“The Church is the Bride of Christ: he loved her and handed himself over for her. He has
purified her by his blood and made her the fruitful mother of all God’s children.”
-Paragraph 808, The Catechism of the Catholic Church
May 2022
By the end of May, I had reached the word count goal for my convent memoir, but I still hadn’t finished the book. Instead, my writing spree concluded in the middle of novice year. Like the Star of Bethlehem stopping to rest over the place where Jesus was, my writing spree stopped to rest over a very significant moment in my story:
Chapter 17: The Night I Found Him
At the very end of November, I had a breakthrough. The thing that Sister Joanna and the other sisters had told me would happen, the special grace that makes the vow of chastity possible—on November 29, 2013, it happened to me.
It was after an evening walk outside with some of my sisters. Instead of heading back to the novitiate for the night, I first stopped at my choir stall in the main chapel. The chapel was lightly occupied at this hour; just a few professed sisters sat in prayer or study in their stalls. The main lights were still on, casting a warm yellow glow on the blank pages of my leather journal.
I tapped my blue pen on the page, considering how to describe the new thing that had happened to me. At the start of the day, there had been a block, a wall, between me and the Lord. By the end of the day…the first tentative threads of connection. Intimacy. Union.
I started writing carefully on the open page. I wrote as if I had an audience. As if someone else would someday want to know what had happened to me on November 29, 2013. My heart told me that this little “thing” was the real thing—the first flowering of my betrothal to Christ, and a gift that would never be taken away from me, as long as I lived. A gift meant to stand the test of time.
At first it was strange—
I didn’t know it was even there,
the “thing” between me and Him.
It was deep, deep down in my heart,
the unexcavated chambers,
and not until the emotional
earthquake did it suddenly rise…
Not like anything I’ve yet written—
the most natural, the most right thing in the world
like two feet walking, like eyes seeing
like ears hearing His voice,
like a heart loving her heart’s choice.
Oh, but it is He who has chosen me—
I cannot refuse Him, He asks so gently—
oh, He made me for this…
He’s here always
built on faith, but more than faith, built on love and
more than a feeling—it’s a knowing and a being—
it’s Him in me—
me in Him…
He has met me where I am, in the heart, where I withdraw—
Oh! You would not believe how much He loves me! You would not
believe it if I told you, but please believe—
the truth, that I have been broken for
so long I did not even know there
could be anything else…
He is healing my wounds—
He is doing such things for me…
When I looked up from writing my poem, the chapel was almost empty. One of the sisters dimmed the lights, preparing for the time of profound silence. That sweet and beautiful time when I could be alone with Him, the newfound Bridegroom of my soul.
I pushed the red line of my bookmark to the last page of my poem, then closed my journal with a soft thump. I thought about leaving it in the choir stall, but I couldn’t part with it. Instead, I carried it with me to my upstairs cell. Inside my folded arms, tucked close to my heart, was my personal testimony of the Lord’s kindness and goodness.
He is healing the wounds, I’d written. He is doing such things for me!
February 2023
I looked over my draft for the next blog yet another time.
Maybe I shouldn’t post this, I worried. Maybe it’s too confusing, or just too personal. Who is going to understand me when I say that I am still a bride of Christ, even though I am a married woman living in the world?
I considered changing the language to something more general or vague: “this was the night when I first built my convent of the heart.” Or: “This is when I first experienced a deep, intimate connection with Jesus.”
Those two descriptions were both true, but they didn’t accurately express the full nature of what had happened to me, almost ten years ago. They didn’t capture the permanent, lasting nature of this event.
That night, the Lord asked me to become His bride, and I said yes. He later asked me to leave the convent and pursue a married vocation, and I said yes to that, too. I had to “follow the Lamb wherever He goes”—inside or outside the convent (Revelation 14:4). However, leaving the convent and pursuing a different vocation did not change the spousal dimension of my relationship to Jesus.
I believe that’s what the Lord was telling me this May, when He stopped my book-writing at this chapter. He was trying to say, “What I have given to you, I have not taken away.”
But What About My Husband?
I am a bride of Christ. He is the Bridegroom of my soul. To say it any other way would be lying and also offensive to God.
This reality does not conflict with my marriage. When I love my husband James, I love him with the love Christ has given to me. And I love James first and foremost because God has given him to me, and me to him.
My husband is like Christ’s Body, Christ’s Face, to me. When he makes decisions for our family, I strive to listen to him as I would listen to God. When James tells me I am beautiful and how it makes him happy to see me smile – it is like not only James, but also Jesus who is seeing me, saying those things to me. They are those little things that I need to hear as a woman, spouse, and bride. ♥️
Jesus Christ is the perfect Spouse. I cannot love Him the way that He loves me: with total, faithful, fruitful, self-sacrificing love … even when I don’t deserve it. However, I can strive to love my earthly husband as Jesus loves me. To love James even when I don’t feel loved in return. To give freely even when I am not receiving. To take care of James, pay attention to him, encourage, and affirm him. (ie., “Great job painting the basement, honey!”)
I need to do these things much, much more. Then I can become a worthy spouse to both the Lord and James.
Happy Valentine’s Day to my two great loves! ♥️✝️♥️
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Thank you so much for reading! A very happy Valentine’s Day to you all. ♥️ Join me next week to learn about the brand new opportunity the Lord introduced into my life this past summer!
