One More Month

Baccalaureate and Graduation are over...the year is finally finished...and life goes on for all of us. Sad but excited at the same time. I've loved my experience at Verb, as challenging as it was at times. It's the people, the work, the place, the community, and the life-giving spirituality of the Word made flesh...all of it has stretched my soul in a way that nothing in this world ever could. I have wanted it to work somehow where I could stay, and God is keeping a crack in the door open for me...at least to help out a little where I can.

When that school becomes a part of you, it's hard to let go.

I know eventually I'll have to, especially when I start having children of my own, but until the Freshman class becomes seniors I'll give what I can...just so they know that I haven't left them completely.

Most of what I feel, though, is relief that I can rest - kinda - this summer. Between moving out of the Student Life Center and creating my space in the 7th grade classroom at St. Jerome, I'll be spending the next few weeks slowly getting my belongings together at home and bringing it all over to Culver City. There is lots to do...but what I'm really looking forward to is the vacation with Gary...or rather the whole lifetime ahead of us.

I know it's been all that I've talked about / thought about / wrote about recently, but considering that in exactly one month I'll be promising myself to him for the rest of my life, this is a pretty big deal.

So maybe we're still in the honeymoon phase, as they call it. Or maybe we'll stay this way for a while. I just find it comforting that even big decisions or potential challenges that come up seem to work themselves out without much of a problem. It has to be the grace of God. When I find myself worried or stressed about something, it helps so much that we lift it up and surrender the situation to God and trust that He'll take care of it. It amazes me the most to look back and realize that many of the solutions have been Gary's ideas - or what he calls "inspirations" - that always seem to offer the simple solutions we'd been waiting on.

Some people just need a second chance to be everything that He made them to be. Put them in the perfect conditions to grow and they bear abundant fruit...much more than they ever thought they were capable of.

That's my fiance.

I'm going to miss calling him my fiance. Being engaged has been wonderful...but then of course, marriage is the real deal. The joy multiplies and so does the love. Just think - ten years from now...twenty years from now...and God willing, thirty years from now, we'll look at each other and say that we love each other more than we did on our wedding day.

That's why we need to keep working at this relationship, and why we're going to need His guidance along the way.

Praise God for the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony. Perhaps I do not fully understand or appreciate all that it entails, but that's the beauty of discovering that with your spouse as the years go by. We're more ready now than we've ever been, thanks to the prayers and the counsel of others who have had the privilege of living out this very special vocation.

Here we go.............in His name. Amen, Lord, amen.