Picture Perfect

Claire and I went last night to an information evening on Campion College. Last year Campion was my dream. It sounded ideal: the course subjects, the lifestyle, the Catholicity. It was picture perfect, and I became moderately set on it. I remember being heartbroken when my parents vetoed the idea for financial reasons, and adamant that I’d find a way of getting there. Over the course of a year, the Campion dream faded as others welled up, and I ceased to appropriate much mental energy in its direction. But when Claire mentioned that this information night was on, my heart repeated its little leap of days gone by, and jumped at the chance to go.

This year I haven’t been giving much thought to “the future”, which is ironic, considering that decisions about that future are probably more imminently necessary than they’ve ever been before. It’s not as if I’ve been wafting or that I’m in denial; it just happens that for the first time in my life, I’m not the girl with the plan. I’m pretty peaceful about that, though, and I think the very fact that I’m peacefully planless signifies a major transformation of heart that God has slowly been effecting in me over the last 18 months. Nevertheless, plans will soon have to be formed, and realizing that fact triggered further incentive to investigate Campion.

We went along, and I was fully expecting to walk away with a solidified desire to attend Campion. Instead I walked away almost certain that Campion is not on God’s bucket list for me.

What changed?

Many months ago, before training even began this year, I remember having a fairly in-depth conversation with Claire about the Catholic “tribe” and her own resistance of the cultural bubble of Christianity. At the time it made no sense to me. I was infatuated with the bubble. I loved the Emmanuel Community in Brisbane. I loved my own youth group back in New Zealand. I loved the idea of, having finished my good Catholic missionary work, going to a good Catholic university, meeting and marrying a good Catholic man, settling down in a good Catholic neighborhood and raising my good Catholic family. I was almost offended at the suggestion that this might not be God’s plan for my life: after all, it seemed so very “Christ”-centered.

Last night Claire’s argument finally began to make sense. As each of the beautiful, Christ-loving Campion alumni spoke with pride and joy about the College they so loved, something cringed within me. And this confused me, because nothing they said was wrong. It was founded upon Truth: the desire to develop the human mind and person; to explore God and faith; to enjoy ‘wholesome’ kinds of fun. The very things that 2014-Kate was so enthralled by while she was researching a Catholic liberal arts education at an intimate university like Campion. But 2015-Kate wasn’t satisfied.

As the enthusiastic marketing went on, I began to realize how comfortable it felt. Campion makes sense in the “good Catholic plan” for my life: it is a beautiful bubble of a world, where I could go to enrich my mind and pamper my soul; where faith and reason would be handed to me on a silver platter; where Christian fellowship would be the most common and natural of things to find. And to tell the truth, that picture is beginning to sound frightful to me. The sheer comfort – physical, spiritual, emotional – of it makes me uncomfortable in a way it never has before.

The entire experience left me re-examining my priorities. As, one-by-one, I expose each of my dreams and fantasies about the future to scrutiny, few of them seem to stand the test. These dreams – of a beautiful, Christ-filled home, a picture-perfect homeschooling family, of a Catholic bubble of fellowship and friends, of mess-free ministry and a world as willing to be transformed into Eden as dissolving sugar – are not bad. And I would never want to condemn anyone who dreams those dreams too. The world needs university students dedicated to Christ and intensively studying theological truth. The world needs full-time mothers who lay down their lives in beautiful sacrifice for family. The world needs dreamers who won’t be content with the mess in this world and do everything in their power to clean it up. But I know that God is not calling me to my comfort zone. God is calling me to ask a question:

Am I building His kingdom, or am I building my kingdom?

When I begin to ask myself that one simple question, my castles on clouds come tumbling down. The perfect little fantasies seem to take second priority to this burning desire for integrity; this desire for a kind of selflessness of which I know I’m profoundly incapable.

I think, quite shockingly, the realization I’m coming to is that I don’t want ‘picture perfect’. I don’t want comfortable. I want to be entrenched in a glorious mess, a wearying and soul-stretching battle in the middle of the world’s darkness. I think – maybe just maybe – I don’t want the bubble any more. Of course I still wantthe bubble – comfort, security and spiritual pampering will always sound attractive – but there’s a restlessness in my soul that is growing stronger than that attraction.

The world offers you comfort. But you were not made for comfort: you were made for greatness.

Pope Benedict XVI

Campion College is a magnificent place. It is a beautiful missionary endeavour that is raising up a generation of disciples to go out into the working world with educated minds and Christ-centered hearts.  It is helping bright young learners become bright young leaders and walk their path to holiness with discernment and boldness.

But there is only one path to holiness labeled ‘Kate Gilday’. And as I boldly discern, perhaps for the first time with any genuine desire for detachment, where that path will lead, it’s becoming clear that magnificent places aren’t necessarily on the agenda. Clean feet aren’t part of the plan.

This year, the idea of coming to Mannix terrified me because it was so uncomfortable. I knew that it wouldn’t be picture perfect. I knew that I would see, up close and personal, today’s culture: a culture that I wanted no part of; the very culture that I was trying to escape by becoming a full-time missionary.  I knew there would be a lot of darkness, and a lot of mess: the kind of darkness that hates the Light and the kind of mess that doesn’t want to be cleaned up. It all sounded so spiritually draining – so wearying and soul-stretching of a battle – that I wanted to say no.

But, in that fear of the uncomfortable, He whispered a story to me. The story of a girl called to bear the Light of the world in the filthiest, darkest and coldest of places one Christmas night many years ago. The story of a God who chose mess over majesty; who chose the cross over the crown. He whispered the story of another girl – a girl who really just wanted to stay in the good Catholic bubble and never venture into the dark; never venture into the messy. A girl who wanted her life to be picture perfect and her feet to stay clean. A girl who wanted to be comfortable.

But she was not called to comfort. She was called to greatness.

He whispers to my heart, and He whispers to yours: My child, my beloved, I do not call you to comfort. I call you to greatness.

Fiat, my God, fiat.

AMDG