[After my wonderful week of dialogue with Meredith "we now return to our regularly scheduled broadcast."]
I hope the title of this post intrigued you. What follows is a story by our own Tom McGrath and it appeared in Together/Juntos our magazine for the parents using God’s Gift to prepare for the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
It’s funny how habits begin. When my daughters were little , they seemed intrigued by my monthly commuter train pass. So I got into the habit of giving my expired passes to each of the girls on alternating months. This continued – kind of as a joke – even as they got older.
Years later, when my oldest daughter was heading off to college and we were helping her pack, I was surprised to see in one of her desk drawers a stack of train passes. Obviously they meant something to her. That made me stop and think.
I realized that these train passes, representing my daily commute to and from work five days a week for years and years, were really a physical manifestation of the vows I took on my wedding day. Before I was married, I thought of myself as flighty and unstable. But that stack of train passes spoke of my stability and reliability to those I loved. It showed that, however imperfectly, I had kept my promise to show up day in and day out to share life with my wife and daughters.
God made a promise too. After Adam and Eve chose to go their own way, which cut them off from the steady flow of his grace, God didn’t leave them (or us) adrift. He promised that we could be saved. In fact, he promised to live among us.
And through the sacraments, he keeps showing up in all the moments – big and small – of our lives.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Because I have always lived away from what I considered home and far from my family, I have the habit of saving strange things that connect me to them. I always felt that if I threw out these little signs the connection would be gone. Little signs that signify love to me.
M.
It’s so true, Marg. We really are tactile beings. Those objects we link with love are so precious to us.
I have 40 years of mementos like these passes. I should someday make a collage to revisit my life and share it with those I love, because they were all part of it.
Thank you for the lovely story.
I will have to think of such a collage for all the moments when God showed up…