White table, red roses

It's evening now.
I've been praying the liturgy of the hours for several weeks. Tentatively at first, and now with much more confidence and enthusiasm... it's a little daunting if you are learning on your own.

For those who don't know, the LOH is a series of prayers which alternate over days, months, years and seasons which are prayed several times through out the day.
Morning, midmorning, midday, midafternoon, evening, night. It's another way of bringing your mundane life into the sacred space of the church--- I participate in the LOH from my home, quietly. Down the street, our parish priests are reciting it at the rectory. Hundreds of miles away, in the Austin Texas Hermitage, a group of Carmelite Hermits are doing the same. In upstate NY, the Franciscan Brothers and Sisters of the Renewal are chanting the LOH. But it doesn't stop there.
In Indiana, my dear friend is doing it in French with me. In France, my grandmother is doing it. In India, the Little Sisters of Jesus are praying. In Rome, the Holy Father is participating. In the Ivory Coast, in a small leper colony called Raffierkro, the local visiting priest is joining in. In China, underground Catholics are chanting prayer. When it's daytime here, It's nightime in Australia, where a community of dominican nuns are praying it.

We are all connected. We are all one. Our voices are rising constantly to God, praying His Word back to Him (the LOH consists of prayers and chants revolving around the Psalms) and worshipping Him with One voice. It must sound like Heaven to Heaven. It's absolutely breathtaking and I love it. And it's the best way to fulfill the scripture to "Pray without ceasing," because when we order our lives around prayer, prayer puts godly order in our lives.

It's through praying the LOH that I've come to realize that God is calling me to be a Saint... not just a saint with a lowercase s. It's through the LOH that I've realized that what happened this week-- where I nearly lost a husband I never even had, and where I had to face the fact that love means giving of yourself, sometimes more than you think you can bear.

We had a knock down blow out on Wednesday night--- mostly because he, after having spent three days in prayer, came home determined to love me better. And while God was blessing Him, Satan was doing the old "divide and conquer" trick on me, giving me a boatload of doubt peppered with a great deal of resentment and anger, all sitting on a mound of attachment to the world.

Wayne and I want to be holy. It is a wierd thing in this world to want to be holy-- it means that we will often get puzzled looks from people who realize that they have goals they think are normal, and that we will never have them. It's the reason we get to longing for a life like my brother and his wife's, where everything is planned and perfect and looking like a hallmark/lifetime special.
We don't have that. We have simplicity and detachment and contemplation and meditation and penance and hunger for more of God. We had these things before we knew what they were. We have them because God is doing something with us... we just don't know what. And if that means we have to look wierd, that's ok.
Wednesday night ended in a loving embrace, the tow of us like children before the Lord, crying, breathless, on our knees... asking God to make right what has been really wrong.

Thursday, we chose the readings for our wedding. We chose readings from tobit, hebrews, and the beatittudes.

Today, we went to mass to observe the solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I received communion for the first time on my knees. I wasn't going to do it, but at the last minute it was as if I felt angels pushing me down and I fell on my knees. Everything got really distant and time seemed to slow down, as if I was going to faint. I no longer heard a sound but the buzzing in my ears and my heart pounding, and I saw everything get really distant and blurred, except for the Host which Monsignor was holding above my head as He said: "The Body of Christ."
He waited a moment for me to respond with "Amen," (which means: "I believe!") and then I recieved Jesus. For the first time, I understood what Fr Tony experiences during mass.... a truly mystical experience, and one which I will never again be able to take lightly.

I actually have bruise, now, which makes me glad that my wedding dress is longer than knee length! It was crazy.

After mass, a dear friend took the kids and we went to work on our pre-marriage counseling session with Father, on his day off, no less! He's amazing.
During the talk, two things impressed me. First, he gave each of us time to share without allowing the other to interrupt. He was able to connect both of our issues (me: no communication, no help, no patience from Wayne. Wayne: too much emotion, not enough reason/logic, not enough faith because I get influenced by the world.) in a way that demonstrated how we had to work on those things in order to complement each other.
He then shared his own impressions with us and asked us to work on certain parts.
The first thing that stood out for me was that Father is intimately involved in our relationship in the same way WE are. Which is amazing. He was able to, WITH Wayne, look at me, and say that they as a team were trying to bring me to fullness in Christ. Then he was able to WITH me, look at Wayne and say that as a team, we were trying to bring him to fullness in Christ. I realized for the first time how the sacrament is OURS-- between myself and WAyne-- but it is an avenue of grace for everyone in the church who comes in contact with us. Wow. It put the sacred back in the concept of marriage.
Second, he rightly discerned something amazing. Protestant evangelicals, he said, have a tendency to overemphasize the "helpmeet" aspect of marriage. Catholics, on the other hand, have a tendency to overemphasize the mutual submission aspect.
The truth, he said, is to be found in the middle--- we are called to both mutual edification and to a structured authority relationship. Not one, or the other.
It was like someone slapped me in the face when he said that. Here we had been all this time working against our very natures to do what was obviously not helping in our marriage: Wayne needs to be reminded to love, to be gentle and thoughtful. I should not be afraid of holding him to that standard, because it is in that that he becomes the best husband he can be.
Vice versa, I am at my best as his helpmeet.
Ding. It's the other half of the puzzle which we had somehow misplaced... or rather set aside... believing that the strictly patriarchal relationship WAS the sacrament of marriage. Wow.
Father Tony is awesome.... or rather , the Holy Spirit, working today through Father is awesome.

We left renewed, uplifted, recommitted, and overjoyed. This week has been nuts, we came inches away from a separation, and now we are closer than we have ever been. Praise God!

Anyways, with all this focus on our internal preparation, I sadly did not have the time to prepare the feast of my wedding day dreams like I had originally intended.
Instead, tomorrow, our guests will dine on homemade cake, delivered pizzas cut into presentable squares, and large bowls of salad. But the important thing--- love-- will be present. Our wedding day will be ripe with meaning and far from shallow, which is what we should all want to celebrate anyways, right?

I've also come a long way this week into understanding the nature of a convalidation. Bringing our marriage into the church isn't just "renewing our vows." (although that's how I've been explaining it to concerned evangelical friends! Haha)

It's bringing our marriage to the foot of the Cross and taking Hold, together, of each side of the cross. I thought I was married before, but I wasn't. Tomorrow will be the first time I'm presented as a covenanted bride to my bridegroom. I'm so so so so so so so so excited!! Tomorrow, my whole life is going to change.

Please pray for us. Please join us in thought and prayer if you are unable to make it. Join us if you can!

Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us as we enter into a deeper union in your Son, Jesus.