How to be a catalyst – written by a work in progress

At the end of 2013/start of 2014 God revealed a word to me for the year ahead – that word was “catalyst”.  I had no idea what this word truly meant, I have no clue what it’s significance might be for me over this coming year, and I hope that I can expand on this as the year goes on.   

My starting point for exploring why God had revealed this word to me was to find out its true meaning.  There is of course the scientific meaning of the word, but the non-scientific definition of a catalyst is “someone or something that helps bring about a change”.  I am pretty sure that I am not that person at the moment as most of my time is spent at home doing the same things, day in, day out.  But there were two things that jumped out at me from this definition

  1. what change is it that I am supposed to bring about?
  2. change sounds risky, so I’m pretty sure there is going to be some kind of risk or sacrifice involved in being a catalyst
Thus began my journey of 2014 as a Catalyst – with no idea what I was supposed to do and what the cost would be! 

I realised that I would need to be proactive in order to be a catalyst.  No-one brings about change sat at home moaning about stuff.  Also, people often moan instead of doing something to change what they are moaning about.  I think my biggest moaning at the beginning of 2014 was about being stuck at home on my own with my baby and having no-one to talk to.  So my first task as a catalyst was to change that.  And I knew that there were other mum’s who felt the same, especially the week that our local toddler group closed down.  We could have all stood around going “It’s really sad” and that would be it, we would never see each other again and would lose the support and company of each other.  So instead, I took it upon myself as a catalyst to try to keep these ladies in touch, to endeavour to set up other meetings and to keep on supporting them.  So here is a summary of my first attempt to be a catalyst:

  1. I knew the change I needed to bring about was both for myself – to get me out of the house and socialising with other mums – but also for others.  It can be a lonely world being a mum, and I was 100% sure that for every time I had the thought of being lonely there was at least one other mum thinking the same. 
  2. The cost involved in this is rejection.  It is scary to put yourself out there and ask for friendship and for no-one to reply.  Out of the 6 or so mum’s who had attended the toddler group, only 1 has taken me up on the offer to meet up outside of this.  I am facebook friends with some of them, and hopefully I can support and encourage them in this way, but in reality it still hurts to be rejected in this way.  
I think to start off with, God wants me to be the person that puts their neck on the line, the person who extends invitations to people who may be lonely, who may want a friend, who may just want to get out of the house for an hour!  To bring about change in others lives when they realise that someone does care and someone does want to talk to them and spend time with them.  However, this comes with the cost of rejection and being turned down.  Am I strong enough and secure enough in who I am in God to endure this?  We shall see!



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