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Archives Finding the true ‘good life’

Oct. 5, 2016

By Amanda Conklin
Staff writer

Jennifer Fulwiler’s workshop entitled “Promoting Vocations in a ‘Francis World’” was poignant for people serving Conklin Fulwilerin all vocations. She used her interesting conversion journey and her vocation as a wife and a mother to lay out three important keys to living one’s vocation.

Her first vocation lesson was that the meaning of life is service.

I listened in the audience and chuckled as I can relate to her funny mom stories. It wasn’t until after attending her workshop, when I was sitting in the front row of the large celebration of Mass, preparing to read one of the prayers of the faithful, that I fully understood and realized I was actively living her first lesson.

My three-year-old who is currently potty training was acting up so I let her sit on my lap. About fifteen minutes before I was supposed to get up in front of 4,000 people to read, she announced that she needed to go potty, and so it happened, right on my lap.

As I rushed out the back and yelled to my husband that he needed to read in my place, I could feel the red in my cheeks and the warmth of the large puddle of urine on my pants.

Sacrifice.

Mrs. Fulwiler’s second vocation lesson was conveying how important it is that we all “fill up our own tank.”  Taking examples from Mother Teresa’s order’s daily schedule she highlighted that even saints have to take time to meet their own physical and spiritual needs in order to bring Christ to others. You cannot give what you don’t have.

I had spent the previous day on retreat with my college students, filling up my own spiritual tank and I know one of the reasons I kept it together during the front row Mass incident, is because I had just been to confession the day before.

The third and final vocational key was that you must live your vocation your way. Jennifer talked about how Instagram has ruined so many moms because they try to portray the perfect family and compete with other moms. I know my life looked far from perfect on Sunday of the Inspire conference, but the way I had to live my vocation was to change my daughter into dry clothes while allowing my toddler son to munch on the strawberries meant for the  guests and then desperately try to dry my pants under the electric dryer in the women’s bathroom. 

Mrs. Fulwiler ended her talking explaining how she had finally found “the good life” through the joy that comes from sacrifice in living one’s vocation. This is opposed to her previous belief as an atheist that the good life comes from doing whatever you feel like.

As I laid my very worn out toddlers in bed that night of the conference, I smiled because I knew that I too, through the beauty of Christ’s Church, had found the good life, potty-training accidents and all.

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