The End…and the Beginning

Have you heard? I am so, so proud to share with you that my new ministry and website, SPOKEN BRIDE, launched yesterday! Click on over to read more about our mission, see our first wedding feature (the photo below is a preview), and find out about how you can submit your wedding and writing for our site. If you're a Catholic wedding vendor, applications are open for our Vendor Guide and we'd love to see your work! And don't forget to follow along on Facebook and Instagram and to tag your wedding and those you attend with #spokenbride so we can see and share in your witness.

Photo Credit: Maison Everett

And that, friends, brings me to my last post here, at least for now. From now on I'll be writing over at SPOKEN, and I hope you'll join me there. All the wedding content, husband-gushing, spiritual reflections, love stories, and baby news that've accumulated here over the last four years is here on Captive the Heart to stay, and I hope the About, Book, and Spoken Bride tabs in the menu give you a clear roadmap to whatever Catholic wedding needs you have. If they don't, or if you just want to chat, I'd love to hear from you at stephanie@spokenbride.com. Truly!

I've been putting off writing this, trying to come up with something at least moderately reflective about what my life was like when I started this blog compared to what it's like now, but I think I said it already in last week's post on Mother Teresa's spousal love for Christ. It feels fitting to be wrapping up this site on the Feast of the Visitation, a day when two women deeply, giddily, profoundly rejoiced in each others' happiness. I've loved the community you helped me create here and have been so happy becoming real-life friends and email and social media correspondents with you, hearing about your engagements and wedding days and seeing the pictures, and praying with you as a sister through the better and the worse. Thank you, thank you, thank you, and this isn't goodbye!

Venerable Fulton Sheen's Three to Get Married gave this blog its name. As I flipped through it again recently for the first time since I was engaged six years ago, this passage captured me in its description of heady romance come back down to earth, resolute in sacrifice and fidelity while still loving and remembering that initial glow and looking forward to the future. It suits my season in life right now, and I think it also suits this time of transition:

Every great thing begins with a dream, whether it be that of the engineer who plans a bridge or of the heart that plans a home. The soul draws upon its infinity and colors it with the gold of paradise. No one ever climbs to the heavens without passing through the clouds. This foretaste of heaven is good, and even heaven-sent. It is the advance agent of heaven, telling the heart of that real happiness that lies ahead. Actually, it is bait, a blueprint, a John the Baptist, an announcer telling of the program to come.

Here's to the future, here's to Spoken Bride, and here's to you, my beautiful sisters. I fully expect to hear from you soon, and until then I'll meet you in the Eucharist.

Mother Teresa's Example to Me as a Bride, Looking Ahead & An Announcement

During Lent, I decided, along with Emily of Raising Barnes and Stephanie of Bluebird Songs, to make my way through Mother Teresa's Come Be My Light for a little spiritual reading book club.  I have to admit, even after Pentecost I'm still making my way through, but the experience of reading about this beautiful woman's call to found her order as a "call within a call," among immense obstacles in the form of her spiritual director and bishop wanting to be sure the pull on Teresa's heart was from God and, most significantly, in the face of intense spiritual dryness and a complete absence of feeling the Lord's presence, left such an impression on me.

I first heard of the book from my best friend's younger sister, who at the time was discerning entering the Poor Clares.  At the time, I saw Mother Teresa as immensely beautiful and holy, so much so that she wasn't the most relatable, though certainly very admirable.  The book sounded interesting, yet I'm aware now that during my conversion in college I was protected by grace and didn't really experience much darkness or spiritual attack, so that being the focus of the book didn't really draw me at the time.

I found a copy in a used bookstore after I graduated and decided to read it because of Tersa's missionary nature, as I was spending that year on mission.  It was also the year I was engaged, and what stood out to me most, and still did on this second reading, is how literally Jesus and Teresa were like spouses. As I read during Lent, I noticed how Jesus constantly called her things like his little bride and little spouse, and noticed the sacrifice to which she went to do his will, even when in doubt and even when it caused her pain.  Before the publication of Come Be My Light, most of the world didn't know that the beautiful sister in blue and white, perpetually smiling and visibly joyful, was thirsting for God, crying out to him for years as she felt, quite literally, locked out of heaven.
What's more, Mother Teresa's spousal love for Christ stood out to me as a pure, beautiful form of obedience.  As a sister, Teresa took the Franciscan vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and later felt drawn to make a fourth private vow: she promised Jesus that she would refuse him nothing.  How simple, I thought, yet so immense to consider as it's actually lived out, especially when you consider her dark night of the soul.  

I asked myself what Andrew's and my relationship would look like if, after discerning that a request of his was a worthy one, I were to simply do it, out of love for him and a desire for both of our sanctification.  Obviously, things like chores don't require much discernment, but our major life decisions do, and the level of trust required of me would be huge.  I told my husband this, and after he thanked me for being so willing to love him in this way, he said, "You have to remember that I'm not God. I don't have every answer figured out, and don't have the perfect knowledge that he does of every right path for us."  Smart, smart, good-lookin' man. He'd started the book, too, and told me he'd also been inspired by Teresa's obedience to Christ, her beloved spouse.  But what he pointed out to me is that of course we can't make each other into idols and blindly assume that everything we ask of each other is something we should actually do.  Still, we agreed, what an amazing model for a marriage to imitate Mother Teresa's faithfulness and desire to seek the Father's will in all things, in the form of constant daily obedience.

Reading the book six years ago as Andrew's fiance, Mother Teresa's divine intimacy with Jesus felt like a huge, but worthy, ideal to strive for, though I knew I'd fall short and would have to go easy on myself. And now, nearly five years into my marriage, I actually feel pretty sobered by the realization of just how damn much I fall short. Andrew's weeks of intense studying for his comps exams a few months ago were one of the most stressful times our relationship has ever encountered, and Come Be My Light was a powerful motivation for me to realize this time is God's will for us.  I saw, and continue to see, so clearly how a willingness to put yourself aside so entirely for your spouse is worth the constant effort.  It's worth our eternity.

Depending on my mood or how I've acted on a given day, that realization is either discouraging or inspiring, but I keep reminding myself that being down on myself is not of God, and neither is feeling frustrated with my abilities in my marriage.  Instead, it's an opportunity to beg for grace and try to receive it well.

So that's our life as we prepare to celebrate our fifth anniversary two months from now.  I look back at photos of us as newlyweds and see two twenty-three year old kids with stars in their eyes, aglow with the joy of a lifetime to come.  And truly, the joy we've experienced is impossible to put into words.  The stumbling blocks, the sorrows, though; they're just as incommunicable.  We still have stars in our eyes, but we're tempered now by the times we've failed each other in sacrifice or patience or quick apologies or even simple kind words.  

I told Andrew recently how sorry I still feel for all these long since forgiven moments, and though we both understand we should still hold each other to a standard of truest love, he said knowing that we've fallen short has still brought us closer to each other and to holiness.  When we got married, he said, we loved each other completely (with all the effort and intention that entails), because we knew a completeness of each other at the time.  The longer we've been married, though, the more complete that vision of each other has become. He told me that in some ways, the trust we founded our vows on is even more trustworthy and entire now, after being tested by our seeing the deepest flaws and weaknesses in each other.  Our love, and commitment to keep loving completely, remains, and is richer than it was on that July day five summers ago.

Approaching a milestone anniversary, three moves and two babies from when I started Captive the Heart in 2012, feels like a good time for a transition.  I mentioned to you a few weeks ago how thrilled I am to be collaborating with three dear friends on Spoken Bride, a wedding and lifestyle blog for Catholic brides and newlyweds launching on the 31st of this month, the Feast of the Visitation.  At least for now, I'll be focusing my writing efforts there.  Spoken will feature real, beautiful Catholic wedding photos and love stories alongside the kind of wedding-related content that's here on Captive the Heart, so my words might take a turn a little away from the personal toward the editorial. I'll still be telling stories and showing you pictures of my babies here.  I'll be writing my last few posts here over the next few weeks, and will continue sharing articles, graphics, and photos you won't find on the blog on Facebook through the 31st.  I am so unbelievably excited for this new ministry and the truth and beauty it has to offer. I hope you'll join me!

What Aziz Ansari and JPII Both Showed Me About Love

I downloaded Aziz Ansari's Modern Romance from the library to read in the hospital after Lily was born, thinking I was basically in for a quick read of a comedy book.  The thing, though, about downloading library books instead of borrowing the physical copies, is you miss out on reading the dust jacket, and maybe it was just me, but I actually had no idea the book is more serious than that.

Ansari set out to write a book just filled with his observations and quips on love and dating, but the more people's text messages he read aloud during his stand-up shows, and the more he talked to older generations and noticed what set their relationships apart from ours, the more he noticed young adults have a range of self-destructive habits when it comes to the intersection of dating, technology, and social media.  He changed tack and worked with sociologists and huge focus groups to get at the core of why people our age have so many complaints about finding love, and I'd argue that the book functions primarily as a social study, not as a humor book--the jokes are sprinkled throughout and are direct responses to the data.

Props, Tommy Fresh. If you can get past what I thought was pretty judiciously used cussing (and, full disclosure, mentions of a few acts that Catholics just can't get behind), I admired the heck out of this book and recommend it.  For a well-liked, truly funny celeb to call out behaviors like sexting as an opening line and refusing to commit to a relationship for the reason that things like Tinder and online dating make it seem like someone better is always around the corner, in a way that's sharp but non-judgy, letting the facts and testimonies speak for themselves, is bold.

And perceptive.  Like the JPII-lovin' cliche that I am, I couldn't ignore the echoes of Love and Responsibility I heard in the stories from Modern Romance.  I want to share them here because I know when you're surrounded by a solid, faithful community and/or are in a relationship that strives for holiness, it's a little too easy to be hard on our brothers and sisters who are out there dating the culture's way.  Whether someone recognizes it or not, every experience of longing for romance, of desire, and of wishing there was something more is an experience of longing for God, the only one in whom we'll find true love and true rest.  Each of us want that; each wandering, restless, aching heart.  Here's the proof:

Every human person is loved and willed into existence, entirely unique, and has immense dignity in God's image and likeness.  And each of us is someone, not something.  John Paul II used the phrase "unique and unrepeatable" to describe the human person in his Christmas Day homily, 1978, and it became sort of a hallmark of his outlook on human dignity.  In Love and Responsibility, he wrote, "it is because it is directed towards a particular human being that the sexual urge can provide the framework within which...the possibility of love arises."  In other words, any attraction should be aimed at someone, specific and special, and not just anyone for the sake of attraction alone.  Our generation gets it.  One young woman, jaded by online dating, said in one of Aziz's studies that "People are not products.  But, essentially, when you say, 'I want a guy that's six foot tall and has blah, blah, blah characteristics, you're treating a human being like one."  The online dating chapter of the book concludes a section with, "even people who meet through Tinder or OkCupid are much more likely to turn a random first date into a meaningful relationship if they follow the advice of [one young man who participated]: There's something uniquely valuable in everyone, and we'll be much happier and better off if we invest the time and energy it takes to find it."

The thrill of falling for someone new is amazing, but can lead us to idealize that person and be too hard on him as he reveals more of himself over time.  The Pope warns against letting emotion overtake reason, saying, "values are bestowed upon the object of love which he or she does not necessarily possess in reality.  These are ideal values, not real ones."  The idealized person can become "merely the occasion for an eruption in the subject's emotional consciousness of the values which he or she longs with all his heart to find in another person" (raise your hand if you've ever started planning your wedding seconds after meeting a new guy who's Catholic and single?).  Meantime, Modern Romance, while it makes a point not to be too down on online dating--it suggests using it not as most people do, as a way to find a relationship, but as a way to get a sense of who's nearby whom you might be interested and then to get off the computer and go talk to them face to face, without all the preamble--does make the point that the sheer number of possibilities on dating sites can overwhelm us with choice to the point of inaction, or can increase the restlessness we're already feeling.  "Seeing all these options," says the book, "are we now comparing our potential partners not to other potential partners but rather to an idealized person whom no one could measure up to?"  And when things don't go perfectly with a seemingly perfect person, "you conclude there's something wrong with the person or the relationship since it isn't as exciting as before, without ever giving companionate love a chance to bloom."

We ache for completion; for a union that can ultimately be fulfilled only by God, which manifests itself in our search for a soulmate.  Because of our uniqueness as persons, it makes sense to me that we want to be in love with someone uniquely suited to us (here's my take on soul mates).  Before reading this book, I'd never known or thought much about the fact that our grandparents' generation often met and married someone from their hometown or even their own childhood neighborhood or street, whereas it's not uncommon for young adults our age go to college and, later, work, far from where they grew up.  These couples tended to have an initial rapport, friendship, and attraction that turned into abiding, romantic love because to them, giving up on their marriages wasn't really an option (by choice, not just by social attitudes toward divorce).  I think that level of devotion and the will to love is beautiful, and marriages like my grandparents'  inspire me for the very reason that they are so lovingly, faithfully committed, but I have to say, I'm incredibly thankful to have been born when I was.   We're blessed living in a culture where marrying for love isn't a dreamy alternative to settling or to marrying for other social reasons (as good as those relationships might be); it's a reality.  It's just the navigating the dating world to get to that reality that's the hard part…

I initially set out to write my college senior thesis on the parallels between Love and Responsibility and Jane Austen's novels.  All the romantic missteps!  That JPII talked about!  That's what all of Jane's characters were doing!  I was so excited, and it probably didn't help that I was only a few months into my obsession (TOB-session?) with the Pope's writings.  Then one day, the professors I was working with sat me down and pointed out that, well, as much as the literary characters were living proof of the Pope's observations, there was no historic or academic connection between the works, a.k.a. back to the drawing board.  I ended up writing my paper on Austen and Aristotle, and I know now that my teachers were right.  But even if there's no actual link, the fact that there are so many similarities between the ideas of a 20th-century cardinal and an 18th-century young woman, both celibate, who knew the heart so well just goes to show that John Paul's writing is powerful stuff.  So yeah, Modern Romance is, you know, modern, and timely.  The cries of our hearts don't really change, though.  Ever ancient, ever new, baby.

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

Photo Source

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.

What I Would Say To Him: Guest Post from Carolyn

A few weeks ago, I posted a piece from a friend who's borne deep sadness and regret in the wake of getting a divorce and seeking an annulment.  Truly, there is suffering and, God willing, redemption in the brokenness of a marriage that has ended.  

For today, maybe you're reading this from another side of heartbreak; the side of having not yet found the man you'll marry, and the cross of loneliness and dashed hopes.  My friend Carolyn, a gorgeously poetic writer if there ever was one, shared this with me and blew me away.  Maybe you, like me, will recognize pieces of yourself in her wake of a breakup and, like her, will find your peace in the divine lover of your soul--read it all the way to the end--the one who is always, always beside you.

Hey.

I know it's been a while and you think that I may have healed, and you could be right I guess, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I have the strength to become friends again.  Not yet anyway, and I can tell you why.  But first, you need to know how much I miss you and still love you, but it can't be simple anymore.

Why?

You left me when I needed you most.  I must have checked my phone every five minutes up until the plane took off.  Sweet man, that silence was crushing.  I never felt so much like nothing to someone, and i'm sure that was largely because I thought you were everything.  I thought the world of you, sir.  Yeah, that was dumb.  I know that now.  I made so many mistakes, in when I told you, how I told you, but not how I felt for you.  That love will never be a mistake, and that love is still so alive.

I admired those hurricanes you contained, the worlds behind your eyes, and those secrets in the creases of your face.  And yeah, it's effed up that we were our only friend in that small town tucked in the valley of the mountain.  That little place that was founded by my ancestor three hundred years ago, and where I spent Saturday morning brewing your black coffee at the cafe where I worked.  Where we would go out late at night to diners or drive to the nearest city for concerts.  We were safe there.

And now look at us.  After we fell apart, we are not both suddenly living in the same city far away from that small town, and so different from where we became friends.

I'm not going to try to understand our Holy on this one, but because of this, you suddenly want to be friends again.

But what if you leave again.  I don't have the time or the money to fly off to Uganda to allow myself to break.  To hide.  To sit with our Holy and stargaze at foreign constellations south of the equator for hours on end, crying softly with a baby in my arms.  I'm in this foreign city now, where you grew up in the shadows of these skyscrapers.  I'm no longer in my childhood neighborhood where you stole my damn heart.  This city is nearly as foreign to this small town heart as the wilds of Uganda.

Sweet man, how can I believed that if I let you back in my life, you will stay?  And how can you expect me to be close to you again and not be scorched?  How do I know that you won't hurt me again?

I'm okay.  I'm lonely here, yes, and I can't sleep most nights, but this feels right.  Living here.  Don't worry about me because I'm going to be fine.  I'm surrounded by good, wholesome people.  But can you please just answer my texts when I ask if you're happy?  They aren't a trick question.  For once in my life I'm being simple.

But you need to put your fight into something you're passionate about now.  Remember how Eve was all dumb and took on too much, thought she could handle the world on her own?  How I did?  And how Adam was literally right at her side, watching her fall, unmoved, hesitant to act, unwilling to fight?  He saw that she was hurting herself, that she was falling, and he did nothing.  God works through the man and rests in the woman, but we got it backwards, you and me.  Just like they did.

You made it clear when you left that you couldn't find any fight in you.  To keep me, I guess.  It will always hurt knowing this, sure, that I may just never be worth it for you or to you.  Not worth your time or the effort.  And I get that you are worn, but I'm not just here at your convenience.  Hey, I know you need to put your heart first until one day you make that vow on the altar, but sweet man, I have to do that too, and I'm not strong enough to see you just yet.

I learned something in Uganda, though: now I know that I love you enough to let you go.  Not enough to stop praying rosaries each night for your heart, not enough to stop writing your name in my journal, not enough to check chapel tears or this sap or this gnawing in my stomach, not enough to stop gazing at some of those nearby skyscrapers and try and guess which one you may be working gin now.  But enough to let you go.  I can do that.  I promise.  But just let me.

Let me, or fight for me.  It's that simple.  And you don't have to decide right now, but don't drag me into your uncertainty anymore.

I love you sweet man.  And because you don't feel the same, I'm not sure you would have anything to say in response.  If you could say anything.  I'm tired of guessing at your silence, so instead I'll let your silence speak for you.  So go do great things, one of which will not be pursuit of me.  But please just allow me to let you go.

But in this paralyzation, He moves.  It's a rumble at first, but it quickly escalates.  He roars to life, unafraid to show the distance He would go to keep me, to fight for me, to tell me I'm wrong…to save me.  He breaks, through all of this brokenness in a great clamor, a whirlwind, a dashing avalanche.  He tears down the temple wall, cracks through the earth, damns the serpent.  He shivers and shatters and splinters from the depths of His grave, rallies a legion of seraphim, performs out mighty wonders, damns the chains, and in my sweet man's silence, He thunders: YOU ARE WORTH DYING FOR.

Carolyn blogs for and edits The YoungCatholicWoman, "a place of feminine insight into the joy, companionship, frustration, heartache, and autonomy on this beautiful road to Calvary."  They have a sweet magazine and are planning a mission to Costa Rica, and you're invited!  Visit her 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?

Advent & Christmas Roundup: Presents, Presence, Music, and Lying in Wait

Happy Advent!  Though we're still in this first week of anticipation for Christ's birth, I can't help wondering this year what life must have been like for Mary right after Jesus was born.  I mean, their family basically invented Christmas, so I don't expect she experienced the holiday FOMO I get touches of now and then as we navigate life with a newborn Lily, but the feeling of being united to Our Lady in motherhood, in all its good and exhaustion, has been on my heart a lot.

In the spirit of this sacred time, I present to you my collection of Advent and Christmas posts past with the hope that these pieces inspire your relationship traditions, gift-giving, and help settle the restlessness that engagement and marriage prep can bring:

How chastity and waiting for marriage is kind of like waiting for Christmas

2013 Gift Guide for guys, girls, couples, and hostesses

A Christmas and winter playlist worthy of listening for Bebo Norman alone

6 gorgeously wintry alternatives to fresh flowers for your bouquet

DIY salt dough ornaments and other decorations from our inferiorly lit first apartment

More Bebo and a classic suggestion for reception cocktail music at a holiday wedding

5 ways to seek holy silence during this time when our salvation grew in the silence of Mary's womb

2012 Gift Guide: classics for the men in your life

Also:

Andrew's Christmas cookie specialty, to which we add a 1/2 teaspoon of mint extract

A sweet (as in killer, not as in saccharine) monstrance-style tree topper you can make yourself

Cozy inspiration for a Christmas card photo or cold-weather engagement sesh

Pope Benedict's beautiful-yet-challenging 2012 Christmas Eve homily, intended, I think, to make us uncomfortable for the better

I'll let you take it from here: I love hearing about other couples' family and religious Christmas traditions, about obscure new covers of old favorite hymns, and about what gifts are at the top of your wish list!  Share away!

Fall Family Shoot and Life Lately

I met Claire and her now-husband Kevin during their engagement a few years ago, when Andrew and I taught them NFP.  The friend crush was mutual, but we didn't really get in touch again until about 2 months ago, when we did a postpartum NFP class with them after the birth of their sweet little girl.  In exchange for the teaching, Claire, who just started her beautiful photography business, offered to meet up for some family photos, and I'm so grateful to her and excited to share them with you!

  

In other news…

...I am 38 weeks and feeling every second of it!  Braxton-Hicks all day long, and though this is more of an emotional intuition than a physical one, I've gotten a strong feeling lately that this little girl isn't going to stay put for a full 40 weeks.  We are getting more excited than ever to meet her, and now that she has clothes and dipes and a cosleeper ready to go, I am more than ready for her arrival!  For now I'm just enjoying one-on-one time with Aaron, filling our freezer with meals for later, and trying to enjoy the surprising amount of sleep I've been able to manage!

…I just read this article revealing letters exchanged between St. Gianna and her husband, Pietro, from before they started dating.  She actually said 'I love you' first, and his response is beautiful.  Call me untraditional, but I think in the right circumstances, there is a holy boldness to that sort of spirit of truth and directness.  If you missed it a while back, here's my take on when and how a woman can pursue a man while still honoring each person's femininity and masculinity.

…I'm pretty sure Christmas shopping isn't going to happen unless I get it all done in the next few weeks, which is fine by my giving-happy self.  I love picking out presents for people!  For me, we've been saving up for this all year, and despite the permanent trauma inflicted on me by my Southern-born 8th grade Social Studies teacher, who thought bringing in her collection of furs--with animal faces and feet still attached--was a good way to teach us about the French and Indian War and the fur trade, I've recently gotten over my aversion and have really been wanting one of these.  What's at the top of your wish list?  

…Did you catch the cover reveal for Invited two weeks ago?  Check it out here, and be on the lookout for more news about the release soon.

…I've been trying to venture beyond the baked goods realm as pumpkin goes--having to go back to the blood lab for the 3-hour gestational diabetes test was enough to scare me, at least temporarily, into cutting down on all the muffins we'd been making.  I made this mac and cheese for Aarons's birthday and it's definitely getting added to our rotation.  Tell me your favorite not-sweet pumpkiny recipe!

I'm out for now.  Oh sweet anticipation.

PhD Wife Life and Advice for Grad School Couples

Any fellow grad-school fiancees and wives, holla.  This is for you today.

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Andrew and I had been friends for a while before we started dating, and I knew his dream was, God willing, to teach college English one day.  By the time I became his girlfriend, then his fiancé, then his wife, I knew that dream would entail many more years of school, moving, and lower income.

We could've waited until he was further along in school to get married, but seriously, from the very first month I knew that boy would become my husband!  For a lot of reasons, including the prospect of years of long-distance dating and struggles with chastity as the alternative, we decided getting married before getting settled was where the Holy Spirit was leading our relationship.  To be clear, I absolutely do not consider us morally superior or anything like that for choosing to get married young (we were both 23) and relatively poor--in fact, I sometimes complain about Andrew's career path, the one he feels so strongly called to, way more than I should--but for our particular weaknesses and strengths in virtue, it's been a purification from which we emerge continually more joyful and in love.

Practically speaking, though, academic life for one or both spouses in a relationship is ridiculously hard sometimes.  Grad school applications are long and daunting, always with an element of uncertainty that sort of forces you into a willingness to move anywhere for the sake of a program and, ultimately, a career as a professor or researcher that's a good fit.  Some full-time students, like my husband, are also student teachers; one of those alone entails bringing work home each night and working far more than 40 hours a week, for measly pay, and the combination of both can involve even more.  And, since there's not really a way around the fact that grad school is a means to an end, there are periodic needs to write extra papers and travel for conferences and networking events.

I know every field definitely has its struggles and busy times of year.  But, if I can humbly try to shed some light on this particular field we're in, here's what experience (and our repeated failings!) has taught us can ease some of the burdens of academic life:

If and when you have to move to a new area, seek out community.  Following your love to a new state and new town, maybe miles from both your homes, can be isolating for both of you, particularly if the one of you who's not in school doesn't have a job lined up yet (looking at you, past Stephanie).  After a somewhat slow start in the town I moved to after our wedding, where Andrew was getting his Masters, we were blessed to make a incredible friendships with another young couple and a few families from our parish, and eventually got involved with the youth group and became certified to teach NFP.  Being able to share in ministry with my hubs from the start of our marriage was awesome, and even after moving away, we've been able to stay in touch and occasionally visit our friends.

For Round 2, aka Andrew's PhD, we were lucky enough that his school isn't far from where we both grew up.  Returning to our families and college friends has been such a gift, especially as we've started our family.  For that reason, along with the demands of having a baby, it took a little longer for us to find a community at our church this time, but in the past few months we've become friends with a few other young families, at the same time that the parish is starting a young families' ministry, and I recently started going to a mom's Scripture study that I'm enjoying.

Thinking you're in this alone is such a lie.  For me, cultivating relationships in our parish, at work, and in Andrew's program made a huge difference in my sense of contentment and belonging.  Here's more advice on how to get acclimated if you're relocating.

Expect the unexpected when it comes to your time, and find ways to fill it while you're alone.  Like any profession, I expect, academia sometimes means unplanned meetings and tasks crop up during the day, especially if your spouse is a teacher and students need to come talk about projects and assignments.  What that looked like for us was me expecting Andrew home around a certain time, only to end up angry when that ETA got pushed back by a few hours--especially in those first overwhelming months after Aaron was born.  Fortunately, I like to think we've become more flexible and forgiving about this over the last few years.

I also need to constantly remind myself that the difficulties with time aren't personal; when I strip away my pride and my temper, it's not terribly hard to remember that my husband would much prefer to be home for dinner on late weeknights or hanging out rather than grading on a Saturday.  And even with those responsibilities, he still finds time to chase Aaron around to the point of the kid practically going blue with laughter, to do a significant amount of our household chores, and to do some of his work early in the morning, sacrificing sleeping in so we can go to bed together most nights.  For us, I think our four years of marriage and two years of parenthood have sort of been a process of figuring out how to identify and enjoy the pockets of free time we have together, compared to being constantly let down by expecting long blocks of time to hang out during evenings and weekends.

Andrew's done taking classes now and will spend the next two and a half years taking comps exams and writing a dissertation, but I found out early on that grad classes are nearly always night classes, usually ending around 9 or 10 p.m.  Before babies came along, I decided to try using those nights to catch up on the phone with my friends and to be purposeful with my time.   "Purposeful" sometimes meant knitting while watching Dawson's Creek, but I enjoyed it, didn't feel like I was wasting time, and it was nice not having Andrew in the room commenting on every melodramatic plot twist.  Now that we have Aaron (and will soon have his little sis!), I try to spend time after he goes to bed putting away all the stuff I didn't put away during the day and just making our apartment a nice place for my husband to come home to and rest.  It doesn't feel sexist or terribly burdensome, just like a gift I can give back to Andrew in exchange for all the ways he helps me and loves me.

Slack off now and then. Seriously!  Andrew's mentor once described grad school to us as getting repeatedly whipped as you run through a gauntlet and, if you make it, they give you a degree at the end.  I know it's a constant struggle for Andrew to feel like there's always more he could be doing, which is probably true, and we're always working on (and failing a good amount of the time at) figuring out when continuing to work is good and important, and when just calling it quits for the day, either for the sake of his mental energy, our relationship, or our other responsibilities, is the best choice. It's sooo hard for me being the one without all the schoolwork hanging over my head--so often, I'm tempted to encourage Andrew to take breaks even when it's not for the best.

We probably should've figured this out earlier, but communicating about each of our game plans for the day, stuff like what time Andrew hopes to be home on a given night and things I might need him to take over around the house, has gone a long way in helping us will the best for each other and to not fight over little misunderstandings.  What's more, it's helped us figure out when we can hang out without thinking about work!  Because of the weird hours, like some longer nights and then other days when Andrew can come home in the middle of the day, we've figured out (or at least know more than we did as newlyweds) when we can fit in time to cook together, watch a movie, and just sit and talk.  Maybe it's easier on me than on him, but I'm so thankful my husband's willing to rearrange his sleep and his assignments a little so we can have that quality time.

Discern things a year at a time.  A few years ago, after an exhausting two years of his Masters program and a year of teaching six classes at two different colleges, Andrew was sure he wasn't drawn to earning a PhD.  Yet obviously, here we are.  Combined with the years he took off from school to work after undergrad and after his Masters, the total time he'll have spent working towards his end goal by the time he finishes his PhD will be 9 years.  Dude,  just typing that out is daunting.  The thing is, the paths we've felt called down in our life together have changed as we reach certain milestones, and we've tried to just constantly pray as we go that God leads us in the right direction.  For instance, I was offered a great job at the tail end of Andrew's Masters program, the end of which we'd expected would be moving back closer to family and Andrew looking for high school teaching jobs.  After so many false starts on the job front for me, and upon realizing we could grow our savings with that opportunity (until that point, we didn't really have any), we decided to stay in the area and lived there for another year and a half.  It was during that time that the idea of teaching college kept pulling on Andrew's heart, and we experienced such clarity from the Holy Spirit that applying to PhD programs was the right thing.

If, at the beginning of all these years of school, we'd decided it was PhD or bust, or if we'd gone into it with a just-get-through-it sort of mentality, I think a lot would have been lost from our spiritual growth and our sense of being present in our own lives.  In fact, every year or so Andrew goes through a sort of academic-calling crisis, worrying that his hard work won't pay off with a future job that suits him (locationally, personally, and financially), or that he's been selfish in pursuing a profession with many years of low pay and no guarantees at the end of school (which, for the record and even amidst all my other complaints, has never crossed my mind).

It might sound like I have nothing but complaints about our situation and while, in my weakness, I certainly get angry over it more than I should sometimes, I do have the abiding confidence that we are doing God's will for us and that these particular crosses are sanctifying us.  The truth is, I do have days where I think how nice it would be to be settled in a house in one semi-permanent place, knowing my husband would be working roughly 9-5 every day and be done with work when he left work, and not having to worry too much about money.  But experience and conversations with friends, some stay-at-home moms, some not, has taught me that academia isn't the only type of work that involves long hours and commitments we'd rather say no to--it'd be self-centered of me to think otherwise.  So we pray and wait on the Lord, and up to now, every question of our calling has been answered with the peace that Andrew continuing in school is the best thing for us and our family, at least for this point in time if or until God comes knocking with something else.  There's a true freedom in that.

What about you?  Will one or both of you be in school by the time you're married?  If you've been at it awhile, what's helped your marriage the most?  Like I said, whatever wisdom I have to offer comes from a place of deep humility and significant weakness; I would love to hear your own advice and be able to support each other!

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!