Page 1

It’s middle school, and you’re the Smart Kid ™ – a big fish in your tiny Catholic school pond. You didn’t do anything in particular to gain this title, it just sort of happened that way. 

You go to Mass every Sunday because in your family, it isn’t optional. You’re a little bored. As you get older you learn more about what’s going on, but that doesn’t make it much more engaging.

And now you’re in high school. You have your Confirmation and take the name of your patron saint, Bernadette. You join your church’s youth group. People there are on fire for their faith, and you can see that they have something you don’t: they’re in love with God. 

And you want that.

Soon, you’re a senior – that happened fast. And you have a choice to make.

 

If you take Calc II and College Chemistry because they’re the hard classes and you’re the smart kid, go to page 2.1

 

If you take Business Calc and Intro to Art because you want to enjoy life your senior year, go to page 3.

 

Page 3

You love art class, and it’s preparing you for when you’ll study Costume Design next year as a freshman in college. And speaking of college, it’s almost here. Penn State is your first choice, as long as you can get enough scholarships. They have an amazing theatre program, more clubs than you could attend in ten lifetimes, and get this – daily Mass. There’s an active Catholic Student Association – the Newman club. Your youth group has become like family to you, and you’ve started to enter into your faith with your heart as well as your mind. You hope that in college, you’ll find a similar community of faith.

You get the grades. You get the scholarships. You get the offer of admission. Now all that’s left for you to do is…

 

If you cry yourself to sleep because you’re sure you’ll never fit in with your theatre classmates once they find out how religious you are, go to page 4.

 

If you trust that God wants you in theatre for a reason and everything will be okay, go to page 5.

 

1 It was suggested during workshops of this essay that perhaps I could include speculative “pages” regarding the paths I did not take. After reflecting on this suggestion, I decided not to implement it. I have no regrets about the choices I’ve made, nor do I think it worth distracting from the focus of this essay with mere speculation about could-have-beens. If you would rather have read a different path, consider making a similar choice in your own life and see where it takes you on your wonderful adventure!

 

Page 4

They’re going to hate you. They’re going to hate you. Irrational? Sure, but everything seems reasonable when it’s late at night. So, you get ready for college, convincing yourself that you really won’t fit in. 

Because when you were in grade school, middle school, even the beginning of high school, your faith was take it or leave it. And then, somewhere along the line, things changed. You had an encounter, or many little encounters – with Love itself – that changed everything. 

Your friend praying over you and speaking wisdom to a struggle that you hadn’t even told him about. Receiving the Eucharist – the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ – and getting the most delightful and surprising sensation that your hand had been touched by a living person. A priest asking if you’d ever thought about becoming a nun, a thought you’d had tucked in the back of your head for months and, again, hadn’t told anyone. And hundreds of sunny days, hugs from friends, doors held by strangers, and plans or situations that worked out in the best possible ways. All saying, God is real. He’s looking out for you. He loves you.

Now nobody could tear the Catholicism out of you no matter how hard they tried. You’ve realized – and you’re realizing every day – that religion isn’t fundamentally about rules or moral positions (though those are important, to be sure). Religion is about encountering God in a real way every day, seeing what He’s done in your life, and learning about how much He loves you. 

The problem is that people who haven’t encountered or recognized the love of God really don’t get the point of religion. And when you’re in college, surrounded by people who “aren’t really religious,” it’s hard to feel like you’re investing your time and love into something that matters – no matter how much you know that it really, really does matter.                  

Now, if trying to find your place in college wasn’t hard enough, you’re staring political turmoil in the face.

 

If you bury your head in the sand and ignore the Supreme Court justice confirmation and the presidential election, because you can’t take that kind of stress right now, go to page 6.

 

If you stay abreast of the news because, well, it’s important to know what’s going on, go to page 7.

 

Page 7

You’re keeping an eye on politics now because you’re growing up, and by now, you know what issues are important to you. You know what causes you would fight for or fight against or lay your life down for. There are people in government that you respect, and people you wish gave you more reason to respect them. There’s Amy Coney Barrett. And there’s the 2017 quote spoken at her 7th Circuit of Appeals confirmation hearing, one that resurfaces now as she’s considered for the Supreme Court, that you hadn’t heard before now: “the dogma2 lives loudly within you. And that’s of concern.” Senator Dianne Feinstein, emphasis added. 

 

2 Dogma: according to Merriam-Webster, “a doctrine or body of doctrines concerning faith or morals formally stated and authoritatively proclaimed by a church.” 

 

It makes you wonder why Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsberg are praised as strong women, role models for young women to look up to (which they certainly are) but Barrett is torn apart by those claiming to stand for the interests of all women. Because certainly her detractors must not be thinking about how it might hurt a young Catholic woman to see someone who shares her beliefs and values get dragged through the mud in front of an entire nation. 

But Barrett gets that seat on the bench.

 

If you lean more into your faith more than ever, go to page 8.

 

If you quietly start distancing yourself from Catholicism, go to page 9.

 

Page 8

You don’t really fit in with most of your theatre classmates, but you didn’t expect to. You get along, and they don’t hate you for your faith. You’re learning how to work with and love (love: willing the good of the other for the other’s sake. A choice, not a feeling) people who have radically different worldviews than yours, and you’re growing.

By now, going to Newman Catholic Student Association events feels much less like attending a club meeting and much more like hanging out with friends – friends who, over the course of the year, have become like family. You’ve found a place where you belong. Now it’s February, and they’re attending a virtual retreat, and you decide to go. Granted, a virtual retreat doesn’t sound as great as an in-person one, but if you get one or two insights out of it it’ll be worth it. 

It’s worth it. 

Believe it or not, Zoom manages to facilitate real connections with your friends in State College or their respective homes, and the retreat is amazing. You take pages and pages of notes, but the recurring theme is the same: you are loved. God loves you. You are his beloved. Yes, you. You. Sure – it might not feel like it, but feelings are finicky. Sometimes they lie to you. Sometimes they change.

The only thing that will never, ever change is God. And you think back to your middle school self and how your identity lay in what you did. When your hobbies, your music tastes, and your class choices changed, your identity shook. But now… Now you are beloved, and you know it, even if you don’t always feel it. Your time in youth group, the retreats and mission trips you’ve attended, and the friends you’ve encountered along this adventure have all played a part in bringing you to this realization. You are beloved, and nothing else really matters because that is your identity. 

You. Are. Beloved.

 

If you keep this realization to yourself because you’re a little nervous about what your classmates might think if you wrote an entire paper about your religion, go to page 10.

 

If you decide to share your heart because maybe there’s somebody else out there who needs to know just how infinitely loved they are… get writing.

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Beatrix Stickney is a sophomore theatre design and technology major focusing in costume design; she’s from Pittsburgh and has been doing creative writing since middle school. Besides sewing and writing, she loves spending time with her family and friends, doing activism work, and running her Etsy shop.