Three days ago, I committed to doing Emily Ley's "Simplicity Challenge" - clearing one area of my home a day, in an effort to simplify our lives for this coming year.  As I began to clear things out, I listed a few items on a resale site and one was purchased.​

Two mornings ago, I pulled the pork out of the freezer, ready to do meal prep when I got home from work.  I signed up for a "30-minute challenge" to help me detox from phone use, and downloaded an app to track how much time I spent using technology each day.  I planned to mail out the item I had sold the day before.

Tuesday evening, I stopped at the store for some groceries, ready to whip out dinner not only for that night, but for the rest of the week.

And then I got home.

I walked into our apartment to find our furniture covered in plastic and water streaming down our walls, one of my pots catching drips on the counter and a plastic bin (previously storage for summer clothes) catching a stream in the closet.

Clearly, all my plans went down the drain. (insert clever water pun here)

Now that the initial chaos is over and I've had a few days to sleep, eat, and distractedly step back into work, I've also had a few moments to think.  I think back 72 hours to that second of walking in my door, not knowing what was salvageable, if anything.

Perhaps many of us have had that thought: "If my house was on fire, what would I grab before running out the door?"  If you've seen Leap Year, you'll remember the scene that was the test of a relationship.  I knew my husband was safe at work, and that I had more than one minute to gather my things, but the first things I thought of?  The letters Christopher wrote me as part of my wedding gift.  The scrapbook I made him as his gift.  And our wedding photos, memorializing the most important day of our lives.

Thankfully, all those things were safe, as were most of our belongings.  We'll be out of our home for a week as our carpets and drywall are restored, and most of our clothes are being cleaned for the next month.  I won't get to mail out that item I sold, and my seller rating will probably go down.  The pork is now sitting in my mom's fridge, and I've used my phone for 3 hours so far today, calling insurance and banking and apartment management.

But ultimately, I don't care about my rating or these challenges.  We're safe, and those "what if" items are safe, and we're having a crazy adventure suddenly living out of suitcases for a week.

So Happy New Year.  Happy sudden-end-to-personal-challenges.  And happy real life, no filter, true as can be marriage.  It may be nothing like the movies, but I wouldn't trade it for the world.

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.

Whew.  Take a deep breath ... we have arrived at spring semester.  THE spring semester.  The one that my entire school career has let up to.
It's a bit overwhelming to think about the next few months.  I have "so much to do, so little time" to do it.  Multitasking seems like the only possible option for getting everything done.  [In fact, as I type this, I am also signing up for a class and writing a cover letter and writing out my assignments for the next few weeks... no judgement, please.]  And in case I didn't feel busy enough, I was running for 12 1/2 hours straight today, just to solidify the idea in my mind that this semester is going to be a whammy.

I've been led to a conclusion.  A conclusion which at first seems counterintuitive, but by now, I know it's true.
I need to spend more time doing more things.
And by "more things", I really mean "prayer".

As I sat with my spiritual director last week, he kept casually mentioning prayer.  Actually, the conversation went something like "something-something-PRAYER-somethingelse-PRAYER-PRAYER-otherthing-PRAYER". **  So by the end I had gotten the hint that prayer should maybe possibly be something I concentrate on in these upcoming weeks and months.

I'm nailing down a schedule.  And part of that schedule is going to be frequent Mass... certainly more frequent than twice-a-week.  It's starting tomorrow, as I wake up earlier than technically necessary to attend Mass off campus (the reason for which is another topic for another day).

Although this semester may be the one of "lasts" and "goodbyes", I'm hoping that for me, its also the beginning of new habits and positive changes.  Because if not now, then when?

** I should note that I do, in fact, remember the "somethings" and "other things" that were mentioned during our conversation.

I was recently watching a video which issued a challenge: invest in personal relationships over virtual relationships.  It stated that there is a difference between being alone and being lonely, and all too often, our obsession with virtual reality makes us more lonely (even though we're "connecting" with people).

I took this challenge to heart and trotted off to Facebook-land to purge my 'friend list'.  Surely, I thought, the fewer 'Facebook friends' I have, the less time I'll spend wasting time on Facebook.  So I clicked to my profile, then my friends list ... and friend-requested 3 people and accepted another request.  Whoops.

Thinking I'd have more success on Twitter, I proceeded over there next.  After wasting 10 minutes clicking links posted by the people I follow, I finally un-followed 13 people, wondering why I was following the CIA and "German translations" in the first place.

Feeling like a media failure for investing so much time in my virtual realities, I took a deep breath and deleted Facebook from my phone.  Done.  And then I came here to blog about it.

Where is the balance?  I think one of the keys is to allow my time online to lead into better, deeper relationships with people in real life.  I think this is one of the reasons that I find it so hard to delete 'friends' on Facebook- because I'm afraid that 'delete' will mean we'll never connect in real life again.  The question, though, is this: if I haven't spoken to that high school classmate in 4 years or my previous RA in 3 years, even online, then what are the chances we'll reconnect now?  And, with technology, couldn't we find each other anyway, if we wanted to?

There's no denying that media can be good, useful, even lead us closer to God.  I can say with confidence that videos, blog posts, or Catholic images I've seen on the internet have inspired me to grow in my faith journey.  It's when they promote distance or even prevent us from having a faith life altogether that it becomes problematic.

So, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go delete at least 5 Facebook friends.  Baby steps, they say.  And then I'm logging off and attending praise and worship.  Tomorrow, the first thing I will do is say a prayer to my Creator, instead of logging on to Facebook. Slowly, I'll begin to reconnect with real people around me.

And I challenge you to do the same.