Finding Room for Faith

Unlike the majority of my peers at Catholic University, I had attended public schools for grades K-12.  All my life, I was accustomed to keeping my faith separate from school; God was something for Sundays only and prayer only took place before bed.  A huge reason that I chose to attend CUA for college was because I wanted my faith to become the cornerstone of everything I did.  I wanted to learn about Catholicism in class, I wanted to walk by crucifixes in the hallways, and I wanted to make friends who shared my passion for Jesus.  CUA proved to offer all of this and more, and over the course of my undergraduate career, my life become centered around my Catholic faith.  I had no idea that this would be a hard lifestyle to maintain while attending CUA as a graduate student.

The name of the game in grad school is stay alive.  Okay...I exaggerate.  However, to describe my life as extremely busy during this nine month Master's program would be accurate.  I am slowly but surely learning how to balance a part-time job and a full-time student work load in a discipline that I am not used to.  I am learning, mostly through trial and error, what I do have time for this year and what I don't.  I have learned that this is going to be a year when my social life takes a hit, my gym card isn't swiped nearly enough, and a full night's sleep is what my naps senior year of college looked like.  But I am okay with all of this, because at the end of it all, I will have earned my Master's degree and will be one step closer to obtaining the career of my dreams.  

What I am not okay with is this becoming a year where my relationship with God is put on the back burner.  Unfortunately, this has been more of a challenge to prevent than I had ever anticipated.  I am no longer taking courses in theology, I am in class or at work during every conceivable mass time, and I fall asleep before I get through one Our Father at bed time. Upon realizing this and feeling the difference this lack of God made in my life, I made an appointment to meet with one of my favorite professors here at CUA - Professor Andreas Widmer.  I explained to him that I was struggling to find room for faith in my schedule that seems to become busier everyday.  He told me to begin offering the work that I am doing in this program (the mornings I wake up at five a.m. to finish homework, the late nights working on a group project, the stress and anxiety I feel during midterms) as a prayer.  In offering these moments up to God or as prayers for others, our work life becomes one with our spiritual life.  God would cease to become something that I would need to find room to squeeze into my life, and He would again become the cornerstone of everything that I do.  I was so appreciative for this advice and plan on living it out as best I can for the rest of my time as a grad student at CUA.