Faith Stories

Have you ever considered combining your faith and your work?

Mike – a colleague and friend whom I had just met – posed that question to me almost 20 years ago. My answer was a quick, “No.”

But, of course, then I couldn’t get it out of my head. A few years later, I began to figure it out.

The back story is a common one. I was born into a traditional Catholic family in a small town in Iowa. We did all the things – went to church, baptized the babies, and went to big Catholic weddings and funerals. I watched my mom deep in prayer, and I didn’t really understand, but I didn’t question it.

Fast forward to the working parents routine and our three kids went from daycare to college in what seemed like minutes, not years. And then, a tragic health incident left our daughter’s boyfriend in a coma. She was devastated. We all were.  All of a sudden, I understood my mom’s look of quiet pain and deep contemplative prayer.  There were so many surreal moments during those days. And, Mike’s question came back to me.

It was true, I hadn’t thought about consciously combining my work and my faith. I thought he meant working in a Catholic organization. But, as I started to seek out more information, I realized that’s not at all what he meant.

Way late in my adult life, I had questions. What does it really mean to be Christian? If we all spend those minutes and hours and days and years in prayer and scripture, what does it mean when it’s completely separate from the way people treat each other at work?

If you’re wondering how and why this faith topic fits into a blog about marketing, hopefully, this introduction is enough of the story to know how it started. I hope we get a chance to take it further into shared stories, amazing stories, and miraculous stories. We all have them.  Some are even at work!

MJ