About Me

I am a good Southern girl, brought up in the One Church and the most beautiful church in the world.  I am blessed with wonderful parents, a brother, and a sister.  My mother was a music major and has taught piano off and on over the years.  Besides homeschooling all three children, she is now the music director for our parish.  My dad works with a power company and is in the Navy Reserves.  He was recently promoted to Captain.  My sister was the first to leave the nest when she went to Christendom College.  She married a Catholic Marine and they have two energetic sons.  My brother was the second to leave when he went to college seminary for four years.  He is now in his first year of Theology at Mundelein, with Navy chaplaincy possibly down the road.

It is going to be a tough day when I fly away.  After twelve years of dreaming of motherhood, I went to this place for a Confirmation retreat.  Just as a child thinks, "Oh, I want to be a doctor when I grow up," I decided that I wanted to be a nun.  I visited several orders including the Dominicans, Poor Clares, and Carmelites, and I investigated several others.  In 2008, I participated in Nun Camp, hosted by the Sisters of Reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.  (The order I thought I was called to.)

In August 2010, I visited Casa Maria on a personal vocation retreat.  I was then but 15 years old.  The vocations director and novice mistress, Sr. Rita Marie, took me aside and spoke to me about knowing a vocation.  After our talk, I was confident that I had a religious vocation.  Much impressed by the sisters, I decided to look more seriously.  A few months later, I came back.  And I came back again.  And again.  And again.  And somehow over the course of those visits, I knew that I had a religious vocation to the Sister Servants of the Eternal Word.  August 2011, I returned to discuss the arrangements for my application process.  After attending a weekend women's retreat in September, I received the application package.  I submitted it in October, was accepted two weeks later, and will enter on September 8, 2012.

Faith and Furballs was a joint experiment for my sister and I.  She had inspired me with her own blogging expertise.  I wanted to start a blog for my newsletter, Saint Cecelia and All Martyrs Press, which began a while later as St. Cecelia's Press Online.  I had so much fun playing with blogger that I decided to keep this one as a personal blog.  I am terrible at keeping a diary, so this is my attempt to record the happenings of my journey to the convent. 

After starting my newsletter, I became interested in Pope John Paul II's teachings on modern technology.  Many people erroneously believe that the Internet it evil.  I disagree.  In fact, I believe that the Internet is a great blessing.  We are now able to access countless areas of information that were so far from our reach before.  I admit that it may lessen creativity, but only if individuals lose their sense of reality.  As many things, the internet is only made evil by the way someone uses it.  That is why, in the footsteps of Pope John Paul II, I endeavor to spread the Good News via the Internet world, to make the Word present and accessible, and to show that Christ is not separate from our daily lives, but present in our every action.