One year and couting....

Exactly one year ago today I married the man of dreams, the one and only, Mr. Matthew Andrew Braman.  We met in the magical land of New Zealand, and my heart has belonged to him ever since.  

This past year has flown by and I’m so grateful for every bit of it.  It feels like our adventures are only just beginning, and that’s a thrilling feeling indeed.  I would like to recount the adventures we have shared thus far:

• Honeymooning in Italy- a fabulous trip indeed
• We (you, me and Maxx) moved into our first apartment in downtown Denver
• We became registered parishioner’s at Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish (how appropriate?!)
• I got my first “big-girl” job
• You switched to your second “big-boy” job, signaling the true start to your career
•  We shared our first Christmas and Easter together, and our second Thanksgiving
•  We had multiple friends visit and explore CO with us

And we were blessed to celebrate it all by staying a night at the oh-so-fabulous Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. 

Thanks for the best year of my life thus far.  I'm so excited for all the blessed things to come. 

I Love You Like a Love Song, Baby

My blog is still a baby by blogging world standards, but I have never seen a link-up that was more appropriate for me!  Perfect timing! Betty over at Betty Beguiles is doing a love song link up, so here goes nothin!

The first song is Matt and I’s first dance song from our wedding.  Besides the fact that the lyrics seemed perfect, it was special because Stevie Wonder was the first concert we went to together... tough act to follow….

Okay, so maybe the last one isn't a happy love song, but it's one of my favorites anyway.  Soooo there you have it.  

St. Raphael the Matchmaker

Are you an expert on angels?  Because I’m not.  Besides the casual mentioning of guardian angels, and hearing the story of St. Gabriel visiting Mary, I know almost nothing about them.  And until I began planning my wedding, they didn’t seem to have a direct impact on my life.

A little over a year ago, it was time for Matt and I to prayerfully discern which readings we wanted for our nuptial mass.  After diligently going through the 8 different choices for the first reading like the good little Catholics we are, we finally decided on Tobit 8:5-7.  The reading is the prayer that Tobias and Sara say on their wedding night, and it really struck a chord with both of us. 

I was so excited about this reading that I called to tell my mom about it. She listened to me blather on like I tend to do, then we said goodbye, and that was it…  Until a day or so later when she called in excitement to share with me something she’d forgotten about.

A few months before I left to study abroad in New Zealand (which is where Matt and I met), my mom and her good friend read about a novena to St. Raphael the Archangel.  He is patron saint of a few things, one of them being patron saint of match makers.  She and her friend decided to say a novena that their daughters would meet their proper spouses (you haven’t seen a meddling mother until you’ve met a Catholic meddling mother- meddler of meddlers, let me tell you, because they go straight to the source). 

The meddlers said their novena and then promptly forgot about it.  Fast forward to my mom and I’s phone conversation.  After she hung up, she remembered her prayers and made an interesting connection:  St. Raphael is considered patron saint of match makers because he brought Tobias to his future wife Sara so that they could be married.  They got married and bowed their heads in prayer on their wedding night… See where I’m going with this?

Boom! So when Matt and I picked our first reading, it was the fulfillment of my mother’s answered prayers for the Lord to bring me my future spouse, all with the help of St. Raphael.

So St. Raphael, you da man fo bringin me my man. 

Bringing lovebirds together (at least I think that's what is going on in this picture)

Clearly angels are more rad than I give them credit for.  I guess it’s time for me to start reading up and learning more about them.   

"Eversing is clost"

Matt and I had THE best time two weekends ago... We're still reeling from the fun, which will be my excuse for taking so long to post about it.

Some of our dearest friends came to visit: Kaija and Jonna LeVine (the dynamic duo), Patrick (Kaija’s boyfrand), and Jordan (our friend from study abroad).  Matt’s sister, Lauren, also joined in some of the festivities, so for the better part of the weekend, we were rollin’ 7 deep.  Good times were had by all. 

We kicked off the weekend by driving up to WinterPark, a ski resort up in them thar hills.  We promptly checked into our veery affordable hotel, and quickly discovered why they were practically paying us to be there: “Thank you for coming. Eversing is clost,” the hotel clerk  informed us (who didn’t quite have that accent, but we imagined she did while laughing about it all weekend).  Apparently the summer activities and the summer schedule for ski resort officially opened up the next day.   Oops. 

“Sooo, there aren’t any restuarants or anyyyy stores that are open??” ….

“Everysing is clost.”

We almost peed our pants we were laughing so hard.  We knew we were destined for a great weekend exactly then.  

Even though it only took us a grand total of 5 minutes to sniff out an open restaurant/bar, it wouldn’t have mattered much at all if everything had indeed been “clost.”  The company was just too spectacular. 

We had a fabulous weekend filled with all sorts of fun, including, but not limited to: weird sausages (think pheasant, rattle snake, boar), hiking in the mountains, Great Divide’s 18^th Anniversary Beer Festival,  impromptu dance parties in our living room (a warm up for Jonna’s dance-off in downtown Denver), the aforementioned night on the town in Denver,  and much, much more.

Man, we sure are blessed with some fun and attractive people for friends. But as the guy on Reading Rainbow said, “Don’t take my word for it!”:

Pretty pretty princesses

Matt and I with our visitors

A columbine flower. So beautiful.

"Hey guys, check out my tail!" -Jonnasaurus

My beautiful college roomie

Great Divide's 18th Anniversary Party

Was it the 5th and 6th, or the 6th and 7th wheel?... can't remember

Love them dearly.  Thanks for gracing us with your glorious presence. Y'all come back now, ya hear?!

A Love Story

I am so in awe of this article.  It’s a love story with such magnitude; my heart ached when I read it.  This is truly what love looks like: sacrifice. 

I think I will be reflecting on this story for the better part of this week, particularly on the richness of the truth that “there is no difference in a life that lasts 30 minutes or 100 years.”

Chiara Corbella, pray for us.

My Confirmation Saint

Most Catholics I know have an interesting story to tell about their confirmation.  The most memorable tend to involve getting publicly stumped/ embarrassed by the Archbishop.  It really doesn’t matter how many times you’ve memorized the 7 sacraments, when you’re standing in front of a large crowd, and the man with the goofy hat is staring at you expectantly, you tend to forget everything.  

My personal story has to do with what I thought was the most stressful part of receiving the sacrament: picking a confirmation saint.  It’s such a toss up: do you go with the saint that inspires you the most (what you’re supposed to do)?  Or do you go with saint that has the prettiest name (give my 8^th grade self a break, alright?)…after all, this will be announced in front of EVERYONE.

 

After much mental debating, I decided to start looking and hopefully one would speak to me.  It was really important to me that whatever saint I picked, she would become my favorite. Despite my lame jokes, I can be fairly intense at times, and this was no exception. Perfectionism much?

I finally came across St. Juliana Falconieri in a small book of saints that my parents had.  Her story caught my eye when I read something about her extreme modesty, to the point of never looking upon a man or mirror in her life.  I think this spoke to hormonally charged 8^th grade Katie, who thought boys were pretty cute and was ALWAYS worried about how she looked.  St. Juliana’s name wasn’t half bad either- success! And the decision was made- St. Juliana would herein be my favorite saint.

A couple of years after I got confirmed, there began to be some trouble in paradise.   It started to eat at me that I hadn’t picked St. Therese of Lisieux instead.  Her story and practical holiness really spoke to me, and she was, to my horror, quickly becoming my new favorite saint.

   

Not only that, but after I found St. Juliana in my parent’s book, I couldn’t find her anywhere else (minus maybe 2 short articles on the internet).  Every time there is a stack of saint cards, I look for her.  Whenever I pick up a book of saints, I check for her name in the index.  And so on, and so on. But I have NEVER found her.  This only led me to further doubt my original choice, thinking “Great, did I pick a fake saint?” Awesome.

The only way I could reconcile these doubts in my head was to tell myself “there is a reason I chose St. Juliana. It’s not clear now, but it will be eventually, whether it be on earth or when I meet her in Heaven.”  Until then, it’s not a crisis to find a couple different role models to follow into Heaven (there’s more than one way to get there ?!!), and putting this stupid requirement of only having one favorite saint is more than 8^th grade kinds of stupid.

Fast forward to August of 2011.  Matt and I had just moved into our urban apartment in downtown Denver, and were looking for the closest parish to join.  We looked up a list of Catholic churches, and to our great surprise, there was a parish (which is now our parish) named “Our Lady of Mount Carmel.”  Matt and I just so happened to have gotten married on the feast day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and therefore, we chose her to be the patron saint of our marriage.  It was fate. We planned to go to that parish the following Sunday. 

I almost started laughing in disbelief when I went inside this beautiful Italian church for the first time.  There, on the ceiling of this church, were paintings of about 8 saints.  I’ll give you one guess as to who one of these saints was… Indeed. My “fake” confirmation saint, dearest Juliana, was perched atop the ceiling in all her pure piety.  Up until this point, I had never even seen a picture/ depiction of her.  It took me a few months later to realize that one of the statues in the front of the church was her as well.  Amazing!

The painting on the ceiling of our parish, and the statue. Ain’t she loverly?

I just couldn’t believe it.  Besides this strong frantic urge to let Juliana know that I was sorry for doubting her capabilities of being confirmation saint material, I was also completely overwhelmed by the implications of this.

Here I am... in Denver... married to Matt.  It all happened so quickly, that sometimes I pinch myself and wonder how I got here.  Seeing St. Juliana on the ceiling and in the statue was so incredible in that it displayed God’s hand in absolutely all aspects of my life.  We wouldn’t have visited this church in the first place if it wasn’t titled “Our Lady of Mount Carmel.”  I wouldn’t have cared about the title if I hadn’t gotten married to Matt on Our Lady’s feast day.  The day of the wedding would have been irrelevant if I hadn’t met Matt, and so on and so forth. And after all of this, I am RIGHT where God desires me to be. Good.to.know.

 

I’m struck by the ways in which my Father in Heaven is so intimately guiding me.  And not only that, but how mysteriously beautiful is it that He allows for participation of the entire Body of Christ to join in the rest of the Body’s salvation? In this particular case, I have every confidence that St. Juliana has been watching over me, praying along with me for my intentions, and working in Heaven to get me there, too.  

Looking back on how frantic my 8^th grade self was to find the perfect saint, I think I can now place that sense of importance I put on the matter.  I don’t think we can place too fine a point on how much of a role the saints play in the salvation of souls.  If God allows for the saints to help those on earth, and has this "great cloud of witnesses" cheering us on, why wouldn't we lean on them? Why wouldn't we ask the holiest and most purified of souls for their prayers? And why wouldn't we look to them to teach us how to get to Heaven, the ultimate goal?

Without a doubt, Juliana is high on my list of souls I hope to greet in Heaven one day, simply so I can thank my dear sister for blessing me as my confirmation saint and for helping me get to Heaven. St. Juliana, pray for us.

O faithful bride of Jesus and humble servant of Mary, Saint Juliana, thou who by practicing the most heroic virtues, especially the virtue of penance and the love of Jesus in His Sacrament didst arrive at the highest peak of Christian perfection and didst merit to be fed miraculously with the Bread of Angels in thy last agony; obtain for me the grace to live a holy life in the exercise of every Christian duty and to be able to receive at the moment of death the comfort of the holy Sacraments in order to come with thee to the blessed happiness of heaven. Amen

Brand Spankin' New

Uh oh.  I think I just heard the faint sound of my productivity levels flying out the window.  I was hesitant about starting a blog for this very reason, and yet as much as I have attempted to talk myself out of it, the attraction was just too darn much for me to handle.

I've always loved journaling. Let me rephrase that. I've always loved reading my journal entries after the fact (narcissistic much?)... the writing portion is met with mixed reviews.  I love reading old entries, because it never ceases to amaze me how life has progressed since I last wrote, whether it be years, weeks, or mere hours since I have written.  I'm not a good listener, so I truly believe this is one of the easiest ways that God speaks to me and shows me the ways in which He is so intimately a part of my life.

It's also nice to have a go-to spot to jot down ideas, share internet treasures, and keep loved ones in the loop.

...So with that, here goes nothin'. As my parents alway say: "Careful not to hurt yourself, Mordecai."