I just finished up my talk  for the retreat this weekend, and I thought I'd post it here at my blog.  Please comment if you'd like.  I would love some feedback before I have to give this talk in front of an audience!
 
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    Finding joy in Jesus has been quite a long journey for me.  I was raised in the Jewish faith, which is a fairly pessimistic religion.   I don’t remember a lot of joy there.  I grew up in the bible belt, and my brother and I were the only Jews in the entire school system.  It was the project of many “Christian Goody-Goodies” to either convert my or remind me regularly that if I didn’t get saved I would burn in hell.   It mainly served to turn me off of Christianity altogether.

    I’d always felt very close to God though.  Ever since I was little, I’ve had what I refer to as “God Hugs.”  I’ll have these brief moments, almost always while in either synagogue or church, where I can almost feel His presence around me.  It’s just this moment of complete joy and comfort.  I don’t get them as often as I did when I was a child, but when I do have them, it’s a comfort to know that He’s still there.  That no matter how hard, frustrating or tiresome life becomes, God is still there with me.

    So, how does a Jew who has been turn off of Christianity end up Catholic?  That story begins with my marriage.  When we married, religion wasn’t all that important to either of us.  We were what we were, and we accepted that.  Rob wasn’t a practicing Catholic, and I wasn’t going to temple very often now that my father wasn’t making me, so the issue didn’t seem to be very important.  And it wasn’t….until our first child was born.  That’s when Rob admitted that he wanted our children to be raised Catholic.  At first I balked at this.  He didn’t even go to church!  I didn’t want it to become a big argument, so I ignored the whole religion issue for probably about a year.  When we first moved up here, I went to church with his family a few times, and I thought the church was nice, and people were friendly enough, and no one said I was going to hell or anything, but I wasn’t really interested in all that “Jesus stuff.”

    But the thing is, I hadn’t found a synagogue, so now I was the one not really practicing my faith.  I’d gone to the same synagogue my entire life, so the ones I visited up here were very different.  I didn’t like different, so I didn’t want to go.   This was when I decided to ask God what he wanted me to do.   God’s so funny sometimes, isn’t he?  Because he answered me right away, but I didn’t like the answer.  So, I kept asking, hoping he would give me a different response.  I argued with him, that I couldn’t possibly become Catholic, I didn’t hardly know anything about Christianity!   Then, one day, while I was tidying our apartment, I found this tiny little New Testament bible.  I still have no idea where that bible came from, maybe it fell out of heaven, but obviously God wanted me to read it.  So I read all four Gospels over the course of two days.  I was becoming interested, but I still wasn’t sure what I should do.    Not long after, I went with Rob to one of the Coming Home programs.  I listened with interest, and someone there gave me a Seekers Catechism.  I read it cover to cover the next day.  I even went out and bought myself a copy of the entire Catechism.   This was when I hesitantly mentioned to Rob that I might want to look into converting.  He said I should talk to his mother.  I did, and of course the rest is history.  She sponsored me through RCIA, and at the Easter Vigil in 2001, I was baptized into the Catholic Church.     

    Now, I’d found Jesus, but it wasn’t all sunshine and roses like I thought it would be.  My mother reacted to my conversion as though I’d been diagnosed with a terminal illness.  The next year I became pregnant with the twins, and after their birth I suffered through months of postpartum depression.   I was embarrassed, so I never sought any help for it.  I’ve had to deal with the fact that while I long to become more religious, and more involved in our church, my husband seems to want to become less religious and less involved.   Our mass attendance is sporadic.  It’s been a frustrating road to travel.
   
    But then I remind myself that Jesus asks us to take up our cross and follow Him.  He never said it was going to be easy, but He did say there would be joy.  For me, I tend to think of joy as this big emotion, how I felt when I was baptized, or how I felt at the birth of my children.  So, when I saw that I was going to have to talk about the Joy of finding Jesus, I had a mini panic attack.    I wasn’t sure that I’d actually found very much joy.  I was terrified I’d have nothing to say.  But as always, God gives us the words we need.  As I prayed over what I would say, God reminded me that I’m surrounded by joy.  It isn’t all the big and glorious joy.  Joy can be small things as well.

    I’ve come to learn, that the best way to find joy in Jesus, is in my children. They see things so much differently than we do.  A perfect example is at mass, during the consecration, I’ll lean over and whisper to them that this is when the bread and wine become Jesus’s body and blood.  They always gasp.  To them it’s always amazing.  I think as adults, we become used to it, and it’s not quite as exciting anymore.  I want to gasp at the consecration right along with my children.  I want to learn to see God the way they see Him.  I think we have a tendency to sort of take God for granted.  We know he’s there, and we pray, but do we really expect an answer?   When I told my daughter we were going to have another baby, she cried because she was so excited.  She had been praying for years that God would send her a sister, and she never gave up praying for it.  She told me that she knew it would be a girl, because God answered her prayer.  So, it was no surprise to her at the ultrasound when we saw it was most likely a girl.   I wanted to be as sure as Sarah was.  I too had prayed that I might have another little girl, but I doubted that God had actually answered.  How silly of me to doubt.

     So, how did I find Joy in Jesus?  By counting my blessings.  I’m blessed with three, going on four, healthy happy children.  I’m blessed with a husband who loves and provides for us.  I’m blessed with a Mother and Father in law who I’ve come to love as much as my own parents.  I’m blessed with family who love and care for me, even though I don’t see them very often.  I’m blessed with a nice home, plenty to eat, and luxuries like internet and television.  I’m blessed to be able to stay at home and homeschool my children.   I’m blessed to have a wonderful church family and prayer group.  I can find joy in anything from seeing the sunrise to cleaning the toilet. There is joy everywhere, all around us.  Even in the darkest of places and the hardest of times.  There is always joy if, if we’ll just ask Him to help us find it.

I also plan on playing the song "Help Me Believe" by Nicole Nordeman at the close of my talk.  I love that song, and I think it ties in nicely with my talk.

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