I thought we all agreed to hate Trojans?

Last night I dropped by the store to pick up shampoo and stuff. As I stood there wondering what brand to get, I turned my head and saw a tall, clean cut guy with a Notre Dame ball cap - clearly a student - surveying the condom display.

I almost said something. I could I have dropped any number of one-liners crafted to make him think for half a second about his situation - or at least embarrass the heck out of him. The top of the list was "You know, there's a reason they sell pregnancy tests next to condoms."

But, I held my tongue and walked away in disgust.

A few minutes later I returned to the scene. The Domer was gone, and in his place was a young teenage couple standing close together picking out - you guessed it - pregnancy tests.


Case in point.

Marriage

Reeee!

I love being married :-)


Last Saturday my dear Matthias and I finally tied the knot at my home parish.

We went on a lovely little roadtrip honeymoon this past week and really enjoyed ourselves!

Now we're back in South Bend, here for two more years since he'll be in the MTS (theology Masters) program at Notre Dame. We just can't leave this place.

We found ourselves a cozy little bungalow very near the St Joe River not too far from campus and began moving in yesterday.


I have to laugh because one of my bridesmaids, Miss D., kept asking me in the days and hours preceding the wedding: "So! Any profound thoughts!?" Most of the time I had nothing to offer her since I was too caught up in making sure all the little details of the wedding and reception were in order - way too caught up in the practical - and unfortunately that couldn't be helped. But now that it's been a little over a week, the profound thoughts are really coming, Miss D.

Right now, I'm really just in awe of the beauty of it all. How lucky am I to be married to my best friend? How lucky am I to be married to one of the kindest, most intelligent, gentle, strong, and (can I add) goofiest and silliest people I know? I really am blessed! :-) Really, just in awe.

It is truly magnificent! I just can't wait for him to pick me up from work in a couple hours :-)


Reeeeeee!

Less than 5 weeks

That's right, in less than 5 weeks, Matthias and I will be married! Crazy...it really is. We can't wait!

I'm sitting here at one of the quieter offices (now that I said that 5 women will walk in) eating my lunch and just trying to sort somethings out in three major areas: 1) Women, Men, Childbearing, Family Life (or the unfortunate lack thereof), 2) The Catholicity of Notre Dame and the rest of the world, and 3) the practical planning aspects of the wedding that still need to be taken care of. My head's going to explode if I keep on keeping it all in there. So here, you all can see what you think...

Women, Men, Childbearing, The Family, etc.
or
Justice gone Awry

A little over a week ago, Karlo posted this article. I just got around to reading it today. Karlo's comments are great, but I thought I'd add a few of my own.

Sad as it is, I'm not shocked. It still makes me want to cry, but work has taught me that this young woman's attitude is not uncommon. And how much sadder is that? How sad it is that we can set aside one child and say "I'm focusing on the child I’ll have in a few years from now with someone I feel safe with and supported by. The life of that child will be infinitely better than this one," as did this woman.

I hear it all the time at work from the women I counsel. If it's not one reason, it's another. Many of these women are not "dehumanizing" their children in the sense of not recognizing them as human. But many have just fallen into a warped concept of justice.

I would love to hear someone else identify this problem as such: a warped concept of justice.

That's exactly what it is.

"I deserve better. My baby deserves better."

"No I'm choosing abortion because I can't adopt, I'd never adopt - because my baby deserves to have me parent, but I can't parent."

or like the girl in the article:

"I'm focusing on the child I’ll have in a few years from now with someone I feel safe with and supported by. The life of that child will be infinitely better than this one."

Right? Planned Parenthood's mantra of "so that every child is wanted and loved." Because kids deserve the best, right?

Twisted.

But next to this heresy of sorts, there's the problem of brokeness that torments so many. And how interesting it is that even her rationalized, "hopefully" statement of resolution, that women in the article can't hide her own wounds:

"The life of that child will be infinitely better than this one and, sometimes, I wonder if such a miserable, lonely woman could even have a healthy child."

In the same breath, barely separated by two commas and a "sometimes," there they are, side by side: twisted justice and the brokeness of the mother.



I don't know what can be done about changing these problem on the large scale, but I know that I can try to work on women individually as they come in for their pregnancy tests. It's not an easy task.


Men, your role in this is huge - most important than any media source would have you believe.

It's ridiculous how few men accompany their girlfriends, wives, babymommas, etc, to our office. Why? Why do they just not seem to care one way or the other?



The Catholicity of Notre Dame and the rest of the world

Perhaps this topic ought to be left for another time. Something's rotten in the state of Denmark.



Weddings!

This summer, until wedding time, I'm living with my dear friend Chris who's getting married exactly (to the hour!) a week after me. So simple math:
1 bride + 1 bride + 1 house = wedding central

It's a joy to be sharing these last few weeks of maidenhood (what a great concept no one thinks of anymore) with each other!

There was a little concern at first that we'd both turn Bridezilla and be at each other's throats, but actually it's better than any other living arrangement I could have imagined.

I still have a terrible amount of work left to do for the wedding. My dress still doesn't exist. The reception finally has a location, but the food is a giant question mark. The rehearsal dinner...wait...there's a rehearsal dinner?? Yeah. Not planned.

Whew.

I need to get to work...yes, that's right, because I have less than 5 weeks!

The Divine Office: Season 1, Episode 3

Fr. Erickson counsels a couple who thinks they're ready for marriage. They're not.

Teens and Sexuality

Paul has two great posts very much related to my work.
One on TV and Teen Pregnancy
And one on a movie I'll have to look into: "The Power of One"

Into Advent - C.A.R.E.

Happy Second Sunday of Advent, everyone.

I really feel like I've fallen of the face of the blogosphere (which I have, and which I have done not infrequently.) But, this time I've missed it more than usual. I have a good number of half-started, backlogged posts that I might try to get out today - but don't hold your breath.

So where have I been?

At work mostly. Work has been keeping me on my toes. This past Monday I did my first high school presentations for the WCC. I spoke with 5 sections of mostly sophomores for 2 days in a local public school. Our program - C.A.R.E. - focuses on Character, Abstinence, and Relationship Education (hence the acronym.) It's a really great program, if I may say so; and has really had a lot of success. As far as I know we're in most of the public and private schools - both high school and middle school - in this area.

Not bad.

My first couple days were very intense. It certainly didn't help that rather than giving me a prep period off (usually teachers don't teach every period in a day) the teachers decided to squeeze in an extra class.

By the end of the day I was beat and wanted to sleep for about a year.

The students filled out anonymous evaluations at the end of two; and I was really pleased to see that the program seemed to have a good impact on the them. While there were some disappointing ones:
e.g. "I can't argue with anything you said, I know you're right but I'm still going to be sexually active

there were some really good ones:
e.g. my boyfriend and I had a talk yesterday after the first half of the presentation, and we've decided to start over.

I was perhaps most surprised to read that most students enjoyed hearing the differences between love and infatuation.



They also really appreciated the sexual progression line and discussion of where to draw boundaries.

At the end of it all, I can't help but just feel really bad for all these kids, 15, 16 years old, who have no idea what their sexuality is for - a girl wrote she thought it was a game; a guy wrote he never realized that he could hurt a girl's feelings so much. But don't worry, the world isn't ending quite yet. A very large percentage of the evaluations came back thanking me for just reinforcing their previous decisions to be sexually abstinent.

LaFortune Love

I just saw 6 campus tours pass through LaFortune with in 5 minutes of each other.

Funny note: each of the male tour guides loudly and proudly highlighted the LaFortune Subway as the most visited Subway restaurant in the nation. None of the girls mentioned that factoid.

Interesting.

Msgr. Knox on Marriage

What are the dispositions that make for a happy marriage? Physical health and beauty in man and woman? No; health may fail, and beauty may be marred. Common interests and tastes? No; tastes and interests may change as the years go on. A violent passion of love, the feeling that neither could live without the other, that each has found a soul's mate? Even that, though it be a gracious and a fortunate thing, is not enough; love is blind, they say, and it is a dangerous thing when the blind leads the blind to the altar. No; the disposition that makes for a happy marriage is the conviction in man and woman that God has called them to do something for Him: to build up a Christian home, and, if He sees fit, a Christian family, by a common act of self-oblation, not to the other party, but to Himself... That a Christian community is being founded, with that primary intention of all Christian communities, the sanctification of its members.

Ronald Knox, "Pastoral and Occasional Sermons," San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002. 88.

HT to the Seraphic Single who posted this about 2 weeks ago before her blog home was displaced.

For Men and Women

Paul noticed this wonderful site and posted it today. I thought I'd repost it here for all my gentlemen friends who might not read Paul's blog.

(click image or here for the link)

Not that this is to distract you from your finals, boys.


Ladies should take note of the Seraphic Single's new home: Still Seraphic