Love, Hate, Jealousy, Pizza

I have known Jessica since the first day of kindergarten. We haven't been friends all that time— there have been some rocky periods of jealousy and anger on both sides— but my memories are good. She's still remembered in our house for coming over for a pizza dinner when we were very small and asking, as she looked at her plate, "can we dig in now?". We tried to write a mystery story together in grade school— either first or third, both times I was in room six— but we quit because we couldn't agree on how to spell "mystery". She was right. In junior high, we would sit on the concrete after school and read to each other the mysteries we were writing in our notebooks. Jessica remembers the early days of Kat and Peter, and remains my most honest critic. ("Alice, that poem sucks.")

The last time I saw her was fall 2003, when we went out for Pizza. I was terrified about going away to college, and Jessica showed me her dorm room at USF and gave me (very good) advice. Every time we've tried to see each other since, we have been sick or busy, but I do try to keep up with her online.

Jessica's going through a really hard time right now. Her grandfather is dying, and they are taking him off of the ventilator today. She can't go to Nebraska to be with him, because of school work.. Pray for her today, if you pray.
Jess— I love you (etc.).

Quote for One Year

"As tender as we can be to one another... the longing is joy, and the hope is peace."

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the day that Patrick and I finally, nervously, confessed our love for one another in Harper Library. The above quote is Patrick's, from last lent, when we were (very theoretically) not dating. Now, a year later, we are looking to our future with the same sweet longing and quiet peace.

Pray for us today.

Snow and The Little Flower

Patrick has already written a lovely post about Father Mike describing what has been going on. I don't want to. Father Mike changed my life. He catechised me, baptised me, and heard my confessions. He was a mentor and friend, and I love him.

When I woke up on Ash Wednesday, I looked out our living room windows and saw the world covered in a light blanket of snow. My first thought was of St. Therese. She loved the way the world looked when covered in snow, and she prayed and wished that she would see snow on the day of her final profession. Problem: her final profession of vows was scheduled for a day in October (I think), and it was seventy degrees. She went to mass, enjoying the weather and in love with Christ, and when she left the church, it had snowed. "Wasn't that a lovely gift for Christ to give to his litte bride?" she asks.

Father Mike put a statue of St. Therese in the Calvert House chapel. That particular statue of the Little Flower had passed through the hands of several suffering people— a dying woman, a priest recovering from alcoholism and drug addiction— before it came to rest in Calvert House, where it can now comfort our mourning community.

I felt too hollow on Wednesday to be truly comforted. On seeing the snow, however, I knew that St. Therese was looking out for us. Christ, for their wedding, gave her a beautiful veil. When I'm sad and I see snow, I know St. Therese is wrapping us up in it, like a mother preparing her daughter for her first communion.