Untethered

Amanda Woodiel shares how she recently grappled with feeling untethered when her family’s trajectory suddenly changed. 

Six months ago, I was homeschooling our five children, and, at my oldest son’s request, exploring the option of sending him (then a sophomore) to a classical Catholic school the following year — a school 45 minutes away. Soon afterward, our second oldest was asking to go to this school as well.  

Fast forward to August, when an unwelcome thought suddenly struck me that what could be best for the entire family would be to send all of the children to this school and my looking for full-time work. This would solve our pressing and longstanding financial crunch as well as keep the children together in terms of starting the adventure of traditional school as a group. 

A Time of Novenas and Tears  

I cast about on the liturgical calendar and saw that St. Martha’s feast day would be coming up soon. I prayed a novena to her and to the Sacred Heart of Jesus asking that I might be open to whatever God had for our family, even to the point of giving up all that I had known and built for the past decade.  

It was a hard time. I write this as a mother who has undergone the pain of a child being diagnosed with cancer. That was a hard time for sure. But this was also extremely difficult. It was similar in that the ground I was standing on suddenly gave way. No longer was I sure of my purpose, our vision for our family, what’s best, what’s do-able, or even, in some sense, my identity. The word that came to me was “untethered.” There is a particular kind of suffering that comes with feeling untethered.  

I spent the hours I could spare engaging in soul-searching. Would I in fact follow Jesus anywhere He leads? Was I making an idol of my preferences and our “family culture”? Was Jesus calling us to something new? Or did we need to stay the course? Could I be open to working professionally, or would I be resentful?   

I felt, as I was answering these questions, that I was laboring to bring something new into the world. It felt like a birthing process: painful, and I was unsure I wanted to go through it.  

After the novena, my heart was sufficiently open (read: broken) to go to my husband and tell him what I had been thinking. He was shocked but saw the potential. He suggested a novena to Saint Joseph.   

On the ninth day of the novena, my husband called me from his workplace. “They offered me a new position,” he said.  

Suspicious, I asked, “Did you go to them, or did they come to you?”  

They had come to him. It did not come with a raise, unfortunately, but it did come with a better workload and better hours for our family life. 

Unfamiliar Terrain  

We decided to enroll all of our children into the school, but the fifth grade had no room for our daughter. Therefore, the oldest three children will be attending the school this year while the younger two girls will be homeschooled and are on the waiting list for next year. It was the first time I felt peace since the tremors had started shaking the earth under my feet.  

As I prepare to send the girls next year, I will spend time praying about what professional work our Lord might be calling me to. In the meantime, my husband’s new hours at work allow him to get my daughter to her volleyball games while I am off picking the boys up from school. Thank you, Saint Joseph!  

In the end, I never was untethered, of course, from our Lord. The problem was that I had wanted to pitch a tent in a particular spot, and He led us elsewhere. I’m sure in your life you too have had moments where our Lord has asked you to pick up stakes and move to a new land. I’m sure you too have felt untethered.  

For me, it helped to picture myself tethered to Jesus, following Him up the rocky terrain of a mountain. Just because the landscape is unfamiliar, I told myself repeatedly, doesn’t mean it’s bad. It also helped to recall the ways our family has seen God work in our lives (and truly, in tremendous ways). He is a God worth following! 

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Copyright 2024 Amanda Woodiel
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