I was baptised when I was 9 years old, about two or three years before my dad converted to Catholicism. Our family lived a fairly average Catholic existence – pious at church and fighting like cats and dogs back home – and I regularly attended catechism and Sunday Mass. I was confirmed by Archbishop Lawrence Henry on 24 November 1990. I chose Jude as my saint’s name, because I considered myself and my life to be a pretty hopeless case and I thought that if any saint could make themselves useful in my cause, Jude was the most likely candidate. I was so sure of this that I was even prepared to fight with the Holy Cross sister who was preparing us for our Confirmation when she suggested that it would be more ladylike to choose Mary or Therese: I wouldn’t budge, I wanted Jude and I got him, along with a free extra moniker thrown in for my trouble: “Little Miss Cheeky”.
Once I had my church leaving certificate in hand, I still attended Mass fairly regularly for a few years before deciding that everyone in the church was a big hypocrite – including myself – and that my time would be more honestly spent elsewhere. So during the day I worked in online publishing, where I spent far too many of my boss’s hours talking in chat rooms with a wide range of geeky boys who had no in-person social skills but a strong urge to find themselves an intelligent techie girlfriend: and purely because there were so few females who knew how to log on to the internet in those days, I had my pick of potential mates. In the evenings I dressed all in black and spent my time dancing as freakily as I could with whomever was the love interest of the month to angry Goth music at a dingy alternative nightclub called Springfield, which was housed in a converted old train carriage parked between Newlands station and the South African Breweries: wonderfully symbolic of the haze of transient and inebriated comings-and-goings that marked that period of my life.
It was a lonely and quite empty existence, because I had no faith in myself or anyone else. I didn’t see many people in my world being genuinely caring, kind or compassionate, and if I felt disrespected or betrayed, I could be vicious. Even so, I yearned for ‘safe’ relationships with people, where I would be accepted and loved just for being myself and not for what I could do for them, where other people would see something good in me, and give me a chance to grow into a better person than I knew I was. And I still had so many unanswered questions about God and the meaning of life! So I was ready to accept the invitation when it came, to attend an Alpha Course at the Church of the Resurrection.
The ten weeks of that Alpha Course in early 2000 were a time of amazing grace and incredible transformation for me. I suddenly understood that God loved me personally and wanted to restore my spiritual home to me, and give me a place in His family – even though I couldn’t imagine why he would do that for me! Loving kindness is a hard pill to swallow when you’ve been living on a diet of death and destruction – but slowly it begins to work its miracle cure.
The nine years since then have been full of opportunities for learning about God and growing in a personal relationship with Him. I’ve been learning to walk alongside Him, and to trust Him, and to be faithful to whatever He asks me to do. I’ve been surprised at how patient and gentle He is!
God also has a sense of humour: when I entered the Cabra Dominican pre-novitiate in April 2008 in order to begin to discern more clearly whether or not He is calling me to religious life, I was sent to live at Springfield Convent, surrounded by a good school and set in the most beautiful garden: wonderfully symbolic of how much I am learning about life and love, and how good it is to walk with God in the cool of the day, and to appreciate the world as his wonderful creation.
And it’s good to know I’ve still got Jude in my corner, pulling for me whenever I need it!
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