A possible career change?

I’ve been meaning to blog this for a few weeks. Last month I did my annual Pre-Cana talk before our parish’s engaged couples. My topic was the spirituality of marriage and this was my 5th time giving that talk (2nd time as a solo without Mr. Pete). I was also asked to give a short speech on setting up a Catholic Household.

I have to say that both talks went extremely well. The Catholic Household talk was given in the hallway of the school, so I kept it very informal. I sat in a chair and the couples sat around me. I had a brief outline of what I wanted to cover but I gave a lot of personal anecdotes from my own life experience. I felt like I was really connecting with these couples and there was a lot of laughter, comments and questions. In fact the only criticism I received at all was that the couples who did not hear my talk, because they were listening to Father’s talk on interfaith marriages, wished that they had had the opportunity to hear me too! I thought that was a very nice compliment.

I felt that I did my best job ever on the Spirituality of Marriage. I knew my subject matter and I really felt super comfortable with it. Afterwards, for the first time ever, one of the brides-to-be came over and gave me a huge hug and asked me to be her wedding coordinator this summer. That really was a piece of encouragement.

The following week, I had to take the same two talks, tweak them a bit and add in some information about Natural Family Planning, and then present them to our RCIA group. My son Sam was with me so I used him a lot for some of my anecdotes and just for general teasing purposes (which Sam took good heartedly and with a wide grin!).

At the end of that talk, one of the young male RCIA candidates raised his hand and said that out of all the speakers they had heard this year, that I had been the most enjoyable and the most helpful and then they gave me a standing ovation. I was very surprised.

I have known over the past few years that I really enjoy speaking to these groups and this year I felt especially gratified and well received. Of course, now both talks are back in the folder, collecting dust until next year. But what I would really love to do, is find a way to speak on these topics regularly. I think I have a knack for it.

But of course my youngest would need to be a bit older, but still this might be something for me to pursue in the future.

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