Help my unbelief

I am a woman of faith. Except for a few years during my childhood, I did grow up in the church and I cherish the faith community that brought me up. In every town where I have lived, even when I've stayed only for three months, I've actively sought a church home where I can lay down roots and volunteer for usher duty. My closest friends from high school are not my friends from my actual school but my friends from my church. My closest friend from my years in New York is not from graduate school, but from my church in Manhattan. In both places, I valued the shared experience of a faith journey more than that of a shared curriculum.

What makes law school different, however, is that I have not found a church home in Boston. In my three years in this heavily Catholic town, I have not found a suitable home in which to place my Bible. I have stopped looking, so I do not attend worship regularly. The irony of all this is that I attend a Catholic law school. Despite my immersion in a(n ostensible) community of faith, I remain unmoored.

I've started thinking more about faith lately for several reasons. First, I wonder what my Catholic boyfriend and I will do should we decide to get married and raise children. Having only attended Catholic schools his entire life, he's pretty Catholic. Second, I wince at my mother's singular devotion to her own Catholicism in the face of her own personal hardship.[FN1] She attends church almost daily and prays not for strength but for a particular outcome. Third, I am confronting my own period of need.

My initial reaction is to hunker down and pray, not for a particular outcome but for strength, for clarity, and for patience. Thing is, though, is I feel my reaction is no different from my mother's, and I always have viewed her theory of faith as hollow and simplistic. Prayer is not for achieving results but for being okay with those results. Hence my habitual prayer when I tanked on my 1L exams first semester. And second.

But now I don't feel so comfortable turning to prayer. I feel needy and greedy, that I turn to God only when I want something. Truth is, I do.

-----
FN1. That's right - my mother's Catholic, but I am not.