Everyone's been asking me if I'm excited about leaving for the monastery and the truth is, I'm not, really. I mean, I know it's an exciting thing, but I'm more nervous and scared. It could be the caffeine I've been having, but I think it's a lot more factors than just that. I don't have much of a spiritual setting in my mom's house where I've ( Read more... )

One of my friends asked me what was on my bucket list yesterday, and that helped the reality of what I am doing sink in. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die," an earlier distinction for monastic life was the 'white martyrdom' etc. I don't really have anything on my bucket list except to not mess up. I ( Read more... )

This guy is apparently my great great great great great great great great great grandfather.

I've been searching desperately for the perfect medal of St. Michael for my brother. I want it to also have the USMC emblem on it, and the portrait of St. Michael needs to be just right, and it needs to have a decent finish, and not too high of a price...I'm not getting too far. Right now I think this one might be my best bet because because St. ( Read more... )

Not only is my long-lost half brother (who is 41) a Catholic convert of five years, but apparently he is also a Knight of Columbus. Living in the capital city of Protestant Arkansas. Gonna meet him at the airport tomorrow, woot!

I'm entering the monastery August 8, the feast of St. Dominic. More later.

For those who haven't already heard, yesterday I got an e-mail from Sr. Mary Rose that basically said, among other things, that they'd been expecting me to enter some time around my birthday all along, but Sr. Mary Rose sincerely thought I was vacillating between desire to be a mother and desire to be a nun when such was not truly the case. Now I ( Read more... )

I feel much more at peace now about waiting at least another year before possibly entering the monastery. As my spiritual director suggested, I will be offering up this year as a gift to God to do with it what he wills. In the meantime, my roommate and I may be renting the master bedroom in the house of a guy who goes to my church. We met him ( Read more... )

Dear Kathryn ( Read more... )

Last week may have been the time when I most seriously considered the possibility that I am not being called to the religious life. Regardless, it was very eye-opening, in a mixed bag kind of way. It is a lot easier now for me to look at my vocation with disinterest (in the non-biased way) and say honestly that I even look forward to potentially ( Read more... )