It's been a long time.

It has been a long time since I have posted. It has also been a long time that I have been waiting to take RCIA. While I can't promise I will be posting very regularly any time soon, (mostly from lack of writing inspiration) I will be starting RCIA in January and I can't wait. Even the sobering, and somewhat scary, idea of my first confession is but a minor obstacle to my enthusiasm. Meanwhile I would love any book recommendations to help prepare me to become Catholic.

Several things...

Wow time flies! Work is quite busy and will be all through next month I am afraid, so probably not much blogging between now and November. I have been going back and forth about posting the second part of my conversion story and have decided, for the time being, not to. There are several reasons for this. First, I am not completely satisfied with part one so until I am there is no point in continuing. Second, I haven't actually converted yet so it seems more appropriate to wait until after I finish RCIA in the spring. Finally, I simply don't have the proper time:energy ratio lately to embark on this written down quest for self knowledge. I am still on the path but writing it down seems difficult at the moment. Some things have to be lived first and written about in retrospect in order to be fully articulated. So, while I do plan on making this blogging thing a more regular hobby, it is just going to have to wait until I can put enough time and energy in to make it something I am pleased with. In the meantime I will be reading other blogs when I have spare time and have just recently discovered a couple new ones to peruse.

Friendship

Well things here have settled down and settled in for the most part. The move is done, school and work started for my husband and I, and I am starting to get back into blogging. In my perusal of other blogs I came across this post which led me to another post. These posts really struck a chord with me. I don't make friends easily and have a hard time keeping up with the ones I have. Until I read these posts I thought it was just because I was a bad friend. I thought that other people must somehow be able to connect better and have better "social skills" than me. Then, after reading these posts, I started to think about my friendships (or lack thereof) present and past. I realized that most of the people I have been friends with don't share many (if any) things in common with me (or I with them, however one looks at it). So maybe my problem isn't that I have bad social skills or am a terrible friend, simply that I haven't found that commonality with another person, aside from my husband, that fosters good friendships. In many ways the last couple years have been enormously trans-formative for me spiritually and intellectually and I hope that carries over into the way I relate and connect to people. Perhaps soon I will be able to find and cultivate the kinds of friends that are true, unforced, and enduring.

Please Pray...

For my cousin's family, he died in a car accident last night.

Moving

Isn't usually much fun... Until you get where you are going anyway. I am sure I will be blogging more about our new adventure as soon as we get settled in.

Happy Anniversary

Well I am a little late but I will say it anyway. Happy Anniversary to the most wonderful man in the world! (for the record I wasn't late in real life, just in the blogosphere.)
:)

Looking Forward, Looking Back

Yesterday was my last day at my job. We are moving to a new state and I will be starting a new job in September. It is a better paying job in a nice place and my husband will be in a very good school this fall. I am so thankful for all of the blessings we have received this past year and I know my prayers, one after another, have been answered. It is amazing how I used to be so cynical and felt that life was either only a product of chance, or destined to be miserable. I used to have a very deep seated notion that I didn't deserve good things in life and if things were going well, it was simply too good to be true. These are self fulfilling prophecies, if you expect everything to go poorly in life, chances are things will. I am so grateful to have found the power in hope and joy in my life. Hope and joy awakened in me by our Lord Jesus Christ. It is as if, in opening my heart to God and what the Church teaches, a garden has begun blooming in my soul. Thanks be to God!

To Post or not to Post.... Part II

OK so I know I was going to post my conversion story (I am working on it, I swear!) but I was just perusing some of the blogs on my blog roll when I came across a link to this article over at kris thinks... Naturally I had to stop and think, does this mean I am a narcissist? Am I over sharing details of my personal life on the Internet? Perhaps I should think about taking down that post on NFP? Well, at least for the moment, I am leaving it up because, on the whole, I enjoy reading about other peoples lives via blogs. It is good to read another person's point of view and I find other people's life experiences fascinating, even the mundane ones. Maybe that makes me weird but I really think it causes me to look at my own life differently. Blogs have helped me to be thankful for all of the blessings in my life and have shown me that I am not alone in my life circumstances. So for what it is worth in this vast landscape of technology, I will still post my story, well, maybe the edited version. ;)

To Post or not to Post? That is the question.

I have thought of posting my conversion story in the past but it seemed such a large thing to do I put it off. It is a bit intimidating in a way, to post pieces of your life on the internet. However, it is also a searching, not unlike placing a message in a bottle and throwing it out to sea. So if anyone finds it, I hope it helps you in your own journey in some small way. I will probably post it in parts in order to better organize my thoughts. Stay tuned...

How not to worry?

I realize that I am supposed to be giving my cares and fears and anxieties up to the Lord but umm..... how exactly does one go about doing that? I feel like we (meaning my husband and I) are at a crossroads of a sort in our lives right now. We are getting ready to move to another state so that he can go to a better and less troubled school (check out FUMARE on the blog roll if you are interested but be prepared to do a lot of reading, on second thought maybe avewatch.org would be easier to navigate, but I digress.) And just when we think things are set to go, he gets scheduled for a brain MRI for a worrying difference in the size of his pupils. If anyone reads this please send up a prayer for my husband's health. In the meantime I should get back to trying not to worry. :(