Of First Communions & belly dancing at weddings...

It was a quirky weekend, to be sure. You don't often see the two things I mention in the title of this post paired together, do you now? That's why you come HERE, right?! Never boring my friends, at least I hope not. And it fits with the overall theme of my life, I think, such as what we have here:

This is what happens when you have no idea that there is a spring picture session. Your let your child wear a baseball style tee shirt with a scissors print on it, and pineapple leggings.

Who came up with those background choices anyway?! At any rate, daily life in my house, right there. Things get forgotten, things get paired up in strange and interesting ways, odd handprints and random bursts of light show up everywhere. The struggle is real.

At any rate, I had wedding #2 of 2 this weekend, the one my troupe was slated to perform at, and we also had a soccer game for Henry, plus the usual weekend stuff like Mass and housework.

Saturday was the wedding. For the ceremony, I was the official "dress fluffer" for the bride, smoothing out her dress and veil before she walked down the aisle, and I felt very important. ;-) Hey, I take such responsibilities very seriously! That was in the early afternoon, and then Mike and I attended the reception in the evening.

So here was the quandary: I had to dance about an hour and a half to two hours hence. Wine with dinner or no? I really wanted to abstain, because drinking and dancing is never really a good idea, but to be honest, I was a bit nervous. :0 So I had wine with dinner. OK, *and* a few sips of a second glass right before we danced, because like I said, I WAS NERVOUS!

The issue was that most of the people there had no idea that belly dancing was going to be imposed upon them. I was hoping they were going to take it well, but one never knows.

So, the DJ clears the dance floor for us, and introduces us, and our entire troupe processes out in our formal dresses and heels, including the bride, to dance our long-standing Middle Eastern pop number.

When I took my place after our entrance, I looked anxiously out into the crowd. This was their face:

Shocked, But Not Unpleasantly Surprised, Face

Everybody was very curious and wanted to watch, to be sure. Which is good. And to be fair, that is usually the reaction we get. But just to give you a little insight into my belly dancing world, here are the other options:

Ambivalent, Perhaps Even Bored, Face (aka Why Are You Making Me Look Up From My Phone Face), of which I am very familiar from restaurant dancing.

And:

Concerned, And Just Looking To Be Offended, Face, which I sometimes see at festivals and other public events.

It's a dancing road of many reactions, let me tell you. But back to the wedding. It went great! Different from any dancing experience I've had thus far, and that's part of the charm of Middle Eastern dancing to me. Always something new! Mike was our spy out in the crowd, on his way back from the bar, who reported in that the word on the street was very positive and complimentary. ;-)

I loved it. A great time was had by all. A beautiful couple whose marriage we celebrated, I couldn't be more pleased for both of them.

Sunday, I was a little late in getting out of bed ;-) and we had Mass and a soccer game to navigate. And let me tell you, the addition of First Communion to our regular 11 am Mass nearly made us late for soccer, but so it goes. It also made us park what felt like a mile away, but who's counting?

The Communicants processed down the aisle with Fr. Joe, and Anne was very interested to see all of their outfits and what each was carrying. At Henry's school parish, the First Communion Mass is on a late Saturday morning, removed from the regular Sunday liturgies. So to have it be a part of our regular Mass was an unusual thing for my kids. It definitely made an impression. I explained to Anne what was happening, and she seemed quite interested. It seemed early to me for First Communion, since it was only May 1st, but then I realized that Mother's Day is next Sunday (doesn't that seem early too?!) so that must be why they placed it so.

When is First Communion at your parish? What are your plans for Mother's Day?

10 years ago today...

This is what I was doing:

:0

On my way to my (very wintry) wedding! We were delayed a bit by fresh snowfall, but all was well. We arrived at the church right on time, but started 10 minutes late to accommodate guests who had to take it slower on the roads. And the church looked perfectly lovely, decorated to reflect that our anniversary always falls within the Christmas season, just prior to the feast of the Baptism of the Lord:

And here we are, following the conclusion of our nuptial Mass:

We look younger, lol! But we still look plenty young (she tells herself, with feeling... ;-)) And 10 years in, I can say that I have been, and am, very happily married. It isn't always easy living with another person and taking their needs into consideration ahead of your own. But it is very, very worth it. I can't imagine my life without Mike in it. I just remember being at the Basilica of St. Anne-de-Beaupre just prior to when Mike and I started dating, and praying for the right man to enter my life if it was God's will for me to marry. And there Mike appeared. :)

There have been times in our marriage where things were more challenging than others. But we always knew that things would get easier, and they did. And no matter what, we were always committed to each other and to the life we were building together for ourselves and our kids. My marriage is indeed a blessing.

So, for the big milestone, and for the first time since our honeymoon, we're going away by ourselves.

*beams*

We're not going far. We always talked about going back to San Francisco, which is where we honeymooned, but that just isn't feasible right now. So we're spending the weekend about an hour north of here in a cute lakeside area known for it's ice wine. Yes, we got married in the dead of winter in Western New York, yet we keep going northward, we're nuts that way. :) We have reservations at a cute inn, and plan to go to High Tea at a historic hotel there, and to some wineries. Saturday night we're going to the vigil Mass at the local parish (excited to check that out!) and then out for dinner, and almost assuredly, more wine. ;-)

So it'll be romantic and fun, and I'm very much looking forward to it. I won't be blogging tomorrow (someday, I will come back to you, my 7 Quick Takes Fridays...) but I will check in on Monday for sure. Until then dear readers! Happy feast of the Baptism of Our Lord! :)

This is my kind of weather, and ponderings on Church weddings...

Ah, the past few days have been overcast and breezy. I love this kind of weather. Clearly, I should be living in the Pacific Northwest.

There has also been some "rain activity" but I wouldn't actually classify it as "RAIN," unfortunately. I mean, little drops have come down, but they never pick up their pace nor last for longer than 10 minutes at a stretch, so total accumulation is something like .000567 %. This is not going to make the grass green again, people. Maybe if it kept doing this for 3 weeks straight, but I'm doubting that will be the case. At any rate, I'm grateful for the break in the heat and the hope of rain, so I'll take it.

On a totally unrelated note, I read an article last week about Katie Holmes coming back to her Catholic faith. Did anybody else see this? It was from a reliable source like Yahoo News *rolls eyes* so I take it with a grain of salt, but it piqued my interest because I had always wondered about this.

I knew that Katie Holmes had been raised Catholic, and that when she married Tom Cruise, they were married in a Scientology ceremony. These are the only two facts that I'm certain of, you see. Thus, everything else that I'm about to say is pure conjecture, but that's what blogs are for, no?

When they married, I remember thinking to myself, "her parents must be heartbroken that she's leaving her faith." I don't know the Holmeses, so I have no earthly idea how they felt about their daughter's marriage, but this is how *I* would have felt. I'm also presuming here that Katie did not pursue and receive a dispensation from canonical form, because if she had, then her marriage would have been valid in the Church. So, I'm making a lot of assumptions here, but bear with me.

My whole point is that the situation got me to thinking about our children retaining their faith as adults. I pray for this intention weekly at Mass, that my children always stay close to Jesus and His Church. Do I think that in order to do that, my children need to marry other Catholics? No, I don't think that, actually. Would it help if they did marry other Catholics? Yes. But is such a marriage *necessary* for them to remain Catholic or even grow deeper in their faith? No, I don't think that it is.

But presuming that Katie here didn't seek out her parish priest prior to her wedding to receive Catholic marriage preparation and a dispensation to marry outside of a Catholic ceremony, this is what I'm getting at. When a Catholic person does not seek out the Church for their marriage, and marries outside of Her authority, that makes me sad. Because that's often the impetus to them leaving their faith entirely. In that state, they cannot receive the sacraments, and without the sacraments, their faith will suffer. Plus, the fact that the person didn't care enough to go through the Church for the dispensation demonstrates (at least in my opinion) that they don't feel very attached to their faith to begin with. And as a parent, this would break my heart.

Many times, it seems to me that the people I see not pursuing a Church wedding lose interest in religious faith altogether. This would bother me the most. It would bother me considerably less if my child became a member of another church. And even that has degrees. I would rather they stayed Catholic, but if my child became a very devout Anglican or Methodist, I would be ok with that. (But I'll just admit that I'd always still pray they would return to their Catholic roots :)). I would struggle, however, if they became a member of a non-Christian faith, probably nearly as much as if they lost all faith in God entirely.

In the end, all we can do is pray. Once they become adults, it's their choice, and we have to hope that something we did as parents acts a springboard to them making their faith their own and growing in their relationship with God.

This is all a bit rambling, but back to Katie. According to Yahoo News, she is now a registered parishoner at a local Catholic Church. If true, I think this is good, and I'm sure her parents are thrilled. :)

So, our thought-provoking question for the weekend: what in your childhood (if anything) caused you to remain attracted to religious faith as an adult? Or alternatively, what in your childhood acted as a spark to reignite your religious faith after leaving it for a time?

An ode to my husband...

6 years ago tomorrow, Mike and I were married (there I am above, getting ready to meet Mike at the church :) ). It's hard to believe it's been that long. Granted, I hope that we live to be married 50 plus more years, but for a girl that barely dated before meeting Mike, 6 years seems like a long time!

It's really hard to fully describe how much Mike and my marriage mean to me. I love being married; I thrive in commitment. I never enjoyed the "dating scene." It was only when I released control over *trying* to meet someone that I did meet Mike, through mutual friends. And I was a month shy of turning 30 years old when I did finally marry. I'm not saying 30 is old! Far from it. It's just that many of my friends married much younger, and I did feel a bit left out. It was a hard, but grace-filled, time in my 20's as I struggled to figure out what God wanted for my life.

These years since I've been married have been the happiest of my life. I love my role as wife and mother, and each day I wake up happy, grateful to have this life. This husband, this son, this new life in my womb, this home, this future that we're building together. And yet, I realize that the best years of my life are probably even still yet to come, which enkindles an even greater sense of awe. I'm still looking forward to meeting this baby, and possibly more, should that be God's will, to seeing our children grow, to trips together and eventually retirement. To many, many dinners spent talking over wine, and unexpected surprises and joys.

It's all so very wonderful, and I know that I love my husband more today than I did that day 6 years ago. Each day, that love continues to grow. It's amazing to me when I think back to when we were dating - it was a special time, but marriage is so much better!

I think that because I always wanted to marry, I thought marriage would come "naturally" to me. It did not, and I don't think it does to anybody. Everything felt very natural when we married, that's not what I mean. It's just that marriage has taught me so much.

At the base of everything, Mike and I are friends. THAT is what will keep a marriage together for a half a century or more. Passion and your role as lovers are important, and it's certainly essential to nourish those physical desires as the years go by, but that won't get you through the tough times, although it can be a welcome distraction :). Through illness and aging, loss of loved ones, misadventures of our children, financial difficulties. It's the emotional bond that gets you through those things.

And your emotional bond is nurtured via the ins and outs of daily life. Cooking and cleaning, raising children, making financial decisions, making career decisions, encouraging each other in your interests. Investing time to spend together, even when a million other things call for your attention. All of this happens most fruitfully AFTER marriage for the most part, and I think some of that is lost in modern society. As a Catholic, I of course believe in the importance of the sacrament of matrimony in solidifying your bond and putting you on the right spiritual path. My role as Mike's wife is to help him get to heaven.

I think that what I have learned the most from my role as wife is that I can't control, via my own emotional needs or actions, what Mike does. I'd like him to come to Mass with us more often, but I cannot make him go, and applying pressure on him will only make it seem like a chore and make him want to go less. Everyone has to come to their own resolutions to things, based on a mutual discussion, certainly, but in the end of their own will and volition. With regard to spiritual matters, everyone has their own path, and needs to come to their own "spark" wherein they communicate with God. A person cannot force that on another person. All you can do is pray and try your best to show God's light through your own life. And like all people, I'm certain that I fail to show that light pretty frequently.

On other matters, I've learned that while you may think going into marriage that it will change the other person in ways you'd like to see, the one who will come out changed is yourself. I've found things that I could do to make being someones partner a little easier, and over the years, I've changed my routines accordingly. The other person does not need to change in order for you to be happy; you should learn and grow, try to compromise, and realize that your expectations may have to mature.

Patience is a crucial virtue. The value of *waiting*. Feel emotional about something? Give it a half hour. You're bound to feel less edgy then and better able to discuss it, as well as listen to the other person more productively. This lesson took me well over 5 years to even recognize, let alone make any headway. :)

After these 6 years, I'm so grateful for everything that I've learned, and for everything that we've been through together. We got married already fairly settled into adult life and had to figure out how to coexist with each other. We had a beautiful son 10 months after our wedding and thus immediately had to figure out how to be parents together. We struggled through the early years of parenting and how to do a good job at it. We worked together when Mike was unhappy with his career, and navigated through a few disappointing positions. We mourned when a job we both thought was ideal did not work for him as we had planned. We took a significant leap of faith and decided for Mike to quit his job and go back to school full-time to pursue civil engineering. We worked hard to create a budget to live on one income while supporting 3 people. We bought a home together. We created another life together. And this year, we're facing adding another member to our family all while completely uncertain when and where Mike will work after he finishes his degree in May, where Hank will attend school in the fall, and whether or not I will achieve tenure (and thus get to keep my job!).

None of it is easy, but it's all so very worthwhile. And I wouldn't want to do it with anyone else other than my husband. Now I'm crying. I swear, it's the pregnancy hormones! Those toilet paper commercials with the little puppy make me cry too.

I thought I'd close with the nuptial blessing that the priest recited at the end of our wedding Mass. I still look back on that day so fondly, and continue to learn from this prayer:

"My dear friends, let us turn to the Lord and pray that he will bless with his grace this woman, now married in Christ to this man, and that he will unite in love the couple he has joined in this holy bond.

Father, by your power you have made everything out of nothing. In the beginning you created the universe and made mankind in your own likeness.You gave man the constant help of woman so that man and woman should no longer be two, but one flesh, and you teach us that what you have united may never be divided.

Father, you have made the union of man and wife so holy a mystery that it symbolizes the marriage of Christ and his Church.

Father, by your plan man and woman are united, and married life has been established as the one blessing that was not forfeited by original sin or washed away in the flood. Look with love upon this woman, your daughter, now joined to her husband in marriage. She asks your blessing. Give her the grace of love and peace. May she always follow the example of the holy women whose praises are sung in the scriptures.

May her husband put his trust in her and recognize that she is his equal and the heir with him to the life of grace. May he always honor her and love her as Christ loves his bride, the Church.

Father, keep them always true to your commandments.
Keep them faithful in marriage and let them be living examples of Christian life.

Give them the strength which comes from the gospel so that they may be witnesses of Christ to others. Bless them with children and help them to be good parents. May they live to see their children’s children. And, after a happy old age, grant them fullness of life with the saints in the kingdom of heaven. We ask this through Christ our Lord."

AMEN.

5 years ago today...

...Mike and I were married :) Unsurprising, yes I know, that I chose to get married in the middle of winter. And I even managed to find someone with the same taste in seasons that I do :)

It was a beautiful winter day in Western New York. We received the sacrament of marriage in the chapel of the small Catholic college that I attended and that Mike now teaches at as an adjunct faculty member. We had a lovely reception at a local hotel, and it meant a lot to be to have our family and friends there, but to be honest I barely remember anything about it. The ceremony was the absolute highlight of the afternoon, and I remember every detail. I loved picking the readings and the prayers, and the priest had a wonderful, and personal, homily.

When you marry in the Catholic Church, there is a specified pre-marital discernment program, as well as planning of your wedding liturgy with the priest. For Type A people such as myself, the little booklet the priest gives you, Together for Life, is a real coup. There is an edition for both nuptial Masses and wedding liturgies outside of Mass. In each there is a worksheet with blanks for the bride and groom to fill in every detail of the ceremony. The booklet includes the text of all the readings and prayers so one can make an informed decision. This type of super-organization really tickles my fancy.

In particular, I loved the nuptial blessing that we chose; even Mike commented on how well it suited us as a couple. The nuptial blessing is recited by the priest toward the very end of the nuptial Mass, just prior to the recessional. Ours was:

"My dear friends, let us turn to the Lord and pray that he will bless with his grace this woman, now married in Christ to this man, and that he will unite in love the couple he has joined in this holy bond.

Father, by your power you have made everything out of nothing. In the beginning you created the universe and made mankind in your own likeness.You gave man the constant help of woman so that man and woman should no longer be two, but one flesh, and you teach us that what you have united may never be divided.

Father, you have made the union of man and wife so holy a mystery that it symbolizes the marriage of Christ and his Church.

Father, by your plan man and woman are united, and married life has been established as the one blessing that was not forfeited by original sin or washed away in the flood. Look with love upon this woman, your daughter, now joined to her husband in marriage. She asks your blessing. Give her the grace of love and peace. May she always follow the example of the holy women whose praises are sung in the scriptures.

May her husband put his trust in her and recognize that she is his equal and the heir with him to the life of grace. May he always honor her and love her as Christ loves his bride, the Church.

Father, keep them always true to your commandments.
Keep them faithful in marriage and let them be living examples of Christian life.

Give them the strength which comes from the gospel so that they may be witnesses of Christ to others. Bless them with children and help them to be good parents.May they live to see their children’s children. And, after a happy old age, grant them fullness of life with the saints in the kingdom of heaven. We ask this through Christ our Lord."

Christmas season runs in the liturgical calendar through the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which is Sunday, so our anniversay always falls right near the end of it. I love :) A true time of celebration.