St. Therese Would Have Made a Good Hobbit

Happy feast day to one of the GOATs

The other day when I was in the midst of a mindless scrolling session, while an autumn fog settled over our backyard and the air was thick with rain, I saw that a couple I used to know was going into missionary work. These smiling, middle-class Catholics with three white-teethed children were giving up their comfortable lives and fundraising their salary to implement a mission program in a parish.

I wish I could say that my next thought was good for them! or wow, praise God, but the honest question that floated into my mind was: Should we be doing that?

This is not uncommon for me. I’m consistently itchy with life’s circumstances, wondering if I’m on the “right” road or if we’re doing what we’re “supposed” to be doing. I spent the next few days racked with guilt while I ate truffle chips from Trader Joe’s, wondering if I, too, should be out spreading the gospel instead of reading a novel. If I should be living at a Catholic Worker house or organizing food drives or at least becoming a volunteer catechist instead of meeting the school bus and answering e-mails. I felt so suburban and normal, and not in a good way. As if all of these people were on Missions With Jesus while I sat on my but and typed on a laptop.

This probably feels at best ironic and at worst ridiculously self-indulgent, considering I do in fact write a newsletter about Jesus that has thousands of readers. But I think many of us can relate to feeling like we’re not doing enough for God. That the life we’d imagined living isn’t the one we’re currently in, and that perhaps we’re on the “wrong” path. That our normal suburban-ness is abhorrent to him and that what we call suffering is pathetic.