Waiting for Patience

As I prepare for Thanksgiving, tonight a comment my cousin made to me last month kept coming to mine mind. I was together with tons of my family for my godmother's 50th Wedding Anniversary. Some of the siblings hadn't seen each other since their brother died. Others in the family it'd been more than a decade, maybe since my grandmother's passing in 1999. Although not everyone was present at the party, we did have a great time catching up. My cousin was taking photos as everyone came into the party and had us put our names on them. After about 10 of the shots were done, she realized that there was a setting on the camera to make them lighter. It was an old Polaroid, so no adjusting after the shot is taken. I was one of the people who had to take their picture twice. When I teased about having to take a second photo, she said "come on, you never take a bad photo - ever since we were little, you've always been photogenic." Hmm, I don't particularly lo...

Last night I was at dinner with a few friends when a guy who used to be interested in me came up in conversation. One of the people at the table wasn't around when this guy was around all of the time almost stalking me. Someone else at the table said "they weren't good for each other age-wise, physically, emotionally, etc..." But she was referring to the wrong guy - another character in this crazy cast. I complain a lot about being alone - and this time of the year the feeling of being alone is exacerbated even more. But it was interesting having this conversation yesterday. The crazy cast of characters that have been on the first date list is wide and varied. But none of them have made the cut. Why is that? Many have asked - in some pretty invasive ways to be honest. What's wrong with that one? Too old, too young, too jerk-ish, too full of them selves, too 'I want to be a priest,' too... Looking to the future, I hope that he's just "too gre...

I am a terrible person to plan a party with when you don't know what you want to do. One of my least favorite things is indecisiveness. I'm sure my friends can tell some tales about planning events, gatherings, dinners, coffees, or advice sessions with me. Although there are some things that I'm not decisive about, my future career for instance, most things I have an opinion about and know what I like. That's usually the problem. Once when I was still working at the parish, Fr. C asked if I had a thought about something. I replied with, "Of course, I have an opinion about everything - that's the problem." And it's true. I know what I like, and I've usually made a decision about something before I even begin speaking about it. I can brainstorm, but I have to tell myself that's what I'm doing before I begin so I don't get married to a particular thought, idea, plan, or way of doing things. A few weekends ago I was with my family at...

I was talking with a woman at Church on Sunday about the busyness of my life and how things are going. Her life is way crazier than mine with the recent loss of her mother and the responsibility she's been given of her siblings who are dependent on others for everything they need in life. The busy travel schedule and hardship of being single seems like such an inconsequential issue in life. I felt silly for even sharing what I perceive as my problems. That I'm still sleeping alone in my big girl bed, in the middle, and can't seem to find someone to share my life with - or even a hot meal or a cup of tea at bare minimum. Although our conversation ended with a phrase I'm coming to dislike. "He's Out There." I used to say "I know, it's just not time yet" or "I can't wait until he gets here" or "Maybe his lost his GPS" or "His directions must not have printed out clearly" ... those last two are just my sa...

People say this to me a lot when I tell then about how much I travel for my job. "Enjoy it now while you still can." I'm away a lot for work, but I also add time on to those trips to visit with family and friends in the area. Since Labor Day I've been somewhere almost every week and have been out of town every weekend for work or pleasure. I thought the rest of my year was going to be travel free but the next four weeks are already booked with trips. One of my recent trips came through from American in my email like this, "Trip to United States of America": Charlotte to New York to New Orleans to Cleveland to New York to Charlotte over 11 days. I came home for 4 days before leaving again for another 9 days. I was hoping the rest of the year wouldn't include much travel, but in the last three days I planned 4 more trips, two of them include a lot of driving because flying would take so much longer and be incredibly inconvenient. That's ...

This is a question that I ask myself all of the time. It's the default question when I'm asked to "talk" by my manager at work, when there's a guy who I might be interested in, and when a friend doesn't answer a voicemail or a text for a long time. It comes up a lot. It's also the devil's number one button to push. I know that, but I cannot refrain from asking it over and over again. Just last week my managers asked to have dinner with just me before a big event, and all I could think all afternoon was "what did I do wrong now?" and "how will I recover from this?" It wasn't that at all. It was them offering me a promotion and additional duties at work because they think I'm great at my job. How can I have such a different view of myself than other people do? Some might say that this is humility, not being boastful and proud about your accomplishments. However, I don't think it's that because if I was being humble...

Yesterday I flew into Charlotte on a 7am flight from Baltimore. It was the 3rd very early morning flight I took this week and I was so tired! So I get home, answer a few emails, make a few calls, and then lie down for a few hours to get some sleep since I was over exhausted. That's when it begins. A loud, piercing beep! So I check every smoke detector in my house - of which there are 4 in my very small 1200 square foot house. Why so many? I'm really not sure, but apparently the builders of this house were very fire safety conscious. Less than a year ago, I had replaced 3 of the batteries after a similar situation and thought that the green light indicated "good" so I went to all 4 and looked for the green light. The one I didn't replace last time, in my office with the highest ceiling, is the only one without a green light. So I check with my friend who was coming over already and her tall husband was coming over with her before we went out last night. He was ...

I've been thinking about this topic a lot lately, especially since my grandmother's funeral last month. The times when it's most difficult to be a single person. Many people claim that holidays like Christmas are the most difficult to be single, but I disagree. Christmas, for my family at least, is when everyone is together and we're celebrating time together. We go to visit other family members around town. I typically spend a week or so at home and don't mind the downtime that I don't have to fill with entertaining someone else and finding things for us to do in a small town. Sounds weird, but Christmas isn't my most difficult holiday as a single person. The most difficult are all of the other days of the year when people have family celebrations. Most of those days friends don't think to invite you over to enjoy dinner or a group event that involves friends. Days like Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day. In my experience, Thanksgiving and Easter ar...

“I beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” the beginning of Ephesians 4 Quite an Interesting Article In the quest for a spouse, everyone from my friends to strangers to siblings to parents have told me that I should do online dating. A way to meet more people, expand my reach. I paid for an entire year's subscription and didn't have any bites - only one guy, who was pretty prejudice even progressed to an in-person meeting. Today as I was looking around my archived draft posts, I found this gem. The below is the real struggle of online dating. Maybe this was just the pool from Catholic Match, but I think it's a good representation of the weird things you see online. The advantage of online dating is that you can just copy & paste this crazy into a blog post as evidence. I'm not sure what my future spouse will look like or be like - but I think comments and profiles like this are off my list. Hopefully it doesn't make me...

Happy Feast! Today is Pentecost and that means that the Holy Spirit was the person of the Trinity on the stage during Mass today. Fr. C's homily got me thinking about my own plan. He was talking about how the Apostles received the Holy Spirit just like we have, but the manifestation of the spirit looks completely different in our lives than in theirs. I'm not speaking in tongues, moving the world, etc... He proposed a reason and asked us to think about all of the prayers we've ever prayed. Then take all of the prayers that sound like this "Lord I need help with X," "Please give me Y," and "Remove Z suffering from my life" and place them on one side of the scale. Then on the other side of the scale put every time you've whole-heartedly said "Lord do with me what you will." This got me thinking about my life and my plan for it. More and more I think that the plan I see for my life is not what the Lord has in store for me. I have h...

I've been thinking about what I'm going to write here for a few days. I've been wanting to get my thoughts down, but can't figure out what I want to discuss. What I want to tell my future self about this time in my life. I watched the movie Spotlight  on Friday and had some thoughts I wanted to share, but it's such a difficult topic that I'm not sure this is the place to discuss them or that I have them all worked out in my mind. Last night a friend and I watched War Room  which was really great - and I thought about writing about that, but not really moved. I did listen to that book on the library Hoopla  app a few months ago and it was just as good - I highly recommend that. In the past few weeks, I've been watching Friends  on Netflix  and I've had some thoughts about that as well, but doesn't seem like fuel for discussion here. So this morning, I googled "writing prompts for single women" and found a blog by Mandy Hale, who sounds so f...

I saw this article on Verily last week and thought it was really good. Then I read the comment below and was a little disappointed. It's not terrible - but is from a the perspective of a married girl. As I read it (probably not her intention) it implies that she is upset with the writer because the writer indicates somethings she wants her married friends to do to keep their relationship going after the wedding. Now that would be a fine article to write - and I might even end up doing that here this evening - however, it is a two-way street. This is the nature of relationships. They are two-way streets. All relationships are about give and take - if they aren't, then they are usually contracts and one party is being paid. I don't know about you, but I don't pay anyone to be friends with me ... although sometimes that doesn't sound like a bad idea. The author's ideas to share with her married friends are super simple and not invasive or even too taxing on he...

Tonight I had to run to Harris Teeter for some snacks to serve my very good friend Father Emmanuel from the Congo and the family who's hosting him tomorrow evening when the come over. I've been in my PJs (ie: shorts & a t-shirt I typically wear only to bed) since I got home from the 5pm Mass. When I pulled into the parking lot I noticed Sister E's car there and texted to see if she too was at HT. She was and we got to see each other for the first time in what felt like months. It was so great to catch up. Our really great conversation ended with me crying in the middle of the HT parking lot. Although it ended in tears, it was a really great conversation. I've been having some trouble lately with the cross I've been given to carry. The single life with a deep desire to be married with children. It seems like everyone else has all of these things that I want. I see how I am incredibly blessed by God. I know this. He takes such good care of me. Like just the we...

October is dedicated to the Holy Rosary, so we wanted to honor Mary and reflect on her help during this time of singleness. How have you called on her intercession before? What is your relationship with our Blessed Mother like? If you don't know much about Mary or the Rosary, is there something keeping you from getting to know her? There are two things that keep me sane as a single lady.  One of them is the rosary and the other is this: So I try to stick with the Rosary on most days!  And today is a special feast for Our Lady of the Rosary  so it's great that Morgan and Jen chose October 7th to talk about it!   A few years ago I was in a Women's Bible study and Immaculee  came to speak in Charlotte at our Eucharistic Congress.  A woman who I was very good friends with was with me and a few other ladies at lunch at the best Chinese Restaurant in Huntersville!  She asked me if I was praying the Rosary for my husband.  I said, ...