Enjoying the ride

On Friday last week, I was just heading out the door to a reception for one of my friends at the University who is leaving, when a student named Paige called and asked for help applying for a job with the Diocese of Cleveland—the deadline was of course the next day, Saturday. I said, sure come on over, with one eye on the clock, I figured I could still make the reception. So Paige rushed over from the coffee shop where she had thought to call us, and she hadn’t even taken time to print her resume, so we huddled around the screen of her laptop. She was a sergeant in the Army Reserves, a clarinet player in the Army band. She had held three jobs simultaneously, including one at Starbucks, and she was applying for a job as an office assistant at the Diocese.

What made her story especially compelling was the fact that she was in the RCIA program in a parish near Parma—the program that prepares converts to Catholicism for baptism. She wrote the sweetest, most touching paragraph in her cover letter about her faith journey, how her mother had not allowed her to be baptized as a child and how she was finally coming into the Church. At first I wondered if we should keep that in there, but she reminded me that the job description called for “knowledge and understanding of the Roman Catholic Church” , so we left the language in the letter. She was just so thrilled at the confluence of her religious studies and the discovery of this opportunity at the Diocese. She promised to let me know how it all turns out. Oh, and that reception I was in such a hurry to get to? I finished up with Paige, raced over to the building across snowy Euclid Avenue, only to find that the darn thing is next week.

Back on Jan. 3, I wrote about the phlebotomist, whose name was Tabitha, with whom I prayed for help for her troubles. On Saturday I went back to the same lab and asked for her and she was working, so she did my draw again. She reported that both she and her husband were back in church and that they had rededicated themselves to Christ. She looked much much happier than she had just a month ago.

So between Paige and Tabitha, I am just so excited about how God is bringing these people into my life, enriching my own experience. We closed Mass tonight with the hymn, "Seek Ye First", just a perfect ending for this amazing week. Laying up treasure in heaven is all well and good, but I'm enjoying these little dollops of joy right here.