My husband and I also try to write things down that they say or do. We don’t want to forget those little moments that are equally or maybe more amazing than the big ones. For example, my youngest who is 5 asked me today if we could go to “Doritoes” for ice cream after dinner. He was referring to Rita’s. He tried again after my older son, who is 7, corrected him. This time he said Rito’s. This is something for the book. We’ll write it down and we’ll look back on it in a few years and maybe it will seem funny and cute to us then, but will it really feel the same as it did today?

I find as I read over some of the memories I’ve recorded, they don’t have the same feel as I am certain they had at that moment in time. I look at artwork that I kept for a very specific reason or even favorite photos of events, and it just doesn’t feel the same. It’s nearly impossible to harness the original joy of that moment. I guess that’s why it’s so important to really live in that moment and enjoy it right then and there. Forget the video camera or the digital photos. I want to just bask in the present.

I think this is how it is with me when God does something very personal, very real, and extremely amazing in my life. I have had some prayers answered, some with a very good turn-around time, I might add. I have had complete reversals of bad situations in my life that only God could have accomplished. No coincidences here. I have had events in my life that were completely and totally orchestrated by God. I’m sure of it. I’ve been on my knees because of these works. I have been overwhelmed to tears hundreds of times in awe of His providence.

But somehow, as time passes and I look back on those times, I’m not as convicted as I was when it occurred. I’m not in awe anymore. Maybe it was just a random event, I think, a coincidence. Maybe there is no plan, this is just life. Lots of people believe that, I think to myself. I remember crying and kneeling and praising. But I don’t feel that emotion when I look back on it. I forget.

I forget what it felt like to be rescued and taken care of by God. I forget that God might have had anything to do with it. I hear myself retelling the story to someone else (or I imagine retelling the story to Oprah), and I’m not including the part about how this was GOD’s doing.

It’s like forgetting that it was your husband who gave you your engagement ring. I’m sure I can’t harness the excitement and emotions I felt when I saw it for the first time but certainly I will remember that he gave it to me, won’t I? It’s not like I’m going to wonder who gave it to me. Was it my dad? Or maybe my brother? Did one the kids make this at school?

I went to mass on campus held in a lecture hall. There were usually only about 20 students there and some random families. I would look around at the students and wonder if I could be friends with any of them. None of my friends would come to mass with me. Not that I asked them to or anything.

Every Sunday, I would see this one boy there. He was good-looking and a soccer player. Popular and cool, I thought. I wondered if it was possible to be cool and to be a church go-er at the same time. I called him my church boyfriend. I also had some other pretend boyfriends like a dining hall boyfriend, a lacrosse boyfriend, and a chemistry lab boyfriend. But my church boyfriend was my favorite because if he really became my boyfriend, he’d be one of the only people in college to know the whole me. The me that wanted to have a good time, but to find a way to love God while doing it.

It seemed like the very second I graduated from college, I became restless again. I got a crappy, entry level job that lasted 8 months. Then, I went back to school to pursue a graduate degree. After earning the degree and getting married, I became very restless with my faith. Now that I was really on my own, what was I supposed to do with that Catholic upbringing? I asked my brand new husband one day, “Is this all there is?” “Yep,” he said and he seemed pretty happy about it. I was annoyed and defeated. The next morning I got up and went to my new graduate-level, crappy job.

I still went to church on Sunday, but I sat in the back, anonymous, invisible. I arrived as late as I could and left after communion. I knew it was wrong and I was annoyed by others who did this but it was all I could take. I was lazy and still just going through the motions. Also, I didn’t have any more pretend boyfriends to think about during mass.

I began to search for something that would mean something to me – a new job perhaps, a new church, or just some connection at my current church. I decided I would volunteer to substitute as a Sunday school teacher. I liked kids and I was interested in my faith. The first time they called me to teach, I declined and then never went back to that church.

Instead of just searching, I began to pray for something to find me. In my immaturity, I was really praying for something great to fall into my lap. I prayed during long hikes with my dog, Louie, in the woods. We would hike almost every day when I came home from work.  I was now working as a toxicologist where I tested chemicals on animals. Rabbits, rats, mice, frogs. I heard stories of ferrets and beagles too but never saw them. I hated that job and I really didn’t like my boss. This couldn’t be all there was to life.

Sometime during that year, I saw an ad in the newspaper which read “ecology teacher” along with a fax number. I didn’t know where I was sending my resume, but I liked ecology and I hated my current job. Turns out, “ecology teacher” was my ticket. My ticket to real faith, a living God, and some really cool nuns.

The job was for a teaching position at an all-girls catholic school. I hadn’t aspired to be a high school science teacher but when I went for the interview, it felt like home. I took a 40% pay cut and a 45 minute commute to take that teaching job.

There was a beautiful chapel right in the middle of the school, like a high ceilinged-stain-glassed beating heart. You couldn’t get from one side of the school to the other without passing through the chapel. I have to believe that that part of the architecture was intentional. I loved the chapel. I loved walking through it to get to the computer lab. I loved spending some of my free time kneeling in the back of the chapel. One of the things I loved most about the chapel was watching the teenage girls kneel and pray for teenager-y things. It was such a beautiful sight to me. Since I had lost God for a while in high school and college, seeing these young girls, so devout, so unashamed of their faith, made me want to be more like them.

This was where my real journey into Christianity began. And by journey I mean, this is when I claimed my faith. This is when I started actually living my faith, not just going through the motions. I wanted what these girls had at the age of 14, and I was 29 years old. How had it eluded me all these years? This is when I knew for certain that there was more to life than a 9 to 5-er. And I wanted it.

I think I’ve always been restless, even since I was a little kid attending the local catholic grade school. I’ve always believed in God and in Jesus, but I was never hook-line-and-sinker like some little kids who learn about Jesus at a very young age. My friends now tell me that I am restless because I am a scientist, and scientists like concrete evidence. I like that idea. It makes me feel smart. I do want evidence of a God who saves, but there really isn’t evidence – just personal experience. That’s your evidence, the only kind you can really count on when it comes to faith. The thing is, I wasn’t a scientist when I was a child so why was I already restless?

I remember a time when I was in 7th grade and I was a lectern at church which meant I read the readings during weekday masses. I was handpicked by Sister Xavier in the 6th grade because I had a good read-aloud voice, I guess. Anyway, one day in the 7th grade I decided that maybe there wasn’t a God. And I wanted to try out my new belief. So I read the readings at morning mass in my best read-aloud voice. Then as I knelt for communion, I decided not to pray or think about God, to see what might happen. Nothing happened. This went on for several weeks. I don’t remember expecting anything to happen. It was just an experiment (maybe I was already a scientist) to see how it felt to not believe.

Sometimes I still feel like that 12 year old little girl kneeling at the alter wondering what it all meant, if life had any purpose at all. I wonder what would happen if I just decided one day that there wasn’t a God, and I stopped believing, stopped praying, stopped seeking.  I don’t think I really want to find out.

Other times, I like being restless. It forces me to wrestle with God, to wrestle with His promises in the bible (Psalm 138:8, Romans 8:28, Isaiah 49:25 and so many more), to wrestle with how to trust Him completely. For me, wrestling leads to seeking, and seeking feels like scientific research to me. I search the bible for versus that offer answers and comfort. After all, we are told that the bible holds the answers to everything and anything we question.  I don’t use it often enough. I usually go to my friends, my sister, or the internet for guidance. If I’m lucky, my sister and my friends will nudge me towards God by offering a prayer or a verse that will help me with the answer.

Restlessness leads to seeking, which leads to finding, which leads directly to God. Obviously, God has all kinds of things for us to learn through reading scripture. Lessons that are as relevant today as they were thousands of years ago. They might be hidden in the circumstances and in the wording a bit, but with some study, the hidden answers can be found. And, if you’re lucky, it can be fun trying to find those answers. Like a good game of hide and seek.