Is there any easy way to transition back to real life after 9 days in paradise?

This is the very honest question I've been asking myself for the last couple days, as I prepared to come home from a 9-day honeymoon in Aruba.  Our time there was relaxing, refreshing, & invigorating.  We laughed more than we have in a long time, learned more about each other's habits and quirks, and ultimately realized we were very ready and excited to tackle whatever "real life" had in store for us back home.

But today, as I opened my work inbox after 14 days away to find 132 unread messages that needed responses yesterday, I felt nothing but overwhelmed.  I sat in this library, staring at old issues of Vogue and Washingtonian (because who's had time to begin internet services at home recently?) and wondered why I thought that taking so much time off was a good idea.  Why was it worth it to lose so many hours of work time?

Because you just got married, my mind reminded me.  Because you're beginning a new life in a new home with a new identity.  Because what matters in the long run is your Vocation - the one you began just 12 short days ago.

These things are true.  And what I realized is that there is no easy way to transition from single to married, from honeymoon-vacation to work-reality.  Not when you have 2 people's laundry to catch up on, and dinner to make all of a sudden, and an apartment to make feel homey despite the still-white walls.  The addition of parishioner emails informing me that our newsletter is more pathetic than that other parish's is just the cherry on top.

Don't get me wrong: I'm still excited for these new beginnings.  I'm still excited to go fold our laundry and figure out what to make for when my husband (!) returns home from work tonight and to do a little grocery shopping trip.  But these changes and beginnings are bittersweet: they bring with them a loss of "me", a realization of how selfish I am, and the necessity for vulnerability - all of which are the average human's least favorite things.

So we'll work together on becoming a family: on losing ourselves in gaining each other, and on better learning how to serve and be served.

I've given and received quite a number of toasts in the last few weeks, but here's another: here's to new beginnings.  Here's to sharing closets and bathroom sinks.  Here's to crashing to reality and allowing the parachute of spouse to catch you.  And here's to growing in the vocation of love, daily, through the ordinary monotony of life.

Dear Rosa:
Countless times, I've planned to write to you once more.  And just as many times, I've convinced myself not to.
"There's too much to say.  Too much I don't know how to explain.  Where do I begin?"

You see, God's been flipping tables on me a lot in the last, well, year and a half.  Since January of 2015, there have been so many things that I've been convicted of, moved to change, and then received a very clear message: "stop."  And so I have.  I've stopped, reassessed, and waited.

Sometimes that waiting gets tiring.
Sometimes I wish that I could have a life like hers, or hers, or his, plugging away at work, just doing the everyday tasks, with no curveballs thrown in.
Sometimes I forget that there's a Divine Plan so much bigger than my own.

About 9 months ago now, I packed up my things and moved to a seminary outside Chicago.  I was going to study the Liturgy to become a Liturgist, and I was going to experience this adventure of living as the solitary woman on a campus full of 220 men discerning the priesthood.  I settled in and I learned a lot, but it was mostly personal growth.  I wrote papers and read encyclicals, yes, but I also prayed, questioned, pleaded, and sought.  And I gradually came to realize that I was sent there not to complete 2 years of a master's degree, but instead to complete an accelerated course in listening, trusting, and praying.  

That realization was a difficult one.  I'd taken a leap of faith in moving, and once more I had to take a leap of faith as I left, rather suddenly, in the middle of the semester, with no credits to my name and no job to head home to.  Somehow, as I packed and said my goodbyes to the friends I'd made, I found an abundance of peace in the knowledge that the Lord was leading me to something better than I ever could have planned for myself.

Do I regret going?  Not for a second.  Do I wish it had happened another way?  Not really.  Does it seem like a waste?
​Sometimes, yes.

It's challenging to wrap my mind around the fact that it took such a large change to uproot my convictions of what my "life plan" would look like.  It's difficult to acknowledge to myself and those I encounter that yes, I did indeed drop out of grad school.  It's humbling to know that the Lord knew such a wake up call would be necessary in order to reach my stubborn heart.

Life hasn't slowed down a bit since I left Chicago last October.  I still wonder how God expects me to get it all done.  And sometimes, it feels like I'm drowning a little bit.  But then I remind myself that if I can move to a strange city with no friends and begin a program at a school with only men, I can probably take on a stressful day at work.

So what am I up to now, Rosa?  I'm reading books, writing letters, and KonMari-ing my sock drawer.  I'm traveling for weddings and pilgrimages, editing textbooks, and learning how to pay utility bills.  I'm working at a parish, learning how to trust God even more through both the minutiae and the ground-shaking changes.

​But above all, I'm allowing my heart to grow and shift and change for the next thing that the Lord places in my path, whatever and whenever that may be.
Vivi d'Amore,
​Allison

This summer, I took up yoga.

Now, before you get all nervous about my eternal soul, I'll assure you that it's not just any weird, new-age-y, kinda hipster yoga.
That's the thing: it's not just any yoga.
It's P90X yoga, make-you-sweat-and-question-life-choices yoga.  These instructors don't care about whatever spiritual lessons you can learn from exercise, as those in the East might propose.  No, they essentially just want to get ripped.

Let me assure you that my goal wasn't "to get ripped".  Actually, my goal was much simpler and more pathetic: I'll do this, I told myself, because it has been suggested to me by someone I trust, and I have no reason not to.

And so I found myself collapsed on the floor of my rented apartment in the middle of July, sweat beading on my forehead and tears running down my face, questioning why something as seemingly easy as holding the Warrior I pose for 15 seconds was actually this difficult.

I fell in love with yoga that night.  I was drawn to the simple challenge of it.  I wanted to excel at it, to make it my own, to become stronger, and  I slowly improved.  I learned to accept the fact that I couldn't do these crazy difficult moves yet, and as I practiced, and sweated, and practiced some more, I had a realization: I could use this lesson of patience in the rest of my life.

--

Patience.
It's a rather difficult thing, especially when applied to ourselves.  I tend to expect perfection of myself, immediately, even while granting a time of grace and learning to others.

--

Right now I'm in that super fun position of being in a new place, meeting 225 new people.  And with the meet-and-greets at dinnertime comes the inevitable question: "Oh, what are you planning to do after you finish here?"

It's been hard for me to accept that I don't know, and even harder to admit that to others.  But last night, as I told Seminarian 1 sitting to my right that I had taken an unexpected leap of faith in coming here, he smiled and laughed softly.  I prepared myself for mockery, confusion, anything, but instead, I received understanding.  

"Ah," he commented to Seminarian 2.  "We know what leaps of faith look like, don't we?"  And turning back to me, he said, "I took one myself in coming here.  But it's been wonderful, and I'm sure it'll be the same for you."

The Lord rewards our patience, our faithfulness.  For me, He reminds me of that by handing me a job before I asked for one.  He sends me Seminarian 1 at dinner to show compassion for following God's will.
And now He turns and says to me, "Love is patient and kind.  Will you love yourself through virtue?"

The end has come once again, and again I am thinking "I'm so done."

I have loved these last 12 months of leadership.  I enjoy working behind the scenes and assisting with so many events.  But I am ready to move on.  While I am admittedly still a bit bitter over the "degree mishap" from May, I'm also just ready for the next step.  It's exciting to think about all the possibilities that await me, and those can't begin until I put my undergraduate life behind me.    

The morning that I left Franciscan University, I was talking with one of my friends as I cleared my desk at work.  He asked how I was doing with leaving, and I took a deep breath before answering.
"You know, it's time.  It's been a fantastic year, but I can see that my time here is done; it's bittersweet, but I'm content with leaving.  God is good."

Indeed, our God is very good.

The books were calling, but sometimes the heart calls louder.

I have a big exam today.  But some evenings, such as last night, the necessary thing to do is to sit in the open window and watch the transition from sun-kissed to charcoal, as the sky is gradually being painted muted blue and purple, from bright orange and red.

As I stood on the top deck, my mind was spinning.  Maybe it was the staticky music, or the jumping floor beneath me, but although I was surrounded by people, there was so much distance.

Someone lit a pipe behind me, a star shot across the sky, and a train chugged along parallel to our river.  I was transported back to summer of 2012, when pipes meant good conversation and shooting stars were common.  A summer when I learned who I was.  And I wished, for a moment, that I could go back.

Lights sparkled in the distance as we moved from the darkness of the water to the brightness of the city.  My heart felt very much like the boat I was on: able only to see reflections of the lights known up ahead, swimming in darkness.  I was alone, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

Four-years-ago-Allison expected some very concrete things of senior-Allison.  Four-years-ago-Allison expected to be hired for a youth ministry position in her home diocese.  She thought she'd have been in a household for four years.  She planned on a ring by senior spring, from that guy she'd courted and they'd done 'everything right'.  She was under the impression that she was already grown up.

Oh, how wrong she was.  She wasn't prepared for the late nights, for crying with friends and coffee at 11 pm just because.  She didn't know yet that heartbreak and crushed dreams (and not just the romantic kind) could be a good thing.  She hadn't understood that household-hunting was a process, love isn't automatic and timed, and she had a great deal of growth left to do.

Last night, I stood beside my freshman year roommate in wonder at how far we've come since then.
And I came to realize that the night wasn't completely black, that there were lights reflecting in the water.

I've been thinking a lot lately.
Thinking about meaning, and purpose, and effort, and what life is actually all about.
I suppose that an impending graduation will do that to you.  The thought of your entire world changing in the course of an afternoon is enough to scare anyone, at least for a moment.
Because as excited as I am to move on to the next step, I also don't want to leave this safe little bubble that's been provided for me over the last 4 years.

What is this life even about, and am I ready to dive headfirst into it?
Am I prepared to face whatever comes next?  And can I tackle it with enough ease and grace and forethought to not make stupid decisions?
Will I be able to accept whatever the Lord's will is for me in each situation?  To recognize it when it's sitting in front of me?  To grasp it when it's already hit me over the head?

When you think about it, college graduation is the one time when you don't really know what's next in your life.  Because we're all expected to attend 16 years of school, and so we do.  But after this point, the world is our oyster.  And that's pretty darn exciting.

It's good to be able to recognize that I'm ready for the next thing.  I'm glad that I can tell that my time here at Franciscan is coming to a natural end.  Not being able to see that would make leaving all the more difficult.

16 days remain in my undergraduate 'career'.  
And then, the adventure truly begins. 

I don't believe I have ever had such an eventful Holy Week, nor such an ironic one.  Eventful because I was running the entire time, ironic because it didn't exactly *feel* like Holy Week while I was going through it.

For the last 3 months, I have been preparing for Easter.  Not simply personally, but planning minute details for our campus' Easter celebration: training our Liturgy team, emailing priests, printing hundreds of sheets of instructions, leading meetings.  And this weekend, we reached the culmination in the Easter Vigil.  I am exhausted - physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally - but it was so worth it and I would do it again in a heartbeat.  As I've walked through the Triduum in such a sleep-deprived state, I have been more at peace than I have throughout the preparation process.

For the last 5 days, the 18 of us spent close to every spare moment together, setting up a beautiful yet makeshift sanctuary in our campus gym, then tearing it down and setting up for another day.  We got little sleep, drank lots of caffeine, and were short on brain cells.  But we did it, and I'm shocked to realize that it's over.

This week, I learned the importance of being a leader, and that I am capable of effective leadership.  I've always been hesitant to admit that to myself, mainly for fear that I'd be asked to do more.
But now I'm in love with it.
I love being behind-the-scenes, preparing the little details that no one else knows go into an Easter Vigil.  I love planning the minutiae and troubleshooting with 1 minute to come up with an answer.  This discovery has energized me, and made me all the more excited to maybe do this full-time one day.

As I continue to recover from lost sleep and complete projects I had to delay, I am learning to view the Resurrection in a new light.  It's a view from backstage, where I am the one seeing the cogs in the wheel.  And just as the congregation didn't know that Communion on Holy Thursday was anything but smooth, I don't know most of the Lord's plans for my own future.  If I can be the knowledgable one in one little area, certainly I can hand over control of my own life to the One who has a much better view of the whole.

The Lord is truly risen, despite my inadequacies and questions.  Alleluia.

I thought that Senior Year would be the year I wrote the most, published the most, shared the most.  But I find myself wanting to only live in the moment, and not take the time to share as "widely" what's going on.  Still, that doesn't mean I've just been sitting around these last few weeks!

3 weeks ago was spring break, and I took a trip to Connecticut to go on a mission/retreat with the Sisters of Life.  This community of religious women is so full of joy, and it was wonderful to be able to spend 10 days in their presence.  The 90 of us on break together heard talks, played games, helped to renovate a house in Harlem, took a "Saint Tour" of New York City, and spent a lot of time in prayer.  While it wasn't a "discernment retreat", the Lord was certainly very present to all of us, but in very different ways.  I had a lot of adventures and learned so many lessons during that week.  I will have to share some of them later.

This past weekend, my household was on retreat together.  We take a weekend away from campus once a semester to gather as sisters, pray, and grow.  These three days were the best we've experienced together, and once again, the Lord was truly present with us.  Again, we prayed and played together, and even got a cow named after our household while we were there!

Looking ahead, I am planning for the Triduum here at school, preparing for an event for a few thousand people.  And then, its only a few weeks until graduation.  I'm constantly blown away at how soon it is, and it's hard to believe that these four years are almost over.  My fellow senior friends and I look at each other almost every day in disbelief- where did the time go?

But there is a lot to do between now and May 9th, graduation day.  So right now, I'm looking at tomorrow, and the next day.  One step at a time,, they say.  The end will be here soon enough, and there's no need to rush it.

I had the greatest of intentions as Lent began.  I was motivated and ready to go.  THIS would be the Lent that would change my life.

But 2 days in, and I was dragging.  My predetermined sacrifices seemed meaningless, and I found myself starting at my list of penances, at a standstill and unable to continue.

And so I stopped.

I sat with the Lord and explained to Him where I was.  I asked Him to show me where I needed to go next.
The thing is, when you ask God something like that, He answers.  But it's always HIS timing.

And so it happened that it was just last night that I came to realize what my Lent is supposed to be.  This year, the Lord doesn't want fireworks from me, but simply my steadily burning candle of faith.  And as pathetic as that makes me feel, I know that's the right answer.

As I look forward to the rest of today, the last day of classes before a much-needed spring break, I also look forward to a new outlook on Allison's Lent 2015.  Because we still have 4 weeks to go, folks.  God's not done teaching me yet.