Fourth Day
"the Rest of my Life"
After attending a weekend long adult spiritual retreat, Cursillo, I vividly remember calling a friend and giving her a list of all I had done the following Monday morning. “I’ve been to Mass, done my daily readings, prayed the rosary and had lunch with my school children. I have done my fourth day and it’s not even noon.” She said, “Julie, read the first page of the little book they sent home with us.” After I hung up with her, I grabbed my weekend packet, found the little book and read, “The Fourth Day is the rest of your life.”
As I sat in Mass a couple of weeks ago and listened to the Gospel reading about the call of Peter and Andrew, I wondered if they knew they would leave their homes and their families, forever. I’ve never had that thought before but really, did they know it was for the rest of their lives or did they think, “Let’s go find out what He has in mind, what His message is, what His life is like, and then if we don’t like it, if it’s too difficult, we’ll just come back to this life as fishermen”?
In 1979, I joined my mother at St. Mary’s Bookstore, working Saturdays to “help out” while I was in college at Vanderbilt. I was working on my degree in Health Education with the full intention of working in the corporate world. Many companies at that time were building exercise facilities inside their corporate buildings and hiring health majors to run classes and teach proper techniques for using weight machines and preventing injuries or overexertion. But before graduation, I changed my mind, deciding to pursue a career in coaching and teaching Physical Education, helping children realize the importance of staying active throughout their lives. I worked at the bookstore full time while searching for '“something more”. In 1983, I was asked to teach Physical Education and coach volleyball and track at the local Catholic girl’s academy, St. Cecilia, but I kept working part time at St. Mary’s. I just could not let her go. The store had its hold on me and after two years of working at two locations and after meeting the love of my life and after backpacking through Europe (stories for another time), I was ready to settle into one job and one relationship.
I could have never guessed that when I started with my mom all those years ago that it would be my Fourth Day. I thought at the time that I’d see what the bookstore was like, what my mom had in mind and if the work was too difficult, I’d just go find something else. But here I am, 45 years later, running the Bookstore with my husband, my sister and two of my daughters. Taking me years to realize that working with the best people in the world for the rest of my life, that reading and witnessing things that would change my life forever, was simply answering a call to “Come, follow me”, to “Come and see.” Every Fourth Day, good or bad, is an encounter. Every Fourth Day, good or bad, is an adventure. Every Fouth Day, good or bad, is a gift. The Bookstore is peaceful (most days). The books and the gifts offer hope and remind us of the One who loves us, good or bad.
This Life in Volumes is meant to be shared. These encounters are meant to be discussed. These “God-incidences” are often hard to believe but at the store we share truth, and we spread love, and we don’t simply fish, but we feed, and are fed, in volumes.
