Marked

Since I work at a public school, walking around all day with an #ashtag meant that a lot of people, including my students, thought that I had paint/marker/dirt on my forehead.  The beady eyed squints, the eyebrow raising, the awkward finger-on-forehead gesture…I received them all.

I could have bypassed that by simply attending the mass at night with the rest of my family at our local parish. However I chose to go at noon to a parish 20 minutes away because:
1.) I had an appointment at night right after work
2.) I had to go to confession and that church was the only one with a flexi sched

After walking out of the church, my heart was racing. How was I going to explain this? How could I make this look more inconspicuous? I’ve never had to worry about this before because I was always at a Catholic school. During my University days so many other Catholic friends had gone with me that I wasn’t just the only one. After all the cathedral was a mere 10 minutes away. Why, after twenty-four years was this a big deal all of a sudden? Maybe it was my fear of having to defend the faith, my faith in a building full of people with different religious affiliations or none at all. In the time I’ve been there, some have been quite loud about their own beliefs and have been vocal about the way they feel about this so called “God”.

So…what now?

The funny thing is, the person who made that appointment with me ended up cancelling just before we were supposed to meet. I also didn’t end up going to confession because the priest cut it off to celebrate mass. Did I really have to go to that parish at noon? Could I have just gone at night?

I caught myself halfway through my monologue and realized was this what a future missionary should be worrying about? Hah.

Who cares if I’m 1 out of 800 people with a cross on my forehead? Was my love for God limited based on my surroundings? Was my love for Him this shallow? Why should I be scared or embarrassed to have the ashes on my forehead? This was a sign of the greatest love ever known to man, ever revealed to me! Now I get to openly share it.

THIS was true evangelization. THIS was going out into the deep waters of the unknown. THIS was God asking me to be His.
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We hear it all the time at lent:  die to yourself everyday through personal sacrifice. But in that call we are also asked to live fully through His sanctifying grace so that His face is ours, His hands and feet are ours, His heart is ours.

How else will the world see Christ if not for the way we live our lives?

So I will hold my head up high every time I park my car with the Couples for Christ decal. I will gladly leave on my rosary hanging off my rearview mirror. I will not hide my rosary bracelet, or the medals on my necklace.

But at the end of the day I also know that I don’t need any of those things to declare my religion, rather it will be in the way I carry myself that will say to this community:

I am a young Catholic woman actively living out the Gospel of a God who I love with all my heart. 

God has a reason for putting me in that public school, and I just continue to pray that I never hide my identity so as to fit in when I know very well that God’s plan for me has always been to stand out.