"Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."
I grew up in a small town in New Jersey. In high school, I played bass guitar in a cover band with three of my best friends. Most of the songs we played were decades older than we were. I was also very involved with my parish youth group, where I met a guy named John, whom I took to my junior prom, you know, just as friends. The next year, John and I went to both his prom and mine. By graduation, we knew there was something special between us that we wanted to last.
John and I both went to college in Massachusetts. I studied English and German at Boston College, where I also dabbled in swing dancing, ultimate frisbee, copyediting the school paper, intramural sports (softball champions '08), and eventually found my way back to ministry, traveling around Boston to give confirmation retreats. I also traveled to post-Katrina New Orleans, Belize, and Berlin. The most life-changing event happened back in Beantown, during the 2008 Boston Marathon: John proposed, and I said yes.
We married eighteen months later at the parish where we met, the parish that we call home to this day. We lived in Manhattan and Brooklyn for four years, before returning to our hometown. Because we've been together since we were seventeen, sometimes it still doesn't feel like we're adults, but we have five children (and one interceding for us) and the home renovation projects to prove it.
I am so grateful for the grace of God in my life. I pray that my voice encourages, inspires, and lifts up other women (and men!) to honor all that we were created to be--to answer the call we've been given with our whole hearts and to honor our God in every thought, word, and deed.