Captive the Heart Turns Four: A Roundup of Favorites and Some Minor Sentimentality

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My marathon of post-Lily guest offerings is done just in time for her to turn 3 months old in a few days.  And what better way to ease myself back into the blogging habit, I figure, than with a post light on new stuff and heavy on past linkage.  Last Wednesday marked four years since I wrote my first blog post ever.  I hesitated to say my blog "turned four" in the title since, you know, I've only actively written it for about three of those four years.  I can only say I fully plan to have things be different when my children turn four.

My children!  It would be stating the obvious to say so much has changed in my life over four years, but seriously.  I went from unemployed newlywed to government worker, to briefly unemployed again, to secretary to nanny to full-time mama.  I went from being a Masters degree wife in one city to a PhD wife in another.  We had a baby, then had another one.  I wrote a book.  I gratefully watched comments slooowly roll in as I talked about awkward things, ventured for a while into amateur fashion blogging, and shared my life.

Far better than the comments are the friendships.  I think every blogger hopes she'll be widely read, with comments, likes, and emails to show for it.  And I have to admit that yes, those visible, quantifiable marks of how many peeps are reading make my day when I receive them and sometimes throw me into unattractively self-centered doubt when I don't.  But more than just wanting the readership, I sincerely wanted to form a community, however small, here, and am so happy that intention has become real.  I love the sisterhood I've found in some readers and other bloggers, and love that I'm on a similar path with some of the closest friends I've made through blogging--over the past few years, we have each started families and grown through the newlywed phase of our marriages around the same time.

So, if you are reading this, thank you.  I'm so grateful for your prayers, your words, and your friendship.  If you're a longtime reader, thank you for sticking with a writer who let "maternity break" stretch into a yearlong blog death when her first baby turned everything upside down.  If you're new here, thank you for dropping by, and I hope you'll stay a while.  I still feel about this piece of the internet the same way I did when I started it: that I hope my love of weddings and relentless, if clumsy, pursuit of authentic love will come through these words and images to inspire your relationship and will just let me be a vessel of something greater; the path to holiness and to heaven, illuminated by Mary to the feet of her Son.

In celebration (and, like I said, because I'm easing back into this!), here, in no particular order, are 10 of my favorite posts, to revisit or to read for the first time:

Theology of the Body-inspired first dance songs 

The sort of mourning I sometimes feel for newlywed life, and how I'm learning to reconcile my identity as bride and mother 

My favorite quality in my husband 

Why one World Youth Day attendee was right when he said St. Pope John Paul II "introduced us to ourselves" through the person of Jesus 

How I became okay with feeling like a boring couple

Are soul mates real, and does it matter? 

That time Andrew hijacked my blog

Honeymoon multi-taskers for lazy packers and small suitcases 

The book that puts my particular spirituality into words 

Remembering my best, and last, first date

So, four years in, can we have a little State of the Blog chat in the comments?  Tell me what you like to see here, what you don't, and how I can make this into a better wedding planning resource for you.  I love hearing from you, truly!  Much love.

Lily's Birth Story, Part 1

Eight weeks into my little girl's life, I can safely say that going from one kid to two has been far easier, at least in our experience, than zero kids to one.  When Aaron was born, I felt like the sleeplessness combined with the total pouring out demanded of us shook up my life big time--for at least the first few weeks, I felt so suspended from time and honestly didn't notice or care much about the difference between night and day.

Don't get me wrong!  Aaron shaped me in so many ways by making me a mother, and has brought such hilariously beautiful joy to our lives.  His entry into the world, like his entry into our lives, was much rougher on his parents than his sister's, though!  After two months tomorrow (say what) of having two babies, I'm more aware than ever that Andrew and I are still such beginners and such beggars, reliant entirely on grace, when it comes to parenthood.  I'm thankful that we feel at least slightly more confident this time in being responsible for a newborn, and that every difficulty isn't a huge drama.  When Aaron would cry as a tiny baby, we'd both freak out trying to pinpoint the exact cause and the perfect solution (spoiler to our past selves: nothing is a perfect solution!), but this time around, we're much more able to not let crying get to us and to be at peace as long as we feel like we're putting in our best efforts, whatever that looks like on a given day, to take care of our kids.

I've been amazed by Aaron's sweetness and general good behavior since bringing Lily home!  Aside from a few incidents here and there (intentionally peeing on his booster seat much?), he's been remarkably non-jealous and consistent with his usual laid-back temperament.  For the first two weeks or so after we brought Lily home, I think I had a way harder time than him!  My heart felt so divided; here I was, falling in love with my new baby, yet I almost wanted my other, first baby to want and need me more than he seemed to!  The day we came home from the hospital, Aaron spent a good 10 minutes leaping around, adorably yelling, "It's Lily!  It's Lily!" and putting his toys in her car seat to show her.  I just sat there and cried!  Then he ran off laughing to play by himself.  His growing independence is fascinating to me (I love hearing him talk and sing to himself as he pushes all his trucks around and pages through his books, some of which he's memorized), but also bittersweet as I realize how big he's getting.  Honestly, I was expecting him to be a little needier and cuddlier when he became a big brother, and though I definitely appreciate him taking it easy on mama, it makes me a little sad to see how generally okay he is being on his own more at times where the baby requires more of me.  The hormones, y'all.  But truly, I praise God for my son's easygoing personality and for all the ways he adores his new sister.  I hope so much that they'll always be close and will be good pals growing up!  Now on to the gory birth deets.

If our children's births have a theme so far, it might be, "Yup, it really is labor.  Get that belly to the hospital already."  On Thursday, November 12, I was 38 weeks and 5 days along.  I'd been having Braxton-Hicks contractions throughout the day for about a month, and though I was getting the feeling my baby girl would arrive early, I thought it'd be somewhere more along the 39ish mark.  Anyway, I noticed what I thought might be some bloody show before bed on the night of the 12th, but didn't want to get too excited.  Around 3:30 in the morning, I woke up to contractions that felt stronger and a little crampier than normal, but not painful.  Being awake and bored at that point (during those last insomniatic months, I tried to spend my sleepless times in prayer and resisting the lure of my phone or Kindle, which made me feel too alert to go back to sleep), I tried to figure out if they were coming regularly, then pulled out my phone and determined the contractions were about 12 minutes apart.  I mentioned this to Andrew, who neutrally said something like "Mmmph" and rolled over.  Deep sleeper, that man.  Belief I was in labor: 17%.

I dozed off again at some point, then woke again around dawn on the 13th.  Since I figured I had about an hour before Aaron woke up for the day, I decided to get up for some coffee and reading; while I was at it, I dialed the midwife-on-call line for my practice and described what I thought were the non-events of the night.  It was a little too early to tell, said the midwife, who said that even Braxton-Hicks contractions can have a rhythm in late pregnancy, but she said to keep an eye on things and call again if they got closer together.  "Maybe I'll see you later today," she said before we hung up.  Belief that I was in labor: 30%.

By about 8:00 that morning, my contractions were down to 6 or 7 minutes apart.  I was a little concerned at how close together they were, but since they felt pretty tame, we decided Andrew should go in to school.  He teaches two hour-long classes in the morning and spends the rest of the day in meetings or studying, and was determined to hack away at his dissertation some more before the baby.  I told him to keep his phone out and on, and probably reminded him of this, oh, a dozen times before he left.  "But it's probably nothing, and I'm only an hour away," he reminded me.  I pondered this, mostly reassured but nervous about the unpredictability of the Metro around here and its ability to actually get my husband home in an hour.  Belief I was in labor: 55%, mostly fostered by my worry about being alone, in labor, and responsible for a toddler.

After Andrew left, the contractions kept picking up, not horribly painful, but to the point that I had to crouch down on my hands and knees, swaying through them, every 5 minutes or so while I made Aaron's breakfast and played with him.  I had been really anxious about worrying him if he saw me in pain, and tried to explain to him that Mommy's tummy was hurting a little because the baby was ready to be born.  I tried to offer each contraction for a safe, uncomplicated birth, for Lily to have a long, fulfilling, holy life, and for both of my babies' easy adjustment to our new life as a family of four.   I was finally convinced this was legit labor by now.  I texted Andrew to come home after class.  He told me later that when he looked at the message, his students kept telling him to cut class short and leave right away!

This was around the time the waterworks started.  I had tears in my eyes all morning long as I watched my sweet Aaron bringing books over to read, coloring with me, pushing his trucks around and talking to himself, and, sweetest of all, patting me on the back, saying "Mommy's okay," every time I dropped to the floor.  The thought of being away from him for 2 days and coming back to a completely different dynamic felt like too much to take.  I have such an abiding love for him and for all our little rituals and routines, and even in my happy anticipation to meet Lily, I felt a sort of mourning for my time with Aaron, who made me a mother, as my only baby.  By some miracle, he didn't seem to notice my tears or the catch in my voice.  It was such a privilege, soaking up the morning with him, and I'll always remember it.

Our taking-care-of-Aaron plan was for my friend Jenn to pick him up and take him to her house when I left for the hospital.  I was certain now that I'd be having a baby sometime that day (please God, a short labor--not the next day!), but wasn't sure when I should ask her to come get him.  It was close to his naptime, so I figured I'd put him down, keep going through what felt like fairly light labor for a while, and then ask Jenn to come stay until he woke up.  I called her and she pointed out that it'd probably be easier for him, and more relaxing for me, if she came to get him right then, before his nap, so he could sleep at her house.

Hold the phone.  What she was saying did make sense, but mentally I hadn't been prepared to say goodbye to Aaron just then; I thought I'd have at least a few hours and time to put him to sleep for his nap, at least, and suddenly I only had 20 minutes.  I burst into tears and called my sister in law, Natalie, who has three babies.  I told her that I was sure I was in labor, but was so unsure of whether it was the right decision to send Aaron packing, since it seemed so early in the game.  I was nervous that since this labor felt like such a slow burn, I was adding unnecessary time to the hours we'd spend apart, or that things would slow back down and he'd have to come home, and then do everything all over again in a few days.  I could barely handle one separation, let alone two.   Natalie tried to talk me down through all the hysterics; she kept saying what good hands Aaron was in and how he'd be fine without us.  She also said how much she wished she'd left for the hospital earlier with her third baby (the only one who hadn't been induced); her labor had felt similar to mine, with a manageable level of pain, she said, but suddenly, on a dime, it became unbearable and she was still at home, 45 minutes from the hospital!  I remembered how rough the mere 10-minute car ride to the hospital had been for me last time, and not being eager to relive it, I felt more at peace with having Aaron leave early, but was still struggling to accept it.  I'd packed clothes and his overnight stuff and sent it over to Jenn's a few weeks prior, so I had time to just hang out with him a little longer while she was on her way over.  When she arrived, I was surprised how easily and quickly Aaron let himself be whisked out the door.  I gave him a last hug, told him I loved him so, so much, and tried not to completely lose it.

I puttered around contracting and tidying our apartment while I waited for Andrew to get home.  I tried reading, tried working on a few blog things, and tried playing my uke, but I felt so restless.  I finally settled on putting on The Office and eating the leftover chicken piccatta we'd made the night before.  It made me laugh when I realized that without planning on it beforehand, deciding to eat all that pasta was a carbo-load for the labor ahead of me.

Andrew arrived home around 1:30, and around then was when I remembered my weekly prenatal appointment was scheduled for that afternoon.  Since, at that point in the game, I knew all they'd be checking was Lily's heart rate and making sure she was head down, and since I was pretty sure those two things were fine, it didn't make sense to me to drive in the opposite direction from the hospital to the office and possibly have a long wait time during which things might pick up.  I called to say I wasn't coming, and that I'd probably go to the hospital by the evening.  A nurse I knew picked up the phone.  "How far apart are your contractions?" she asked.  "Four or five minutes, but they don't hurt much," I  said.  "Honey, go to the hospital," she told me.

Because this labor was less painful, to that point, than I remembered it being with Aaron, I still didn't think we needed to leave right away!  I wasn't sure whether pain or frequency of contractions should be the bigger marker of how far along I was, and since my contractions still felt manageable, I decided I wanted us to stay at home a little longer.  With each contraction, dropping down on all fours still helped, and so did bracing my elbows on a table or the sofa arm and swaying my hips.  The four to five minute interval had been the same for about 8 hours at that point, and I started feeling stronger and stronger twinges.  Around 4:45, we decided to head out the door.  I remember looking around the room with the thought that it would look the same next time I saw it, yet everything would be completely different.

This novel has gotten long enough for one post.  Read Part 2 here!

"My Soul Proclaims the Greatness of the Lord:" A Marian Post Roundup

Happy Feast of the Immaculate Conception, y'all.  Mary, under this title, is the patroness of my alma mater (and I know I'm biased, but really, given the name, the history, and the saintly children of Our Lady who've walked the grounds--Elizabeth Ann Seton being one of them--is there a school out there more suited to the term "loving mother?), and on this day in the past few years, I've had several extraordinary, transcendent times that bore tremendous joy and one exceedingly crappy, spiritual warfare-ridden time that ended in a breakdown.  Each of them, I know, regardless of my emotional state, has been the result of binding myself to our mother in Heaven (more on that below), a promise that has borne such fruit in my spiritual life and my marriage and that I'd never take back, even when the battles are on.

So between those things, this day of Mary's conception, the day she was formed to crush the head of evil and to illuminate our path to her son, is one of the most meaningful days in the Church for me.  In honor of her, to whom I'm immeasurably grateful to belong entirely,  here's a collection of posts from the archives on all things Marian:

In which I call Mary a badass (sorry, just trying to capture the right sentiment!), and why there's nothing more beautiful than a man in love with Our Lady

One of the first posts I ever wrote, on looking to Our Lady when you're struggling with beauty and self-worth

Why consecrating myself to Mary was one of the scariest, best things I ever did 

An awesome, self-guided book to prepare for Marian Consecration

How meditating on Our Lady's identity as an earthly mother to Christ can ease some of the insecurities of pregnancy

The exhilarating, sometimes terrifying (but always, always worth it) beauty of loving like Mary and Simeon at the Presentation

What about you?  I'd love to know what this day means to your spirituality and how you're walking with Our Lady this Advent!  Thoughts?

Aaron Tobias Turns Two

Andrew and I spent Sunday afternoon watching football and sorting through all our baby clothes, trying to pick out the ones girly enough for our daughter to wear and still have people know she's an actual girl.  Basically, anything without too many sports balls or trucks got the pass.  We kept cracking up, saying how much Aaron would love to see all the stuff (he was napping) as we found PJs after shirts after onesies all covered in diggers, loaders, and dump trucks, which I now know the difference between thanks to my son's obsession and to our having checked out, at some point, practically every library book involving them.

My adorably weird, hilarious boy is two, and aside from trucks, his interests can be summed up by peanut butter, dirt, books, and jumping off of things.  I think what made me laugh so much about the newborn outfits was that when he was first born, it was so hard to see through the fog of just staying afloat to wonder much about what our son would be like, but having survived that and gotten to what I consider kind of a sweet spot in his development (I mean, there are the typical toddler tantrums, but the fact that he can do so much more for himself and communicate so much more than when he was tiny makes things feel much simpler), I just can't get the smile off my face as I think about how much joy he's brought to our lives.

And there ends the sappy; on to the more factual.  Here's what Aaron's been up to…

I realized after uploading this that that's a knife he's eating off of.  Oops.  He
cut it himself, okay? Exemplary  table manners, that boy.  

Playing: I feel like his imagination has gotten insane over the last few months.  He'll narrate what he's doing while he plays and ask his stuffed animals questions, and so many of his sentences start with "Maybe…" ("Maybe this trash truck is going to go pick up the trash!" Maybe the dinosaurs want some pizza!").  His favorite toys lately are a set of mini construction trucks that he wheels around with Play Doh and any kind of pretend food--the pizza for the dinos is from this set, and he likes cutting up velcro food with the little girl I nanny for and they feed her princess Barbies and zoo animal figures.  He started to enjoy drawing over the summer and is still into it.  For such an active kid, I love watching how still he is when he's scribbling away, and I also love when he kind of art directs me and we draw pictures together of people we know; usually he asks for drawings of him and his three cousins riding on various trucks.

We live within walking distance of a great library and walk there a few times a week.  There are puzzles and, well, more trucks, that he loves playing with in the kids' section and he hasn't gotten into any all-out wars with other kids yet.  They also have kid-height furniture that's still wide and deep enough for adults, if that makes sense, and he loves running around picking out books and reading them together "on the tiny sofas!"

Sleeping: After 13 months of anywhere from two to six nighttime wakeups, during which Andrew and I were about as nice to each other as a pair of vipers, Aaron finally slept through the night for the first time.  Honestly, I think we created the monster in a lot of ways, with me running in to nurse him every time he made a peep and feeling too lazy in my sleep deprivation to put much effort into changing tactics, but I think making the admittedly really hard decision to let him cry a little and settle himself back down, combined with the fact that maybe he was just developmentally more capable with sleep by that point, ended up being good.  I know sleep is such a sensitive subject and would never tell another mom to do exactly what I did out of pride that it's the best, most surefire plan ever, or to expect the exact same results, but for Aaron's personality and for the desperate need to have a kind and non-zombie relationship with my husband again, it worked.

In the middle of all that cray cray during Aaron's first year, I never would've imagined looking forward to bedtime, since I was just doing the same "bedtime" routine with him every 2 hours all night, but I cherish the end of each day as a family so much now.  He takes a bath while one of us watches him and the other does the dishes (welllll, full disclosure, I hate dishes and usually opt for bath duty while Andrew cleans up), and then we all go in Aaron's room together while he runs around in the penguin bathrobe my mom got for him.  Then it's PJ's, stories, tooth brushing, more running (he and Andrew like to play a game we named Interception, where pretends to run toward me but is actually waiting for Daddy to grab him and pick him up), more stories, prayers, and lights out.  Sometimes we hear him really loudly talking to himself after we leave the room and try to keep our laughter quiet while we listen outside the door!  He usually sleeps around 10 or 11 hours at night and takes about a 2 1/2 hour nap in the afternoons.  No complaints from me.

Demonstrating helicopter sounds.

Talking: He talks and I love it, not just for the ease of communicating what he needs and wants but because the kid is so darn funny to me.  I feel like examples are better than vague descriptions so I'll tell you (and tried and failed 439458405968 times to upload video of this) about the cranky-induced little medley he came up with on a recent car ride home, involving repeated, semi-melodic yells of "Aaron TobIAAAAASSSS! …looking for (a truck, a loader, a tree…)"

Also, meet Potato Ron, a pterodactyl of Andrew's invention whom we make up stories about, and whom Aaron has taken to talking about all the time, too.  He like blueberries, flying high in the Jurassic sky (that's the opening line for all our stories!), dancing, and kicking soccer balls.  We found a pterodactyl on Amazon and gave it to Aaron when he woke up on his birthday morning, and the first thing he did was flap the little wings and have him do a dance.  I won't deny our family is weird but there you have it.

I wanted to do a super small, low-key birthday with both of our immediate families this year, but the scheduling didn't work out, so we had two small parties, one with each family, over the weekend.  On Friday we had Andrew's siblings over for lasagna and pumpkin bread, which was very fun aside from the fact that Aaron helped me cook ahead of time all day and kept getting mad that he couldn't eat anything as it was coming out of the oven--fine, I cracked and gave him a muffin early--he loves watching my mixer spin around (we drag a chair over so he can peek in) and helping dump dry ingredients into the bowl!  And Saturday we visited my parents' house and had barbecue, mac and cheese, and this amazing blueberry cake my sister made.  I didn't want gifts to be too much of a focus, so I hadn't really mentioned to him that he'd be getting any, but plenty of jumping around ensued when he opened his presents, especially the ones involving vehicles (aka three out of four)!

I'm sure only a mother could love this level of detail, but it's tiny details like snacks and storytelling that I want to remember one day!  I am beyond thankful for my son's sweet temperament, sense of goofiness, and the excitement about everything that he has at this age.  Happy Birthday, my baby!

P.S.  Did you catch my announcement on Friday?  I'm so excited to reveal the cover design for my book, INVITED, this Thursday, October 22, in honor of JPII's feast day.  You'll find it on Facebook and Instagram first, a week earlier than on the blog!  Follow along here and here.

34 Week Bumpdate

Less attention for the second child, even in the womb, syndrome: it's totally real, you guys.  I suppose the difference in my life from two years ago, namely, that I spend my days playing Hot Wheels and feeding peanut butter spoons to a toddler instead of sitting at a desk with lots of downtime to read about my pregnancy, has made this round of gestation feel much faster than the last.  I've even had to count on a calendar a few times to figure out how far along I am!

Anyway, Aaron's photographically neglected little sis got some time in front of the camera this weekend, and that, along with my being full term (what) approaching so soon, made now feel like a good time to take stock of everything that's going on right now, plus catch up on the things I want to remember about this pregnancy in general.

Weight Gain: Man, you bumpdate inventors don't beat around the bush.  Around 20 pounds, I think.  My weight has been weird this time around.  I actually gained only about 2 pounds in the first four months, probably thanks to throwing up around the clock, and once my morning alllll day sickness subsided, I gained 6 pounds in a month, two months in a row, and have continued on that path of bigger gains at each of my appointments.  Steady on.

Maternity clothes:  Dislike.  But yes, I'm wearing them, at least in places where pants are socially required.  I was able to get away with a belly band, a ratty pair of gym shorts from college that were still comfy, and with pushing down the waists of stretchy bottoms until about a month ago, which I was grateful for since I have neither the space nor budget for a big maternity wardrobe, but it's on to full-fledged elastic and panels now.  So I cling to three pairs of jeans, wear one of these most days, and layer a regular (unbuttoned) button-up or cardigan over top, though I do have a few T-shirts that still fit over everything without getting ridiculously stretched.

Stretch marks? None until about two weeks ago, but my belly is starting to get the tigress look.  Last time I also had some on the bell, as well as my thighs and sides, but to my surprise, they faded pretty quickly after Aaron's birth and aren't really visible anymore.  I like to think these new ones wouldn't bother me if they become permanent, but I also remember how fragile my sense of beauty and worth was in that postpartum haze, so while I'm hoping these marks also go away, I'm also hoping I can be at peace with them should they decide to stick around.

Sleep: Mercifully, pretty good, and definitely better than I recall compared to last time (Two years ago I quite literally wrestled this horrible-to-me pillow to the ground in a 1 a.m. rage...).  About once a week I wake up and can't go back to sleep for about two hours at a time, which I spend peeing, tossing the blankets around, reading, and attempting to pray, but other than that I'm so thankful to sleep through most of the night, most of the time.  I'm trying to soak it up while it lasts!

Miss anything? I enjoy alcohol, but rarely have it, mostly due to my inner cheapskate.  So it's been such a surprise to find myself consistently craving a beer!  As far as dietary pregnancy rebels go, I think I fall about halfway left of moderate and have had things like sushi a few times without really worrying about it.  With the booze though, I have the sense that if I don't often have it while not pregnant, pregnancy maybe isn't the best time to start habitually (moderately!) drinking some, so I've mostly avoided it.  Oh, and basic flexibility…I'm starting to miss the ease of doing seemingly simple stuff like rolling over in bed without crushing my baby honeydew, painting my toenails without also painting my actual toes, and squatting to pick things up without my knees running into my belly!

Movement: I'm 34 weeks.  Let's keep this simple and just call it a resounding yes.

Food Cravings: Well, beer.  Beverage-wise, I've also been guzzling seltzer water with lemon juice as often as I can, thanks to the SodaStream my sister gifted us last Christmas.  Maybe it's a general carbonation craving.  And tart craving.   In keeping with the tart I've joined Aaron in his frozen berries with yogurt habit and almost always want strawberries or an apple first thing in the morning.

Anything making you sick? Not anymore, praise the Lord.

Gender: Still a lady baby, so far as we know.

Labor signs: Lots of Braxton-Hicks, but nothing terribly uncomfortable or frequent enough to make me think I'm in actual labor yet.

Symptoms: Some round ligament pain, which is also more manageable than I recall from my last pregnancy.  I've been taking calcium supplements this time, which evidently are helpful, and have also wondered if being more active this time has helped.

Belly button in or out? Super out.  It wasn't until I saw my reflection when I wore under-belly maternity pants, instead of over-belly ones or my belly band, that I realized how prominent it's gotten!

Rings on or off? On, and I'm hoping with the cooler weather, they'll stay that way.  Also, both my wedding and engagement rings have always been a tiny bit loose, not so much as to to come off or slide up and down my fingers, but enough that the stones sort of fall off-center to the side rather than staying snug in one spot, which has turned out to be handy (accidental hand pun…) for pregnancy.

Looking forward to: meeting this little girl face-to-face, of course, but I think even more so, I can't wait for hers and Aaron's first meeting!  Although I don't expect perfect behavior from Aaron as three become four, I've loved watching his sweetness of spirit be drawn out in this way of him becoming a big brother. He insists his sister read books with us by pulling up my shirt, runs over with toys to show her, and rocks his stuffed animals in the baby swing.  I know for sure I'm going to lose it the first time he sees her…

Baby girl was breech at my doctors' appointment 2 weeks ago, and to see if she'd flipped by the most recent one, my midwife did an ultrasound to check on her position.  I hadn't expected one at all, and the difference in her size and development compared to the one I had at 20 weeks, even at the slightly fuzzy level, was amazing when I saw her on the screen.  Even as she's felt more and more a part of our family over the past 8 months, something about seeing her sweet little face made her coming arrival feel even more real.

Speaking of transitions (of the figurative, not labor-related variety), any wisdom from veteran mamas on helping your first child adjust to your second? And helping you adjust to your second, for that matter?  I love hearing about your experiences!

My Renegade, TOB Take on Maleficent

A few disclaimers before we get into this: 1) I'll admit, this has little to do with weddings today, but this is the forum I have for writing so here I write.  2) If I weren't 8 months pregnant, my hysterical crying over this movie might have been just regular crying.  Still, I think it has a lot of emotional merit worth crying over.  3) Spoilers lurk ahead, though I suspect I'm one of the last people in the world to have watched this.

A few months ago, I read a few posts floating around Catholic blogland praising the truth, beauty and goodness to be found in Disney's Cinderella remake, particularly compared to the lack of goodness in Maleficent, which, of course, is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty.  I'm dying to see Cinderella and haven't yet, but as a lifelong Disney lover, I grabbed Maleficent, in spite of what I'd heard, when I spotted it at the library.  Free movies, people.

To my surprise, I found myself more moved (read: sobbing uncontrollably) by this film than any other I've recently seen.  To my even greater surprise, I seem to be in the minority on this.  After watching, the general secular opinion I read was that Maleficent is visually striking but weak on its intended pro-woman storytelling, and the general Christian interpretations I came across viewed the film as too subversive, with the message that men are weak and true love isn't real.  All due respect, especially to Kendra, whose Maleficent vs. Cinderella post I really enjoyed reading, I have a different take, one rooted in the longings of our fallen hearts and the hope of our redemption.

Maleficent introduces us to the titular fairy when she's a girl, joyful and free in her gorgeous woodland home.  There are some beautiful shots of her flying through the sky, gazing upon the heavens.  Like in the start of Genesis, the world, the garden, is unstained by sin or shame.  

Pope Saint JPII's Theology of the Body points to the Genesis narrative as a lens for understanding the deepest parts of our humanity: daily battles between love and lust, temptation and self-control, and our ache for something infinite, the result of the broken communion between man and God that took place at the Fall.  It's a communion we won't fully get back this side of heaven, but the unitive, nuptial aspects of each vocation give us a glimpse of the Father's divine love, the only love that can ever satisfy entirely.  

The Fall in Maleficent takes place when Maleficent's first love, the future King Stefan and Princess Aurora's (a.k.a. Sleeping Beauty's) father, a poor young man and reformed thief who's set his sights on greatness, secures the throne for himself by fulfilling the (current) dying King's request that Maleficent be destroyed after humiliating him on the battlefield.  Specifically, Stefan returns to Maleficent's wood after years apart have passed between them, drugs her into sleep, and cuts off her wings.  

The scene where Maleficent wakes from this sleep, completely bewildered and in deep physical and emotional pain, is wrenching (this was about where my tears started, and they didn't really stop after that), and marks the start of her path to becoming the glamorous-yet-terrifying villain I remember from my childhood.  Her transformation comes complete with shape-shifting raven sidekick; in this movie he is a man named Diaval whom Maleficent tends to treat like a plaything--to his resentment in several instances--turning him into whatever animal suits her whims and her needs.

Are these exemplary, functional relationships between men and women?  Not at all.  But that's what I think affected me so deeply and so truthfully about this movie.  It's oversimplifying, in my opinion, for morally-minded viewers to draw the conclusion that the film justifies Maleficent's descent into darkness and that it begs us to sympathize with her.  It's undeniable that she's been horribly, painfully wronged, by a perhaps more obvious villain than she in Stefan, yet it remained impossible  to see her in an entirely sympathetic light, or to feel she had a right to her sense of hatred.  I just saw it as a believable, if not virtuous, reaction to being so burned in her vulnerability.  I think Maleficent's resulting mistrust and manipulation of men makes her neither the sole victim of the wing-cutting, nor merely a misunderstood woman whom we should see as morally relatively good just because she was on the receiving end of an evil act.  I wept for the tragedy of human fallenness and of the wounds men and women inflict on each other, and for the actual walls of thorns Maleficent builds around herself.  King Stefan falls for selfish ambition, while Maleficent falls for revenge and isolation, each to the other's harm.

It's an interesting figure of speech, "falling" for something.  The movie speaks to this in a literal way through Stefan and Maleficent's sins, yet the phrase also implies someone has believed a lie they shouldn't have.  In Maleficent's case, she falls for the lie that cursing Stefan's daughter, Aurora, will right the wrong done to her and bring her fulfillment.  The second half of the movie focuses on the surprising maternal pull that draws Maleficent to Aurora as the princess grows up in seclusion, safe from Maleficent's spinning wheel curse.

Strangely, it's only since becoming a mother that I've felt most acutely a woman's desire for motherhood and for giving life, and have mourned most deeply the times when a woman struggles with this, through miscarriage, fertility issues, or otherwise.  I cried a whole lot more as I watched Maleficent's inclination to care for baby Aurora, who's left in the care of three incompetent pixies, and later, to engage her in conversation and invite Aurora into her company.  I found it beautiful that a woman so broken, so walled, still found her feminine heart stirred, subtly and unknowingly at first, and then more fully, by Aurora's new life as an infant and by Aurora's purity of spirit as a teenager.

Can we talk about Maleficent's love for Aurora?  Much seems to have been made of the fact that the movie suggests men are unnecessary, for the reason that it's Maleficent's motherly kiss that wakes Aurora from her cursed slumber, instead of Prince Philip's.  While it's true Maleficent's experience of betrayal is what leads her to make a mockery of true love's kiss when she casts the curse on the baby princess (which, again, is in my eyes an indicator of her imperfection, rather than a call to justify her actions without critical evaluation), I'm not so sure the reality of true love is in question here so much as the reality of love at first sight.


Aurora and Philip share a sweet, shy conversation in the woods at their first meeting, which notably lacks the "Once Upon a Dream" sequence from the original Sleeping Beauty, with its lines like "you'll love me at once."  When Aurora's pixie guardians learn about the prince, they're so excited at the possibility of Philip being the one to break the inevitable sleeping spell that they seem to depersonalize him.  In their understandable desperation to save Aurora, the pixies are happy enough that anyone, that is, the first man to come along, might love the princess, rather than someone.  JPII professed in one of his TOB audiences that "man is unique and unrepeatable above all because of his heart, which decides his being from within"--it makes sense, then, that each person and each couple's love story will be similarly unique. 

I go back and forth on the idea of soulmates.  On the surface, maybe, it looks like Maleficent suggests either that true romantic love isn't real, or that Philip and Aurora aren't meant to be, but I think there's actually another idea at work.  Regardless of whether or not the prince and princess are each other's destiny, the spell simply specifies that the princess be awoken by "true love's kiss," raising the question of whether Philip and Aurora can actually share true love, as in self-gift and sacrifice, after just one short encounter.  It could be just a matter of semantics, but I prefer to see Philip's "failed" kiss as an insight into how we fall in love--it's more than emotion, more than the flutter of feelings that spring from a first meeting, that makes for authentic romance and good will. What's more, the movie makes a point of showing that Philip is an entirely different man than Stefan.  Unlike the king, who drugs Maleficent and violates her body against her will, Philip is hesitant to even kiss Aurora while she's asleep, for the very reason that she'll have no idea, and finally agrees only at the pixies' incessant requests.

I got a little wary at the end of the movie, which shows Aurora and Maleficent on their own, back in Maleficent's newly dethroned forest.  The woods have been restored to their original beauty and Maleficent's wings have been restored to her (which, together, suggest to me a powerful image of a return to the garden in eternity and the resurrection of the body).  Had the film concluded just with that whole All You Women Who Independent business, I would've been disappointed.  After what I perceive as an effort to explore the truth of love as a gradual development--the fruit of coming to see and know another, rather than instantaneous, traditional fairy-tale love--leaving Aurora entirely on her own would've been a little too obviously feminist, too easy an ending for me.  But I don't think this movie takes many easy outs.  Instead, by making a choice to show Prince Philip returning to visit the princess, we're left with a sense of possibility that maybe a truthful, personal love really could develop between these two.  Their first meeting and first kiss aren't the end game, but the beginning.

So that's that, my unexpected reaction to and weird interpretation of this story.  I think secular critics missed the point of the movie by reducing it to a commentary on the injustices men inflict on women, and that it's a shame it was marketed (falsely, in my opinion) in a way that made light of evil.  And I think audiences who care about the moral implications of what they watch also missed the mark, making the assumption, perhaps, that if any plot twist strays too far from tradition, there must be some agenda at work. I know it'd be naive of me to think Hollywood doesn't, in fact, have an agenda, yet the beauty of Maleficent lies, to me, in the truths about who we are, beneath any cultural conventions or media-driven intentions about love, sex, and gender.  Whether the world chooses to recognize it or not, it's the truth that all of us are fallen and walking around with wounded hearts, yet there is grace at work in the world, and restorative love and healing are possible.

What about you? Agree?  Disagree?  What did you think of Maleficent, and did you notice any of the TOB underpinnings I did?  I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Surviving a Long-Distance Engagement, Catholic-Style

Andrew proposed to me beneath a statue of Our Lady on our college campus, the summer after I graduated and right as we were preparing to spend a year apart, me for mission work and him for grad school 5 hours away.  We set our wedding date for 13 months later.

Given the choice, both of us would've preferred a shorter engagement.  Yet given the responsibilities entrusted to each of us over the upcoming year, it would have been both impractical and imprudent to get married any sooner.  Off we went in opposite directions, seeing each other roughly halfway between at one of our families' houses every two or three weeks.  And oh hell was it a marathon.  When I think back on that year, the hardest aspects were the mounting panic that our wedding was fast approaching and we had little time to plan, the heightened temptations against chastity that came with not seeing each other often, balancing time alone with family time (since they were hosting us and also happy to have us around), and struggling against impatience. If you're currently engaged long-distance and have similarly experienced at least one of these, and if you'll allow me some unsolicited advice, here's what my own heart could've used some reassurance on at the time:

Don't fall into believing the two of you are all alone.  Sounds obvious, yet I bought into this lie over and over, the one that made me think if I didn't control every part of wedding plans and cultivating our relationship across the miles, everything would be doomed.  But it wasn't just on us to take care of all that.  So often, I forgot to invite the Father in and to turn to prayer for even the smallest matters.   Since we'd started dating, Andrew and I had just sort of naturally created our own litany to a handful of saints, and both of us had fallen hard, in particular, for JPII's spirituality rooted in human love.  At some point, Andrew reminded me of the grace and power that reside in saintly intercession, and though I, in my inadvertent pride, took a while to develop the habit of calling on their prayers, there truly was peace to be found there.  If you haven't already, choose a few patrons for your engagement and pray to them often.

Don't expect perfection, but don't stop pursuing it.  Chastity, yo.  It's such a battle--both before marriage, when it asks abstinence of us (though I don't personally consider chastity and abstinence the same thing), and continues to be tough after marriage, as spouses are constantly called to die to self, to live out their sexuality through self-gift in its infinite forms, and to strive for virtue and self-discipline.  But let's talk about the before marriage part.   No matter where the two of you are living relative to each other, it can be seriously hard to discipline the good and beautiful desire to physically express your love, so much so that for me, I sometimes questioned (and hated that I was even asking myself) whether love or lust was the motivation.  Add infrequent time together into the mix, thanks to long-distance dating, and things get even harder.

But listen.  While I fully view sexual sin as serious business, I also view it as so incredibly human.  We are created, body and soul, with a longing for the infinite, an ache whose earthly fulfillment is fulfilled, at least in part, through a properly integrated expression of our sexuality.  For those called to marriage, that expression is physical, so of course those desires are right at the surface during engagement.  While it's true that God is just, it's also true that he is so, so merciful and wants so deeply for us to run to his mercy and to come back to him every time we fall.  Be gentle with yourselves, don't give up the fight (I'm no theologian, but in my opinion there is more culpability in giving in to temptation because you've decided chastity's not worth it than in continuing to seek holiness even amidst occasions of giving in), and go to confession as often as you need to.  Speaking of which…

Seek out spiritual time together, especially time away from wedding planning.  Practically speaking, it was sometimes necessary for Andrew and I to condense into a single weekend some of the wedding planning that we might've had more time for had we been able to see each other more often (you can read about our semi-disastrous registry experience here…).  But, making it a priority to go to confession and Mass when we were together, and to pray with each other in the car and before heading off to bed, impacted our peace for the better, in ways I probably didn't even recognize.  When your time is limited, it's tempting to try and fill every second with managing your to-do list, yet we quickly noticed how much more relaxed and content we felt when we made a conscious effort at leisure and quality time.  Carving out time for prayer and for just sitting down to read or get coffee had the ironic effect of making us feel like there was actually more time than we perceived to get everything wedding-related taken care of, and had two added benefits for our situation.  First, making a point to relax gave us time with just each other, which was sometimes hard to come by when we were visiting each other in our parents' homes and were usually surrounded by other people who were happy we were there (that setup was really good for chastity accountability, but not as good for quality conversation between the two of us).  Second, it gave us an opportunity to trust each other and follow through on our word in a specific way; because it simply wasn't possible, or even necessary, to do every bit of wedding stuff together, we had no option but to delegate tasks to each other and do them on our own, a habit that came in handy after we got married, too.

Don't just make this time about surviving.  For me, at least, there were so many occasions when I wanted to fast forward through our engagement and just get to the altar already.  Normal as it might have been (someone tell me I was normal?), it would've been unhealthy if my entire life was defined by the fact that I was engaged or if I didn't take pleasure in anything outside of my relationship with my fiancé.  I needed to remind myself I was doing work I loved and sincerely enjoying my life's other pursuits.  Time is sacred, for the simple yet profound fact that God freely chose to enter into it, a man among us.  Use it well.  Frankly, counting down to the start of my vocation flat out sucked sometimes,  yet I also clearly remember a sense of sweetness in the waiting and an urge to not make it wasted time, not in my friendships, my work, my spiritual life, and my overall sense of presence.

Last week Andrew had two back to back loooong workdays of student-teacher conferences where he didn't arrive home until I was almost ready for bed, yet by the time he walked in the door, I was so happy to finally talk to my husband that we were up for another few hours.  Even though he'd basically spent the past twelve hours talking, we spent the time asking question after question about each others' days, and I did my usual I'm-so-glad-Aaron's-in-bed-but-let's-talk-about-all-the-funny-things-he-did-and-look-at-pictures-of-him thing.

At one point, Andrew asked me if our conversation, one we'd unconsciously been saving up all day for, reminded me of our engagement.  It did!  Four years ago, when most of our daytime hours were occupied and we weren't seeing each other at the end of the workday, we didn't usually talk until after dinner in the evening and did a pretty similar blow-by-blow of our days, mixed in with all the thoughts and debates the day had sparked.  I love that I get to talk to this man forever.

What about you?  Is your engagement long-distance?  What are the biggest struggles you've faced, and the best ways you've found to deal with them?  I always, always enjoy hearing your stories!

A Living Heart: Attending Pope Francis' Mass in Washington, D.C.

You guys.  The Pope.  I count myself so blessed to have attended Francis' canonization Mass for now-Saint Junipero Serra (with a seat, in the semi-shade, no less!) last Wednesday, yet was surprised by all the mixed feelings in my heart when what I expected was more along the lines of happiness and fortitude alone.  Beforehand, I tried to be conscious of not trying to force myself into any particular emotions surrounding the Pope's visit, but just prayed that his words would take root in my heart and bear fruit in my vocation and my spiritual life.  It's only now, nearly a week later, that I'm starting to recognize those fruits and hoping they're just the seed of things even more significant to come.

I didn't want to have my phone out much, but by the time we got home I did have about 20 versions each of this photo of us and of the view from our seats.  I want to call it pew-view, but you know, it wasn't a pew... 

Truthfully, when a few people asked me how I felt about going to the Mass, the first word that came to mind was "undeserving," but I felt sort of insecure giving that as an answer.  I felt undeserving not just in the greater spiritual sense that any good I receive is purely thanks to grace, but in the sense that I applied late to ask for tickets from my parish and was surprised to receive them, I'd never even heard of St. Junipero until I had my tickets, with his name on them, in hand, and I found out I was going only a few days beforehand; I felt like aside from happening to have gone to confession the weekend prior, I wasn't particularly prepared, spiritually, for a papal encounter.

It's uncomfortable, writing this.  The day after the Mass, as I scrolled through all my social media peppered with excitement over Francis' visit, I felt a growing sense of guilt that I didn't…I don't know, feel more.  I suspected what I did feel, which was kind of down on myself, had nothing to do with the Mass or the Pope, but with my own deficiency, which I don't exactly enjoy contending with.  Lately I've been feeling in a spiritual rut, a creative rut, and just generally not as alive as I'd like to be, thanks to a little too much time in front of screens.  I've been revisiting Francis' homily over and over the last few days.  His invitation to rejoice, as in the Mass' second reading, even when "so much seems to stand in the way of this invitation," and his reminder to the faithful of St. Junipero's personal motto, "always forward," maybe should've left me with a renewed spirit of mission and determination, yet I felt more a sense of defeat and frustration with myself.  The Pope pointed out that in the absence of joy, habit and apathy can come to govern us too entirely, "with a fatal consequence: our hearts grow numb."  Yikes.

The more times I meditated on his words, though, the better I started to feel.  Francis doesn't stop at this statement, nor intend it to be just a warning, I don't think.  He invites us to overcome "the force of habit" with a love for the Gospel and for sharing it "in faces of wounds, of thirst, of weariness, doubt and pity."  There are obvious examples of literal woundedness, thirst, and doubt in our brothers and sisters, those more than worthy of works of mercy.  Yet in another way, those faces are the faces of all of us, and certainly me.  As the faithful, I feel like he's saying we've been entrusted with much, yet being on the inside of the truth doesn't mean we're strangers to brokenness and imperfection.

But we also aren't strangers to the hope of our redemption.  I'm filled with admiration and surprise-yet-not-surprise at how Pope Francis so often asked those he met on his visit to pray for him, and how often he seemed to indicate that he wasn't just coming to us, but that we were coming to him.  Since his election, it's been so clear to me what a man of humility and Franciscan poverty he is, which maybe is why being at this Mass felt so unusually…normal.  Even in the presence of the Holy Father and in a different setting than my usual parish, I sort of just felt like I was at a Mass--a beautiful, elevated one, to be sure--but not like I was being spoken to by a celebrity or showman.  Just like I was being spoken to by Christ.

I had the pleasure of going to Mass and brunch with Jen this weekend, and described to her my struggle to put the experience of encountering Pope Francis into words.  Amazingly, she got it.  She told me the story of the time she walked into St. Peter's Basilica for Adoration.  Even in the midst of extraordinary beauty, history, and holiness, she said, she didn't feel overwhelmed with sentiment or drama, but simply felt the complete peace of knowing she was home.  That, ultimately, is one of the things I love about the Catholic faith: no matter where you're coming from, what language the Mass is in (this one was in Spanish!), or what wounds you bear, the liturgy, the sacraments, and the potential for boundless joy are home to us.  Thank you, Papa, for reminding me.  May my heart be not numb, but broken open, a heart of flesh united to Jesus' sacred heart.

How about you?  I'd love to hear about your experience of the papal visit, and not just if you saw him in person!  How did the Holy Father speak to your heart?

Precious Words: Ways to Pray For Your Fiance or Husband, and Why I Sometimes Find It Harder Than I Expected

At least in the correspondence category, I sometimes feel like I was a better wife to Andrew before I even knew I was going to be his wife--you can read about all the letters I wrote to my then-future husband here.

We exchanged a lot of notes back and forth while we were dating, some that made me all twitterpated and anxious for marriage and some that just made me crack up.  I was reading some yesterday during a nesting/reorganizing rampage and just laughed in joyful disbelief and gratitude for what we share. 

Now that the gushing is out of my system…a few years ago for Christmas, I gave Andrew a journal we could write in together as a way to hold our letters in one spot.  We filled up a lot of pages quickly…at first.  Then we petered out a little.  I'm fine with things being unforced and just naturally having different seasons for different things--I prefer it that way, in fact--but at least on my part, the lack of writing started to feel like a lack of effort rather than a lack of actually wanting to start writing to my husband again.  

So, in a fit of Pinspiration a while back, I set out to do a 30 Days of Prayer-type thing for Andrew, and…well, failed.  I got as far as making a list of 30 intentions specific to him and faithfully wrote him a note about each day's intention before I went to bed, so he could read it before work in the morning.  For about two weeks.  The biggest problem for me, I think, was intentionality.  I sometimes fall into not viewing self-imposed projects, in this case writing a letter every day for 30 days, as real obligations, even when they should be--not that the writing was a duty in the sense it was a burden, but it became too easy for me to push it aside in favor of other things I wanted or needed to do…if I'm being honest,  it was more things I wanted (if the only choice was between a letter or dishes, my answer would've been obvious...).

Anyway, I gleaned at least two fruits from this.  The first is that in all things, not just in letters, my husband deserves the best of me, which includes a willingness to follow through on commitments and to sacrifice my time for him.  Not exactly a revelation, but an important reminder for me nonetheless.  The second is something I've always known and loved: that words have immense significance, and can become such a gift to another person.  It's easy for me to pray constantly for Andrew in my head throughout the day and to frequently thank God for our relationship, but I really do love the idea of creating occasions for more focused, intentional prayer.

That being said, I'm eager to reignite my attempts at daily written prayer for Andrew, maybe with less pressure on myself this time yet with a renewed effort to willingly give this gift to him, and I'm also curious to know how other couples do the prayer for each thing.  What's your experience been?  Do you and your fiancee have specific or creative ways you pray for each other? And do you encounter any of the same consistency struggles as I do?  I'd love to know!

P.S.  I'm SO excited to be attending Pope Francis' canonization Mass for Bl. Junipero Serra in Washington, D.C. tomorrow!  I would love to pray for you--please do get in touch if you have any special intentions!

This Is My Body: Dealing With Wedding Night Nerves

Sometimes I think I really must be a lunatic.  I just like talking to people about sex.  Well, about chastity, NFP, and the Theology of the Body, specifically, so hopefully not so crazy?  Anyway, week after week, the most-read posts on this blog are the ones I featured two years ago on preparing for your wedding night when you are virgins, when you aren't, and when one of you has a sexual past and the other doesn't.  If you missed them, you can catch them here:

Be Not Afraid: The Sex Post

Be Not Afraid: The Sex Post, Part 2

Guest Post from Trista: Sex is Replacable; Love Is Not

Or maybe you're coming to this from a different place. In the time since these posts were published, I've gotten emails every few months from brides-to-be expressing the nervousness they're feeling as their wedding nights draw closer.  Thanks to what I attribute entirely to grace and well-timed formation, neither Andrew nor I were anxious about our wedding night, but I completely get that there's so much anticipation, conventional expectations, and a lifetime of experiences personal to just you, all packed into one night--it can understandably add up to major nerves.  So here, humbly and imperfectly (and hopefully not too awkwardly…), speaking only from my experience and the candid thoughts I've shared back and forth with other brides, are my thoughts on what seem to be common wedding-night concerns, and how to approach them with love and a spirit of openness.

If you're nervous about physical pain:
Again, I can only speak for myself here.  In my experience, our first few times were uncomfortable.  Yet with complete honesty, I can say the pain was coupled with a very true, pure sense of joy at finally being able to unite myself fully to Andrew and express our love in all the ways we'd been longing for our whole engagement.

The Cross is sometimes described as the agony and the ecstasy, and I meditated on that sometimes during those first few months.  To unite yourself to Christ is to accept suffering, but to unite yourself to him is also to trust in the promise of fulfillment, in every longing of our hearts.  Just so we're clear, I wasn't thinking about these things while everything was going on!  They were, however, constantly in my heart and my prayer life as we adjusted to being newlyweds.  And on the technical side, using a lubricant as often as you need can help ease discomfort you might feel, and so can taking your time with one another before actual intercourse to relax your body.

If you're nervous about the different intimacy you're about to share:
Just like it takes time in a relationship to build communication and honesty in your emotional and spiritual lives, so it is with your physical relationship.  Don't be frustrated if your sexual relationship takes a while, well into your first year of marriage, even, to feel more effortless and free.  If you are truthful and loving, I promise it will happen.

Meantime, it's not bad or wrong to feel like sex is a major step--it'd probably be weirder to view it as insignificant, no?  There's no rule saying you have to have sex the second you walk out of your reception and shut the doors.  Being so close as husband and wife will be completely new, and it's okay if you'd prefer to wait a night or two.  So long as other intimate acts aren't used as a means to an end, it can be really beautiful to just take your time getting to know each other, fully revealed.

If you're nervous about how to communicate in a new way and put your sexuality into words:
I dated someone who genuinely struggled with articulating his emotions and being honest about his feelings towards our relationship, towards how I and other people treated him, and towards his own strengths and weaknesses, to the point that he would often be vague and evasive, partially out of not really knowing how to verbalize his thoughts, only to let out a flood of unfiltered, uncontrolled anger every few weeks.  When Andrew and I first became friends, I remember being so struck by his humble sincerity; he thought (and still thinks) carefully before speaking, yet what he said communicated so clearly what he was really thinking that there seemed to be no division between what he was saying and who he actually was.  I could just see him so clearly, and I feel like I came to know him so truthfully.

I say this because many sex therapists, religious and otherwise, hold the belief that a couple's sex life is a sort of microcosm of the other parts of their life together--that is, if they're generous in their physical relationship, they're likely to express generosity in other, non-sexual ways, and if they withhold things from each other in the bedroom, it can indicate other behaviors in their relationship that point to selfishness or to bottling up conflict.  My husband's directness and honesty are two of my favorite qualities of his, and he's drawn out similar habits in me that had never been tapped by anyone else before.

They've served us well in every part of our relationship, but in our intimacy, as well.  I truly feel like the best remedy for nerves about communication is simply to be honest from the get-go about what you both like and dislike, what's uncomfortable, and what you are open to.  At first, I felt shy bringing up stuff like that because we'd never had an opportunity to talk about it before, but it has helped our marriage so much, not just in the sexual category, to be completely open and to talk about things with love and charity.  Bringing everything onto the table, in a prudent way, eliminates so many possible misunderstandings or feelings that stay hidden because they are never addressed.

If you're nervous about making the night special when you're abstaining for NFP reasons:
We prayerfully made the decision to postpone pregnancy in the beginning of our marriage because Andrew was in grad school and I was unemployed.  Our wedding fell right in the fertile middle of my cycle.  The thought you're having, that abstaining might take away from your wedding night, is totally understandable, and it definitely went through my head a few times.  Every couple is different, of course, but being on the other side of it now, I can honestly and so joyfully say that not being able to have sex right away wasn't disappointing at all and didn't take away one thing from our wedding night.

On that first night, there is so much that is brand new and special--being completely alone, seeing each other for the first time, and learning how to be intimate in a new way.  You're so free.  That said, in our case we weren't thinking at all about what we didn't get to have, but what we did.  I think, too, that for us, going from mostly just kissing before marriage all the way to sex on the night of our marriage would've been a huge leap, and I'm actually grateful for the opportunity to just enjoy one another slowly at first.  That's not to say it wouldn't have been nice to have the chance if we hadn't been abstaining; it's just that nothing felt missing, and things were wonderful as they were.

If you're anxious about being disappointed or the night not being special just for the reason that you'll be abstaining, I'd encourage you to pray about not seeing sex as a finish line.  Try, instead, to see every act of intimacy as something beautiful in and of itself, not just a step on the path to something else.  I know that for me, I was concerned about the morality of certain acts if they weren't going to result in going the whole nine.  A faithful married friend advised me, at the time, to view each of these other things as an act of love that isn't striving for anything more beyond the present moment.  When they are approached with love for the other and a sense of purity, she reminded me, there is nothing wrong about them, and they aren't acting as some sort of false start or way of arousing the other person without fulfillment; they can be completely fulfilling and beautiful on their own when there's no grasping for more.

On your wedding day, you stand before God and man and vow that the good of another person is more valuable, more important to you than the good of yourself.  On your wedding night, acting with love when you've chosen to abstain is a heroic sacrifice and an immediate, tangible way of living out your vows: putting aside your wants for the good of the other and, in this case, for the good of your new marriage.

Alright.  Thoughts, friends?  Andrew and I once gave a talk to engaged couples that we high-fived over afterwards, only to read the surveys and find the general sentiment was "don't talk so much about sex." Oh the humbling; how I need it.  But if this post has helped you, I'd love to know, and my prayer is that it bear much fruit and living water in your marriage.  Feel free to toss in your two cents of advice, and if  you feel like chatting, email me anytime at stephanie.captivetheheart@gmail.com.  I love hearing from you!