needed to pretend that I was okay.
Each piece in a puzzle has to connect to another piece four times over. While I know that Sammie is both what I need as a friend and a community member, she is also what I need spiritually. I grew up Catholic, but like many Catholic kids in my generation, I was only culturally Catholic. I received all the sacraments one does, including confirmation, but never once cared or did it for myself. Not only did I not care, but I hated God. My spiritual journey is complex and messy, and is a story that I will tell on a different day. The one thing that really changed my mind about religion and God was someone actually being patient with me. Something about religion is that you can push it on someone all you want, but they will never believe in God until they choose to see and feel Him. The tough part about Grace is it is always given, but it isn’t always received. Fr. Duns, a professor at Marquette University, helped me experience the Grace of God. Through kindness, patience, a bit of humor, and most importantly, never judging me for my anger and distrust of God and religion, he slowly picked away at the hurt I had felt. He is the first person who taught me how to pray. After graduating from a Jesuit school, the prayer I am most used to is the Examen. I briefly mentioned this to Sammie. For our first community prayer, she picked an Examen. Not only did I feel completely valued as a community member, but it helped me feel a lot more comfortable for our first community prayer. While it may seem crazy to you, prayer is not something I yet feel confident in. It isn’t that I have to learn how to pray, but it is that I have to learn to be confident in doing so. Over the past month, I have already grown immensely in my confidence. I couldn’t be more excited for this coming year, and I am even more excited that I have Sammie by my side to help me find more puzzle pieces.
