Small groups

If you had told me five years that I would be part of a small group faith sharing community, I would not have believed you. If you had told me I would be providing testimony in my church about the benefits of this small group, I would have laughed you out of the room.

But life and faith are funny in many ways and this morning DH and I found ourselves standing up in front of our church giving testimony. Our church is trying to get more people to sign up for small faith sharing groups and asked us to speak to recruit the younger crowd. I did chuckle to myself a little when the organizer spoke after us and said they will put you in whatever type of group you want. I chuckled because when we first signed up for a small group, we requested a group of young couples or young professionals. People at our stage of lives.

That is not what we got at all. At our first meeting, we both sat there thinking, "why are we in this group" and "we don't fit in at all." Over time we got to know them and the people in the group are really great, so please don't misunderstand me. There were moments of frustration when they called us "kids" and seemed surprised that we would be old enough to have a professional career and own a house. We are definitely at a different life stage of the other members and thought that we would have been better off with people more our age.

But, again, life and God are funny at times. We started this group about 18 months ago. About 6 months ago, our church started a social group of young couples. See, we don't really fit in with them, either. We are Catholic and while not everyone adheres to everything the Catholic church says about family planning (we certainly haven't), by the time couples have been married for as long as we have in the church, they transition from "young couples" to "young parents." The young couples group is filled with people who have been married for 3, 9, 15 months. There has already been a pregnancy announcement.

So maybe our seemingly misplacement in a group with older couples was just what we needed after all. Today there was also a baptism introduction during mass and it was hard for me. I wanted to be up there and wondered when/if we would ever get our turn. That's why I think our group is just perfect for us. We can talk about the sacrament of baptism and focus on our baptism, or what it means to be godparents. We don't talk about baptizing our own children. So our slightly older group is a nice respite for us. A place where we can for once not focus on this stage of life and our inability to transition out of it.