“I’m learning that God doesn’t wait on perfection. He works with the writer who is writing through the distraction —the kids fighting, the sticky floors, the dishes piling up.”

 

I don’t know what it is, but whenever I write for a Catholic audience, I freeze up. I play it safe. I choose a neutral, educational topic. The teacher in me justifies it — after all, don’t readers want useful information? That works in a classroom or with children. But most of the time, I want to speak to women like me.

For years, I felt like I couldn’t write in Catholic spaces because I didn’t have my life in order.

How could a single mom, never married, talk about being Catholic? People wanted to hear from the wholesome Catholic mom blog, where the mom is homeschooling ten kids and has a cute Catholic craft for every feast day. That wasn’t me.

I was a Latina mom living in income-based housing. Eventually, I got married—maybe to prove I had the “credentials” to run a Catholic mom blog. I had a husband, a yard, and a house. Still, my life didn’t magically become blog-worthy. My husband lived abroad with our eldest son to support his soccer dreams, and I was left trying to manage everything alone, including a lawn I couldn’t keep up with. How could I write now?

But God kept calling.

Like Samuel, I didn’t know how to respond. Me? Really? Let me get my life in order first, then I’ll start the blog. But life doesn’t wait to be sorted out. The years passed. My circumstances didn’t improve, and I wasn’t getting any younger. Eventually, I got tired of waiting to become a “worthy” writer.

I’m learning that God doesn’t wait on perfection. He works with the writer who is writing through the distraction —the kids fighting, the sticky floors, the dishes piling up.

What do I have to say to others? I don’t have a perfect marriage, but I still show up. I don’t get my kids to Mass every Sunday, but we make daily prayer a habit. I do novenas even when I’ve done them before. Even when prayers aren’t answered. I’ll reach for God in a phone app, fitting faith in my life however I can.

When my kids were younger, we prayed the rosary together. Now that they’re teens, it’s not so easy—and I don’t want to force them. So we say Grace before meals and thank God for our blessings. We pray for the 14-year-old soccer teammate who lost his mom before Mother’s Day, for my five-year-old who suffers from daily tummy aches, for my sister who lost her job.

Even the things that aren’t too visibly Catholic count too. Like making sacrifices as a family to help one another live out our dreams. The biggest one? Leaving behind American comforts to support my son’s soccer career in Mexico. Still, the small sacrifices are just as good, like the parable of the Widow’s offering. I see this when my 13-year-old takes her younger siblings to the park for two hours so I can write—even though she’d rather be lying in bed, scrolling on TikTok.

Or how my husband puts up with Mexican traffic and crooked cops every time he drives two blocks for Domino’s pizza.

Mexico is broken with corruption, crime, and drugs, but it’s a country that wears its faith like a tattoo sleeve. You can find a statue of Mother Mary drilled on the concrete walls of crumbling homes, makeshift altars on dirt roads, and a cross hanging on the doorway of the 7-Eleven.

Here, you don’t have to be perfect to be Catholic. I used to compare myself to the ideal American Catholic family. It’s what we do in the U.S., asking others: What school do your kids go to? Where do you live? What Mass do you go to? Secretly sizing them up, and almost always falling short. Now, I see things through a global perspective. My two-bedroom apartment could have easily been a dream for someone living in another part of the world—like Mexico. Faith isn’t bigger in bigger homes. It’s in the homes with addresses scratched on with a rock, in churches that have no air conditioning, but are so packed that they have to bring out the baby stools for extra seating. This is Jesus’s story, and I kept missing the message.

Mexico consistently ranks among the world’s happiest countries, despite widespread poverty.

On any Sunday at 10 p.m., families are still out getting ice cream. They make dinnertime a special event by eating outside on their patio. They set up a large table and chairs, bring out their big screen TV, tune in for the soccer match, and grill. It’s not about what you have but what you make out of life.

The same goes for writing.

You don’t have to be perfect to be a Catholic writer. Catholicism can be scary, you can feel judged, and it can be hard to live up to. The good news is that God doesn’t measure your worthiness by worldly success. I used to think I needed a theology degree, too.

God needs you …  from … (insert your name and rep your block). Look, he just made a pope out of someone from Chi-town! So if God is calling you to write, trust and believe. Or as my  older sister would say, “Did I stutter?” or better yet, “You got something in your ears?” He wants you and your story-worthy story in all its grit and glory.

© Copyright 2025 by Janet Tamez

Feature Photo by Angel Rkaoz: https://www.pexels.com/photo/nun-in-habit-writing-in-book-20535450/