I did it.

I moved into my very first apartment, all by myself!

True, it's an on campus apartment, but still it's pretty darn exciting if you ask me!

I also have a room all to my self, for the first time ever!

And tomorrow I start my last first day of college (and of school for the foreseeable future). Craziness....

My last painting of the Summer

"Blessed is the woman who has a smile in her voice, a sparkle in her eyes, a song on her lips; a spring in her step, a warmth in her touch, a depth in her beauty, a purpose for her life, a joy in her faith, a hope in her breast and a love in her heart."

William Arthur Ward

"If you want a relationship to have purpose and meaning, it cannot be isolated from your ultimate purpose and meaning in life. God Himself said that it is not good for you to be alone. But that desire for union must first be filled by Him. Before you can truly love a man, God wants you to be secure and content in His love alone. Only then will you be able to allow Him to love others through you.Otherwise, a relationship can take the place of God. Instead of being a reflection of God's love, it becomes a replacement for Him. After all, no man's affections can replace the security of knowing the love of God. If your relationship with God is secondary to your relationship with a man, the human relationship can grow into an idol. It will reign over your heart and dictate your level of happiness. Not only is this unfair to the man, it will ultimately end in disappointment. For things to run smoothly, put God first and let Him worry about the rest."
- How to Find Your Soul-mate Without Losing Your Soul, by Jason and Crystalina Evert

My new morning prayer...

Let the day reveal itself to me.
In its own time.In its own way.
I am yours, Today.
I am yours.

-The Day Before, Lisa Schroeder

"Humility is the mother of all virtues; purity, charity and obedience. It is in being humble that our love becomes real, devoted and ardent. If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are. If you are blamed you will not be discouraged. If they call you a saint you will not put yourself on a pedestal." (Mother Teresa)

‎‎"The world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming it." - Helen Keller

“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.”

Rumi

New Translation Monday: Eucharistic Prayer II, Part I (Preface)

New Translation Monday: Eucharistic Prayer II, Part I (Preface)

"Every day our hearts must live the experience of conversion, changing from withdrawn people, to individuals who are open to the action of God, to spiritual souls who feel challenged by the Word of God and opening their lives to His love."

-Pope Benedict XVI

"More intellectually coherent than relativism, orthodoxy is also more demanding. It makes us place others above ourselves, the truth above what we'd like to be true, the fight for virtue above the pursuit of pleasure. In a word, it preaches sacrifice.

These themes will be prominent in Madrid this week, as Catholics of all nationalities gather for prayer and festivity. So why are they happy to be Catholic? Because they have concluded that the church's teachings are, in fact, true, and because they've recognized that true freedom lies in self-sacrifice. Far from repressive, such realizations are — as millennials of other faiths can attest — thrilling."

USA Today Column: For these millennials, faith trumps relativism, by Anna Williams

Pope Benedict XVI speaks to my heart...

True enough, it is important to have a job and thus to have firm ground beneath our feet, yet the years of our youth are also a time when we are seeking to get the most out of life. When I think back on that time, I remember above all that we were not willing to settle for a conventional middle-class life. We wanted something great, something new. We wanted to discover life itself, in all its grandeur and beauty.
- Pope Benedict XVI

"Totally love Him, Who gave Himself totally for your love."

-St. Clare of Assisi

Open Hands

"When a woman has a kingdom heart, she has an active understanding of what matters most to the heart of God. She lives in the balance of passion and contentment. She learns to love well, give without regard to self, and forgive without hesitation. The woman with a kingdom heart may have a duffel bag full of possessions or enough treasures to fill a mansion, but she has learned to hold them with an open hand. Hold everything with open hands. I don't think we are ever allowed to grab hold of anything or anyone as though they matter more than the kingdom of heaven. When you hold relationships with open hands, then people come in and out of your life as gifts of grace to be cherished and enjoyed, not objects to be owned and manipulated. And then when you hold your dreams with open hands, you get to watch God resurrect what seemed dead and multiply what seemed small."-A Beautiful Offering, Angela Thomas

"The saints don't become saints because they are eloquent, gorgeous, bright or athletic. They become saints because they discover God's love and let it conquer their hearts." - The Better Part, Fr. John Bartunek,LC

"What is capable of restoring enthusiasm and confidence, what can encourage the human spirit to rediscover its path, to raise its eyes to the horizon, to dream of a life worthy of its vocation – if not beauty?" - Pope Benedict XVI

Happy Feast of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)!!!

"We bow down before the testimony of the life and death of Edith Stein, an outstanding daughter of Israel and at the same time a daughter of the Carmelite Order, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, a personality who united within her rich life a dramatic synthesis of our century. It was the synthesis of a history full of deep wounds that are still hurting ... and also the synthesis of the full truth about man. All this came together in a single heart that remained restless and unfulfilled until it finally found rest in God."

"Learn from St Teresa to depend on God alone and serve Him with a wholly pure and detached heart. Then, like her, you will be able to say, 'I do not regret that I have given myself up to love.'"

-John Paul the Great on St. Edith Stein at her beatification

"God our Father, You give us joy each year in honoring the memory of Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. May her prayers be a source of help for us, and may her example of courage and chastity be our inspiration."

-Liturgical Prayer on the Feast of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

"Things were in God's plan which I had not planned at all. I am coming to the living faith and conviction that - from God's point of view - there is no chance and that the whole of my life, down to every detail, has been mapped out in God's divine providence and makes complete and perfect sense in God's all-seeing eyes." –Edith Stein

To learn more about St. Edith Stein read this biography put out by the Vatican.

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, ora pro nobis!

The Secret Ingredient

Have you ever seen the Food Network show Chopped?
It's a competition in which 4 chefs must prepare 3 parts of a meal- appetizer, entree, and desert. Sounds fairly simple, right? It is until you add that in each round the chefs are given baskets containing several "secret ingredients," which could be anything from potatoes (doesn't sound so bad) to cheetos, honey and herb cough drops or spam. Sounds considerably more challenging now, eh? On top of the secret ingredients, the chefs are given an insanely short amount of time to cook each course (we're talking 20 minutes for appetizers and 30 minutes for the entree and desert). So in the end Chopped is a race against the clock to make creative, tastey and well composed dishes out of seemingly inedible ingredients.
I think it's quite exciting. Watching it has kind of become a family affiar at my house. My siblings and I will gather aound the T.V. and watch episode after episode (we have at least a dozen recorded).

A couple nights ago my brother decided try their hand at Chopped. One of them was the judge who got to pick the secret ingredients (which were considerably more tame then those on the real show- tabasco sauce, twizzlers and strawberry jelly, although the Instant Breakfast was a pretty tough one), and the other two were the contestants. I was dissapointed that they did it without me (I was working), but I'm looking forward to trying it with them sometime soon.
I was trying to think up possible secret ingredients when I saw a bottle of Kahlua in our pantry. I remebered that on a recent episode one of the chefs made whipped cream with vodka in it.
"Kahlua Whipped Cream," I thought, "YUM!"**

It's moments like these I wish I could be a chef for real. But for right now I'll just keep pretending I am whenever I cook something here in my own kitchen.

**Try Kahlua Whipped Cream on coffee (especially coffee with chocolate)





or on top of chocolate cheesecake






Bon appetit!!!

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence therefore, is not an act but a habit."

Aristotle

This song gets me everytime...
I think we can all relate to this song in some way or another at some point in our lives. I know I can. It really speaks to the struggle we have with truly understanding and accepting God's mercy. It's one thing to know that God is merciful and has forgiven us, but it's another thing completely to understand it and to feel it deep in your heart of hearts and to be able to be confident in that mercy.

You Are More
By Tenth Avenue North

"There's a girl in the corner With tear stains on her eyes From the places she's wandered And the shame she can't hide She says, "How did I get here? I'm not who I once was. And I'm crippled by the fear That I've fallen too far to love" But don't you know who you are, What's been done for you? Yeah don't you know who you are? You are more than the choices that you've made, You are more than the sum of your past mistakes, You are more than the problems you create, You've been remade. Well she tries to believe it That she's been given new life But she can't shake the feeling That it's not true tonight She knows all the answers And she's rehearsed all the lines And so she'll try to do better But then she's too weak to try But don't you know who you are? You are more than the choices that you've made, You are more than the sum of your past mistakes, You are more than the problems you create, You've been remade. You are more than the choices that you've made, You are more than the sum of your past mistakes, You are more than the problems you create, You've been remade. 'Cause this is not about what you've done, But what's been done for you. This is not about where you've been, But where your brokenness brings you to This is not about what you feel, But what He felt to forgive you, And what He felt to make you loved. You are more than the choices that you've made, You are more than the sum of your past mistakes, You are more than the problems you create, You've been remade. You are more than the choices that you've made, You are more than the sum of your past mistakes, You are more than the problems you create, You've been remade. You've been remade You've been remade. You've been remade. You've been remade."




"And he who sat upon the throne said, 'Behold I make all things new.'" Rev. 21:5

"You may Kiss the Cross"

“Intense love does not measure. . . it just gives.”

Bl. Mother Teresa

“Love makes us beautiful”

St. Augustine

"My Jesus, I desire to be all Yours, and You must be all mine."

In honor of the Feast of St. Alphonsus Liguori:

Maxims for Attaining Perfection

Which maxim do you find most challenging? Which ones strike you the most?


St. Alphonsus Liguori, ora pro nobis!

A really good reminder...