BOSTON COLLEGE | THE CHURCH IN THE 21ST CENTURY CENTER
MY FAVORITE MISTAKES
TRANSITIONS
By Mary Troxell I’m of a certain age where you look back and think, “What have I done right? What have I done wrong?” Some of the biggest blessings in my life are as much a result of my mistakes as they are a result of my successes. They say that God draws straight with crooked lines. It’s a more prosaic way of saying what the New Testament says in the Letter to the Romans, which is “We know that all things work for good for those who love God.” My first mistake was becoming Catholic. I call it a mistake because at the time it just felt like a disaster. I was raised in an evangelical church. My parents were very devout. We had very long services which are very joyous and jubilant. There was dancing in the Spirit, praying in tongues, and prophecies. But throughout all of these very intense meetings, I never experienced God. One of the reasons I couldn’t wait to go to college was so that I never had to go to that church again. So when I got to college I considered myself an atheist, a Marxist feminist. That was sort of my tag. And so were all my friends. You can imagine: we were very leftwing, very progressive, social activists, and outspoken. In my senior year, I saw my friends sending their resume everywhere looking for a job. I realized I was not up to the task. So I stayed in the town where I went to college and lived with a couple of my friends. I got a slacker job: I worked at a tanning salon.
During that time I read a lot of books, including Dostoevsky. And I realized that I didn’t think communism really spoke to the human condition. The understanding of human nature articulated by Marx wasn’t really tenable. And by reading Nietzsche, I realized that I didn’t have the stomach to be an atheist. I decided that I was going to apply for jobs in South Florida where I’m from and where the market was better. I moved down there, and while I was waiting to get a job, I decided to go to a Catholic church. And this is very strange. I didn’t go with anybody. I didn’t discuss it. I just went to a Catholic church one Sunday. By the end of that Mass, I knew that was going to be the most important thing in my life for the rest of my life. It was a transforming experience, like no other experience I’ve ever had. And I was kind of confused, because here I was, with these evangelical parents and these progressive, activist, feminist Marxist friends. And I knew that I had to become Catholic. That’s why I call it a disaster. I knew telling my parents would be devastating. In my parents’ church, Catholicism was not considered Christianity. So to tell my parents that I was going to become a member of a faith that would impede my salvation was extremely difficult.
FAITH FEEDS | STUDENT SERIES | TRANSITIONS