Be Like Jacob: Life Lessons from a Spiderman-Loving Toddler

Sometimes life's most profound lessons come to us from those who haven't yet lived much of it. As I turn 36 today, I'm compelled to share one with you.

I was elated to spend a brilliant summer afternoon with my niece and nephew. Lucy, 6, was zooming
ahead on her big-girl bike, and Jacob, 2, was thrilled to be perched on his new Spiderman bike. He hasn't quite gotten the hang of pedaling, so I walked alongside, pulling him forward by the handlebars.

Partway down the sidewalk, Jake startled me by slamming on the brakes (something he really has gotten the hang of) and jumped off. "What are you doing, buddy?" I asked, figuring he was over this activity already, and I would soon be wheeling a Spiderman bike back up the hill. But Jake was far from done with the bike. Instead, he crouched down next to it, peering at it with an adorable, delighted smile.

"Das mah Spidey-bike, Tracy," he said, face full of pride. He stood up and pointed to the image of Spiderman on the seat. "Das mah Spidey!" He touched the hand grips, ran his fingers over a tire, and then bent down again to show me more bright colors and Spidey images on the sides. "You see dat? My Spidey!"

After a few more moments of taking it all in, Jake sighed into another huge, satisfied grin, and climbed back on his Spidey. 

We rounded a curve and were a few driveways down the next cul-de-sac when I felt the brakes jolt a second time. There was Jacob, once again beside his beloved Spidey, admiring and appreciating every inch. My heart filled with the wonder and delight beaming in his eyes.

Jacob's joyful ritual happened twice more before we made it back to my brother's house, who chuckled lovingly when I told him about our pitstops: "He loves that bike!" 

Driving home that evening, I couldn't shake the simple beauty of it all. Without knowing it, Jacob offered a profound, stunning image of how to live gratefully. So often, we just pedal along from one thing to the next. Personally, I don't find gratitude particularly easy. I tend to more readily dwell in anxiety, nostalgia, and criticism. But Jacob reminded me of the power of pausing with purpose from time to time, getting out of the driver's seat, and intentionally beholding the miracle of our lives. 

In his honor, I offer this birthday prayer.

God, my Beloved Creator and Ever-Present Companion,

On my birthday, I ask for the grace to be like Jacob. Fill me with the innate wisdom of my Spiderman-loving nephew. Where I've become jaded, invade me with a toddler's amusement and curiosity.

Inspire me to witness this wondrous life with delight, to notice and name all its exquisite features, to point out and run my fingers over all its unfathomable joys and gifts. 

Help me to do this along the way, not just on my birthday, to occasionally cut the constant motion and simply peer with pleasure at all you have created and given. 

Let my prayer of gratitude pour out constantly and sincerely, impossible to contain and utterly pure like Jake's innocent glee. Remind me to relish the journey.

Thank you, God, for 36 amazing years of life. On this birthday and beyond, help me to live my own jubilant version of "Das mah Spidey!" Amen.

Ten years a Sister-in-Training

Ten years ago today, Andrea Koverman and I entered the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati. Ten years!

The journey to becoming a Sister includes lots of significant milestones, but June 24, 2012, is the date from which we count our official membership in the congregation. God-willing, on this date, we will celebrate future Jubilees.

My stomach is a mush of emotion today. We don't traditionally celebrate 10-year anniversaries, but this feels important to me. So much has happened in ten years. The world has changed; the Sisters of Charity have changed; I have changed. Sister Janet Gildea, who welcomed Andrea and me to Affiliation, died in 2019. Both grief and gratitude pulse in my heart.

In ten years, I have lived with seventeen different Sisters and discerners in four different local communities. Together, Andrea and I started Visitation House, a community for hospitality and discernment. I've ministered at Proyecto Santo Nino, Parroquia Sagrado Corazon, the Catholic Social Action Office, the Global Sisters Report, Holy Family Parish, St. Leo the Great Parish, Casa de Paz and in Vocation Ministry. Mentors companioned me with great generosity, and now I get to pass on that gift to discerners. I've served in Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, and the United States. I've encountered my roots in the Charity charism and my wings through Giving Voice. I studied in Chicago at CTU and completed my MDiv online after the pandemic hit. I professed my final vows in July of 2020 and celebrated them in community last month. I've persevered through confusion and pain, and I've glimpsed joy and love beyond all telling.

To paraphrase the famous song from Rent, "How do you measure, measure ten years?" Of course, the truest way to measure it is in love. I'm struck that this anniversary falls on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a locus of the most powerful love in the universe. Normally, June 24 is the Nativity of John the Baptist, an appropriate and comforting reminder when my vocation has involved a role of preparing the way. But what wisdom could the Sacred Heart offer as I ponder a decade in religious life?

Today's scripture for morning prayer likens God to a nursing mother whose unconditional love and compassion will never abandon (Isa 49:14-16). Our liturgical scriptures reveal Jesus to have a shepherd's heart (Ez 34:11-16; Ps 23; Lk 15:3-7) and assure that such love has also been poured into our hearts through the Spirit (Rom 5:5b). All of this got me thinking about the saying, "To be a mother is to have your heart forever walk around outside your body."

Not having children of my own, I will never know the intensity of loving as a mother. My heart aches so fiercely just looking at my niece and nephew; I can't imagine the bursting complexity in a mother's heart. And God's love for us is even more than that - infinitely, unfathomably more than that. I've struggled for a long time with believing in and receiving the gift of God's love. I can write, sing, and tell others about it sincerely, but my brokenness sometimes throws up a block to keep it from fully seeping into my heart. Maybe that's one invitation for me today: to spend less time "measuring" the last ten years and more simply receiving God's delight in who I am and how I live my vowed commitment.

A second insight arose in me as I prayed this morning. I've always thought of the "To be a mother..." quote from the perspective of the mother but never considered the flipside of what it entails: that, as a child, I am forever my mother's heart walking around outside her body. Depending on one's relationship with their mother, this notion could be deeply moving or deeply painful. But I feel drawn to consider this idea with God as Mother, with the Sacred Heart of Jesus as a living, bleeding, loving mother's heart that contains each of us and that we, in turn, contain. God loves us so much that we, created out of love, carry that love with us in our bodies. Astonishingly, we are forever walking around as Jesus' Sacred Heart. As a Sister of Charity, I vowed to make such loving the deepest purpose of my life. In my humanness, it doesn't always happen that way. Today, I'm invited again to renew the intention.

Ten years in, I still feel like I'm a Sister "in training." The vows call me to lifelong discernment and growth. There is always something more to learn; there are always more questions to ask. The day I think I have it all figured out is the day I probably should reconsider my vocation. But today, I want to take a moment to pause and give thanks for this last decade, almost never what I imagined it would be but surely what God dreamed for it to be. On this feast of the Sacred Heart, I ask for the grace to open myself to God's love and to share it as best I can in my life as a Sister of Charity - to forever be walking around as Jesus' Sacred Heart.