Catholic Marriage Prep

My years as a Catholicmarriageprep.com instructor and blogger immersed me in the world of Theology of the Body and the beauty of the Sacrament of Matrimony. Beginning the course with Creation and the Fall of Man, I knew that God created us good, and that without sin, nakedness wasn’t shameful because the body revealed the soul. Adam and Eve saw each other as God saw them, and therefore were able to make a gift of themselves to one another in love.

Then came sin, and as is taught in marriage prep: “They severed themselves from God’s gaze of love and couldn’t see God’s image in each other, as before. Their bodies were not transparent windows to their souls, but more of an obstacle hiding the soul…”

Last summer, we did a lot of work to the front of our house. I mean, a lot. We tore down the crumbling brick façade and replaced it with stucco and stone. We removed the concrete stoop and built a cedar and composite porch. We replaced the soffit and fascia, installed a new roof and gutters. (And by we, I mean my husband. But someone had to watch the kids!)

When I was in high school, my family took a long weekend in Colonial Williamsburg Virginia one September. After seeing the historic sites, we spent a Monday at Bush Gardens amusement park. Since school had already started, the park was empty even though the weather was sunny and warm.  I was excited to go thrill-seeking on the roller coasters, and it was Apollo’s Chariot that was the biggest rush for me.

When my aunt asked me last fall why we chose to homeschool, I gave her the lamest answer ever: “The public schools here aren’t great and private school is too expensive.” In reality, those were contributing factors to our decision to homeschool, but they were not the driving reasons.

If knowledge is power, then we have a lot to learn and a long way to go.

There are some things I want to share with you today (with the help of some other writers). I feel very passionately about the state of women’s healthcare and want to highlight a few areas in which women are in need of more information, more funding, more access, and just plain more.

I was in 8^th grade when I received the Sacrament of Confirmation. During the preparation process you are supposed to choose a patron saint, and I was having trouble picking one. I grew up reading about the saints but no particular one was really sticking out to me. If it were now, I probably would have picked St. Paul or St. Philip Neri, or maybe even Zelie Martin. But at the time, I chose St. Bridget of Sweden.

We had been married for about a year and a half when we traveled to my in-laws for the holidays. We were staying in a hotel room with our 6 month-old son, who was just starting to become mobile. While we were getting ready to leave, my husband put Timothy on the bed, even though I told him not to leave him there unattended.