It was well below zero in Chicago when I decided to become a Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) missionary. We wore woolly hats to our Airbnb’s hot tub, watched out for icicles falling from skyscrapers, and slid on ice and snow in an attempt to play basketball in the numbing weather. Why had we made Chicago’s fierce winter our New Year’s destination? To meet thousands of other young Catholic leaders at the FOCUS Student Leadership Summit (SLS) 2018.
Shortly before this I had been a science student, party girl and president of my students’ union. I knew I had been trying to live a life with a thumb in each of two very different pies: the Catholic and the worldly. My faith had always been important, even central at most times, but I still felt the need to prove I was “normal”. As it turns out, leading a double life isn’t all that fun or fulfilling.
