Feeling disconnected

Lately I'm feeling very disconnected from my church, and I'm not sure what to do about it.

Let me first say, I love our parish. It is located just across the main road through our city, so whenever I go anywhere outside of my neighborhood, I drive right by. For a long time before we started attending, I would drive by and see the sign and wish, deep down, that we could go there. For a lot of reasons, I didn't give voice to that wish, and I tried to be open to other possibilities (mostly because I didn't think my husband would ever want to become Catholic), but the call was there. And once we did start attending, both going to Mass regularly and meeting with the RCIA group, I felt a great sense of peace, of community, of belonging. We were home.

Fast forward to now and it has been nearly a year since my husband was Baptized and received his Sacraments of initiation. Our family are all full members of the Catholic Church and we strongly believe this is where God has called us to be. But it has also been nearly a year since we've been participating in something other than going to Mass. We used to have RCIA every week, but since last Easter, we haven't. My husband has gone sporadically and was even considering sponsoring someone else this year, but that didn't pan out and we've fallen into something of a rut.

I feel a real longing to be a more active part of our parish. We do teach the baptism prep class for new parents, but that is only two evenings every other month, so it isn't the same. I miss getting together regularly with a group of familiar faces. I miss the discussions, I miss the sense of belonging we had.

I know that there are plenty of opportunities to get involved. We could both be sponsors again (I sponsored someone while my husband was a catechumen). We're friendly enough with the Pastoral Associates (a husband and wife team), I know we could ask to be put to work somehow and they would happily find ways for us to be involved.

So what's the problem? Time. Childcare. Working up the motivation to find both time and childcare.

I know this is something I need to address, and soon. My husband and I are both feeling the lack of participation in the church community. As he used to say, going to something at church on a day other than Sunday helped shore up his spiritual armor, getting him through the rest of the week. We both need that and I need to take a more active approach to finding a way to make it happen.