Awakening to Being Loved

I’m Andrea Parunak, a homeschooling mom of eight (soon to be nine!) children, who loves reading, ballet, and gluten-free dessert. I was a life-long, committed evangelical, who studied linguistics and Hebrew in college with a special interest in Bible translation work. But as I went on in my faith, I struggled with an uneasy hunger to go deeper with God. I wanted to know God intimately and be transformed by him. Every time I went through a trial of some sort, I would beg God to give me himself. If I only had him, then any amount of suffering would be worth it. But even in these prayers, I imagined him as a sort of cold perfection who deigned to allow me to worship him, but was just as content without me. It was after stumbling across Didache that the world of the Church Fathers opened up, and with that the truth that the Church Jesus started has always known: God actually loves us. He doesn’t tolerate us. He loves us with a passion beyond our understanding. And that longing that I had for God to give me himself is exactly the thing he wants most to do for us and in fact does do at every single Mass. My mind is blown, and I’m so excited to be entering into the fullness of the faith.