I've realized that some of the most effective tools for speaking about Christ are stories. I mean who doesn't love a good story? They're personal, emotional, sometimes funny, and they always touch our hearts in ineffable ways. It is easy to see God working in the lives of others when they openly speak about their lives, so I've decided that this blog is going to focus a lot more on storytelling. My story telling. And with all the big changes happening in my life, I figured it might be about time that I share one of the favorite stories of my life, my vocation story.
First, I'm going to actually start with something very recent. This summer, on July 7, Patrick and I got betrothed. Betrothal is an old rite in the Catholic Church that basically makes our engagement official and binding. Binding in the sense that if we want to get out of it, we have to get it absolved by the Church. So basically, we are in this for the long run, and if we decide otherwise, we are going to have to get the advice and permission of holy people around us first (and don't worry I'm not planning on deciding otherwise). This ceremony is absolutely beautiful, and it truly makes serious the religious commitment that a man and woman make to each other as they prepare for the Sacrament of Marriage. I want to describe the whole thing in detail later, but I'm bringing it up now to underscore the seriousness betrothal is, because I feel like Patrick and I have been intentionally moving toward betrothal with each other through much of our relationship (although, not all of it, because we are far from perfect). We have been yearning to make a commitment to God that we would indeed pursue our vocation with intention and purpose in order to be drawn into His loving embrace together. So with our current end in mind, I'll now try to tell a story that hopefully reflects the commitment we've made.
So I guess I'll start at the beginning, because that's always the question right? How did you meet? The short answer is in a hotel swimming pool, which I think is hilarious, but also can sound a bit scandalous, so I'll give you the long answer too. We did in fact meet in a hotel swimming pool, but we were only in that swimming pool because we had both signed up for a school trip through the scholars program we were both a part of. Patrick was a sophomore and I was a freshman, and one of our mutual friends started a conversation between all of us. What did we talk about? A different girl Patrick liked at the time. So, no, it was not love at first sight. However, Patrick did give me his phone number in the elevator at the end of the night "just in case I got lost, or something." He got off the elevator, and I immediately had to ask what his last name was so that I could actually put his contact into my phone. So clearly, we were not the kind of people that met each other and just knew we were destined to be together. In fact, we really didn't think much about each other at all, and we wouldn't talk to each other again until the same trip the next year. After spending a whole bunch of time trying to convince you that Patrick and I dated intentionally, this seems like an odd place to start. But that's exactly why I wanted to start here. Vocations don't work like that. It's not like one day you wake up and God speaks to you aloud and tells you "I want you to marry this particular person" or "I want you to be a priest in this particular order" and then you can suddenly change your whole life and you go through a series of socially appropriate steps with the utmost sincerity and conviction. At least, not for most people, I would guess (If God did descend from heaven to tell you your vocation out of the blue, then please let me know. I want to hear that story.). Even if that's how most vocations were discerned, I would not have been in a place to receive that message from God right then. I had not abandoned myself to Him enough to be able to let a message like that hit me in the heart. At that particular moment in time, I was more concerned with how to do well in geometry class and playing volleyball than anything else. Dating was the last thing I wanted to do. And seriously praise God that He didn't present a vocational call to me right then. He knew that I needed to know myself much better before I even ventured into the discernment scene. So yeah, Patrick and I, like a lot of people, started as mere acquaintances. Acquaintances that probably thought the other was just a little bit weird, and definitely not my type. I wonder how hard God laughed in heaven that day, knowing what would come next.
Flash forward a couple of years and Patrick sends me the famous "What's up kiddo?" text. At this point in time, I still haven't heard the vocational call, but the Holy Spirit is doing some work. I bet if you asked Patrick what made him text me that day, he couldn't pinpoint a cause. If you asked me what made me answer that question with honesty instead of "oh, nothing much," I wouldn't have been able to tell you either. But now, I am confident that the Holy Spirit guided both of us toward each other that day. We ended up developing a friendship that eventually led to me asking him to be my Confirmation sponsor. Twice. Yes, that's right, Patrick wouldn't give me a hard commit the first time, so I had to ask him again. But he did eventually say yes, and this is the point that our friendship started to take the intentional shape I harped on before. Of course, we weren't dating, so neither of us was considering marrying the other, but as my sponsor, Patrick had agreed to take on a certain level of responsibility for my soul. And Patrick is a very holy man who takes his responsibilities seriously, so he dove in head first to discussing the spiritual life with me. Fortunately, unlike freshman me, I had fallen in love with the Church and Christ, and I was hungry to be fed spiritual food like this. I'll spare you all the gory details of how we both eventually realized we wanted to make this friendship thing more than that, but maybe not, but maybe yes, and just note that at the end of Patrick's senior year we actually did start dating. Even though Patrick forgot how that conversation went a few hours later and had to ask me to make sure. Despite Patrick's charming forgetfulness, our dating relationship didn't drastically change from our sponsor/candidate relationship. We still entered into relationship with one another with the goal of improving the other's soul, but now we just had the added dimension of actually discerning a vocation together. Although, I probably wouldn't have vocalized our intentions as such, we both knew that this was what we were doing. God had graced me with the stubborn will to know that I did not need to have a boyfriend just to have one. He graced Patrick with this conviction too, because we both ended up being each other's first girlfriend/boyfriend. But because I knew I didn't want a boyfriend just to have a boyfriend, I would only date someone I could see a potential life long partner in. I vividly remember having a conversation with Patrick where he promised me that he wasn't dating me just because he knew he wouldn't have to for long since he was leaving for college in a few months. We were going to give this a chance. This didn't have a predetermined expiration date from us. We wanted to see what God's will was in this.
So now I'm a senior in high school and Patrick is a freshman in college, and I'm overconfident that we can make this work and that it'll be easy and I really won't miss him at all. Let's all pause for a moment and laugh together at that. I thought that because I had maintained long distance friendships that I was an old pro and could totally handle this dating thing. Boy, was I wrong. Dating, it turns out, is a whole different ball game. College had Patrick busy with the exciting and the new, while calculus had me preoccupied with doing the same basic routine, just now without Patrick in the chapel every morning to give me a hug on my way to class. As a result, I was painfully aware of his absence, while he was struggling to develop a new schedule that could also include the girl he left behind. Maintaining a relationship together was hard. We weren't aware of or meeting the needs of the other, and we weren't particularly skilled at communicating those needs yet. I started to wonder if this thing was going to work out. I knew I wanted it to, or else I wouldn't have dated him in the first place, but after a few months of struggling through a long distance relationship, I was ready to surrender if it wasn't what God wanted for me. I wasn't willing to work for something that wasn't going to last anymore. So what did I do?
I started a new paragraph, so you know it's important. I got to Mass early one weekend by myself because my family had gone at a different time or place. And when I say early, I mean like 45 minutes early. It was one of those awkward timing moments when I just ended up somewhere earlier than I intended, but it worked out beautifully, because I had ample time to pray. I think I prayed a Rosary, which had been the weapon I used to stay afloat while I was waiting for Patrick and I to even start dating (because sometimes, you just need to talk to your Momma about boys you like), but it didn't solve any problems right away. So then I started to talk to my Father, who had also heard plenty from me about my desire for this relationship. God looked kindly upon me and gave me the grace to pray one of the most important prayers of my life. I said, "God, I am done telling you what I want. I really want this to be my vocation, but I realize now that I am trying to make it happen. So instead of holding on to what I want, I am giving you my vocation. You tell me what you want me to do with my life Father and I will do it. During this Mass, I offer to you my vocation." With my complete surrender over, I sat back in the pew. I still had some more time before Mass, and I realized I hadn't prepared the readings yet, so I opened up the choir book to the twenty-seventh Sunday in ordinary time (cycle B for you crazy Catholics wondering) and then God spoke to my heart. The first reading was from Genesis chapter two where God proclaims that it is not good for the man to be alone, and He creates woman who is bone of Adam's bone and flesh of Adam's flesh, and the two become one flesh. The psalm spoke about a holy household with children like olive branches. The Gospel came from Mark chapter ten where Jesus speaks against divorce and says that what God has brought together no man should separate. (Funnily enough, this reading cycle was back up again this past Sunday, so I got to take a lovely trip back down memory lane at Mass this weekend.) My heart was wrapped in the love of our God and I wanted to cry right there in that pew. I remember bowing my head and saying, "Okay, answer taken," even though I never expected to get an answer moments from making my plea. I hold onto this moment with all my might, especially in the moments when the Enemy attacks and makes me doubt my calling. I knew in my heart then and I know in my heart now that God does in fact desire me to enter into holy matrimony with Patrick, and I praise and thank Him every day for this assurance.
What I find most beautiful about this moment is that I only got answers when I truly let go of my own desires. I really need to do that more often, because usually I'm too scared to do that. Guys, I'm telling you that there was so much grace involved in that prayer, because I'm usually too scared to let go. I need to learn from my past self and pray like that again, and just abandon myself to the Lord. Because I wasn't looking to date anyone when I met Patrick, I wasn't looking for a vocation when I started dating Patrick, and I was done holding onto Patrick when I realized I was called to marry him. When people ask me about discerning their vocations, I always tell them to stop looking. God will find you when you stop trying to do it all yourself. Because no matter what it is you are discerning, you probably have some stake in it going a certain way, and sometimes that's not the way God wants it to go, and sometimes it is. But when you stop trying to control the movements of your life and stop trying to make everything fit the mold of what you expect your vocation to be, God has the freedom and creativity to speak to you. Just be open. Pray for God to give you the grace to be open to His will and pray that He will guide you where you need to go. There's no way you can go wrong when you pray like that.
Of course, I told Patrick later, but he wasn't so sure. In fact, he warned me not to make an idol of him. I wasn't quite as eloquent as Genesis, so I have to give him some slack, but to Patrick's extreme credit, he didn't run away from the crazy girl who told him that God said she was going to marry him. I know a lot of people would. But he didn't. Instead, he stayed and discerned along with me. He shared his soul with me like he had never shared with anyone before, and we truly got to see the beauty God put into the other by just talking about our own journeys. As difficult as long distance has been, I thank God for the graces it has given us, because we have learned lessons in communication that we would have never learned had we not been separated by so much distance for all these years. On another note, we learned things about each other we could have never learned if we had not been perfectly clear with each other that sex is reserved for marriage. I know people say that all the time and it may not sound genuine when you hear it, but I'm telling you that I would never have been able to share my intellectual and emotional vulnerability with him had I given my body to him first. I feel the need to say that so I don't scandalize anyone, but it's also practical in the way that it builds a great relationship. So anyway, we discerned our vocation quietly together, and the what ifs eventually became future plans. We realized after smaller moments like receiving prayer cards that had prayers for marriage and children hidden in them that this was truly what we were called to.
And so Patrick asked me to marry him and we were engaged. Much too early by most standards, but we knew we wanted time to make intentional marriage preparation with a priest, and we wanted the freedom to talk about it with our families and friends and not sound like crazy people. And the long engagement has definitely worked for us. It has reduced the stress of trying to cram everything into a year or six month period in which I am a six hour drive away from the wedding city most of the time. It allowed me plenty of time to do what most girls do now when they are planning a wedding: Pinterest. And whatever you think of Pinterest, it actually came in pretty clutch this time, because I came across a little known rite in the Catholic Church called the betrothal ceremony. As soon as I read about it, I knew I wanted to do it. I wanted the blessing of the Church as we journeyed through this liminal time together.
Which brings us back to July 7. Patrick and I sought the Church's blessing and the solidifying of our commitment to each other through this ceremony, and let me tell you, I got more than I bargained for. I received so many graces from these prayers, that I honestly cannot wait to see what graces the actual sacrament holds. My soul has been transformed. I used to get so nervous and anxious when the summer wound down, because I could almost feel the clock ticking the time away until we would have to be separated again. I would feel guilty and worried for not spending enough time with Patrick when time was so precious and scarce during school. But then we got betrothed and it was like a weight was lifted off my shoulders. I couldn't tell you why, but I stopped worrying so much about our impending separation, and even when I thought about it, the time apart didn't seem like it would be as endless as it had before. Even some of my deep sadness at being separated from the man God made me to be with diminished. I trusted this even more than I had before, because a whole congregation of Saturday morning Mass goers had prayed for us. I can now look down at my engagement ring and see a sacramental blessed with prayer and holy water and not just a secular promise. Our fidelity to each other now has a declared purpose and is dedicated in the name of the Trinity.
Just so you can get a feel for how beautiful this liturgy was (and how beautiful the Church is. Y'all it's a two thousand year old family Tradition. It's beauty is beyond my words, you just gotta experience it and fall in love with it.), I'm going to share the vows we exchanged. Of course, they do not take the place of our wedding vows, but rather prepare us for them in a concrete way.
Patrick vowed this:
"In the name of our Lord, I, Patrick, promise that I will one day take thee, Kennedy as my wife, according to the ordinances of God and holy Church. I will love thee even as myself. I will keep faith and loyalty to thee, and so in they necessities aid and comfort thee; which things and all that man ought to do unto his espoused I promise to do unto thee and to keep by the faith that is in me. "
I vowed this:
"In the name of our Lord, I, Kennedy, do declare that, in the form and manner wherein thou hast promised thyself unto me, do declare and affirm that I will one day bind and oblige myself unto thee, and will take thee, Patrick, as my husband And all that thou has pledged."
I absolutely LOVE these vows, because they really encapsulate what we've talked about in marriage prep. God gave Adam two tasks in Eden: 1) to till the earth and 2) to protect everything in it. This is where we get the idea that the man should die for his wife and his family, because the first sin was possible because Adam stood by without protecting Eve. When I heard Patrick promise those things to me, I heard him promise to take seriously his vocation to die to himself and to restore a little bit of Eden in our home. Eve on the other hand was given no explicit job except to be holy, I know this may not be a popular sentiment with modern feminists, but this doesn't mean I have to be a total 50's housewife to uphold the religious view of marriage. Instead, I must allow my future husband to perform his task of dying to himself, and I must strive for holiness alongside him. Part of my striving is humbling myself and allowing myself to be taken care of and protected. Venerable Fulton Sheen explained this by saying the nature of man is to do and the nature of woman is to be. Man is fulfilled in making his wife a mother while the woman is fulfilled in being a mother. Patrick vowed to fulfill himself and our vocation by doing, I vowed to fulfill myself and our vocation by being.
To top off these gorgeous vows, my engagement ring was blessed and Patrick placed it on my finger again in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Our marriage is not going to be just between us, it is going to involve a third person, God, so to have the sign of our betrothal confirmed in Trinitarian love and beauty was the perfect, and definitely a major source of the graces that have entered my soul since then. If you want to check out the rest of the rite, which I highly recommend, especially if you're engaged, click here.
Of course, I can't gush over this ceremony without inserting a few pictures, so check them out below.
Father Duy was the presider of this ceremony and the witness for the Church. We are so thankful he was on board with this rather obscure rite.
Mary and Blake are a lovely married couple who served as our witnesses on this special day. We couldn't thank them enough for their faithful witness to their vocation that inspires us daily.
So with that, I think you've got a pretty good picture of our vocation journey. We have definitely not always been perfect, and we are most certainly anticipating many challenges ahead of us. But we know that with the grace of God we will be fortified to continue our fight for each other and for God. I hope in this story you can see that intentionally listening to the will of God and working toward the holiness and greatest good of the other are what has kept us afloat for these past three and a half years. We couldn't have done any of this on our own. The only credit that can be given must be given to God, for we are nothing without Him. Pray for us, that we can continue to abandon ourselves to the will of God.
Live Jesus in our hearts, forever.
First, I'm going to actually start with something very recent. This summer, on July 7, Patrick and I got betrothed. Betrothal is an old rite in the Catholic Church that basically makes our engagement official and binding. Binding in the sense that if we want to get out of it, we have to get it absolved by the Church. So basically, we are in this for the long run, and if we decide otherwise, we are going to have to get the advice and permission of holy people around us first (and don't worry I'm not planning on deciding otherwise). This ceremony is absolutely beautiful, and it truly makes serious the religious commitment that a man and woman make to each other as they prepare for the Sacrament of Marriage. I want to describe the whole thing in detail later, but I'm bringing it up now to underscore the seriousness betrothal is, because I feel like Patrick and I have been intentionally moving toward betrothal with each other through much of our relationship (although, not all of it, because we are far from perfect). We have been yearning to make a commitment to God that we would indeed pursue our vocation with intention and purpose in order to be drawn into His loving embrace together. So with our current end in mind, I'll now try to tell a story that hopefully reflects the commitment we've made.
So I guess I'll start at the beginning, because that's always the question right? How did you meet? The short answer is in a hotel swimming pool, which I think is hilarious, but also can sound a bit scandalous, so I'll give you the long answer too. We did in fact meet in a hotel swimming pool, but we were only in that swimming pool because we had both signed up for a school trip through the scholars program we were both a part of. Patrick was a sophomore and I was a freshman, and one of our mutual friends started a conversation between all of us. What did we talk about? A different girl Patrick liked at the time. So, no, it was not love at first sight. However, Patrick did give me his phone number in the elevator at the end of the night "just in case I got lost, or something." He got off the elevator, and I immediately had to ask what his last name was so that I could actually put his contact into my phone. So clearly, we were not the kind of people that met each other and just knew we were destined to be together. In fact, we really didn't think much about each other at all, and we wouldn't talk to each other again until the same trip the next year. After spending a whole bunch of time trying to convince you that Patrick and I dated intentionally, this seems like an odd place to start. But that's exactly why I wanted to start here. Vocations don't work like that. It's not like one day you wake up and God speaks to you aloud and tells you "I want you to marry this particular person" or "I want you to be a priest in this particular order" and then you can suddenly change your whole life and you go through a series of socially appropriate steps with the utmost sincerity and conviction. At least, not for most people, I would guess (If God did descend from heaven to tell you your vocation out of the blue, then please let me know. I want to hear that story.). Even if that's how most vocations were discerned, I would not have been in a place to receive that message from God right then. I had not abandoned myself to Him enough to be able to let a message like that hit me in the heart. At that particular moment in time, I was more concerned with how to do well in geometry class and playing volleyball than anything else. Dating was the last thing I wanted to do. And seriously praise God that He didn't present a vocational call to me right then. He knew that I needed to know myself much better before I even ventured into the discernment scene. So yeah, Patrick and I, like a lot of people, started as mere acquaintances. Acquaintances that probably thought the other was just a little bit weird, and definitely not my type. I wonder how hard God laughed in heaven that day, knowing what would come next.
Flash forward a couple of years and Patrick sends me the famous "What's up kiddo?" text. At this point in time, I still haven't heard the vocational call, but the Holy Spirit is doing some work. I bet if you asked Patrick what made him text me that day, he couldn't pinpoint a cause. If you asked me what made me answer that question with honesty instead of "oh, nothing much," I wouldn't have been able to tell you either. But now, I am confident that the Holy Spirit guided both of us toward each other that day. We ended up developing a friendship that eventually led to me asking him to be my Confirmation sponsor. Twice. Yes, that's right, Patrick wouldn't give me a hard commit the first time, so I had to ask him again. But he did eventually say yes, and this is the point that our friendship started to take the intentional shape I harped on before. Of course, we weren't dating, so neither of us was considering marrying the other, but as my sponsor, Patrick had agreed to take on a certain level of responsibility for my soul. And Patrick is a very holy man who takes his responsibilities seriously, so he dove in head first to discussing the spiritual life with me. Fortunately, unlike freshman me, I had fallen in love with the Church and Christ, and I was hungry to be fed spiritual food like this. I'll spare you all the gory details of how we both eventually realized we wanted to make this friendship thing more than that, but maybe not, but maybe yes, and just note that at the end of Patrick's senior year we actually did start dating. Even though Patrick forgot how that conversation went a few hours later and had to ask me to make sure. Despite Patrick's charming forgetfulness, our dating relationship didn't drastically change from our sponsor/candidate relationship. We still entered into relationship with one another with the goal of improving the other's soul, but now we just had the added dimension of actually discerning a vocation together. Although, I probably wouldn't have vocalized our intentions as such, we both knew that this was what we were doing. God had graced me with the stubborn will to know that I did not need to have a boyfriend just to have one. He graced Patrick with this conviction too, because we both ended up being each other's first girlfriend/boyfriend. But because I knew I didn't want a boyfriend just to have a boyfriend, I would only date someone I could see a potential life long partner in. I vividly remember having a conversation with Patrick where he promised me that he wasn't dating me just because he knew he wouldn't have to for long since he was leaving for college in a few months. We were going to give this a chance. This didn't have a predetermined expiration date from us. We wanted to see what God's will was in this.
So now I'm a senior in high school and Patrick is a freshman in college, and I'm overconfident that we can make this work and that it'll be easy and I really won't miss him at all. Let's all pause for a moment and laugh together at that. I thought that because I had maintained long distance friendships that I was an old pro and could totally handle this dating thing. Boy, was I wrong. Dating, it turns out, is a whole different ball game. College had Patrick busy with the exciting and the new, while calculus had me preoccupied with doing the same basic routine, just now without Patrick in the chapel every morning to give me a hug on my way to class. As a result, I was painfully aware of his absence, while he was struggling to develop a new schedule that could also include the girl he left behind. Maintaining a relationship together was hard. We weren't aware of or meeting the needs of the other, and we weren't particularly skilled at communicating those needs yet. I started to wonder if this thing was going to work out. I knew I wanted it to, or else I wouldn't have dated him in the first place, but after a few months of struggling through a long distance relationship, I was ready to surrender if it wasn't what God wanted for me. I wasn't willing to work for something that wasn't going to last anymore. So what did I do?
I started a new paragraph, so you know it's important. I got to Mass early one weekend by myself because my family had gone at a different time or place. And when I say early, I mean like 45 minutes early. It was one of those awkward timing moments when I just ended up somewhere earlier than I intended, but it worked out beautifully, because I had ample time to pray. I think I prayed a Rosary, which had been the weapon I used to stay afloat while I was waiting for Patrick and I to even start dating (because sometimes, you just need to talk to your Momma about boys you like), but it didn't solve any problems right away. So then I started to talk to my Father, who had also heard plenty from me about my desire for this relationship. God looked kindly upon me and gave me the grace to pray one of the most important prayers of my life. I said, "God, I am done telling you what I want. I really want this to be my vocation, but I realize now that I am trying to make it happen. So instead of holding on to what I want, I am giving you my vocation. You tell me what you want me to do with my life Father and I will do it. During this Mass, I offer to you my vocation." With my complete surrender over, I sat back in the pew. I still had some more time before Mass, and I realized I hadn't prepared the readings yet, so I opened up the choir book to the twenty-seventh Sunday in ordinary time (cycle B for you crazy Catholics wondering) and then God spoke to my heart. The first reading was from Genesis chapter two where God proclaims that it is not good for the man to be alone, and He creates woman who is bone of Adam's bone and flesh of Adam's flesh, and the two become one flesh. The psalm spoke about a holy household with children like olive branches. The Gospel came from Mark chapter ten where Jesus speaks against divorce and says that what God has brought together no man should separate. (Funnily enough, this reading cycle was back up again this past Sunday, so I got to take a lovely trip back down memory lane at Mass this weekend.) My heart was wrapped in the love of our God and I wanted to cry right there in that pew. I remember bowing my head and saying, "Okay, answer taken," even though I never expected to get an answer moments from making my plea. I hold onto this moment with all my might, especially in the moments when the Enemy attacks and makes me doubt my calling. I knew in my heart then and I know in my heart now that God does in fact desire me to enter into holy matrimony with Patrick, and I praise and thank Him every day for this assurance.
What I find most beautiful about this moment is that I only got answers when I truly let go of my own desires. I really need to do that more often, because usually I'm too scared to do that. Guys, I'm telling you that there was so much grace involved in that prayer, because I'm usually too scared to let go. I need to learn from my past self and pray like that again, and just abandon myself to the Lord. Because I wasn't looking to date anyone when I met Patrick, I wasn't looking for a vocation when I started dating Patrick, and I was done holding onto Patrick when I realized I was called to marry him. When people ask me about discerning their vocations, I always tell them to stop looking. God will find you when you stop trying to do it all yourself. Because no matter what it is you are discerning, you probably have some stake in it going a certain way, and sometimes that's not the way God wants it to go, and sometimes it is. But when you stop trying to control the movements of your life and stop trying to make everything fit the mold of what you expect your vocation to be, God has the freedom and creativity to speak to you. Just be open. Pray for God to give you the grace to be open to His will and pray that He will guide you where you need to go. There's no way you can go wrong when you pray like that.
Of course, I told Patrick later, but he wasn't so sure. In fact, he warned me not to make an idol of him. I wasn't quite as eloquent as Genesis, so I have to give him some slack, but to Patrick's extreme credit, he didn't run away from the crazy girl who told him that God said she was going to marry him. I know a lot of people would. But he didn't. Instead, he stayed and discerned along with me. He shared his soul with me like he had never shared with anyone before, and we truly got to see the beauty God put into the other by just talking about our own journeys. As difficult as long distance has been, I thank God for the graces it has given us, because we have learned lessons in communication that we would have never learned had we not been separated by so much distance for all these years. On another note, we learned things about each other we could have never learned if we had not been perfectly clear with each other that sex is reserved for marriage. I know people say that all the time and it may not sound genuine when you hear it, but I'm telling you that I would never have been able to share my intellectual and emotional vulnerability with him had I given my body to him first. I feel the need to say that so I don't scandalize anyone, but it's also practical in the way that it builds a great relationship. So anyway, we discerned our vocation quietly together, and the what ifs eventually became future plans. We realized after smaller moments like receiving prayer cards that had prayers for marriage and children hidden in them that this was truly what we were called to.
And so Patrick asked me to marry him and we were engaged. Much too early by most standards, but we knew we wanted time to make intentional marriage preparation with a priest, and we wanted the freedom to talk about it with our families and friends and not sound like crazy people. And the long engagement has definitely worked for us. It has reduced the stress of trying to cram everything into a year or six month period in which I am a six hour drive away from the wedding city most of the time. It allowed me plenty of time to do what most girls do now when they are planning a wedding: Pinterest. And whatever you think of Pinterest, it actually came in pretty clutch this time, because I came across a little known rite in the Catholic Church called the betrothal ceremony. As soon as I read about it, I knew I wanted to do it. I wanted the blessing of the Church as we journeyed through this liminal time together.
Which brings us back to July 7. Patrick and I sought the Church's blessing and the solidifying of our commitment to each other through this ceremony, and let me tell you, I got more than I bargained for. I received so many graces from these prayers, that I honestly cannot wait to see what graces the actual sacrament holds. My soul has been transformed. I used to get so nervous and anxious when the summer wound down, because I could almost feel the clock ticking the time away until we would have to be separated again. I would feel guilty and worried for not spending enough time with Patrick when time was so precious and scarce during school. But then we got betrothed and it was like a weight was lifted off my shoulders. I couldn't tell you why, but I stopped worrying so much about our impending separation, and even when I thought about it, the time apart didn't seem like it would be as endless as it had before. Even some of my deep sadness at being separated from the man God made me to be with diminished. I trusted this even more than I had before, because a whole congregation of Saturday morning Mass goers had prayed for us. I can now look down at my engagement ring and see a sacramental blessed with prayer and holy water and not just a secular promise. Our fidelity to each other now has a declared purpose and is dedicated in the name of the Trinity.
Just so you can get a feel for how beautiful this liturgy was (and how beautiful the Church is. Y'all it's a two thousand year old family Tradition. It's beauty is beyond my words, you just gotta experience it and fall in love with it.), I'm going to share the vows we exchanged. Of course, they do not take the place of our wedding vows, but rather prepare us for them in a concrete way.
Patrick vowed this:
"In the name of our Lord, I, Patrick, promise that I will one day take thee, Kennedy as my wife, according to the ordinances of God and holy Church. I will love thee even as myself. I will keep faith and loyalty to thee, and so in they necessities aid and comfort thee; which things and all that man ought to do unto his espoused I promise to do unto thee and to keep by the faith that is in me. "
I vowed this:
"In the name of our Lord, I, Kennedy, do declare that, in the form and manner wherein thou hast promised thyself unto me, do declare and affirm that I will one day bind and oblige myself unto thee, and will take thee, Patrick, as my husband And all that thou has pledged."
I absolutely LOVE these vows, because they really encapsulate what we've talked about in marriage prep. God gave Adam two tasks in Eden: 1) to till the earth and 2) to protect everything in it. This is where we get the idea that the man should die for his wife and his family, because the first sin was possible because Adam stood by without protecting Eve. When I heard Patrick promise those things to me, I heard him promise to take seriously his vocation to die to himself and to restore a little bit of Eden in our home. Eve on the other hand was given no explicit job except to be holy, I know this may not be a popular sentiment with modern feminists, but this doesn't mean I have to be a total 50's housewife to uphold the religious view of marriage. Instead, I must allow my future husband to perform his task of dying to himself, and I must strive for holiness alongside him. Part of my striving is humbling myself and allowing myself to be taken care of and protected. Venerable Fulton Sheen explained this by saying the nature of man is to do and the nature of woman is to be. Man is fulfilled in making his wife a mother while the woman is fulfilled in being a mother. Patrick vowed to fulfill himself and our vocation by doing, I vowed to fulfill myself and our vocation by being.
To top off these gorgeous vows, my engagement ring was blessed and Patrick placed it on my finger again in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Our marriage is not going to be just between us, it is going to involve a third person, God, so to have the sign of our betrothal confirmed in Trinitarian love and beauty was the perfect, and definitely a major source of the graces that have entered my soul since then. If you want to check out the rest of the rite, which I highly recommend, especially if you're engaged, click here.
Of course, I can't gush over this ceremony without inserting a few pictures, so check them out below.
So with that, I think you've got a pretty good picture of our vocation journey. We have definitely not always been perfect, and we are most certainly anticipating many challenges ahead of us. But we know that with the grace of God we will be fortified to continue our fight for each other and for God. I hope in this story you can see that intentionally listening to the will of God and working toward the holiness and greatest good of the other are what has kept us afloat for these past three and a half years. We couldn't have done any of this on our own. The only credit that can be given must be given to God, for we are nothing without Him. Pray for us, that we can continue to abandon ourselves to the will of God.
Live Jesus in our hearts, forever.
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