November 3-9, 2019, is National Vocation Awareness Week. The dozen books below thoughtfully consider vocations (marriage, consecrated life, priesthood, and single life) through characters who consider, discern, or actively live their vocation. They range from a picture book and a chapter book to stories for teens and adults.
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My husband and I will be married twenty years this week. Twenty years. Not sure how it’s even possible that so many sunsets have slipped by me.
As a twenty-five-year-old bride, I thought I came into marriage well-prepared. Relatively speaking, I did. My parents provided a good example of a long and faithful marriage. (Remote preparation.) I understood, more or less, what marriage entailed, at least as well as any never-been-married person can. We attended the Church-required marriage preparation and consulted with a priest. (Proximate preparation.) We discussed the important stuff: faith, babies, finances, and lifestyle. Continue reading
Why small success? Because that’s the only kind I know! Even the big ones come in small steps. Here’s my paltry offering for the week:
With more than fifteen months of blogging under my proverbial belt, I feel as if I might now have some material worth revisiting, so I’m linking up with Theology is a Verb and Reconciled to You for #WorthRevisit Wednesday Linkup. This post, written less than four months after I began blogging, was viewed by more people than any other post of mine at the time. My reflections on our less-than-perfect marriage were timed to my wedding anniversary, as is this repost. Only this makes nineteen years.
What’s different a year later? Very little. Only that I’m already considering how to celebrate our twentieth wedding anniversary by spending our second night (and third through eighth nights) alone since 2002. Continue reading
Parents, can you “waste time” with your children? It is one of the most important things that you can do each day.
— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) October 27, 2015
I’m good at wasting time. One might call me an expert. Yet, I need to be reminded, by the Pope no less, to do that with my kids.
When I had only one child, I spent loads of “wasted” time with him. Four and a half years. I pushed Thomas trains around the wooden track. I sang and danced to silly songs in the backyard. I lay in the grass and watched the clouds pass.
Then I had another baby. And another. And another. And my time divided amongst the little people in my life. Continue reading
On Sunday, my husband and I will celebrate our eighteenth wedding anniversary. I write that with disbelief, not because I expected our marriage to fail, but because the years have a way of slipping by with increasing velocity.
Our wedding day, 1997.
A couple of months ago, we had a rough day. Neither of us go for superstition, but that Friday the thirteenth lived up to its reputation. It began with an argument and tears and culminated in a rescue mission when my husband had locked himself out of his car on the opposite side of the city. (A mistake I’m more prone to make than him.) Continue reading
My husband and I will celebrate eighteen years of marriage this month. As a result, I’ve been reflecting on the ways our relationship has grown and the challenges we’ve faced.
Like every couple, my husband and I have had our ups and downs. We’re still working on becoming better spouses, better lovers, better friends. Here are some of the lessons we’ve learned about fairly universal traps that can trip up even the most committed and loving couples.
