It’s been awhile. I’d apologize, but I’m not actually sorry for neglecting the blog. My life has been consumed with many wonderful things that, even now, I’m ignoring on behalf of you, my beloved creepers. That’s right. Feel the love.
I’m procrastinating the reading of three different books of the Bible, an entire book, five chapters in three different textbooks, several hundred paragraphs of the Catechism, the writing of a reflection paper, two journal reflections, and nineteen chapter summaries, the re-copying of notes, and the memorization of the Old Testament canonical order, all to tell you that I’m doing wonderfully.
School has been insane. Completely. My life is a beautiful hodgepodge of prayer, classes, homework, household, and health. It would probably be pretty easy to look at the above To Do List and be stressed out, but honestly, I’m getting used to it. You should have seen last weekend’s list. I’m learning and growing and it’s grand. I’m busy, but not stressed.
Let’s have some life-details, shall we?
Classes
I’m positively in love with two of them. Scriptural Foundations of Catechetics (totally as nerdy-Catholic as it sounds) and Principles of Biblical Studies. The first is about applying Sacred Scripture to catechesis (teaching the faith), and therefore is intensely focused on reading, memorizing, and falling in love with the Word of God. After all, you can’t give what you don’t have. In the second class we’re diving deep into the Old Testament – studying it intensely at a fast pace. It’s incredible. Don’t worry, I’m not surprised at its quality in the slightest. I mean seriously, the Guy who wrote the textbook is Awesome.
My two other classes are taking a little longer to pick up speed. Theology of Christ has been beautiful (Sirilla is an amazing professor) but we’re still working our way up to the really mind-blowing stuff.
Content and Curriculum (another Catechetics class) is being taught by a new professor. She is fresh out of fifteen years of teaching high school classes, and it still shows a bit. You can tell she’s used to having to work really hard to get her students to want to know what she’s teaching. Hopefully she’ll realize that she doesn’t have to do all the build up – she can just tell us the Truths she’s trying to share with us and we’ll go from there.
Finally there is my Personality class. It’s for my psychology minor, and it exists because God wants to teach me about patience, humility, and finding joy in suffering.
Household
I love it. My sisters call me on and call me out on a daily basis. God was kind enough to give me a kick-butt accountability partner who tells it like it is and is cool with me being just as blunt, which is good because I would have been regardless of whether or not she wanted it. ;)
***TOP SECRET THINGS TO BE FILLED IN LATER***
Prayer
My prayer life has been really consistent lately. I can’t even describe how grateful I am that God has chosen to give me four years in a place that is so safeguarded from society’s nonsense. I am completely aware of how blessed I am that the cool thing to do around here is to talk to Jesus and let Him talk to you. Don’t get me wrong. There are still plenty of things that could easily (and too often do) distract me, but hopefully building self-discipline here when the distractions and temptations are smaller will profit greatly when they get bigger. That’s the plan anyways. I love Him. He loves me. It’s good.
Other
1. Injury
Ok. So. I’m limping again. You’re probably (like EVERYONE who sees me) shaking your head and wondering why on earth I can’t just stay in one piece like normal people. The answer is that I don’t know. I’m just not good at it.
Good News: It’s not my ankles!
Bad News: It’s my knee(s).
Long story short: There is a kickboxing class on campus that is crazy fun. Mel convinced me to try it with her, and it was great. You may laugh at me. When I told Hannah, she laughed until I hung up on her and then laughed some more after she called me back. She’s a goob. Anyways. It’s fun, and as soon as my stupid knee works again I’m gonna do it some more. What is wrong with the knee? Well, I stepped wrong or kicked wrong or something on Monday. It hurt. I was like “It’s not that bad. I’ll just finish this class.” unfortunately that was only ten minutes in, and fifty minutes later I was limping. No, I haven’t been to the doctor. They’d just tell me to do the whole Rest Ice Compression Elevation thing, which I’ve been doing anyways. I’m fine. I’ll keep you updated.
2. Born of the Spirit
I’m on core team for the Born of the Spirit Retreat. The retreat is Oct. 21-23. I’ll tell you more about it then. For now: It’s cool. Please pray for us and those who go on the retreat!
3. I need to learn how to speak Spanish.
This needs to happen for several reasons. First, because it’s on my bucket list. Secondly, because I’m going to Nicaragua. Dec 31 – Jan 7. I decided while I was eating gross caf food. The conversation went something like this.
Marriana: I can’t eat anymore of this. I don’t know what animal it came from. I’m going to go to Nicaragua. God just said so. Do you want pizza?
People eating dinner with Marriana: … wtheck?
Basically: God told me to. So I’m going. More to come later.
