Perfect Every Day

Happy dating Catholics, circa 2009 - Indiana Dunes

I want to share with you all a great secret: the reason that I have started to write. Luckily I saved myself the trouble and wrote it down earlier; so here is the excerpt from the letter I wrote my husband when we were dating:

"I have never wanted to really publish because I never thought that I had much to say but pretty things, nonsense things. I have things to say now. I want to write about this, what's right here, between two people, who never thought they could really love another person like this--and I want to write this because it's really true, it's so real, and I am not afraid to want to write this because I'm not worried that it's going to disappear. It won't. Not ever. I believe in this with an unshakable belief, comparable only to my faith in God and in His Holy Church--and I have since I first began praying. Since Day 1, when I fell on my knees and asked God if you could be in my life and received more peace than I thought possible on any one thing, I have known. Unmovable not as any earthly thing like mountains or the ocean itself, but like God, eternal and True and Good, felt somewhere deep in the heart where only Beauty lives in complete secrecy and yet unbearable light. 

You draw things out of my soul that I thought life had beat out of me, forever."

Life is always difficult, it must carry its share of sorrows for all persons, but for the nonbeliever they are so much heavier. Without Christ to make the yoke easy and the burden light, life is so often incredibly lonely and frightening. I am not a very good person even now with all the help of the great company of Heaven, but before, I was far worse - and I hurt myself far worse. 

For such a long time after, I believed that my life would be beautifully given to some great, noble cause: likely very poor people in a far away land, or becoming a civil servant closer to home. I wanted to be a religious, to walk around wearing no shoes and ministering to the weary and downtrodden; I have always been just a leedle idealistic. Yet in all my wildest imaginings, I never imagined marriage. Men, I thought I had learned, were not a kind to be depended upon. I was not very good with them myself and  seemed to have some horrid affect of making very bad animals out of them. 

Like Circe with all those Greek chaps

When Tom and I became friends, I had a new dream: I wanted us to be like St. Francis and St. Claire, great saints of the Church that would set the world on fire with love for Christ! I was sure that our letters would be preserved forever, a record of our growing journey to holiness. But then they took a turn towards something entirely unexpected, and unsought. Tom felt the stirrings in his heart first and I had no idea the tremors it would send through my soul. 

True love for another person, without design, falsehood or pretense, or selfishness, must have that affect on a soul so tarnished, like mine. It acts as a polish, shining away all the ugly, cruel and small pieces of myself, until ego is gone. His love refines me, constantly, into the woman I want to be: it is not painless, but it is beautiful, and baffling: 

"I wanted to say "I have still yet to conceive a reason why you love me" but that is not true. I know I am cheerful, and at least a decent cook. I know I can make some people laugh. 

But I suppose what I mean truly is that I am not sure what of these disparate pieces of me inspire such love and devotion in you."

See my crazy eyes? This was after a very intense rosary walk at the National Shrine, somewhere around 1am I'm pretty sure - ain't he just hotter than fish grease?

What I am fumbling towards here is giving credit where credit is due: if anyone stumbles upon this little corner of the world, where a zealous loud-mouth is rambling on about various topics holy and heartfelt, you should know that any good in her should be attributed to her husband's softening influence and love (and the good God's grace). Without him, I would still be a little lost idealist, doing God's will where I could, but as rudderless as the boat in my Papa's front yard. 

The day before he moved to Alabama to begin our courtship in earnest, I wrote this: 

it's 17 hours. 

17 hours till you're here, finally in my arms like you've been in my heart for so long, 

after months of waiting 

and praying

and crying

and begging

and more waiting

and desperately clinging 

to hope

it comes down 

to 17 hours. 

you're sleeping, peacefully i hope, softly, i pray, dearly....

dearly

my dear. 

if i had all of the words to express my feelings right now, then i would be

an angel 

or dead--

the truest expressions of the holiest emotions can only be 

experienced

somewhere beyond

or within

but not --   here ---

in this space that we assign it. 

i can't help but cry. i just can't but marvel. i  never thought my life would be this beautiful. i never imagined you.

never in my whole life did i think someone as good as you existed. 

i feel i am about to burst and so i will do all that i can do...

so i will clean

and i will sing

and i will 

sit!

among these trappings of my

independent life

and cry.

then clean some more 

because it's the only way i have 

of saying, 

praise be to God, 

forever.

Step by Step (I'm Moving Forward)

Tomorrow the hubs and I leave for Washington D.C. and I could not be more damn excited. For those of you following along at home, I lived in Northern Virginia/DC area for 5+ years (undergrad plus a year of grad) and it stole my heart. It was the first place I had lived outside of Windermere, and I couldn't have been happier. I ended up there because I followed a boy to college, but along the way...I broke up with him, became Catholic, went to grad school, met Tom, started playing rugby - ! So many experiences that formed me happened in that amazing area. I miss the dickens out of it!

We are headed up there because my amazing mother is running the Marine Corps Marathon. Now this ain't her first rodeo, er, race, but it'll probably be her last since she turned sixty this year and is concerned about her knees. So my big sister will head up, along with my dad and Tom. Also excitingly, I will get to see my good friend Colleen for her baby girl's first birthday, and hopefully see my confirmation sponsor, Meg, whom I haven't seen in several years.

Tom and I first thought we would stay at his old seminary, which is near CUA, and where he lived when we met. Apparently the seminary rents out upper rooms to visitors and we still have several friends in seminary there. It didn't work out, but it did get me thinking. At first, I felt a little awkward at the prospect of staying where Tom used to live as a celibate man. But I talked myself out of it; it wasn't wrong for him to leave seminary, he did in a perfectly respectable way, and we're married now! Still, the taboo persists.

Part of it is that when I tell people Tom and I were friends before we began to date, few believe me. Even my closest friends insist "you must've had SOME feelings!!" Yet the truth is, we didn't. I cared for Tom so much as soon as we became friends, but I regarded him like one should regard a friend's husband - possibly great and amazing, but never even on your romantic radar screen. I dreamed of entering into religious life myself, so that Tom and I could have a holy and literate friendship like St. Frances and St. Clare! Although I recognized that he was the ideal man (in my opinion), I treated him like he was a priest already and so there was no attraction.

When Tom began to question his vocation on his own, I began to fervently pray for him. I developed a prayer life that I had always wanted - staying up late not even counting what number rosary I was on, feeling that I was simply sitting at the feet of the Lord and waiting on Him to speak to me. It was then that I began to question Tom's vocation, but not for my own sake -for his. I felt it was my duty to point out to him some potential problems that I saw.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the Lord opened my heart to what he had for us. Though there were many people who claimed I was in too deep or that I was already in love when Tom wasn't committed, I alone knew that my heart was completely buried in God's will. I knew that whatever happened, God had a plan to sanctify me that would give me deep and abiding joy. That it ended up with us getting married in July of 2011, I could NOT have predicted (I definitely thought it would be way sooner).

So tomorrow, headed back to the place where we met as dear friends, that we approach now as man and wife, I hope that I pause and thank God for choosing such a dear husband for me. I never would have dreamed that the man I regarded as ideal would one day be my darling husband: my cup runneth over.